Friday, January 6, 2012

Oww Drums Oww

In my head, I had a lovely post about the impact of labels on other people and why I personally use labels to describe myself, but my head hurts and I'm exhausted, so you'll have to wait for another day for that update.

We're in tech for my show and notes are generally keeping me until 11:30 or 12 every single night, so I'm tired with that.  I didn't expect this week to be full of 9+ hour work days again, but it has been, so hurray for that.  Anyway, as asm, I'm stationed backstage where I can keep an eye on the actors and help if anything goes horribly wrong (there are no scene changes, although I do have a single quick change involving three actors at once).  The stage is completely devoid of soft goods and masking, so I am stuck in a corner behind some scaffolding and a half-falling down curtain (which serves artistic purposes, not masking ones).

Underneath the scaffolding is where the drummer is stationed.  In front of the drummer, there is a drum shield.  I sit directly behind the scaffolding and thus, directly behind the drummer.  The sound that the drummer is making is bouncing directly off the sound shield and coming straight at me.  I have that artistic curtain between me and the drummer but for muffling/baffling purposes, it doesn't do a whole lot.

For sitzprobe (where the band plays through the entire show for the first time with the actors) I sat in the house in order to keep the actors quiet, so I honestly didn't realize how loud it would be back where I stand/sit until I was trapped there during our dress rehearsal.  After the show actors were asking me questions and I literally could not hear them.

Having thought it through now I have several solutions to this problem: a) ear plugs b) a hat (since i'm also getting a headache from the headset) c) spending more time in the back hallway and les time actually backstage d) a bottle of excedrin on my person always.

However, in the meantime, I have to live with my temporary hearing loss and raging headache.

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