Silk Road Theatre Project

Last night marked the first official day of tech - my favorite time in the production-creation process! The tech tables have been up since the seating risers were installed, about 2 weeks ago and at 5pm the design team and staff gathered around them to tackle the production as a group. Which is not to say that everyone has not been working on the production for a long time already. Design sketches, models, plots and paperwork have been going around by e-mail and on the production Google group for months already. But much of that pre-tech work is created by one person at a time - the costume designer sketches alone, the sound designer listens to music alone, the prop master shops alone, etc. Tech is the first time that we begin to create with several people working as one team, integrating their ideas on the fly to shape single images that combine music, light, color and shape. It is truly a beautiful thing!

Tech will continue through the first preview on Sept. 18. We have the “12 hour weekend” coming up - so named because the crew calls are approximately 12 hours long on Saturday and Sunday. Spending that much time in a dark theater seems like something to dread, but it is through the process of sharing meals, drinking coffee, sneaking out for cigarette breaks, and keeping each other in good spirits that we really come together as a team - and so does the show.

In preparation (and for those of you who may not have had the adventure of partaking) I am adding this dictionary of terms commonly overheard at tech - hope it helps!

Dry tech = looking at light, sound, projection or scenic movement without actors present

Wet tech = same as above, add actors

cue-to-cue (also Q2Q, cue2cue, etc) = moving through the show skipping all the parts that do not have a light, sound, scenic or costume shift

SFX = a computer software program that triggers light and sound shifts with a single button. “Loading SFX” is the process of writing when and how the shifts are triggered and often takes the better part of a day.

Blocking = what the set designer says the actors do to his set (ha!) No, really I found that on a joke website. It’s really the term for the movements the director has given the actors.

“Going Dark!” = battle cry of the lighting designer 2 seconds before turning off all the lights

Go (or Go Time) = time when we will begin (often a run-through)

Call = amount of time before Go that the crew is required to come in for set up

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Yohen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.