I have to start out by apologizing that it has taken me so long to start posting, but now that I'm comfortably over here in Stratford, I'm fully ready to tell you about (and I hope not bore you with) all of the details of my job at the RSC. At the moment I'm working at The Courtyard Theatre in Stratford, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I've been learning so much and having a great time. The people I work with are so patient and hugely accepting of me. I really appreciate their willingness to explain anything and everything I don't understand and I couldn't be happier to be working with such wonderful people. (And I promise that I'm not just saying that in case some here reads my blog; I really do mean that.)
I arrived in the middle of fit up for Richard II, so luckily there was plenty to do and an infinite amount to learn. On my first day, I helped run some multi-core cable around the stalls for the birdies, source 4s and source 4 pars that were hung underneath the first gallery. I had never used multi-core before and I found that it was really useful in reducing the amount of cable we had to use. Initially, I got confused with some vocabulary; for example over here they call a two-fer a grelco and a three-fer a trelco, (I've probably spelled that wrong) but now I think I'm finally getting used to most the different terms over here.
I also watched while the other lighting technicians, wearing harnesses, hung lights from the technical gallery. I'm not harnessed trained, so I could only watch and bring them whatever they needed, but I think that the harnesses were a wonderful safety precaution and I'd love to see if I could get my school to use them as well because it would not only keep students safe, but also make it much easier to hang and focus lights.
On my second day, I learned about lyndapters, (sp?) which allow you to safely hang lamps from the eyebeams, that could be very useful at my school, as there are only a few really useful hanging positions. I also watched while three vari*lites were hung just below the tech. gallery and I learned about addressing and focusing moving lights, which was especially interesting because we don't have any at school and I find them really interesting, partly because the vari*lites look like really expensive lighting toys, but mostly because they seem to be incredibly useful.
I spent my third day in the metre high crawl space under the stage tidying and fixing the cabling and adding more working light so that no one would run into the maze of metal bars under the stage. I had a really good time learning all about Birdie transformers and flourescent lights under the stage. Although I must admit that my knees were quite sore, it was well worth the hard work to actually be able to see and crawl under the stage quite easily. Toward the end of the day we installed two Viper smoke machines under the stage for the special trap effects, which I found especially interesting because I've never really been able to work with smoke machines in the past and it was very useful to learn how to connect them to DMX. At the end of the day I was thrilled with the amount of hands on experience that I had gotten and I couldn't wait to get back to work and learn more.
On my fourth day here I got to set up the rope lights in the SR and SL tower cupboards for the door operator and an ASM. I also got to run cabling down from the second gallery, so I learned a lot about keeping cable out of the way and tidy. Later that afternoon, I ran cable and set up several sockets for the band 's music stand lights and I was really excited to be able to help. That evening, I helped to wire and instal the lights that light the ladder that shine through the holes in the stage. After that, we moved into technical rehearsals, so there was much less to do, but I found that I learned a great deal about the process of lighting design, by watching.
I also learned more about how to operate the RSC's Strand board, by watching the lighting programmer. I had never realized exactly how many different element of the show effect what lighting effects can be done. For example, we found that we had to strike one of the hanging lights because when two of the actors dropped in on ropes, they came too close to hitting the lights. As I'm interested in both stage managment and lighting I found my fourth day especially fascinating because I loved being able to see all of the elements of the show come together.
Now that I've written far too muchI'm going to say goodbye and promise that I'll try to write a less, but more frequently in the future. Thank you so much for reading!!!
