John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

Playing right now at NYU's skirball center. I finished the slap-dash, run for your life tech of this funny, outrageous show on Sunday.

Perhaps as a theatrical designer you have never be through a Fringe Festival technical rehearsal. If not allow me to give you a sense for what one is like.

First some background....Goldfarb is a full-length musical. That is to say it's supposed to run a little over 95 minutes. The Fringe Festival allows 2x your run time for technical rehearsal. In that time you must run the show once. So in truth you have exactly the amount of your run to tech the show.

at the time of application, Goldfarb was running a 2 hours this gave us a 4 hour slot between 12:30 and 4:30 to tech. This is not my first Fringe rodeo so I came in prepped and ready for thunderdome. The skirball center is a brand new venue for NYU, only about 3 or 4 years old, 500 and some-odd seats and a proscenium house. It's very nicely equipped with a nicely maintained rep plot. With magic sheet in hand I sat at the tech table, the staff informed me that I wasn't getting a console or monitor, those were upstairs. So I began to program watching the stage and little else. Our sound team rapidly and hurriedly arranging the audio gear for a 5 piece band and 12 mic'd up actors. 90 minutes of blind writing cues as the cast runs back and forth checking props and costumes. We finally hit the top of the run.

The tension is high as I know there have been script changes since the last time I saw the show (48 hours prior). Things look pretty good, I find out a number is cut entirely, and another scene is paired down. By and large the cue sheet matched up.

There is no time for fine tuning. On the same clear-com channel as Stage Management and the backstage crew, I am trying to give my board op notes upstairs and give the SM notes on cue placement. It is a harried scene. As the show progresses the notes begin to fly as I am frantically speaking notes to the programmer, who does a nimble job keeping up with my motor mouth. The director, a friend and long time cohort knows I am doing the best I can. He is more worried about how the transitions aren't working, and the actor's are hitting his marks. The band sounds great but they are too far onto the stage and people are missing their entrances because of confusion backstage.

That was my tech for John Goldfarb.

Notes I received after opening:

1. I have a cue 80 but there was none programmed, should I disregard.
2. The belly dance number was a little dark.

Not bad.