"Sleeping Beauty" My Ass

Currently working on the NE Atlanta Ballet's version of "Sleeping Beauty" at the Gwinnett Center where I work and I must say it has been a rough couple of days. Let me say that again - "ROUGH couple of days." The last show I worked on with the NE Atlanta Ballet was their 2007 version of The Nutcracker and even though I hate the show and the story I believe it was a pretty good production that had many merrits.

This production on the other hand has been nothing but one big cluster-fuck of a problem. We're on day three of four on the production and I'm still fixing light cues and we're still having problems technically on cirtain sequences. Lack of preparation and lack of adequate time to set up is the biggest reason why this production is having so many problems.

Most of the productions I do at the Gwinnett Center lack the finess of major productions even though quite often they like to claim they are professional. These short comings are never more apparent then now.

We never did a paper tech of the production nor a technical run-through (although this is not uncommon at this facility) so I was creating cues on the fly without any input from the director until it was quite often too late. I constantly have to rewrite cues (thus the reason why I'm still fixing things). There is a live orchestra and without a stage manager to call cues it's been very difficult to stay on top of everything. When the lighting designer/production manager (which is me) has to do all my cues and the rail cues off visuals on a show I've never seen before. Needless to say it doesn't make for one of the best circumstances.

There have been other technical issues at hand as well but the main one is the fact that we've had to move drops from lineset to lineset more times than ever need be because the direct never did a line sheet diagram for where everything is placed. This has caused such a debacle in terms of wasted man hours. I've never had to move drops as often as on this production (and there are approx. eight drops all with the exception of three that were moved more than once). After tonight's performance the director still wants to move a drop and we're four shows into the production with only three left.

Talk about over-kill.

Other than that I'm just trying to get through the next day without killing any one. I've had semilar experiences with clients at the Gwinnett Center before but the main reason for the problems has been language issues (in which many of them didn't speak English so communication was sometimes difficult).

Another problem with the production is that it just isn't all that good. The NE Atlanta Ballet with as many students as it has may be over extending because they have so many dancers that trying to give them all their own solos tends to be just a tad too much especially for a show with two Intermissions and a two and a half hour running time. The story also is not solely that of "Sleeping Beauty" either as it uses characters from many other different stories to compensate for the huge cast.

All in all it's a production trying to do too much and not give the adequate pre-production time it needs to present a "good" show so it becomes taxing on everyone involved. I do have to give credit to some of the dancers who are actually quite talented as the NE Atlanta Ballet is no stranger to producing some very tallented individuals but regardless the Ends do not justify the Means...at least in my book.