The Beggar's Opera

April 2008
Assistant Light Board Operator

The Beggar's Opera was the third show both of my sophomore year and at Cinco Ranch H. S. It was my first UIL competition show, and we advanced to District with it (for those of you unfamiliar with the UIL format there are 5 competitions to advance through: Zone, District, Area, Region, and State).

UIL shows are a bit different from regular shows in the fact that they are much smaller shows (in fact, UIL has rules about how many people can be in the company) and therefore by their nature they are the hardest shows to get into, and also the shows where you grow the most. In addition to this, they are also touring shows that we pack into a truck, take to another school, and have only two hours in the other theatre to unload the truck, program the light board, spike the stage, and if we’re lucky, run the show. Everyone in the company is always required to be on top of their game and get what they need to done, because if they don't, then our entire show can be disqualified. Additionally, there are many other rules that go into the competition that one must be aware of, such as there are limits on the number and type of set pieces used, a certain time to set up and take down, and everything for the show all has to fit inside a certain area.

Our concept for this show was that they were a band of traveling players going around to put on a show. With this in-mind we started the show by having everyone go around "setting up" the stage, and then once they were "ready" the show began. I found that this really added to the comedy of the show because it allowed for some funny bits and good reactions from the other cast that was "off-stage" (sitting on the set/props in the back).

Assistant Light Board Operator

For The Beggar's Opera I was the Assistant Light Board Operator. What this job consisted of was based upon the theatre we were in. In some of them with better lighting, I essentially shadowed the light board operator and watched how it was done to learn the differences in UIL lighting so I would be up to speed for following years and to be able to run the show if for some reason the light board operator were to get sick. If the lighting in the theatre wasn't the greatest however, or we wanted light somewhere the theatre didn't usually have it, I was backstage during the show controlling sidelights from Seeless--the small version of Seymour. Seymour and Seeless are the dimmers-in-a-box that our company owned. They allowed us to dim and use standard wall power for our theatrical instruments, as we were not allowed re-patch the light board, and therefore, unable to use any floor or wall pockets the theatre's had.