Ireland Tour Blog: Opening Eve

Ireland Tour Nikki

by Nikki Hoffpauir

So we opened last night—after what seems like both forever and the shortest amount of time imaginable. To say we’re all exhausted is putting it mildly but it all went so well.

But let’s back up. When we last met, we were still building the set.

The set went up well, but took longer than we expected, but I understand that was par for the course. So we spent most of Monday building with no rehearsal, and then had to spend most of Tuesday finishing up the painting, staining, putting up railings, hanging hooks, etc. The two tables Mark and his team made to replace our steel tables back home are gorgeous and this time Josh and I managed to get more stain on the tables than on us, unlike the black paint.

Ireland Tour Set

By the by, black paint gets everywhere. I’m still washing it off my hands, and we ended up having to scrub the floor of the Black Box with sponges and steel wool to remove the drips. Poor Josh (our Downey)…he kept trying to teach us how to paint neatly and efficiently and still we managed to make a mess of it. But it’s really hard to ruin painting everything black.

Anyhow, that all got done about two on Tuesday, so we jumped into rehearsal /building cues. LONG LONG DAY. We almost got through Act 1 with Kyle building light cues and us integrating sound before having to call it a night at 10. I know it was frustrating for the cast to have to stand around so much but they were all troopers.   The tech team met up early on Weds for dry tech before the actors were called at two, so things went faster but still took us until about 6 to finish the show. Dinner break and then a preview run of sorts for three of the Town Hall family.

IReland Tour Thony on Set

It wasn’t fantastic. Not horrible, mind you. We may have jumped around a bit in the script. Quick changes may not have been perfect. And someone (me) may have forgotten to program a cue into Qlab that had been built and noted in the lighting program and thus called an early end of act blackout. Oops. But…for a first stumble through on the set, with the first time we’re seeing cues, it was pretty solid. And can only get better.

So we went to bed anxious but feeling confident we could pull it off. Thursday, actors were called 2-4 for some notes and to work some scenes after tech folks did some more programming work. Seven pm call for opening.  Stay tuned…