Performance at Yilan

I returned from Yilan last Tuesday after a five-day performance tour with my opera troupe and it is only now that I have the time to blog about it.

Part of our troupe's suitcases... but none of which is mine..

This performance is the second of the troupe's overseas performance tour to Taiwan for the year, but it's my first time traveling with them. Of course, I do not get to act due to my busy schedule. I decided to give up my role to someone else in view that I had to juggle between doing scenic design, lighting design, scenic construction, school production and school homework all at the same time.

Rigging in progress, with Ah-Long, my light op and great assistant to me throughout our stay in theatre.

Reflecting back, this performance is very hectic, as day in day out, everyone of us was stuck in the theatre since morning till late night, and hence there's totally no time for personal leisure. For me it's even worse; due to some communication breakdown, I had to do last minute lighting and scenic changes to accomodate the change in stage configuration, and one of our major scenic elements could not be pieced up in time, even with the assistance of many other troupe members. Luckily for me, everyone went on smoothly.

The lighting console: ETC Insigh 2X (oh my god it's so antique!)

A view of my symbolic scenic design without the lights; as usual, me with my drapes

Having said so, there're things which I was very sore about. First, I wasn't given any credit in the programme booklet. I don't know if this is the usual practice for the Taiwanese that the creative team is usually not credited, or that it has been left out due to space constraints. Well, they were kind enough to include it in for me after I raised it up, but then an amended programme booklet is no longer original anymore. Another thing is I wasn't able to take pictures of my own scenic and lighting design, despite being promised that someone would do that for me. No doubt I can extract the stills from the DVD recording, but how can still images be compared to high-res photographs, when it comes to compilation of portfolio? It's all about compromising of my professionalism, although I'm still not yet a professional.

Rigging again... with a bit of lighting

Bad moments aside, I still feel this is a rather nice experience. I learnt quite a lot, like coming out with contingency plans within 5 hours, planning a technical schedule (even though it may not be a perfect one), and cueing a show entirely in Mandarin. Say, how many newbies in the industry can have the luck to do all these?