the timboucher experience

“Where’s your script?” the technical director asks me.

“My script? What do you mean? I don’t know where it is.” I rummage around for it and produce it from underneath the lightboard.

I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking at it, but evidently, as a lightboard op (short for “operator”), you’re supposed to follow along the script for light cues just in case something happens and the stage manager doesn’t call something. Usually I don’t look at it though. I trust my stage manager and have developed a preternatural ability to read her body language for when she’s about to call a cue. We’re wearing wired Clear-Com head sets to communicate directly with one another and to whatever hand is stationed stage right. Even though we’re only positioned about four feet apart from one another on stage left, the headsets allow us a direct line to one another’s ear that cuts through all the actor noise and commotion that happens backstage during scene changes and set pieces coming in and going out. Maybe it’s not a preternatural ability after all, since really I’m just noticing that she’s reaching to the control box clipped to her belt, clicking on the mic button to talk. Either this means she’s about to call a cue or make some other comment only we who wear the headsets can hear – another nice backstage benefit, not to mention a pleasant way to pass the time through show after show. You develop a certain camaraderie with someone who has the magical ability to project their voice directly into your ear.

Cues go like this: she’ll say, “Standby lights fifty-four.”

“Lights,” I’ll whisper in as short and crisp a manner possible. This curtness minimizes my air time to allow for what may be anything from an extremely short to a little bit longer standby. During standby, no other conversation – no chatter – should be transmitted over headsets. Calling cues takes absolute priority.

“Lights fifty-four, go.”

I press the button marked “Go,” and the flat-screen monitor depicts numerically changes in intensity happening amongst the lighting instruments arranged in a plot over the stage. In my first couple stints as a light op, I prematurely hit the “Go” button a couple times. Luckily, there is a “Hold” button right next to that which arrests the transition. A green light next to each then alternates between “Go” and “Hold” indicating that you’re in a hold. Press go again, and the transition resumes. During dress rehearsal of my first show as a light op, I also accidentally pressed the second “Go” button. There are two sets of channels that can be programmed independently. We only use “A” and “B”, never “C” and “D.” Pressing go on the second set drops you into - at least in my experience – the land of unwritten light cues. To come back from the land of unwritten light cues to where you need to be, you press the “Cue” button, punch in your cue number on the keypad and then hit “Go.”

For “Me and My Girl” (so far my favorite show of the season), there was one passage where I had to call my own light cues by following the script. During one scene where the ancestor portraits I’d painted as set pieces begin coming to life, the stage manager was occupied with a series of sound cues. Her sound cues and my light cues formed what I began referring to as a duet: interlocking synchronously so as to create the effect of ghostly voices issuing forth from the paintings as the lights flickered and cycled through a different focus for each portrait. The passage only lasts about forty-five seconds, but it you get behind on a cue, it’s difficult to recover. In this case, you’re not just pressing the “Go” button either, but a second button programmed to dim and brighten whatever cue you’re in. But it alternates, every other cue is normal. So the rhythm is like: GO – BUTTON BUTTON BUTTON (being the secondary button to flick the lights) - GO… (wait) GO – BUTTON BUTTON BUTTON, and so on. All the while, you’re waiting for a certain word in a certain line to be delivered… GO – BUTTON BUTTON BUTTON, ending with a final GO and then back into normal la-la land where I can put the script back down and rely on the stage manager to call cues – though I keep the text nearby and refer to it occasionally to mentally mark anchor points, or open it up if it looks like she’s getting up to check on something backstage and might not be back for a while… a while in the backstage world being like thirty seconds maybe. A lot can happen in that span of time. You gotta stay on your toes and hit all your cues. The entire action of the drama moves forward solely on people correctly taking their cues.

• Technical Theatre, Augmented Reality, Immersive Technologies
• Stage Mic & Futuristic Comm Systems
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• Notes On Volume
• Douglas Rushkoff Interview Questions