We were invited by St Albans High School for Girls to run The Boy Preference in the new Jubilee Hall. We readily greed as it's a much bigger space than we've been used to and it was nice to take the show to a school where a number of the cast attend.
It's a lovely space but has its drawbacks - particularly as it looks as if the final spec was not done by a theatre person (e.g. no ground level DMX/TSR points). But the get-in went fine, the rig was easy and Rachael the theatre manager even managed to restore two of the stage lighting bars which decided to become unresponsive during the afternoon. So all was well.
We started the show at 7.30pm and about two cues in it was apparent that the lighting desk had become possessed by a demon. Rather than moving cue to cue it moved to the next while keeping the previous one going! So we were ending up with a string of cues all merged together. Jack in the lighting box worked some wonders to keep the thing going and the cast coped with some weird effects increasingly well.
In fact all was going fine until 2 minutes before the end, just as the climatic bulldozer scene was finishing, when suddenly the fire alarm went off. At first I thought Alex had done something (actually pretty cool) to the soundtrack (and something we will now try and recreate) ... but no!
So we have to call a halt and evacuate across the road to the tennis courts to see if order could be restored. After a few minutes it was apparent that there was a real issue with the system and that carrying on inside was not going to be an option.
And then the fire fighters arrived.
So in the true spirit of theatre we decided to rerun the last two scenes on the tennis courts with the audience sitting on the ground.
These are the memories that will stick with the cast forever. This is what theatre is all about.
Bring on the Dorfman!
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