I always enjoy working with Lance Burton. It was his sixth time visiting the Cerritos Canter for the Performing Arts. Last time he came I asked him if he had signed our balls .(Ping Pong Balls that is!) He couldn’t remember, so we went in the office to check. He did, many years ago– two balls in fact. But he really wanted to see the collection anyways. He said he had heard about it but had never seen it. So I took him to look at the collection. The technical staff only has performers WE like sign the ping pong balls. All performers sign a tile for the lobby.

Lance was fascinated by the many famous people we have collected over the years, he took a lot of photos of the whole collection and especially people he knew or liked. We swapped stories about some of the performers. He especially was moved when he saw Louie Anderson had signed a ball, as they were good friends. I told him the story about when Louie came to visit. 

Louie was such a nice guy. Everybody loved him. He took the time to meet everyone, including the ushers, who he did a little comedy routine for before the doors opened. After the show he asked me if I would be interested in making some video content for a comedy/magic show that he was planning to do with a friend. I gave him my number and was looking forward to working with him. But he unfortunately passed away soon after and the tour didn’t happen.

That’s when Lance told me that he was the magician who was going to go on tour with Louie! What a small world.

Lance Burton, his crew and the friends who he tours with are all some of the most down to earth people who have ever come to work on our stage. All super friendly. He certainly does not have to tour to make money after playing in Vegas for thirty years, but him and his friends just love what they do, so they keep going out on the road.

I gave Lance a copy of my book, Stagehand: A Backstage Pass to my Life Stories, and was hoping to get a photo with him and the book while he was in his magician costume, but he gets in and out of costume only seconds before going on stage and out of it as soon as he leaves the stage! So the timing was bad and I didn’t want him to have to pose in his street clothes– oh well. Either way I am glad he will read my book! At the end of the night as we finished packing the trailer, the crew all took photos with me– but on their phones, I didn’t get any!

On to Robert Cray. I don’t have a lot to say about him. He, his band and his crew are all wonderful and hassle free to work with. The day was easy and fun. Their music is awesome! If you don’t know who he is, just know that he is one of the most accomplished blues guitarist in the world. And his band is great. Go Google his name and take a listen to some of his music, I guarantee that you will not be disappointed. I’ll leave you with some photos from throughout the day.

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The prop department is responsible for many jobs on a Broadway/musical production.

The first job that the props department usually does is loading in gear from the trucks with the rest of the crews. Then we lay down marley. Marley is a vinyl-based, slip-resistant surface used as a dance floor. Almost all musical productions will use marley. It comes in giant rolls, which weigh hundreds of pounds each, and usually arrives on large steel carts capable of carrying around six rolls. The whole setup weighs several tons, and marley carts are responsible for many broken or injured stagehand feet. The vinyl surface is laid down over the stage floor and taped with marley and gaff tape. After this, the props department will sweep and French mop the surface (which they will do between and after every performance).

A French mop is basically a large, barely-wet towel slung over a big push broom. Very fancy.

A lot of stuff stored in the shop after the load-in,

The main job of the props department is to lay out or pre-set small items that the actors will use during the show. Objects like hats, pencils, pads, scarves, swords, pitchforks, fish etc.

After pre-setting props before the show, the props crew will also hand out props to their assigned actors during the performance. All of the cues (instructions about who, what, when, and where) are contained in what we call tracks—usually typed up on a piece of paper or a laminated card. The prop master (with the touring company) will also sometimes cue the crew during the show or give us a “standby” and “go” at the time when we should hand off the prop.

Many people wonder how we see everything in the dark. Everything is on a shelf and labeled in its place with tape that glows under blue light. It’s hard to miss that glowing tape.

When the shows are over the prop crew packs up the boxes and rolls up the marley, and of course we also push everything to the truck with the rest of the crew.

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Today should be an easy day, we start off by striking (taking down) some lighting fixtures and cables. Mostly ellipsoidal (Leko) lights, a workhorse in lighting – especially in theater.

We unplug power and data cables and then untie them from the linesets, then remove all the lighting fixtures hung on the (battens) pipes for storage on “Meatracks”.

In the foreground of the picture above you can see the thick Socapex cables hanging off the end of the pipe. These cables carry multiple circuits of power for lighting fixtures so they are made out of a lot of copper and thick non-conductive outer casing. They hang from the grid at the top of the flyhouse and we usually keep them coiled up on our midrail which we call the 42ft Level. They need to be pulled up and down that 42 feet whenever they are used, have to move or be stored. They connect to stage pin (Bates) cable through “Breakouts”. (photo above) Those cables then can be split with 2-fers or converted to other types of connectors for moving lights etc.

Aside from Par Cans

and Ellipsoidal (Leko) lights, we will also remove or move some larger moving lights to use on the next show or be stored.

We also have to collect and distribute small accessories for some fixtures. Things like “top hats”, for lighting control on the front of Leko’s, gels for coloring/softening/color correction on conventional lighting fixtures, gobo patterns for creating shadows.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY SAFETY CABLES.

