One Tech Day, Forty-Three Moves, and a Motor on Backorder
The stage manager of a non-union regional production is calling a two-act drama with 34 light cues, 11 sound cues, and 43 scenic moves executed by a six-person running crew. Load-in lost six hours when the truck arrived late. The first tech is scheduled Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the company handbook requires a meal break after six hours of work. Two actors have a 25-second quick change that crosses under the deck stairs. One automated wagon's motor is on backorder, so the wagon must now be moved manually by two crew members. The director wants to stop-and-go the top of act two for two hours. The lighting designer has not yet seen the moving-light positions onstage. The costume shop still has three pieces to finish. The second preview is already sold to 240 people, and it is now Monday afternoon.
1. Build the Tuesday tech schedule. What goes first, what gets time-boxed, and what is deliberately deferred?
Read the worked answer
Triage by irreversibility, not by act order.
Tuesday is 13 hours on the clock, roughly 10 to 11 working hours once the meal break is counted. Anything that only works with people in costume, in light, on the actual set ranks ahead of anything that can happen Wednesday.
- 10:00–1:00 - Focus the moving lights onstage with the LD while the cast warms up and takes notes. This is the one item requiring the LD, a dark house, and an idle cast simultaneously, and it can happen while the shop finishes the three pieces.
- 1:00–4:00 - Change tech with the crew only: walk and time the 43 moves and rehearse the two actors' quick change in costume with dressers. Forty-three moves cannot be stop-and-go'd inside an afternoon.
- 4:00–5:00 - Meal, inside the six-hour rule.
- 5:00–6:30 - The director's stop-and-go of the top of act two, time-boxed with a hard stop and a visible clock.
- 6:30–7:00 - Notes.
- 7:00–10:30 - Run act one with cues, continue into act two as far as it goes.
- 10:30–11:00 - Reset, crew notes, post the Wednesday call.
Deferred deliberately: a full dress run. Post the schedule on the call board at 9:45, not at 10:00.
2. How do you make the 25-second quick change and the manual wagon reliable enough for a sold preview, and where does that information live?
Read the worked answer
Write it down, and rehearse the crew rather than only the actors.
Quick change. Twenty-five seconds under the deck stairs is tight, so measure it: walk the path in costume with a stopwatch and time from the actor's last exit line, not from the exit itself. Three fixes, cheapest first: (a) presets laid out in the order hands touch them, closures fastened, shoes pre-tied; (b) a dresser at the stair head and a second at the bottom, one job each; (c) if the path is the problem, a scripted exit change - talk to the director before talking to the actor.
Manual wagon. The backorder converts a cue into a two-person physical task. Assign named crew, never "deck." Write the call as a counted sequence ("wagon - take - and - hold"), tape the travel path and stopping mark on the deck, and rehearse it at performance speed with actors aboard, including a failure drill for a wagon that stalls mid-travel.
Documentation. Both live in the cue sheet with run times, crew names, and the failure plan. Information that lives only in someone's memory is what fails in front of 240 people.
3. It becomes clear Tuesday afternoon that Wednesday cannot hold a complete run. What do you cut, and how and when do you communicate it?
Read the worked answer
Protect the two things that cannot be bought back: the sold audience and the actors' safety.
Cut in this order. First, the second stop-and-go - the first one was already bought Tuesday. Second, defer the costume shop's three remaining pieces if they are outer layers with a same-silhouette substitute. Third, replace the full dress with a cue-to-cue plus top-and-tail, and hold one complete run before the preview if any hour can be found.
Do not cut the fight or dance call, the quick-change rehearsal, the crew's wagon rehearsal, or the safety walk of the deck and stairs.
Communication. By 6 p.m. Monday, post the revised Tuesday schedule with hard stops, the Wednesday change, and a short written note to the director and producer explaining what was traded and why. Give every actor revised call times in writing; a schedule change delivered verbally is a grievance waiting to happen.
Then put the decision where it belongs: if Wednesday cannot hold a run, ask the producer to move the preview. That is a producer decision and it must be made Monday, not Thursday night with 240 seats sold.