Wednesday, October 17, 2012

All Hail The Board Operator

Thanks for your patience over the last couple of months as we've built our ensemble for The Seeing Place Theater's 4th Season - which will be announced on October 29th at our Season Kickoff Party!  Please join our mailing list to get the gritty details!

For a long time, we've been wanting to discuss some of the technical side of Off-Off Broadway theater-making.  This post is for all of you Board Operators out there (that never seem to get any credit)!

I'll begin with an analogy.  Have you ever listened to an album, fallen in love with it, and then gone to see the band only to find that the musicians fall apart in performance?  I know I have.  And rather than addressing what is actually happening, most people feel like they've been duped - as though those musicians somehow faked it in the recording studio and cranked out songs that don't represent their actual level of skill.  In reality, there is an artist on every album that is essential to the creation of the songs we have come to love and enjoy: The Producer.  That's the person that drives the group to better their songs, to cut the fat, to pull out a metronome (if needed).  And then they get mixed down to create something that is unified in sound.  All the time, the Producer supervises the creation of the album.

In theater, that person is the Stage Manager, who lives behind the action and calls the show so that the design elements and acting elements create the unified package that is received afresh every night by an audience.  In the Off-Off Broadway world, which can't afford mic systems galore, all of those responsibilities fall upon the Board Op - who can either make or break your show.

First of all, for those of you who have yet to experience Off-Off Broadway in all of its glitz and glamour, please understand that there is rarely have a perfect sound system, and even more rare is a computerized light board.  More often than not, the lighting system is run on a Two-Scene Preset Light Board.  It's a far cry from what most people have experienced in their colleges - and some high schools!  Most of our schooling only prepares us for the state-of-the-art work going on, rather than the stark reality of what we normally deal with in most of our theatrical endeavors (before we get there).

Have you ever seen a production with beautiful acting work that is completely swallowed by problematic transitions?  Or have you ever seen a play with sub-par acting, where the crispness of the technical flow actually impressed you into appreciating the show?  We tend to point fingers at the Director or the Designers, but much of the time, these things are all within the power of the Board Op - especially in Off-Off Broadway, where there are limited budgets and very little time to get everything perfect in the theater.

A great Board Op doesn't just pull the lights down and hit the sound cue when the last line in the scene happens.  The Board Op is every bit as important of an artist as the Director, the Designers, the Writer, and the Actors - and that person should strive to live the show with the cast (and audience!) every night.  The Board Op is the person that directs and packages the show into the event that the audience witnesses.  In most of my favorite projects as an actor, it's almost as if I could feel the artistic touch of the Board Op smoothing out the edges of our work as we're playing onstage.  And when the technical elements pop, the audience is that much more engaged. 

There's no better way to lose an audience than to forget to turn the work lights off, scramble to get the first cue up, or pull the music out too early - even to pull the lights up too high during transitions.  And often times, it really isn't easy to make that everything go off without a hitch.  It requires a lot of organization, and a lot of concentration.  It sometimes requires a lot of improvisation.  Lights often go out or ghost (come up unexpectedly), and speaker cables might need a little bit of TLC in order to work every time.  Actors may skip pages of dialogue.  The Board Op has to be just as attentive and responsive to the action and inevitable problems as the actors onstage.  And the greatest ones often go completely unnoticed.

In some ways, it's a thankless job.  In others, Board Operators really cradle the experience of the entire event in their hands.  So, next time you are at a show and either you or the actors you're watching point to the booth and clap for the techies, consider all that has gone into creating the story that night and show your appreciation for our unsung heroes.

By the way, we're looking for a Board Op for our next production, so please let us know if you'd like to be involved.  Please also share your thoughts and stories of shows where the Board Op either saved or broke the night.

I'll start...

Personally, when I was in high school, running a production of Open 24 Hours by my classmate and friend, Justin Hudnall, I accidentally pulled the lights down on a Two-Scene Preset Board to work on the scene after this scene (totally not thinking).  And luckily for me, in the middle of this total blackout during a moonlit romance, actor Nico Pitney (who's character was on a date with actor Maya Baldwin) blurted out "Oh wow!  An eclipse!"  At which point, my head shot up and I fixed it.  But just keep in mind that neither actors nor techies are perfect.  Thankfully, there's usually a tomorrow night, so that the show can grow into something eternally better than the night before.

Your turn.  :O)

18 comments:

  1. Thank You Brandon! As a Techie, I really don't mind being in the background, but it feels good just to know we are Appreciated!
    I also would love to work with you guys again!
    Steven McMullen

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    1. We'd love to work with you again too!

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    2. Thanks, Steven! I'll be writing you by the end of the night! :O)

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  2. Hey, Brandon, great post! I know so many people who would love the things you said. I think perhaps you're right, many people outside (and even inside) the theater world don't really know what they're clapping for when a cast raises its arms to the booth during a curtain call. But these people are artists as well, creating plot and manipulating emotions just as much as the performers onstage.

    I love the assimilation you made to the music world. I like to think of the board-op as some very unfortunate, reverse-conductor of an orchestra. In most orchestras a conductor leads the musicians, guiding them through the pages that contain their music. Being a board-op is like being a conductor to a bunch of musicians who start playing to their own beat, leaving the conductor to catch all the notes of every instrument and iron them out before they reach beyond the lip of the stage. While it's a very technical art the board-op engages in, it's nonetheless an inspired scramble every night.

