It is day seven here in Jersey Boys techland. We have gone three days of our ten days straight. Seven more days before our next day off!! We’ve teched all the way to the finale. Pretty darn good for 6 days!! Today is the first day that I got to sleep in. I don’t have to be in the theatre until noon (yeah!). The average day has been 10:00 am – midnight.
The theatre staff is great, and tech has gone pretty smoothly. Here’s our fab prop crew standing in tiny, cozy, cramped stage left:
Stage left is very small, and we have no crossover (an onstage path from stage right to stage left). Sometimes we have a blackout drop in that allows for an onstage crossover, but the dreaded words here at tech (especially when it comes time for a quick costume change) are “you have to take the basement crossover”. Here’s a picture of our lovely basement cross:
It is where you will find actors running at top speed to get from one side of the stage to the other. It is also the access to our elevator lift. The lift that carries up all the mics, some of our furniture, and of course the Four Seasons in the final number.
The offices are also in the basement. Ours is a room just large enough for our two road boxes, and a small table. That’s one of the other Stage Managers, Tripp, sitting in our tiny space. Note the talking Crusty the Clown doll. He goes everywhere with me. My pal Tom gave Crusty to me, and my fellow SM Tripp ADORES it!
The company manager’s office is right next door. It’s even tinier than ours, but there’s only two of them, and there are four stage managers. Here’s Doug & Michael in their office
The road boxes are kind of instant offices. Just open em up, pull up a chair, and you’re good to go.
The dressing rooms are on the two levels above the stage. They’re small, but there’s a lot of them. Here’s one of our ladies, Melissa Strom, in her room:
Here’s the men’s floor. The hallway is so tight that when two doors are open at once, they hit. Here are the men of Jersey Boys lured out of their rooms to say hi.
In the world of knitting, I’ve almost finished the back of my winterwonderland sweater. I manage to get a row or two done at dinner break each night.
As in most theatres it doesn’t take long to find the other knitters. I found out last night that our hair supervisor is an expert knitter. One of our actresses, Sandy DeNise is a big crocheter. Here’s Sandy fresh from the hair room, half nurse, half Sandy:
Erich Bergen, one of our Four Seasons, mother is a huge knitter & crafter. She has her own podcast. I think it’s called CraftCast.
(Erich Bergen)
That’s all the news from San Francisco. More later. Back to techland.