Many fixtures will be coming out of a box where they have been stored, as such will have to have pipe clamps re-attached to them so they can be hung on the battens.

We need to scavenge some Baby Colors from the aluminum truss in the shop.

Moving lights don’t work unless they are connected by DMX cables (or network) so there is a lot of DMX cables that have to be run out to each light. And don’t forget about power. After leaving the Socapex, power is converted to Stage Pin / PowerCon or whatever is needed for a particular fixture.

There’s 5 pin and also 3 pin DMX which can be converted between the two but are definitely NOT XLR cables which are for audio.

At the end of the moving lights DMX cable chain don’t forget to put a terminator on the last data output or things may not work as expected.

The moving lights are each assigned a unique address on the network, some lights have dip switches, this one is a little bit more modern.

Once all the old lighting fixtures are removed, the new ones hung, all the cables stripped and then re-hung for the new placement of everything and all the DMX, Power cables, breakouts, and Soccapex are in place and tied up neatly we can tie on a short border to the front of the batten in order to make sure the pipe and cables go unnoticed by the audience during the show. Like everything in this black hole it should be invisible.

Now that everything is connected and looks beautiful it’s time for the carpentry crew do do their thing. A loader at the top of the flyhouse on the loading bridge (82 foot level) will add or remove steel bricks (the same kind as in the upcoming video). The weight of all the lights, cables, accessories, borders etc. will be calculated by the flyperson (in our case here today Alma), at that time the loader will be told how many bricks are equal to (or very close) to that weight and the loader will place steel bricks on the arbor (a carriage) to counterweight the load on the batten (pipe pictured above). Then the flyperson working at the Rail will pull the batten “out”, which to most people means up!

All the lights are hanging in the air! So I guess were done? Nope, now it’s time to build booms! We are lucky to have rolling boom bases which we can build light trees on and then roll where we need them, very convenient.

Each of the rolling boom bases will be loaded with 24, 22 pound steel bricks. The same type of bricks which the loader on the loading bridge uses to counterweight the fly system.

Pipes, pipe clamps, lighting fixtures and cables are gathered together to be hung on the rolling boom bases using the scissor lift and a ladder.

Fixed Cheeseboro (“cheeseburger”) clamps are used to attach horizontal pipes to the tall vertical pipe (upright). The lighting fixtures will hang from these horizontal pipes.

Everybody on the lighting crew today pitches in to build the rolling booms.

Once the booms are built, all the lights are hung and secured and have been cabled with power runs and data to their bases, power cables are pulled from the floor trough in order to route power and data to the fixtures on the booms from below. Then the ME/LD can test the setup from the onstage control wing of the lighting desk.

It’s a short day so it’s time to clean up now. Here is a view looking up at the Socapex cables hanging from the 42 level and above at 85 feet, the big yellow thing is our grid from which everything hangs in the flyhouse.

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There will be other instruments on stage too such as the Koto, a large zither (think steel guitar for country music fans, or a lay down harp for classical people).

I’ve  also seen a shamisen around  (think Japanese three string banjo type instrument). The shamisen is made of animal skin with a wooden body and neck.

There are also various symbols and small percussion instruments laying around.

I understand that there are also flute players on this show, and I just ran into one playing one of his flutes in the hallway backstage.

There’s lots of dancers in the show, using sticks and long staffs in ways that are much in the style of martial arts. You probably wouldn’t want to get in a fight with anyone on this stage! The show also has a lot of seemingly contemporary pieces in it. It’s not just old school. The mix is refreshing. The Wardrobe is great too.

The thing about Taiko is it’s LOUD, really loud. And those big drums produce a lot of low frequency, so the sound really hits you hard. It would be difficult to not be excited sitting in the house when they start to play. It should be an exhilarating show for tonight’s audience.

Today has been an easy day for me, being on the audio crew, as there are only five mics on the floor and six hanging in the air provided by us (the house crew). The company brought their own lighting and sound boards but they are very small so all of the setup was done rather quickly. They also bought their own wireless  mic kit and we don’t have to worry about operating any of that as they travel with audio and lighting techs.

This is one of the nice things about being a tech, although some days can be a lot of work, others are relatively simple. And we also get to see a lot of different kinds of shows (and other types of events), just not from the angle you’re suppose to view them from most of the time. Last night was good old time Rock and Roll and today we have traditional Japanese music. Another great thing is the people change daily too, so we meet people from all over the world. Most of the people who are on this crew tonight do not speak English, but tech’s have our own language anyway so we seem to be able to communicate and get the job done despite the language barrier. I sometimes wonder if this translates into any other business? In any case it’s great to work alongside people from another culture and observe how they do things.

