I was going to make this a complaint post, but after today's events I don't feel like complaining as much.
On Wednesday, we open up our last mainstage production of the semester, it's actually a presentation of two Eugene Ionesco one-acts, The Bald Soprano and Jack, or The Submission, both absurdist pieces. I am again the sound designer. Originally the production was to be performed in our 88-seat 3-quarter round black box.
Here's the series of events:
On Tuesday, one of our professors opened a storage room in the black box theatre to retrieve swords for her stage combat class, and uncovered a leak and discovered that the weapons were covered in mold. She reported this to the university maintenance department.
On Wednesday, an actor got sick during rehearsal and had to leave. Thursday morning, maintenance finally checked in on the report from Tuesday, and they discovered that the mold is toxic and has actually infested not just that storage room but the entire space, and it's in the ceiling. So they shut it down. All the furniture, props, and equipment that was over there had to be carted out by shop employees wearing masks, carefully cleaned outside, and brought to the only alternative we have, our 450-seat proscenium mainstage.
This sucks for me as a designer and part-time shop employee. We spent all of Thursday and Friday doing an emergency re-focus of every light in the theatre while others completed an entire new set that we borrowed from a nearby professional company. Thank god the costumes weren't in there yet. I had to re-set all the cues, and re-cable much the system because some improvements were being made while the theatre was dark, to be ready for First Tech this morning, which went absolutely swimmingly. Almost as perfectly as a First Tech can be expected to go. The last show had 4 weeks of rehearsal in that space and their first tech was a near disaster. We had 2 days and went pretty swell.
So although the mold situation created hell for the design team, myself included, the director, and the actors, it's actually been a great learning experience. Because being a theatre professional is all about adaptability. It's still a bit unfortunate because there were some great comedic moments in the shows that are lost now because of the distance. But overall I'm actually kind of glad it happened this way.