    I also loved how you mentioned those actors who may skip lines of dialogue. It happens all the time. But even more so than this calamity is the event of really great actors doing really great things onstage in the moment...in their own bubble. Some of the best actors are those who work off of their instincts and who improvise a little bit every night. But this doesn't necessarily make all of their choices the best ones for the show! In those cases, it comes down to the stage manager and the board-ops to create a unified piece of art, to catch all those stray notes and create Brahms.

    As for a good board-op story, I can't think of any "make or break" scenarios off the top of my head (though I'm sure they've occurred), but I'll share this: my first gig once I got to the city was as a stage manager/board-op for a one-woman Fringe show. I got to see first-hand how terrifying it is to be placed with those responsibilities. While most board-ops work from a booth behind the audience, I was placed on the side of the house, just a few feet from the performer and the stage. Luckily, it turned out to be a huge advantage--the best nights were when she and I really connected, in some unseen, ethereal way, and the lights would change when her thoughts changed, the sound would come in when she began hearing them in her head. It was the same sensation you get as a scene partner when the chemistry between you and your fellow actor is really igniting. It created a beautiful atmosphere within the space, and I got to learn how much art is actually applied in being the master behind the technology.

    So, thanks all you board-ops! I've only mildly touched your world, but even that brief encounter was enough to instill in me a great appreciation for your work.

    -Javan

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    1. Love this comment - didn't realize you had done some board-op/SMing in the city!

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  3. Thanks Brandon- I totally agree when I run lights and sound I feel like Im contributing creatively to the project. Its not an easy job when lights AND sound happen simultaneously. It can be overwhelming and take so much concentratuon and when it doesnt go right, people blame the tech without realizing that its 1 person trying to do 3 jobs with 2 hands. Most of us feel horrible when it doesnt go right, but hey we are human like everyone else!m

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    1. Yeah. And it's so hard for Board Ops (or at least me when I've done it) not to fall prey to perfectionism. If you're a person on a stage and something goes haywire, we call that humanity. If you're a person in a booth and something goes haywire, everyone feels like you ruined their night.

      I was the Foley Artist for a show once and had all sorts of panic attacks until I realized that a margin for human error is totally understandable - AND IN FACT, I forgot to turn the "On Air" button on until the very end of the play, right after a hugely dramatic monologue in THE 1940's RADIO CHRISTMAS HOUR. And it got such a huge laugh that we kept it.

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  4. I really love this post - I feel like this blog as a whole is trying to help artists and audiences understand the ART of producing theater, which includes all kinds of things both on and off stage. I hope this is just a beginning of a series of posts where we illuminate the special relationships that technical artists have with the theater we create. Bravo!

    I remember when I was in college and I was given the task to not only run the light board for a traveling dance show, but I was also asked to make my own decisions as to when to go from cue to cue, depending on how it "felt" to me. It was exhilarating. I felt like I was a part of the pulse of the show, with the ability to change the look of the stage depending on what was happening on it. I would imagine that the better a board op is with "feeling" the piece the more creativity they'll be able to express, particularly when working with small theater companies (probably not as much in larger houses.)

    I love that we're hearing from some board ops in these comments, too. So cool!

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  5. I love following the beam of light and the feeling of the support and connectedness I get...to that special person in the booth...

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  6. I directed a play a few years ago and happened to be sitting in the audience one night. About three quarters of the way through the show things began to go drastically wrong on stage. Actors missed entrances, props weren't on stage and lines were dropped. It was just one of those nights. I was having a full panic attack sitting in my seat, but amazingly, each and every light cue went when it was supposed to. Some were skipped to get to the one that needed to go at the right time, and I later found out it was because the Stage Manager and Board Op were calm and focused during the entire debacle and they basically saved the show. It's so special when the Board Ops are able to connect with the play and become a sort of character in it themselves.

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    1. Oh man - I can only imagine how you must have felt in the audience that night!

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    2. That's why they make all the big bucks.

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  7. I don't have any great stories to share of board op heroics because they seem to happen every show. I will say this though, one of the best people I know that knows everything technical and has run most of the boards in and around NYC, once said to me, he most trusts the boards that have some sort of graffiti on them; A name scratched in the side, a cue carve in the back, a number written to indicate the perfect level, etc. He loves the history a board can have. I found that to be a pretty romantic sentiment. Here's to the techies, an actor's best friend!

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  8. I produced and starred in a one-woman show in 2009; my lighting and projection designer didn't show up to tech, and my board operators Danny Maly and Dylan Duke designed the whole damn thing. It looked fucking amazing. In a 90 minute show of just one person talking, lighting and sound cues are imperative to keep the show flowing. Danny and Dylan's job in this took talent and artistic timing, which they both have in boatloads.

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  9. No great stories here, but I can say that while reading this it reminded me a lot of editing video. When I am editing, one of my jobs is to make sure the viewer doesn't notice me. It is crazy how hard it can be to blend in. All of the professionally edited content out there sets a very high bar, so remaining artfully hidden can be difficult. ANd just like the board op can make or break a show, an editor can make or break a production. The only difference is, you can always hire another editor to re-worl your footage, but once a show starts, that all folks!

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  10. I have had great board operators, and not so great BO's. I believe actors can easily forget how important it is to have everyone on the team working as a machine, and without that part working well, the overall result can definitely be affected negatively.

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