Friday, March 23, 2007

Day 2 of the event-from-hell:

8 a.m. dropped the kids off with grandma. . .




The morning is a blur, but in a nutshell, Rob got about 2 hours of sleep and we went back to work on the show, only now the dance group from Mexico is here, doesn't speak much english and is expecting Rob to have everything set and ready to go AND show them how everything works. . . the men who hired us that live here locally that we were hoping would help us get around the language barrier are no where to be found even though they were supposed to pay us in full yesterday. . . I'm sick to my stomach and am quickly realizing that this could have some major ramifications. I slip into despair mode and picture us not only not getting paid but having them sue us, taking everything we own and putting us out of business because the show would fail and it would be our fault and they would have to refund ticket holders money, etc., etc. . . . In retrospect, I think the biggest obstacle to my people-pleasing nature was feeling as though everyone was talking about us (badly, of course) but we couldn't understand them as it was all in spanish. When we bid on this show it was very much within the realm of what we do: stage, lights, audio. No problem. AFTER we got the bid, they added intelligent lights, video and all that goes with it and many, many more details that we really had to scramble for to be ready for this big of an event.

Since I was completely unable to take pictures of the a.m. set-up, this pic of my hand will have to speak volumes. It's filthy, calloused, and blistered. . .


The good news in all of this is that on one of my trips to Home Depot I had the good sense to call Gil and ask for prayer. I had also talked to a couple of other prayer warriors and I knew we were being covered in prayer. By the time I got back, things had changed somehow. I can't say that things necessarily got easier, but the oppression I had been feeling had lifted. Everything was working like it was supposed to be with only a few glitches. The show could definitely go on at this point and Rob was still hanging in there, doing what he does best. We also had great help throughout this event- friends and "rivals" who pulled together for us to help us pull this off. Rob tends to go above and beyond to help other people but rarely asks for help himself. Things evened up a bit this day.

After a few attempts at cranking up the lifts only to have to lower them again for gel changes, the truss is up and Marc's guys can put up the pipe and drape. . .

We're actually pretty well set when they're ready to do a sound check and have the dancers practice:


A miracle:

The spot lights were the last thing to get set up and, thankfully, they fired right up without any problems.

Gary ran the spot on the right. . .

. . . and Lori ran the spot on the left:

The doors opened at 7:00 to let in a measly 400-ish people out of the 2000 they were hoping for (I was secretly relieved to see such a small crowd!).

Front-of-house (foh) for this show consists of video, lighting controllers for both intelligent lights and "dumb" lights, the rack and mixer for audio, and two spot lights:

As it turns out, these people are pretty nice and very understanding. They reassured us that they knew we were doing everything we could with the information we had been given (by the two guys that hired us) and they were impressed with our hard work. Things had really lightened up by showtime. This pic is of Rob and Toto, the lighting guy and one of the few people who could speak english.

SHOWTIME:

The bright spots in this picture are Dale's wash lights in action. We used two of the sets as "audience blinders". . . they worked perfectly:

On the left side of this picture is the video screen with the opening video and on the right side, a huge white sheet is pulled tight across the front of the stage to hide the dancers and the swirlies on the front are from the intelligent lights:

I have very few actual event pictures because this was NOT a family-friendly event but this is a nice one from the side of the stage:

At the end of the day (midnight), we were paid, for the most part, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not once was there any mention of anyone being sued. . . Back tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. to take it all down. . .