Theatre shoved down your throat! UPDATED 1/25/08

If you have a production of Blue Man Group in your city, raise your hand.

Everybody? That’s what I thought. But here in Chicago, we literally cram the BMG into you.

Apparently BMG Chicago has a small camera that was forcibly inserted into an audience member’s mouth during a show by the Blue Men themselves. This breaking of the fourth wall, and gum-line, was not appreciated by the patron, who claims he struggled to get free but was restrained by the actors as his 8 year old grandson watched. He has filed a lawsuit.

“At the time the ‘esophagus cam’ was inserted into plaintiff’s mouth, it was covered in food, liquid and grime from the Briar Street Theatre floor, including the thick blue paint used to cover the actors’ faces,” the suit said.

It is unknown whether the Blue Man Group will speak in their defense... (So, do they stick the camera in other places in different cities?)

UPDATE 1/25/08: Blue Man Group denies charges. Bemoaning the necessary revealing of a theatrical trick, BMG announced that the camera is never inserted into anyone’s mouth, let alone throat. The bit uses the live feed from the camera of the patron’s open mouth, and then switches to taped footage of a medical camera entering a throat. The patron that has filed the lawsuit claims that the camera was forced into his mouth, and that doctors later found he had “a traumatic contusion” to the esophagus. He also claims to have bit down on the camera’s cord during the ordeal.

Granted, it may be possible that a bit of both is true (I have never seen any BMG performance, so I am just speculating). Perhaps the camera did enter this patron’s mouth during this performance, but in his panic, he thought the footage on the screen was of his own throat. The other thing to consider is: if they had really gotten anything down his throat, wouldn’t it be likely to trigger the gag reflex, resulting in him vomiting? Regardless, if this man thinks that they really jammed a camera into his mouth and throat, and prevented him from being able to refuse to participate, he has every right to be upset. That means that this “gag”, for lack of a better term, went wrong during that performance.
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I’ve been ranting a lot about people in management positions mistreating or abusing those that work for them. Some folks here in Chicago are now finally publicly calling out theatre companies that have a history of this. While I will report more on that later, today I wanted to explore the management and other jobs that I am amazed anyone would want to do. Jobs that I wouldn’t wish on others.

For instance: Production Manager. I have worked with many production managers over the years. What has amazed me is difference between them all. Some have been horrible with their people skills, but great at the core management of the productions. Others have been great with people, but bad at making production decisions. Only a very few have been good with both the people they supervise and the job itself. But regardless: its a hard job. You have to manage money, time, and egos. You have to have a working understanding of all technical and artistic aspects of a production. You have to be able to offer solutions to nearly any problem that comes up during the life of the production. And if you make a wrong decision, the show may not happen on time.

Stage Manager: The people who do this job well amaze me. The people who do it badly anger me. This is a job that is totally thankless, but the good SM’s are totally dedicated to it, even though they work harder than nearly anyone else. When you are lucky enough to work with good SM’s most of the time, it becomes painful to work with bad ones. Stage Management might be summed up this way: everything you need to do is simple, but there are 100,000 simple things you need to do. I think this is why it is frustrating to work with bad SM’s. The individual things they fail to do are so simple.

Be kind to your stage manager, they have to put up with actor, director, and designer egos, as well as stagehands, house management issues, and of course, you. Stage Management deserved a Tony before any director or designer.

Props: it takes a special person to make and run props, and I am definitely not it. Time periods, styles, hues… and thats just the beginning. Then you have to go find the stuff, or make it, including cars! Hundreds or thousands of things that all need to be procured, brought in, and set up. Prop changes between scenes can be awe inspiring in some shows, but even one prop missing can stop a show dead. Every little scratch, ding, dent, tear, or bend means you need to fix the prop, even though you are entrusting the prop to others every show. People who do props should be paid more than the other people running the show, just to help with the psychiatric care from all the stress they end up with.

House Managers: If you think your job backstage sucks, try dealing with the general public. Especially if they are at a high priced show, and are donors. House managers have to deal with people who claim to have come to that theatre for years, yet didn’t know that matinées started at 2:00, and demand to be let in when they arrive at 2:28.“What do your mean we have to sit in the back? Our subscription is for the center of our center row!” It gets better if they also donated more to the theatre than the entire house management staff make in a year. But don’t worry, even though you might be envious of the pay and benefits available at the Burger King across the street, you get to be responsible for the safety of the entire audience! Thats right, the responsibility of getting all 30 to 3000 strangers out of a dark, crowded room in an emergency is completely on your shoulders. That, and telling rude patrons to please stop talking on their phone during the show.

I know there are other thankless jobs (such as Box Office), but these four stand out for me.

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Finally, The Humble Nailbanger has posted this great story of his first time learning the ropes.

“So. College boy. Tell me, do you know your knots?” The speed and manner of which he so thoroughly chewed his gum was especially intimidating, even above and beyond his rangy strength.

I vaguely remembered my father mentioning this, and showing me the two knots “I absolutely, positively needed to know.” His hands moved in flashes under the light and after he showed me three times how to tie each, he had me do what he did. I fumbled around until I got them right, and promptly forgot everything about them. What was good for me was that I quickly and correctly saw that I was doomed here, that nothing I could say or do would prevent me from getting kicked around for a while. Somehow, I internalized it, accepted it and decided to roll with it in one quick, shining and rare moment of adulthood. Rare for me, anyway.

“No sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

He leaned in close to me. Though all around us was chaos and noise, he spoke very quietly. I didn’t miss a word as he growled them at me, delivering them aloft a quiet breeze on which I smelled the odor of every cigarette he had smoked that day, along with the slightest hint of mint. Judging by the pack he smoked over the course of that first four-hour call, there were a lot of sticks on that breath.

“Don’t call me sir, college boy. I work for a living. Do me a favor and save that shit for your professors, alrighty?”

“Ooooooookay. Yup, no problem.”

He turned to a bin full of bundles of white rope, grabbed one, spun and unraveled it all in one fluid motion that showed he had done it tens of thousands of times, all while keeping his eye on me. “OK Plato, there’s just two knots you need to know for now, alright? The first is the bowline. I’m gonna tie it for you once or twice, and then you’ll do what I do.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.