(10) Orange Park, Florida

Thursday, October 9th: We started today with a 257 mile drive(1257 miles total) to Orange Park, Florida which is up near Jacksonville. The drive went well and we were at our Country Inn and Suites by early afternoon. After a lunch at Panera, Caroline, Jill, Eric, Rudy and I (collectively called the Tech Crew) made our way to the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts. On the way there we were following the directions on our GPS which took us down a wrong street. We were very confused and ended up calling the Technical Director for the venue and asking for directions. We got there just before our 5:00pm load in was suppose to start. Unfortunately, this was just the first bump we ran into. When we got there, we also learned that they did not have the lighting cues written for the show! Our lighting cues were written for and ETC Expression Console, which is the kind of computer that controls the lights. This venue had a Strand Console, which can’t read the same files as an ETC Expression. We had sent them a print out of the lighting cues with the understanding that they could be written in before we got there. Eric had left his computer at the hotel but I had brought mine and had a copy of the lighting cues as well. While they were focusing the lights, one of the venue staff was also writing in the light cues. He got about half way done before my computer ran out of batteries and I had left my power cord at the hotel. We finished the load in by around 10pm at which point I drove Caroline, Rudy and Jill back to the hotel, got my power cord and came back to the venue. Eric and the venue staff worked for another hour, until 11:30pm writing light cues. It was a long night and we still had work to finish in the morning.

Friday, October 10th: We had a 10:30am(6) and 7:00pm(7) shows. Eric and the venue staff worked right up until the show started writing light cues and still wasn’t quite finished. We had about ¾ of the show finished and had a few different light cues we could jump too when the show was finished. When we started the first show, the house crew hadn’t turned off the work lights in the house! This means we couldn’t go completely black. It was fixed halfway through the first song, but it didn’t start the day well. After the first show we had a Tech Crew meeting to discuss future venues. Then I went out and spend the afternoon driving around trying to purchase some hardware for the show which I couldn’t find anywhere. The second show had a bad start as well. Somehow is all the cue writing an extra cue had been added near the beginning of the show. We spent half of the first scene in a black out because we were in the wrong light cue! Load out went much quicker than I could have expected. We were out in just under 2 hours again and made our way back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.