Two weeks at Easter 1977 Away from home for longer than ever before.
I took the Train from Barnstaple station to Exeter St Davids. I walked up to the guest house that had been recommended to me and that I had a room booked. It was quite a nice place, if a little odd. For example the milk for the tea or coffee was always boiled. I learnt after the first morning to keep back some of the milk from the corn flakes. I only had breakfast there as the rest of the time I would be at the Northcott theatre. I think it was often used by crews and cast members on tour, the owner, a very pleasant lady, referred to the guests as patrons. I would from that day on be out early, and back late.
In the Afternoon I walked up to the Northcott and presented myself at the stage door asking for the Chief Electrician, Maurice Marshall. I was met in fact by the Deputy Chief Electrician, David Whitehead who took me down to the Electrical Departments workshop.
I can’t remember many details of my time at the Northcott. Apart from a flying system for the lighting bars and scenery. An advanced light bar over the auditorium operated by a hand Winch. A bigger sound system, and a much bigger lighting desk along with a conventional auditorium stage set up it all seemed fairly straight forward.
I don’t intend to list day by day what I did over the two weeks that I was at the Northcott, I can’t remember what order they necessarily came in or all of the details.
The first thing I grasped was the theatre’s physical size and looking back over time, for example, from my time at the Royalty, that little had been done to save time or manpower. This was true in most theatres of that time. Theatre frequently appears to lag behind the attitudes and working practices of the rest of the country by about ten years.
I was sent from the stage to the lighting control room (known as the lighting box, or just “the box” ) to turn off the working lights over the stage. Unusually at the Northcott the sound and lighting controls were in the same place. With the operators sitting at their relative controls side by side. Follow spots also were worked from the same position.
The working lights or “workers”, are a set of lights placed around and over the stage, also possibly in the Auditorium pointing at the stage that are used to allow technical work, and rehearsals, to take place without using the main stage lighting reserved for performances.
It was quite a long trip to “the box” I had been told to turn off Effects circuit 10. I had been shown the box earlier when the crew had done a “rig check”.
This is the operation of turning on all the lights in the lighting rig (the rig) and then checking that every “lantern” or light and attached device works properly, and that none of the colours (gels) placed in front of the lanterns have burnt out or faded.
I made my way to the box, and looked and looked but could not find this effects circuit ten. In my defence I had only watched the operation of the board during the rig check, little else had been explained at the time. I returned to the stage and reported that I could not find this switch. I was dispatched for a second time being told where it was. Still I could not find it. I was then yelled at from the stage ” its marked hash FX 10″ My thoughts on this, and the quality of the explanations I had received so far, can not be legally repeated in this book.
But I had learnt two things so far, FX stood for effects and the symbol # represented circuit.
(An FX was something presented to the audience to represent reality. #FX can control anything remotely and are not dimmer circuits. Um a whole new language. Not all theatres use exactly the same language.)
My problems at the Northcott was they thought I knew more than I did, but wanting a job, I was not going to tell them of my ignorance.
There had been a lamp out in the rig, found while the rig check was in progress. For the first time I was to meet a device known as a Tallescope. This is an extending ladder that has a small platform at the top surrounded by a safety rail, it also has a set of wheels at the bottom that allow it to be moved about easily. I watched as this device was moved into place below the Blown lantern.
( the lamp blows and so creates the expression blown lantern, although 99+% of the time there is nothing wrong with the lantern itself it just inherits the title from the lamp. ” Bulbs grow in the ground according to knowledgeable technicians wishing to show off and put down enthusiastic students”.)
Later the following day, while no one was about, I man handled the Tallescope (the scope) out, pulled the rope and extended the ladder so the little platform at the top was raised to its fullest height. I put the breaks on and up I went.
Just to cover a few more theatre expressions that I had already learnt or was leaning as fast as I could.
The use of stage left or or Stage Right ( S/L or S/R) refers to when someone is standing on stage looking towards the audience. Just to confuse the matter TV directors refer to Camera left and right which is the opposite way round. And just to make the world even more confusing. Sometimes actors are asked to move on or off stage, which refers to moving towards or away from the centre of the stage. Some stages rise in height as they move away from the auditorium. This was created to give an illusion of depth. To create a vanishing point. “Or just to make life more difficult and dangerous for those people working on ladders at heights above the stage.” Because therefore a person further away from the audience would be higher than one closer to the audience they are referred to as being “Up stage” and the person closer as “Down Stage.” The Angle of this slope is referred to as the rake and is usually quoted as a road going uphill such as 1:24 or one in twenty four.