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Also two of the people working as A2 ‘s at the load-in will be leaving before the show so lots of notes are getting passed between us for the change over between bands. I’m sure that’s going to make things interesting during the change over. I’m actually the video projectionist tonight but I’m also working with Henry as an A2 as we both have different schedules that list us in each of the two jobs.

I’ll write more later depending on what happens.

At sound check I unexpectedly had a conversation with Jim Messina (I didn’t know it was him when we started our conversation). We spoke about stuff I wrote in my upcoming book,  about performers and how they treat people around them, some being good, kind individuals and others not so much. I pointed out how most people who are in the business and treat others well succeed, but there are some who have so much talent they succeed even though they treat everyone around them badly. He told me how he started working at age 13 assisting in a studio, and how his musical career bloomed out of that. He saw a lot of people partying and doing drugs but he had already started working hard, so he just kept up with that and it ended up paying off. He went from assisting to engineering, to producing and then to performing. All he knew was, “Once I started working in Hollywood there was no way I was going back to San Bernardino!” It didn’t matter what kind of work he was doing.

Obviously he is a down to earth kind of guy. He has friends in all walks of life working regular jobs, carpenters, plumber’s etc. – and it shows in his attitude toward life and the people who surround him. It’s refreshing to meet another performer who falls into the category of good people. I have also enjoyed working with and talking to his monitor engineer Willie too. He is a great guy. We spoke about how much fun it is to meet so many interesting and talented people in our business. So far all the crews and musicians working today have been great.

Sound check is still moving along fine despite the small bits of confusion, mostly because the road crews are all easy to work with (as well as the musicians). Hopefully the change over will go well.

Before the doors open and after dinner the carp crew and audio crew had a little meeting to come up with a plan for the movement of the drum, percussion and keyboard risers and how we will swap all the cables and re-patch everything. Did I mention that all the risers that the gear is on will move? Hmm? Maybe I forgot. So we now have a plan for the move.

Jim Messina and his band are playing right now, they are pretty good. I’m enjoying the show from behind the monitor board. It’s nice to have music I like playing on our stage. Most of my down time I spend listening for things going wrong on stage (so I can run out to fix them) and reading. Tonight I’m actually listening to the music for a while. The sax players are really good. Soon it will be change over time at intermission.

At intermission all the tech crew jumped on stage for the change over. Cables were disconnected and re-patched, risers, wedges and microphones were moved and swapped. I ran out to the video station and started the 7 minute intro for Pablo Cruise as Henry was still working with Johnny B. to tap through all the inputs. Jon was a little surprised when the video started, nobody told him both the band and our supervisor James had asked to start it! Yet he and Henry were able to get everything working except for one audience mic which we had changed over in the break. Other than that we had only to lift the ground switch on the bass during the second song- not an unusual problem. So I went out and flipped it between songs. Now everything is working fine and the audience is enjoying the show. All in all the change over was way more painless then expected- also not so unusual!

Now while Pablo is playing I am going to start putting together the mic kit for tomorrow’s show, Chubby Checker.

Tonight  has been a successful evening working with good people and good music.

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I’m working on the prop (property) crew. After load-in, when all the gear goes from truck to stage, my job has been to setup gear in the orchestra pit – and also help the audio crew with the pit setup which was easy. Tonight during the show my job is essentially to move furniture on and off the stage via small cards called skateboards which have push sticks or are pushed onto stage by actors then dragged off by me via a piece of tie-line (⅛ inch cotton poly rope, think thick shoelace).

Other than that I will be doing a lot of sweeping and mopping of the stage. Not too exciting, but on the other hand I’m on call for almost 14 hours and have time to do other crap like write this for you! The show is loooooong, so I imagine I will read a book or two also by the end of the weekend as we have three more shows (two on Saturday and another on Sunday). All in all an easy three days with a friendly touring crew and easy pay. Who could ask for more? And that’s why I love my job.

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Currently, in the latter part of what I’ll call my career I am a local stagehand. I have traveled in the past but like to have a “house”. I know lots of techs who prefer to be on the road. Sometimes it’s fun to do a bit of both.

My house is The Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. (CCPA)

I have been with the CCPA for thirty one years. 

I at first thought I would do a few part time gigs in the venue and continue freelancing, and I did for a while – But now I’m getting old! Hahaha

I started at the CCPA before the doors first opened. Since the place is a world class venue that artists say they love, I decided to stick around. 

A lot has changed since the beginning. The building has changed, so have many tech crew personnel and venue staff – and of course the artists come and go almost every day.

Although I work at a house gig, almost every day is different. That keeps things interesting (sometimes tiring), and that’s something I love about my job.

You also see many strange things when you do this job for a while. And meet many interesting people. 

Every day I learn something new and try to pass on whatever I know to new people. There should always be stage techs, or the world may fail!

When I’m not at work I like to travel and adventure, cycle, film stuff with cameras and drones, play with software (video edit, color correction, and FX), and work out at the gym so I don’t fall apart when I go back to work.

I wouldn’t mind scuba diving somewhere tropical right now either!

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