I've not been around much

[fivemack]

Moved house, so no broadband for a month while virgin.net decide that the obvious way to ensure people stick with their service is to require 30 days notice for any change of address. And my laptop's WinXP setup stopped deigning to boot up (I blame the rather hideous convolutions I got into trying to get both my and my housemate's Palms to sync to different data on the same machine), so I've had to reinstall from scratch and thank Lacie for backups. There's something odd about the radio environment around this new house; very poor TV reception, my mobile phone drops out every minute or so, wireless LAN has trouble getting from my bedroom to the living room just below.

And for the last week or so I've been busy with The Tempest, Playhouse Theatre Cheltenham, playing 24th April to 1st May. We have a fine feisty Ariel, a majestic Prospero and a Caliban with the sort of voice you get from a pack of cigarettes for every meal and a bottle of whisky for every breakfast. I'm the assistant lighting person; my housemate Ed is actually doing the lighting, I get to hold ladders, cut gels, focus lanterns, miss cues (quite a lot of those tonight; I'll plead in mitigation that I'd not used a lighting board before, and that I was working from a rather vaguely marked-up script), and operate the lighting board for some of the shows (starting Tuesday; wish me luck ...).

It may be because the last work I read about theatre was The Golden Globe by Varley, but somehow it strikes me as an art for which almost arbitrary technical means could be useful assistance (though, of course, one run on budgets where technology isn't really available; enthusiastic technical types working unpaid at the top of very slightly wobbly four-metre ladders are so much cheaper than little electric motors for three-axis control of lantern orientation). Maybe in professional theatres you do get lighting boards which let you click on a light on the lighting diagram to turn it on and off, rather than "oh, pink centre stage is light #40, isn't it?"

The theatre work is fun, though it's eaten evenings and weekends since Easter (and since well before that for Ed); I suppose the question is what else I'd have been doing in the evenings and weekends. The answer is probably playing Deus Ex 2, a game that I'd been anticipating since finishing Deus Ex in October 2001; amateur theatre is certainly more socially useful, and the sight of a cue kicking in just right to show the fairies that had been posing unseen behind the gauze is rather more rewarding than discovering that all the events in Trier had been orchestrated by a conspiracy of the Illuminati.

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

What kind of desk are you using? Strand 2xx and 5xx I find okay after a bit of practice. I think it's a bit like some UNIX software, that there's been little pressure to unsteepen the learning curve over the years, particularly if it interferes with some trivial feature vaguely useful to experts. That just increases their mistique, :).

[ms-saffie.livejournal.com]

Poppet! Haven't seen you in *ages* - not IRCing?
Anyway, hopefully see you soon and keep me up to date on potential housewarming :)
Sx

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

enthusiastic technical types working unpaid at the top of very slightly wobbly four-metre ladders are so much cheaper than little electric motors for three-axis control of lantern orientation

I did work experience in a professional theatre. That is so true :) I once spent the morning standing up to my knees in water so they could place the lights right for a garden pond scene..

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

*cough*

Starting Tuesday and ending Wednesday, I hope, without malice.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Well, opping two shows and then fleeing the country seems as good a way as any to start ...