Moving Scenery by whatever method, either up or down is referred to as the art of flying. And so the item, or for that matter person, that is flown. Not just that, but they, or it, is flown in or out, not up or down. So now if you have been paying attention left or right can be ON or OFF . Up or Down is IN or OUT. Closer or further away is DOWN or UP. Front of House (F.O.H.) is any area in front of the Proscenium Arch (or Pross, or Pross arch.) That is the big square thing that separates the audience from the stage. It is a huge thing that has a hole in it so the audience can see through it to the stage. This arch has to support the grid, the thing that holds up the lights, and the set, but allows them to fly in and out. Now an Iron is not something from the wardrobe dept, it is the thing to stop a fire reaching the audience. It is a solid sheet of metal as high as the Pross, and as wide and slides IN to cover the hole in the Pross so that a fire on stage can not reach the audience. ROH is the opposite of FOH, in other words ROH “rear of house” is the area behind the pros.
I watched the show that night. It was sleuth. “A two hander”, meaning that there were only two people in the cast. The play had been doing the rounds (touring with different companies) for quite some time. Although only a box set (A stage made up of a set of scenery displayed on three sides with the imaginary fourth wall removed so that the audience looks through it at the action of the cast. This is fixed in place and does not move throughout the entire show.) The Northcott had purchased this set, it was quite sophisticated and the very first real set that I had seen actually on stage. Plates flew off walls, bits and pieces fell off tables, chairs moved by themselves. It was all magic until one stood in the wings (an area to the side of the main acting area that the audience normally can not see into.) and watched how it was done.
The Next night I watched from the lighting box, after that there was little else to see. I looked at the sound equipment. I think it may have been built in house, I have never seen a system quite like it since. It has the normal arrangement of inputs for microphones and line. They had I think at that time 3 Revox reel to reel tape recorders. 2 were chassis mounted in wooden boxes. These were complete with remote controls so although the units were behind the operator, he could sit in front of the desk and face the stage with the machines behind. Also there we’re two record decks and a large collection of records. Some of the records were sound effect recordings but not all. But the unusual thing was the way the output could be routed to any one of four amplifiers, and then these amplifiers via a switch panel could be routed to any speaker socket around the theatre. The amplifiers themselves were of the thermionic valve type.
A few days later was the get out of sleuth. We worked overnight to take down the set and on stage lighting rig. It was the only time I have ever known the following practice. Everyone involved in the get out chose a record they wanted to listen to and these were then placed on the auto changer of one of the decks in the lighting and sound control room. The records played through the sound system and everyone got to hear one side of their choice. It was a cheery sort of thing to do. I am not certain that today it would be allowed, but we enjoyed it. It had an odd mix of choices following one another. And then I heard Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” . Well the first half of it. I was enthralled. If I had not been in love with theatre before I was now. Late at night in an almost empty theatre listening to this. I could not wait for the stack of records to be turned over to hear the second half. Being alive the penultimate track on the second half just was it, one of the greatest Theatrical numbers ever. I was sure my father, a “musical nut”, would have a copy, he didn’t. It would be years until I could get my own copy in HMV in Oxford Street. It would be Twenty three years until I could get a copy of it on CD and that was in Boston Massachusetts.
The following Monday was the fit up of Under-milk Wood. Because the planned sale of the set for sleuth has not taken place, because no company wanted it. The Northcott was short of money for this production. The answer was old crates, barrels, bits of fishing nets and lots of very clever lighting, using lots of “specials”. A special is a light put up for a special purpose. It lights just one item or person for one reason alone. Maurice the Chief Electrician was lighting the show. He was the lighting designer. Every time one of the cast spoke only they were lit. It worked brilliantly. It worked as the author Dylan Thomas had intended, remembering it was originally written for the radio.
Only two incidents stick in my memory, both involved flying. At the Northcott at the time the LX Dept did its own flying of its own equipment. Or it did on this fit up of Under Milk Wood.
