Ass Whippin'

The ramp for Sleepy Hollow is built. Some high school kids were scheduled to go to Albuquerque Little Theatre today and put a base coat of paint on it. Colby likes grey. He's the TD (Technical Director for those of you not in show biz) and he's happy to have me around. His other volunteer carpenter Matthew is 86 years old and can only work one day a week.

The December show is the one Colby is really worried about. They're doing Irving Berlin's White Christmas, a show with eleven different sets. They have no fly space, very little wing space and no budget to speak of. Colby's excited because Carmen and I saw it twice in Boston- once with MD Fogg and spouse- and I've done automated scenery before, as well as other forms of moving set pieces. We're going to have to pull every trick in the book to do this show justice with the time and money and space available for it. Good thing I'm not in The Secret Garden.

The title of this posting refers to yesterday, a nine hour day volunteering down at ALT. At about 3:30, Matthew and I finished building and assembling the 7 foot by 24 foot ramp. Matthew went home, and I crawled around on the floor for three more hours cutting and attaching 36 legs to make it show-worthy. A nine-hour strenuous day after three months of sitting at my computer just about kicked my ass. For a lot of my show biz career, a nine-hour day meant we were going home early. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I could get used to ten to sixteen hour days again. Truth is, I don't want to get my ass whipped like that any more.