Setting Up For Success

An 8 AM start to a scorching day filled, for the most part, with carrying very heavy bits of metal around does not sound like the beginning of a Good Time. This much I happily confess, and whilst I don't think I'd recommend it as an option for a fun day out with the kids, I can say with all honesty that it was more fun than I had anticipated the night before, when the prevailing terror I felt insisted I was going to be crushed under a stage item or make some sort of horrific error which would mean the show would most definitely not go on.

What I'm talking about is helping with the 'get-in' for this week's showing of The Rat Pack, which audiences are loving. 'Get-in' is a term I hadn't heard before coming to Richmond Theatre, and so far using the term as if people don't already know what it means has earned me looks which range between pitying and contemptuous, but just in case you're the only other person besides me who hadn't come across it, a 'get-in' involves bringing in and setting up everything required for the show. In this case, 'everything' is a massive collection of steel frames, plastic sheets and wheeled cases which combine to make the elaborate back-drop for The Rat Pack. Perhaps a day on which it felt like the sun was throwing itself at the Earth like a hungry lion on an unlucky tourist was not the best choice for ingratiating myself with the intricacies of stage set-up, but I've never been one to pass up a punishing experience. While I wilted and sweated and saw my life flash before my eyes, the rest of Richmond's technical crew (admittedly a bit more used to such things) made it look easy, hefting, lifting and hauling with practised ease.

The bare stage began to transform into a place to perform as we stretched backdrops over frames and assembled platforms with poles, screws and more than a little effort. Other members of the team hoisted up and tested a bewildering array of lights. A piano tuner fiddled with an expensive-looking grand piano while I was tunnelling around inside the structure we had erected trying to bolt bits of it together.

I even got to close off the little road to the side of the theatre and Duke Street church so that the lorry could escape without crushing cars into scrap or demolishing shop fronts (something I am reliably informed has happened before). This probably sounds less exciting than it was, but hey, I got to use a short-wave radio.

It was enormously satisfying seeing the whole thing come together, rather like I imagine watching a sped-up recording of an artist drawing a cartoon might be. The moment when the stage suddenly looked like it was fit for The Rat Pack was elusive, but when it jumped out at me I couldn't resist a little bit of self-congratulation. Richmond Theatre's technical team deserve all the more- they do this kind of thing week in, week out, and have to pack everything away again when the show moves on. There was a point in the middle of the day when, under the sun's punishing gaze and a barrage of heavy lifting, their banter and good-natured insults faltered a little, but it rallied soon enough amid a public inquiry into the name of Def Leppard's drummer and a blizzard of alliterative alternative names for the band.

A great many thanks go to Adam and everyone in the technical team for tolerating my doe-eyed innocence and inability in a job where the clock is the enemy- it would have been easy to get frustrated with the blogger who's probably more hindrance than help, but everyone was nothing less than friendly and welcoming all day, even when working to a deadline in the boiling heat. Will I be back to help with a get-out? Maybe one day. For now, though, I'm still discovering aching muscles I didn't know I had. You're on your own on Saturday, guys!

Rory Thomas is Richmond Theatre's digital media editor and thought it sounded like a great idea at the time.