Easter Holidays....but not for scenic.

So this week we came in to try and get all the last bits and bobs of Opera finished, I couldn't see the end of opera until I think Thursday.

Opera piling up in construction

The damn mega glaze was playing up again and leaving funny marks on the paint which meant that we had to re-paint and do the whole 4 step process again for a few item which was a pain in the bum and very time consuming! It was mainly just painting small bits and nothing too tasking, On Thursday I couldn't sleep and ended up just coming in to uni at 8 to get a start on finishing up the last of the lettering. I am looking forward to my brain finally switching off so I can get a good nights sleep again as for the last 5 weeks I have not slept well! Its been pretty relaxed this week though as its just been the 4 of us (Rosie, Rose, Saz and myself) so its been pretty good and i've felt the pressure has been off me a bit too which has been good. We were still waiting on the post box from Simon and having debates with props about who was to paint the plant stands but we decided just to leave all the small bits until after the holidays. 

We got the moon clock back from props after the frame had been made, so did some woodgrain on that, it looks amazing! I think it should be kept and put up somewhere after the show!

After the boys had moved the huge, heavy steel framed post office, I realised i'd forgotten to do a few more bits of lettering and a number on the front...oops...

 Rosie doing some woodgrain.

Moon clock almost finished

Today we started working on the MACCT's and Gary was showing us how to hang a cloth which was good as none of us had done it before so it was a good thing to learn...although the 4 of us working together are sometimes like a comedy sketch show...but hey, we were happy! 

I dont think we got as much done as Gary wanted us to but we got the cloth hung and drawn up and the lines inked in so I think we did pretty well. 

I was pretty happy doing something that wasn't opera and i was beginning to see the end until Matt realised that himself and Simon had forgotten to make the beading to go along the top and bottom of all the headers and had forgotten the skirting for the angled walls. So at 4.30pm today he brought in 100m of beading to be painted....so that'll be a couple of little jobs for me to do next week....when were in on our second week of holidays...No rest for the wicked!

Bring on the MACCT's

I am looking forward to a relaxing and fun long weekend :) Although today was a pretty amusing day, and Gary brought us in some Easter chocolate medals....because he loves us all!

I love these girls! 

The end is in sight....kind of.

Week 4 on Opera and oh what a week!
Because were behind I had scheduled in to do late nights this week. On Tuesday we got a lot of stuff through from construction so got painting and priming and pva-ing.
Another flat to wallpaper was brought through and the wallpaper had been cut last week so when sarah and Carolyn went to hang it and found it was a foot too short....we were all a tad confused. Easily fixed but another silly mistake.

Gary and I made a start on the lettering last week which looked great and everything was coming along pretty well until...disaster struck! Simon was looking at the lettering we'd done on one of the headers and pointed out that there wasnt enough space for the corniscing on the top, I told him we had discussed it and he had told me the measurements and I had asked him 4 times to confirm, but alas, he had forgotten to give me the cornscing measurements so the two headers we had done (which looked beautiful) were wrong and had to be re-done. On top of that, we looked at some of the newly painted green pieces and realised that they were a completely different green from the rest of the set pieces...So at 6pm we broke for dinner, as much as Gary was egging me on to give up that made me more stubborn to not give up, even though I was so physically and mentally drained. So we worked until 9 and managed to get the green altered to the same as the rest of the set pieces. The rest of the week was spent doing the lettering, working on the moon clock to change the colour and finishing all the priming and glazing of all the corniscing. This wasn't even all we had to do, we still had the huge metal framed post office exterior, all the doors and some wallpapering.

On Wednesday we went to see Carousel, I really enjoyed it, it was long and the set wasn't amazing but it did look great and it was a good show and good to finally be rid of all that rubble from the floor!

We did another late night on Thursday and managed to make a stencil for the false proscenium which will be at the front of the stage as the printer wouldn't print the letters big enough for us. On friday the team got wallpapering the final, biggest, flat. The got it all hung, a wash made and when we stood back and looked at it we realised the pattern was squint and when it had been hung they hadnt paid attention to the bottom layer of the flat so it was on a bit of a diagonal. We had no choice but to leave it so they started painting the wash on top, which unfortunately went really patchy....This was the final straw for Gary, he got pretty angry and as  the manager I felt completely responsible, I was very close to breaking point, I was tired, mentally and physically drained, had a pounding headache and could barely keep my eyes open. I was ready to give up. Everything that could have gone wrong on this show, has gone wrong, it has been so challenging from start to  finish (well, were not finished yet) Also the fact that some of the set is in the paint shop, some is in the workshop and some has been up in the applied arts base its been really hard to keep an eye on everything thats been going on in all 3 areas, ive been running around like a headless chicken and feel bad that I didnt spot some of these silly mistakes before they happened and before it was too late. I did have a bit of a mini break down on friday, but the day ended well with the prosc getting finished, the moon clock getting finished and all the wallpapering done. Its just going to be myself, Sarah and the two Rosies next week so hopefully there will be a little less pressure off me as a manager as I wont have as many people to manage! Im looking forward to having a relaxing weekend...most probably all ill be doing is sleeping! If only it wasn't so cold!!

Week 3....Opera Continued...

Paintshop has been chocka block this week, workshop have been churning stuff out and passing it on to us before we've even had a chance to start the last piece! We managed to get two flats wallpapered, the team are getting the hang of wallpapering now which is good as there are still 3 more flats to do!
We spent a few days working mainly on cutting out the lettering stencils so we could make a start on all the false prosceniums.

