The crowd shuffles into their seats, ushers handing a playbill to people passing by. As the lights dim, and the music begins, a hush falls over the crowd. As I turn up my headset, I hear the stage manager telling us to standby.
“Spot one, go,” Ria, our stage manager says.
I snap the shutter of the spotlight open, illuminating the actor on stage as he delivers his line. With a fade out, I readjust to a new position, ready for the next actor. He is playing the main character of the musical, Frederick Frankenstein, aka, Young Frankenstein. By the time the scene is over, I’m ready for one of my favorite scenes of the whole show. Though intensive with following my assigned actor with the spotlight, it’s a rather funny thing to watch. Igor, Frankenstein’s assistant, happens to jump around the stage quite a lot, which makes it challenging to keep a smooth moving light. Though the way the actor delivers their lines makes the challenge well worth it.
As soon as I’m finished with the scene, my spotlight partner and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Break time,” he says in a sing-song tone, as for the next two scenes, there’s no spotlight cues.
Instead of silence the whole time, all I hear over my headset is our stage manager. Her cackling laughter gets a few funny quips from the rest of the crew on headset. Although we’ve all watched the show many times at this point, Ria never stopped laughing at those scenes.
As the blackout marking the end of the first act hits, I grab my things and head off the catwalk through a rather uncomfortable door. Roughly waist high, with a sketchy ladder to get down, it’s a battle. As I stand up, I end up nearly tumbling back as I bash my head into the concrete around the door.
“Ooh, watch it,” my spotlight partner, Ethan, jokes.
Once getting back to the green room, where all the actors and crew go between acts, and before shows, we can relax for a few minutes. Filling up water bottles, and getting a slice of a rather large pumpkin pie that a member of the cast brought. Before heading back upstairs, I lay down on the couch beside the door. Once we’ve relaxed for maybe five minutes, Ria calls over the intercom that we have five minutes to be at places. We rush upstairs to the elevator to bring us right to the door out onto the catwalk.
“Ready spots?”
“Yup.”
“And we are go for act two. Enjoy the show.”
And so act two begins. The beginning of the best and busiest week of my life. So far.
