Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal

It's 9:30 am when I'm unceremoniously awoken to a phone call. Of course it's my boss. Yay. Bill. What do you have in store for me this week? I mean considering that I haven't been paid for the last 4.

Well there is some sort of show that rehearses tomorrow. Would I mind coming in at 9 and staying until 9 you say? That should really shoot up the amount on my next pay check. Of COURSE I'll help you out. Who knows there might be some new vandalism to giggle over.

Well there is no new vandalism to giggle over. As always I show up to work late to show my blatant disrespect for the authority figures that might be around. Suprise to me NO ONE was around. For the next 2 hours and fifteen minutes I dragged a couch down the hall and around the corner and fell asleep on it backstage listening to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I wake up to the sounds of four young people dicking around on stage. I saw them go in the door and didn't think anything of it. Thinking "Well there is my event for the day 2 hours late" In the E-mail bill told me they would break at 11:30 - 1. These people are just showing up it's 11:30 now. Well the youths on the stage show me just what they are all about by beat boxing into the microphone on the podium. Badly.

I surprise everyone appearing from behind the curtains and tell them in so many words. Yea, Could you stop that? Thanks. After the initial shock of having someone come out of no where they realize I am not dressed like an authority figure so karma kind of paid back all the disrespect I showed up with this morning.

There is nothing better than an indignant kid asking you "Uh, who are you?"
Well I'm the Liz the God Damn Tech and I work here and I'd really appreciate it if you not only got the hell out of my face, but also stayed the hell off the microphone.
At least that is what I wish I had said. I really just replied "I work here."
Well that seemed to satisfy them until thier REAL authority figure showed up yelling at them for not being where they were supposed to be. Vindication! Now I don't have to feel bad about being rude. Especially waking up to see one of them changing pants in the hallway instead of going down the hall to the bathroom.

After a 30 minute ADHD conversation with a woman who repeats everything several times I discover that I am not just here for a rehearsal, but for a dance/fashion/drama/award ceremony/show.

I also found out that one of the women in charge had been sitting in the lobby for the past hour and a half wondering where all the kids who are supposed to be in the show and not knowing how to get into the theatre. Whereas I was sitting back stage for two hours wondering where the heck anyone who was supposed to be here was.

So what was going to be a twelve hour shift really just has me sitting on my ass for 8 hours with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and sleep.

And then I work a show for four hours and leave. Go me!

or that's what I originally thought.

I decided that since I was scheduled for two sperate shifts. 9 - 3:30 with a break around 11 and then 5 - 9, and since I don't drive I'll just stay through the whole time.

Since this particular post is about the client and not Bill annoying me I'll leave the break for another time.

I showed back up around 5:30 set up the stage, a walky talky turned on all the lights and unlocked what was needed and went to the lighting booth to await the pain.

Knowing full well that out of the 60 kids in the show or that the show was four 9 of them showed up for rehearsal. So the women in charge had no idea what was going on or when they might show.

Because of the NON rehearsal I had to wing the lights and just make up something for whatever I thought they would be using.

Which soon started. Almost immediately a third into the show one of the main Lekos on Channel 1 blows. Every one who stands at the podium is mostly in the dark. At this point they had angered me enough in not responding to any thing I said on the walki talki and yelling incesantly for me to do things if I did not respond right away. I just have to be honest I didn't fix it. I didn't notice at first and by the time I did realize it had happened I just shrugged and said fuck it.

They skipped around on the program and dragged on entirely too long. They had three slide show presentations that they didn't tell anyone about and somehow thought I had a projector to use for them. They took SO LONG changing for this fashion show that They cut one of the dances. Also other people came out to small talk the audience while they waited for the models to change. During which the audience sat in the dark. They ran back upstairs afterwards and told me to put on a certain song because they (the models) hadn't finished. Which thankfully never happened seeing as their Guest speaker preached on for entirely too long keeping me there for a full hour after I was supposed to leave.

I think his message was that black people arej ust as good as white people. We need to remember that if you give me a (white famous person who did something important) I can give you a (mirrored individual who has also done something important in the same vien as the original white person but happen to be black) Which is the kind of relation you can make three times or so in a speech and have it make sense. But this bloke went on for forty minutes! He had like a hundered of these examples Only to of course end with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. Or it could have been an FDR, by this point it was 30 minutes after when I was supposed to be able to leave and I just truly wanted to haul ass so I wasn't paying attention.

The original woman I met with found me after the show and thanked me for all my patience working with the clients that she's happy it went off so well knowing it was planned that afternoon and told me to go enjoy dinner and gave me an applebees gift card. She had read my mind I was just on nmy edge I wanted to leave so badly I thanked her graciously and ate buffallo wings less than 40 minutes later.

So Thanks To You Woman Who Told Everyone To Call Me Ms. Liz

You fixed the night.

_Liz