Lighting Lambton
I suppose I should start at the beginning of my current Newcastle adventure.
The night I arrived in Newcastle was the night I began work. Newcastle Theatre Company is a small but successful community theatre based in the suburb of Lambton here in Newcastle. My grandmother has been involved with the theatre ever since she moved her in 1998. She brought me up to the tech box that evening and deposited me in front of another lady.
"There you go Adelle," my grandmother said, "he's all yours".
Adelle Richards was directing Company, Newcastle Theatre Company's next production. Adelle and another lady, Jenny, were in the middle of programming lighting cues for their musical. I had planned to just sit back and observe the process but before I knew it, I was alone in the lighting box, flicking through the lighting desk manual, trying to work out how to use it myself. And let me tell you, this was not an easy board to use.
I'm guessing this model went out of production circa 1995. It didn't exactly look new; from the fading paint to the missing knobs to the broken ENTER key. But what confirmed my suspicions that this lovely lighting desk was most likely not from this century was the floppy disk drive in the front.
A floppy disk drive. Kids these days don't even what a floppy disk is.
Anyway, as well as the out-of-dateness and the few unusable keys, the manual didn't lend much help either. The instructions didn't relate easily to application which made learning how to use the machine very challenging. There is a button on the board called "pig". Like... Why?
That first night I only spent a few hours at the theatre; a short and sweet introduction to a building in which I would soon end up spending half my life.
The next day, the lighting technicians - two lovely chaps by the names of Trent and Andrew - arrived with a spotlight, which was to be my designated role for the run of the show. My first use of the spot was a highly sweaty affair. I did not have a dimmer nor an off switch near me during the run, which meant I was stuck beside this huge-ass lamp as it got hotter and hotter as the night went on. I felt like I was in a tanning bed. Not that I've ever used a tanning bed. It's all natural, I swear.
Thankfully, Trent gifted me later in the week with both an iris to make the size of my spot smaller (I'm sure there's a better way of saying that) and a dimmer so that I could actually turn off the monster when it wasn't needed. I soon became a an absolute master of the spotlight. I don't think I could name anyone who could control that lamp like I could.
I.
Was.
Boss.
Not that it's very difficult to flick a switch and point a light at someone.
BUT I WAS SO GOOD AT IT!
I have to say though, between working a bit on the lighting board, to using the spotlight, to just being part of the technical crew in general, I do feel like a learned more than I expected. After the first week or so, I felt satisfied with what I was doing and positive about what was to come.
But what was to actually come took me rather by surprise.
- 08/07/2014
