THE SHOW MUST GO ON...

Interesting day for Hayes Show yesterday. I feel I am being trained for something in this series of ICE TIMES what the something is I'm not sure yet. Anyway - we lost our technician for the show who sets up ice and lights, sound, set so we had no show at 10.15am. A bit of a pity as we had already cancelled this show once and to do so again would be awful. 

I'd met Ryan and Ricky at a charity bash for Leukemia last week and they had ice - I helped youngsters to skate on it. Wasn't sure if it would work but called them and they said they'd come along. So we had a show - at 11.15am..

But I needed to be the technical set up director as well as present the show and skate with Charlotte and Zoe and Stephen and re-brief them so - all in all a bit to do. And I needed my blades sharpened - thanks Clive in Slough for that. 

So theatre set up, Patch on lights - great job... fun to have the moving lights revamped. Becky on sound and Kerry helping get us set us... all coming together. Focus time for me. There's a lot of stuff to sort out. Ice went down....

And skated - couldn't hold edges! Sliding sideways, plastic ice surface was harder than Ice Magic surface and none of us could skate properly - and to do routines was impossible. Show set, everything ready - 7 pm. Do I pull the show because we can't skate routines? No pressure at all then! What would you have done.

Giles our Producer who was on his way I was a help - "We've come so far you've got to give people a show." So I considered..... everyone waiting, spoke to Christiane, skaters, theatre manager.... Choose Nicky... "OK we go ahead." I edited the show content in 10 minutes to remake the show!

So we did the show, and  the projector didn't work at the start (it had been working) so I had a false - warm up start - funny time. And start again. Two hours overall - a bit too long but we had a lot of fun and the audience could see we were giving it everything we could. It is always a surprise to me that different stories come up and associations in each show. even though I have a framework It is always different.

I tried to skate at the end! I looked like Bambi - I would have got applause for a fall I'm sure.

Great comments from audience at the end who really enjoyed it and Giles was right... "The Show Must Go On." This is Show Business..... and I love it.

Day off and to develop my theatre brief as Technical Manager(!) and to Malvern Theatre on  tomorrow. We'll see some skating there.

Have a great day.

Love

n