The first incident involved winching out by hand the “Advance Bar” This is a bar of lights over the audience’s head in the auditorium. It was very heavy and had to be manually winched out (upwards) from a small hand winch in a cupboard from the stage level. Myself and Jonathan, who was the lowest in the pecking order apart from myself, had winched it almost to the top of the ceiling when we stopped for a breather. The pawl on the ratchet must have slipped because down it slowly came. All our effort for nothing. The winch handle just flew round faster and faster. We dare not try and stop it. David told us from the stage not to try and stop it! I thought that was bloody obvious. After it was all the way in. (back at ground level where we started) David told us we should have put the safety chain around the handle in case the pawl slipped. Jonathan and I had to winch it out again. No one offered to help us.
The second incident involved the Flying system.
The flying system at the Northcott is a counter weight, or balanced system. Lighting or set (scenery) is attached to a horizontal pipe or bar. This is held up by steel wires (ropes) that go up to the grid, pass over pulleys (blocks) and then to the cradle (a frame that steel weights are placed in) to counterbalance the weight of the item over the stage. A rope is then attached to the top and bottom of the cradle and this in turn passes over pulleys placed at the top of the counterweight frame that holds the weighted cradle to the wall. The break on this rope stops the whole set moving. When the brake is released the cradle can be moved up or down and so the bar also moves in the same direction of travel as the rope.(Hemp)
The lighting equipment had been put on the wrong bar, the system was out of balance, considerable weight was involved in this and the brake could not hold this. We should have let go and let the people on stage take the consequences for their actions. We held on and on, in the end Jonathan said he could hold it alone, I raced up to the loading gallery and took the weights out from the cradle. This was very dangerous, and it was the second time we had been put at risk. In My opinion, two inexperienced people had been sent off to do jobs they were ill equipped for.
This theatre appeared to run very much on a hierarchical structure. I have never been in one like it before, or since I am glad to say.
A couple of nights later after the First night of Under Milk Wood I was left in the theatre by myself so I could plot (work out) the lighting for Who’s Afroid of Adolf, the student production coming from the New Theatre Barnstaple. I think one of the team had been told to stay with me by the chief LX. but they all went to the pub, that suited me. I worked on. Setting levels on the desk, going out to look at the result, writing down the levels. I did it all. I worked out how to do the lighting desk, how I could work the tape effects from the remote controls, I would have to re-splice the tape with a clear window taken from an old cassette tape leader. I worked on how to do the followspot cue, I was a one man band. I finished about 4am.i turned everything off, locked up and went back to the hotel. My first experience of being alone late at night in a theatre.
You can still see and hear the audience, the noise of them talking and applauding . It is most odd. When you start work in theatres you probably think that the show time is the normal time, but slowly this feeling shifts until the show is the time you work towards but it is no longer the normal time, its just an interruption in a pattern of work when the auditorium is empty.
It would be a few weeks later that a coach would bring me and the cast of Who’s Afraid of Adolf back to Northcott for the last time. I had spliced my tapes but there was a problem. Gerry came along and took over, this was the first, but not the last time in my life that this would happen. I don’t know why I do it, I work it all out and then someone else takes over. He said he would do the lighting. I think he may have gone to the pub with friends, but just for once in our friendship it went wrong. I decided to leave him to it. I just did the sound cues. But the remote for the sound cue was not put next to the followspot, and the lighting board operator can not reach the sound desk at the Northcott unlike the New Theatre! I stayed with the sound that’s what he wanted. That all important follow spot cue was missed, I couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it. On the coach going home I got the blame, great, after all that, I got the blame from the cast.
It was the end of my fortnight at Northcott. I had learnt a lot. It was of course a theatre much bigger than the New Theatre in Barnstaple. It was still a college theatre though. I waited to see Maurice, I hoped perhaps that he might have a job for me. Considering that I had been pitched in rather at the deep end, I thought that I had done rather well. So did he, or at least that is what he said. But as regards a Job no. His exact words were along the lines of that. “He thought I would go far, and get a job in theatre, but not at The Northcott.”
I was disappointed, but looking back it was the right choice. I might have been able to work with him, but he had recognised that he would not be able to work with me. He was already by that time famous for teaching students about theatre and the industry. I did not want a teacher, I just wanted a job. In such a small provincial theatre the chances of there ever being an opening would be almost zero. I needed somewhere where there were lots of theatres. Lots of Jobs, and ideally somewhere where, they just perhaps, were all just not quite, so very clever.