Organization

The easiest way to get pliable and friendly and helpful tech staff is to be properly organized. If you come to a show with Tech Sheets for every scene or dance in your show with specific instructions for the lights and the sound then Tech will really appreciate it and even if they don't want to be there they will remain friendly to your face and more importantly behind your back. If you don't come running to them every fifteen minutes demanding or asking that they scramble to bring you some obscure request that doesn't even properly fall under their jurisdiction the chances that they will help you [ even if they can ] are low and the chances that they will talk shit as soon as you leave is much much higher.

Every tech talks shit about shows. Usually during a show. If some member of the show happens to be around the Techs will bite their tongue but chances are most will just find some subversive way to do it with them still there. Nate and I are a fan of during rehearsals sitting in the light booth and making fun of everything through Instant Messenger on our laptops. Another favorite of ours is talking frequently about burning down the Theatre. This is hardly true of all tech, our obsession with bringing an end to the tyranny that ruins our workplace is ever lasting and our attraction to fire is obvious because fire is cool.

When you spend an entire week on a tech rehearsal for a show you learn the cues it's a real bitch when people come running up to you and demand that you ADD cues in the middle of the show. Which sometimes is nigh impossible and just requires some really quick patch work from the Techs. When you say things like "Oh can you just plug this Boom Box into the Sound System, then we can just play it on stage" you have to realize things like that aren't just that simple when the sound system is up in the booth. We can't just run a cord down through the audience and onto the stage just so you can plug a boom box into it and have the boom box on stage while the two dancers you have who are just adding a dance into the middle of the show at the last minute can come out and pretend to know how to break dance. [I'm serious if you had been here for this show you would not have believe how awful this break dancing and crunk was. I think perhaps I would rather have watched Legally Blonde than sit through it again. ] OR you could just give us the CD and we can play the track number needed through the sound system from the booth.

Sometimes we don't have to do things for you. At our theatre Nate and I aren't required to do things if you haven't previously specified to our bosses that you need us to do it. Setting up tables in the lobby so you can sell snacks that your audience will just bring in and eat in the theatre despite all the signs telling them NOT TO isn't our job. Emptying trash cans is 100% not our Job. Putting away your props is not our job and most importantly keeping track of whatever your dancers or actors did with whatever expensive peripheral backstage is not our problem either.
We are not and cannot be held responsible for your possessions. If you have a show and you leave your expensive black berry and iPod in the dressing room out in the open and someone takes it then you can't come crying to us. perhaps you should have locked your shit in your car.

We are vaugle responsible for the splinters that you might get when dancing on the floor but we are in no way responsible for the splinters that you DO get running through the shop barefoot to make it to the other side of the stage because you were too slow with your quick change.
Just to make sure you understand a quick change is supposed to be quick! FAST! YOU ARE QUICKLY CHANGING YOUR DAMN OUTFIT! You are NOT asking the techs to fade in and out 4 minutes of filler muisc between every dance that the audience can listen to while they sit in the dark and wait for you all to be ready to perform your next solidly crappy dance routine.

Liz the Tech is Displeased.