I am just finishing up a week of production rehearsals at Pine Box Studios in Wilmington, DE. The week went very smoothly, and we accomplished everything that we needed to accomplish. In fact, everything went a little too smoothly. It was borderline boring. Everyone got along, the facilities were clean, the load-in was efficient, and I was bored out of my skull. Entertainment is about emotions. I want to feel something in every aspect of this job. I need to be reminded of the pain, suffering, and melancholy that infects every day of sentient life. I want to encourage other rehearsal facilities to spice things up. Keep me on my toes. I want to be challenged and forced to solve new and interesting problems. Here is a short list of how rehearsal facilities can liven up their rehearsal experience. Don’t be like Pine Box.
Step 1. Make sure that rigging is nearly impossible.
Rigging at Pine Box is severely straightforward. They have a 2,400 sq. ft. climate-controlled space with a 130’ x 98’ flying mother grid with a maximum out trim of 85’ with a 136,000 lb. capacity. One of the things I enjoy most about starting a tour is hanging half my rig to a limited trim due to weight restrictions. This ensures that I must update all my focuses onsite. Pine Box leaves nothing to the imagination. You just bring the mother grid down, hang your motors, and send it back up. There is not even a time to start yelling at the riggers up in the air because they are right there on the ground with you. They were done with our points even before I could start complaining about how many breaks they were going to take. This saves money on time and labor. Maybe Pine Box doesn’t know that if we don’t spend the money this year, we won’t get the same budget next year. This means that we will have to find ways to waste more money in other departments. Maybe we will start handing out champagne to the local stagehands instead of crew shirts.
Step 2. Do not provide convenience.
When our production brought 40 crew members into Wilmington, DE, I was really hoping that we would be stuck in a tiny town where we had no other options but to sleep and work. Pine Box disappointed me there. Wilmington has decent hotels, good restaurants, and several convenience stores in the area. I was hoping to sneak away for an hour or so to do laundry, but Pine Box has laundry service onsite. Sneaking away to do “laundry” was the only excuse that I had to go into town and buy souvenirs. Pine Box took that from me. Most excruciatingly, there is an entire inventory of lighting gear on the other side of the wall. I’m accustomed to rehearsal studios that make you wait for hours to get last-minute requests. I enjoy chatting with site supervisors who have to wait for a guy to get back from his lunch break so that he can call the rental department head to contact the warehouse manager to call the shift supervisor to check on availability of a single extension cord. Pine Box bypasses this whole process by being attached to Light Action, a full-service theatrical lighting, staging, audio/video and outdoor roofing systems production company.
Step 3. Be spread out over a large area.
I like to ride around on an electric scooter to get from FOH to the production offices. The hum of the electric rotors reminds me of my self-importance. Pine Box put the production offices right next to FOH. I don’t even get to unpack my Razor Scooter because the production offices, catering, showers, and storage are just a few steps away from the FOH position. Even the covered loading dock that can fit six trucks that flows into a climate-controlled holding/storage area before dumping into the main arena space is so close that I can overhear the truck drivers talking about which brand of energy drink they prefer to snort. Pine Box even has a mezzanine area right outside the second-floor dressing rooms and offices for a bird’s eye view of what’s happening down below on the floor. Every American knows that bigger is better. Pine Box decided to go for efficiency instead of grandiosity. That kind of reason, logic, and foresight has no place in my America.
Step 4. Be incorrigible.
Pine Box has a friendly, accommodating staff that is made up of experts from various ends of the live entertainment industry. Their local crew is made up of people who have toured the globe and done gigs of all kinds. They were often solving problems that I hadn’t even created yet. I went in to start telling them how to do their jobs and instead of arguing with me, they tried to find solutions that would work for me and my fellow crewmembers. Imagine my shock when they said that they would leave one guy behind to lock up after I left at midnight. In Los Angeles, that could have been an additional call that required three people. Even the house lights were accessible to me. The house lights are instant on/off, and as simple as a household light switch. Pine Box gets real dark real fast when you want it to be.
Step 5. Have terrible catering.
I find that a malnourished crew is a motivated crew. When the food is terrible, crew members tend to avoid catering and work longer. They may get a little grumpy, but that is how roadies thrive in their natural habitat. Pine Box disagrees with me. The catering staff at Pine Box is top notch. The catering team comes from the backstage catering world, so they think they know the best way to accommodate touring crews. They subscribe to a philosophy that happy bellies make for a good working environment. I’m not sure which Italian grandmother she picked that up from, but it’s, quite literally, an old wives’ tale.
Step 6. Power must be inaccessible and unreliable.
Pine Box has a dedicated 2,000A 208V 3-Phase power supply within 50’ of where dimmer beach goes. Any idea of running lighting power through guitar world, over sound, and through production is quickly squashed. I miss the good ol’ days of waiting for guitar techs to blame any hum on the dimmer racks and the proximity of our feeder cable.
By now, I am sure that you have seen through this thinly veiled promotion for Pine Box. Please excuse the shameless publicity. I have been to too many rehearsal studios that charge far more for far less than what they provide. Rehearsal studios have become a necessity for modern concert touring. The time and money spent on production rehearsals has proven to be more cost effective over the duration of a tour. Cutting corners on production rehearsals will, inevitably, lead to more costly reconfigurations on the road. If more rehearsal studios would take the time and effort to mimic a real load-in environment, we can better assess the time, labor, and logistics necessary to tour a large rig.
