h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I spend too much time doing this. We've just finished a production of "The Crucible" in which I designed and painted the entire set ON MY OWN. Where's the justice? All that work, and they forgot to mention me in the speech on the last night. It was a damned nice conceptual set, too.

they forgot to mention you?! aw, man, that is just rude. tisk, tisk.

but such is the life of the techie, no? it's enjoyable torture.

I actually worked back stange in a really disorganised secondary school production years ago. We got credited. Later a friend did lighting for another production and had to fight tooth and nail to get his name in teh program despite all teh other back stage staff being in tehre.

Freshman year of high school I worked sound/lighting crew... *shudder*

Terrible, terrible memories. We were a separate entity from the stage crew, who handled props and curtains and drops and such. We just dealt with the lights and sound. But it was enough. Oh, was it enough. I worked with a fellow student who was more experienced and therefore in charge of the whole thing. A fifteen-year-old male with authority is a dangerous thing indeed. That was definately a bad experience, which led me to give up crew and actually make the effort to become part of the cast, which, in the end, was a lot more rewarding, anyway.

In my brief, and very very amature experience as crew, did you ever grow to hate your cast? I fond them teh cause of half our problems. It woudl have been twice as easy without teh cast.

yes, 33337, we DO hate the cast, we just don't TELL them that... *grin*

guthrie (or however it's spelled, sorry!) i disagree. perhaps the cast gets more congratulations, but i find crewing for shows immensely rewarding. it's grueling and it's thankless, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. especially if there's a book used onstage by a cast member and you write funny messages in it... *evil grin*

Well, I'm sure being on crew would have been great fun, well, honestly, it really was at times. It was just when the self-proclaimed Master of Light, Sound, and Infinity got annoyed that things got really ugly.

Being on the cast wasn't all fun and games, either, really.

Hmmm... I was crew on another play which involved a scene in which various diplomats contemplated the very real possibility of worldwide warfare over a desk strewn with various ephemera - envelopes etc. I wrote humorous poetry on all of the documents, which b******d the moment somewhat.

I tend to hate the cast when I'm on crew - they make too much noise backstage. It seems to be endemic since when I'm in the cast, I always end up being told to shut up. Or maybe crew are just endemically paranoid, since I never think I'm being noisy.

I think part of my problem was the cast sometimes felt tehy coudl do our job better, and "Helped" (Read as move props, unplugged sound effects and got underfoot) Also tehy always missed cues to collect stuff from us in the wings tehn blamed us when it wasn't there five minutes late we were preparing teh stuff for the next scene.

*nods to all of the above*

it's easy.

ACTORS should never touch anything having to do with TECH CREW.
TECH CREW should never touch anything having to do with ACTORS.

problem solved.

and emily? are you sure that says queen of the goldfish? because i would think that it would be "reine de les poissons d'or"... you know, gold fish. 'cuz rouge is red.

Quite sure. French translations aren't always literal; what the English refer to as the Goldfish is the "Poisson Rouge" in French. Personally, I reckon they're Orangefish, but never mind. I mean, French cows go "meuuu", and French dogs go "wooooooa" (as opposed to the more staid English "woof")...

'kay. just checking. makes sense, actually...

What do French ducks say?

the french equivalent of "quack", i'd wager...

actually, i don't know. they don't teach stuff like that in french class...

I was rather hoping Emily might know. Seems to be her sort of thing.

Of course, we all know that French frogs don't go 'ribbit', but 'keep that bloody knife to yourself!'

"My sort of thing"? hmmm...

Dunno. I'll just check the Tintin...

...

...

(still looking - only a dumb cow so far)

...

Nope - no ducks (or frogs) yet. I'll look elsewhere.

I did however find out that French babies make precisely the same noise as French dogs.

"My sort of thing"? hmmm...

I hope I didn't misjudge you

I just thought you would be interested to know that babelfish translated 'quack' as 'charlatan' and 'quack quack' as 'charlatan de charlatan', which is probably all well and dandy normally, but no help under the present circumstances.

i think it's translating "quack" in the that-doctor-is-a-quack sense, not the the-duck-says-quack sense...