Saturday 23 March 2013

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!!

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