It’s Friday, and for some reason I’m not doing a show at the moment
An update on the smoking ban: I found some interesting lines in the Sun-Times article from the 5th. Here’s a quote from Health Committee Chairman Ed Smith (28th). “We would be duplicitous if we … say it’s all right to allow people to smoke on the stage. … It’s an adversity to people who come to see those plays and the stagehands.”
Apparently Mr. Smith doesn’t know any stagehands.
The article also claims “For 16 months, actors have been defying the ban, prompting complaints from theatergoers, “strong words prior to performances” between producers and City Hall and veiled threats to stop the show.”
Seriously? Any show I have ever seen in Chicago that had smoking had a big sign in the lobby stating it, and usually a notice in the program as well. How could anyone reasonably complain about being surprised by smoking in a show? Its not like its a new thing, and its not like you don’t know how big the theatre is before you walk in. Heck, in Chicago we put up notices for smoking (separate ones for cigar vs cigarette), fog, strobes, gunshots, and nudity.
This usually leads to amusing guessing by the audience about who and when the effect will be used. My favorite was on a production of Christmas Carol at the Goodman (several years ago) when House Management forgot to completely clear the Show Info sign from the previous show, so it read:
A Christmas Carol runs approximately 1 hour 30 minutes
There is one intermission
Gunshots are used in this production
They only discovered it when some poor little girl came up to one of them and asked in a worried voice, “who gets shot?”
For those who like Blogs: Steppenwolf Theatre has a great one, and its actually filled with things from the company! Check out this post from Tracy Letts addressing those annoying patrons who just don’t get it.
Bees: they may be dying off, which if true will threaten a major portion of the food supply.
More fun facts: BackstageJobs.com is now in its 6th year of service since the domain was first registered (5 years 3 months, to be exact) and in its 11th year of service since its launch as The Theatre Design and Technical Jobs Page (10 years 4 months). I have used a total of 3 computers to maintain the site during that time, starting with an Toshiba Satellite laptop running a 75mhz Pentium with 8 meg of RAM and a 14.4 modem (time to upload the site after updating: 30 minutes minimum) Now using an obsolete IBM ThinkPad bought used running Windows 98, but at least with a ethernet port and DSL line at home (time to upload the site after updating: 3 minutes. It takes longer to select the files to upload than it does to upload them). I have lived in 4 different apartments since I started the site.
Hey! Keep those Employer Questionnaires coming in, and for those of you that work in the Rental/Sales part of the business, let us know what you WISH your customers knew before they call you. Also, you only have until May 30th to get those pictures for the Photo Contest in. So what are you waiting for?!
Hudson & Gaines
