Tim's Blog!

When you go to see a live performance or show it in some ways is an illusion. If it all goes to plan you will see only performers and maybe just the head and waving arms of the Conductor.
However throughout the show, set pieces move across the stage seamlessly, banners fly up and down from behind the proscenium arch and then there’s that voice, the voice that can be heard over the theatres P.A system just before the curtain rises exclaiming how phone calls are not cool after a show has commenced.

Yip, it takes many hands to make a live show work.
Producers, Stage Managers, Costume makers, Set Designers, Lighting Operators, Directors, Publicists, Sound Operators, Front of House Staff…
The list goes on and on and on.

To put on a live performance really is a team effort and as a professional performer myself, that is the only way to view it.

Dancers remind yourself next time you find yourself dancing in front of thousands of people in a pink unitard and then realise that you are the only one dressed like that, maybe being rude to the Costume department wasn’t a good idea.

Singers, always remember that a sound operator can just press the ‘off’ button on your microphone if you disrespect them as an integral part in the production team.

Or Actors, the Lighting operator that you constantly ignore can make that spotlight shine on your understudy in ‘your’ scene at the lightest flick of a switch.

But the same message can be said to Directors or Producers too, they are also just another player on the live performance football field.
If they don’t ever pass the ball or disrespect their other team members they might start finding weird things start to happen also.

Of course nearly all professionals wouldn’t play out their revenge on the ‘field’ as such, however if you push people enough…?

This dancer just before their performance was told that their services were no longer needed, they were fired.
The dancer must’ve felt hard done by because…

Thoughts and Good Vibes to ALL!
Tim Maddren