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History ensemble member on Nick Asbury teching for Henry V.
Teching
Teching. It's Wednesday morning and we're creeping along getting the show up. It's a long old process. This is a complicated show with lots of flying and lots of things coming out of traps so it's all got to be minutely planned out. It takes a while and it's very laborious.
 Having said all that, this has been the nicest tech I've ever been involved in. At the risk of banging on about it and being a little sick making, it is all down to the extraordinary nature of this project. It's not just the company of actors that has been together for so long, it is the whole back stage crew and stage management. The directors, designers, lighting technicians, costume people, aerial automation, all the many very talented people who have worked so hard to bring these eight shows to life. As a consequence, with us all having worked together so intensely for so long, we all know each other and have a confidence in each other and a trust that you cannot buy. And we have a laugh. We play. A play is not called a play for nothing. We are the 'flat, unraised, spirits that have dared/ On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth/ So great an object...'.
And it's great fun. It's going a bit slowly and we might not get a Dress in, but we're still enjoying it. There are a few sequences in this show where quite a lot of us - the English army in fact - spend a lot of time down underneath the stage waiting to come on. During show time we would only be there for a couple of minutes waiting to go, in a tech we're there for ages whilst all gets technically plotted in around us. This of course leads to all sorts of ribaldry. It's like some boy scout camp after the teacher has told everyone to get to sleep in their tents. Lots of giggling and hitting and farting in the dark. And more giggling. Which gets slightly more insane the more we sit in there for a few hours. And I tell you, when you're lying down there - there's only three feet of headroom - with Patrice Naimbana and his two swords and Katy Stephens covered in blood and Streatfield snagging his crown in her hair things are only going to get funnier...
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About blogger Nick
Likes: Cricket and music. Fields and dark pubs with no music
Dislikes: Lager, crowded streets and light bars with music |
