Bye Bye Birdie


This is what dominates my life at the moment. I have been roped into being the support Stage Left ASM. The real SL ASM is having a rough time in her life, and she's never been a stage manager before, so my English teacher (who is also the drama teacher), has asked me to kind of help her out. Now, this means that I have gotten hardly any sleep this week, because with the exception of today (they let us out early for good behavior), I have been in rehearsal until 9:00.

A couple of problems that have been prevalent that we're still trying to work out:

Techies Needed!

We have to bump them around sides of the stage to make the numbers work out for the scene changes. We don't have enough. In fact, we've had to abduct an actor and turned him into an actor/techie hybrid.

The Case of the Colorblind Fly Operator

We have a colorblind fly operator. We really appreciate him, as he's a last minute helper, and he's a really great guy. However, our fly master decided to make the spikes on the flies bright orange (the marks on the fly lines (ropes) that show where to stop). To someone who is red-green colorblind in a semi-dark backstage area, they don't look any different than the white ropes. Thus, myself and another techie were very nearly killed by coming down flies that shouldn't have been that far down. And they were big, and coming down fast, and would have been painful.

The Dilemma of Detained Shriner Table Clamp

The two shriner tables need to be fastened together as to protect them from moving. Unfortunately, removing a clamp in the dark in approximately 45 seconds is not as easy as it sounds. Thus, our techie/actor hybrid had some trouble unfastening. This took a should-be 25-second scene transition to a 1.5 minute scene transition.

The Mess of the Monotonously Sugar-Loaded Conrad Birdie

So, many of you have seen Bye, Bye Birdie, correct? So, Conrad Birdie is supposed to be slightly alcoholic. How do we simulate this? Soda pop spray painted to look like beer cans! Now, the problem is that this poor actor has now drank 15 cans of soda in the past three days. Not good. By next Saturday (closing night), he'll have drunk 35 cans of soda. He's starting to get sick from it--feeling sick, lethargic, trouble concentrating, you know the drill. Which is not good. Now we're trying to find a way to counteract it. Should we just make him drink tons of water? But then he has to get out of the leather pants to go to the bathroom, wouldn't he? It's just ridiculous. Any ideas, I'm open. Any ideas for how to counteract sugar overdose in approximately 16-year-old males who need to also be able to dance?

The Hullabaloo of the Hoarse Hugo

It's officially not good. Hugo Peabody has lost his voice. It's coming back, and hopefully he'll be okay by tomorrow morning. BECAUSE OPENING NIGHT IS TOMORROW! He had significantly more voice today than he did yesterday, but we still need more out of the guy.


So, those are some of the highlighting problems. Any solutions, I'm open.

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