I was sitting at home thinking about how I didn’t have anything to write about since I’m on vacation. Then I realized that being on vacation is a rarity in our business. This is the first time I’ve ever had one. That is, left a show that is still in progress and been absent while the show continues on.
All too often in this business “vacation” is the time that we spend frantically trying to find what the next gig is or skimping a saving until the next tour picks up. It’s nice to actually have a little time off when neither of those things is a concern.
So how does vacation work on a Broadway tour? I’m glad you asked. Otherwise I would have nothing to write about.
We moved the show from Cincinnati to Cleveland. I’m allowed to leave but I think missing a load in or load out would be pretty tough in the audio department without training in a vacation swing. Many shows do just that but in order to cut costs and make it easier for us to come and go as necessary the audio department has decided to simply train a local on the backstage show track. When I’m gone my assistant mixes the shows and the local takes his place backstage. In reality, we are training the local we already have and then an additional local is brought on to cover my contract per IATSE/Yellowcard rules. In this case I stayed through the first couple shows and left Friday morning and will be gone for 8 days (9 shows).
The nice thing about touring the county is that you get to see all of the airports and hotel rooms you would ever want to. Because of that it was very easy to pick where I wanted to go on my break: Home. Of course it couldn’t be quite that easy. One of my girlfriend’s best friends was getting married in Portland, OR over the weekend so I had to make a quick detour to the Pacific Northwest on my way from Cleveland to NYC.
The other thing I wanted to do, while I have a little downtime is check in and see how everyone is feeling about the content of this blog thus far. As I’ve said before there are certain things I can’t/won’t write about because of intellectual property concerns. That said, are there any questions from those of you reading thus far? Anything you want more information/clarification on? The only reason I started this was to be a source of information so let me know what you guys are interested in reading or learning about.
Thanks for reading,
Jake