GET-OUT!

I’m not actually shouting at you.  I’m just preparing for a flurry of activity on Saturday night.  You, the saturday night punter will watch the show and exit promptly afterwards.  But once the door shuts after the show, a crack team of set LX and Stage Managment crew will be unleashed on the set, lights, costume and props and unravel them with extreme precision, place them in an awaiting truck that will whisk it all away to our storage shed.  All this will happen inside 4hrs on a Saturday night in Temple Bar.

Or at least, that is the idea.

From my side, I have to make sure that I have enough crew to do the job. I need a truck large enough to hold all the set pieces and the rigging equipment.  I need enough space in our shed.  I need everyone to be on their game so that the schedule is followed. I need to be Ms Organisation in order to make sure that everything is done correctly.

Get-Out. The word causes a shiver down the spine of everyone who works in theatre. You don’t love it, you don’t really hate it, but it has to be done.  It can be the most difficult time for everyone in terms of attention to detail.  The show has been up and running and now it’s time to tidy up.  Its like washing dishes.  Noone wants to do it, but it has to be done. We’ve done Get-Out’s before of course.  But as we tend to work in our own venue we do it in our own time.  For Lizzie Lavelle there was a whole day and Drive-By too.

This is the side of theatre that is you don’t always see, but is so important. We have a large storage shed out in Kilcock where we keep our sets and other companies do too.  Into this space early on Sunday morning we will unpile ourselves from our warm cars and truck and unload the set into a cold/dark shed. We have to exert all the energy we have left to doing this with love and care.  This is our set, our sweat, blood and tears from the past three months, our baby.  This is our bubbly wall, curvy ladder, chessboard floor, sparkling chandelier and firefly pygmy drops.  It may be used again, it may not.  The point is all this gear has made our show real.  It made it beautiful.  We are going to take it carefully from Project on Saturday night and put it in the shed for a rest.  A well deserved rest.