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30 November 2012
… Who ya gonna call? GLITTERBUSTERS!
I don’t think it’s a secret that the Christmas show is always my favorite of the year. There is nothing better, when sitting in the office going over budget figures for the next year (yawn!), than to have the show relay on (this is a speaker that monitors what is happening in the theatre) and hear the reaction from a couple of hundred children to what is happening on stage.
It’s a continuous soundtrack of laughing, giggling and oohs – not to mention the noise when the belly dancing starts. As always though some of the best reaction comes from the simplest effects – you can never beat the expression on a child’s face the first time they see a mirrors ball or better still a glitter drop.
Now sadly this expression of joy is not shared by all – glitter does tend to get everywhere!
Fortunately most of the stage management and production team have partners who are well used to the fact every item of clothing we bring home will be covered in the stuff, and the bath has a sparkly tide mark for a couple of months. Though I must say my first visit to the village pub at this time of year always gets a strange look!
Those who are not normally impressed are the stage management team who not only have the joy of crawling on their stomachs into traps in the toilet floor above the auditorium to drop it – but then have the task of clearing it all up at the end of the show!
In the past I’ve tried supplying battery handheld vacuums and even leaf blowers to aid the task but I’ve still been met with the “look” of raised eyebrows that says “great- you think that will help?”
But this year I got a smile – thanks to a small company in West Lothian who provided me with a Back-pack-vac. (DSM Victoria is sporting it in the photo above).
This could be why, on the turnaround between shows, you hear the odd chorus of “Who ya gonna call?” over the show relay.