Unfortunately some of the processes involving the paint and mega glaze ended up going streaky and we had to start the process again as it would show up with the lettering! So that took us back a few steps which was a bit of a pain.
The moon clock was coming along great, Rose did a really good job, but then we realised we had projected the image back to front so we have technically painted on the wrong side, its easy to fix but a bit annoying, I think there was also a bit of confusion with Cordys references as the one that we thought was the colour reference wasn't....so we need to have a wee fiddle with that.

We got started on the lettering, the process is a bit fiddly so until everyone is confident in the process im going to have to keep a close eye as we cant really afford for it to go wrong. But the 2 we've done are looking good :)

We had some 5 minutes of fun on friday for comic relief and got our picture tweeted on the RCS twitter haha.

Merry Wives- week 2

The second week working on Opera went a little smoother, people were getting a bit more confident in what they were doing, the wood graining is looking great! Cordelia was up and was pretty happy with what we'd done so far which is good!

 





Rosie finally got the gauze finished which im sure she was very pleased about, after all the dramas it caused it looked really good and thankfully Cordelia didn't say anything bad about it.
Im not really sure what was going on at the beginning of the week as a  few people are still working pretty slow and making silly mistakes. I'm not sure they quite realise the extent of what we still have to do, I think we've done about a quarter of what there is, and we haven't even started on any of the big flats yet!

 

Gary wasn't on my back quite so much this week but he did snap at me on Wednesday and said something that I found really hurtful, I think he realised he'd really upset me though as he bought me some chocolate at the end of the day....although I would have rather had an apology!

There has been a couple of things this week that got to me, like people asking Gary for advice instead of asking me first seeing as I know more about the show and what Cordelia wants. Also I felt a bit like because im the last one to do my management the other 3rd years maybe think they have a bit more knowledge over me, like  I gave a couple of them measurements of where to put the wallpaper to so that they left space for the skirting getting added later. I got the measurements from Matt with a bit of leeway so there was no risk of a gap. When i looked at the line they had snapped I noticed it looked a lot smaller than the other flat next to it and when I asked them about it they said they had added extra to allow for leeway....but they hadn't asked me first, as though they just assumed that I wouldn't have thought of it. That did upset me a little bit.

 


Thursday and Friday got pretty busy with some more flats getting finished and brought through, but we managed to get a lot done and are making progress with what we've got. Unfortunately I found out that because were essentially a week behind were going to have to come in through our independent learning week which means I wont be able to work over Easter which is a bit of a pain. But hey, that's theater life!

The first week of Management!

I was looking forward to starting work on Opera.

On Tuesday I set my team to work on making samples and mixing colours to kill time whilst waiting for the set pieces to arrive. They all did a great job and were set to work on the bar as soon as it was ready. Gary did have to tell me a few times who I should be focusing on and spending most time with because of the tricky-ness of what they were working on but apart from that I think I managed to keep an eye on everyone and everyone seemed happy.
Lee and Rosie did work on the stencil for the gauze and I think because none of us have ever worked on it before and the model is so faint Lee had a bit of a hard time with it but Rosie managed to stick on and did a great job, even with Gary breathing down her neck every 5 minutes.

I did find a couple of times this week that Gary got a little too involved, I know he's managing me, but when I was telling Rosie what I wanted her to do, he came up and said quite loudly, so that everyone could hear, that I should be helping Sarah because I should be able to see she was struggling. I did see this but I was just giving Rosie a job then I was going to go and help Sarah. He also made a comment at the end of the day about the way Sarah was feeling and that I should appologise to her for making her feel like it was her fault the gauze had gone wrong (even though Sarah hadn't even mentioned anything about this) which I felt was really unnecessary and like he just wanted to create tension between Sarah and I.
He also butted in when I was explaining something to Gillian and took the sample out of my hand and just started explaining exactly what I had just said to her instead of letting me do it which I found a little rude.

We got quite a lot done and are I think currently on schedule as we got one of the angled walls which we weren't scheduled to get until the second week so that's good as it has all been wallpapered and painted and just needs to finish getting dirtied down.

On Friday morning I gave everyone their jobs then helped Sarah with the gauze colour as we had gone too dark. Gary had explained what he wanted us to do so we went ahead with it, he then told us we had gone too far and Im not actually sure what he wanted us to do but whatever it was he hadn't explained it well as Sarah and I were thinking the same thing but he was meaning another. He got a bit annoyed with us and was talking to me as if I should know better, even though none of us have ever worked with gauze before so we didnt know how it worked. Sarah and I tried to explain what we thought he had meant which made him more annoyed. I was getting upset and frustrated and he could see this but he just kept pushing and pushing until he made me break down into tears. I was really annoyed that he had done this as it was only my 4th day of managing and I feel this made me look weak and like I didn't know what I was doing to the rest of the team.

Later on that day he took Lee, Gillian and Iona off a job I had given them without consulting me and butted in again when I was explaining something to Jan. I feel that he is undermining my authority as a manager in front of people and is not giving me a chance to show him that I know what im doing, even though every time he asked me something about the set or the show I had already done it.

I know that it's his job to make sure we know what were doing, and I think the fact that I have this management under control at the moment and Im not stressing about it, made him think I needed to be pushed, but the only reason im not stressing about it is because im organised and I have seen how Sarah and Rose managed and have taken pointers from them. I think there's no point in stressing because then i'll get ill and I wont be able to focus properly and things wont get done right. I know how my body works and I know how I work best which is why I have organised myself and i'm feeling confident about managing.

I did talk to him at the end of the day on Friday and told him what he was doing and asked him if he could back off a bit and give me a chance, so hopefully next week will be better. And I will be stronger and not take everything so personally!