Yeeaahh I Love Old Remotes. Here's One From The Studio At Hamilton Place, Hamilton, Ontario.

Yeeaahh I love old remotes. Here's one from the Studio at Hamilton Place, Hamilton, Ontario.

My Associate Production Manager found this old dinosaur in his office as he was cleaning it out.

Yet again the amount of creativity and art being produced during these trying times blows me away. Humans really are amazing.

OMG GUYS YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS, IT'S AMAZING!!!! ROTFLMFAO XD

This is bloody brilliant!!!!

The National Theatre is going to stream a free play every Thursday night  (source) 

As numerous theatrical institutions have admirably opened up their archives in response to increasing lockdown restrictions, all eyes have remained on one organisation: the National Theatre, which has the greatest archive of cinema-quality recordings of stage plays of any theatre in the world, thanks to its formidable NT Live programme. It’s designed to beam productions from the NT into cinemas across the country, but there are of course no cinemas in operation at present. So the NT is switching to its YouTube channel. From April 2, under the banner of National Theatre at Home, every Thursday (7pm) will see a new National Theatre play released – free to watch for one week – along with bonus content including cast and creative Q&As and post-stream talks.

There’s a definite emphasis on family-friendly good cheer for the line-up so far, which kicks off with a big hitter: Richard Bean’s beloved farce ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’, starring a pre-chat-show-days James Corden. Over the next few weeks you can expect a string of family-friendly titles, though naturally there will be those hoping for some of the real NT Live blockbusters, notably ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Frankenstein’ starring Benedict Cumberbatch and ‘Coriolanus’ starring Tom Hiddleston.

The initial programme is:

April 2 ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ by Richard Bean, starring James Corden. Read our review.

April 9 ‘Jane Eyre’, adapted by Sally Cookson. Read our review.

April 16 ‘Treasure Island’, adapted by Bryony Lavery. Read our review.

April 23 ‘Twelfth Night’ by William Shakespeare, starring Tamsin Greig. Read our review.

Additionally, the National Theatre will be rolling out National Theatre Collection study resources to pupils now learning at home.

The NT has also confirmed that live performances won’t restart until at least July.

Well, still not Frankenstein, Hamlet, or Coriolanus, but getting close! If we are still in lock down in 5 weeks…but as much as I want to see these again, I REALLY don’t want to still have to have most of the world still in lock down. And what they are planning to show are going to be good.

Shaw Festival's running a live Cabaret event on youtube in 10 minutes!

Dunno what's in store but might be worth a look!

Oof. Even that small conductor riser, right under the curtain line.

The system at Aquarius has a "pull in case of emergancy" lever stage left. Which is fine 99% of the time, but also right where someone might lean or try to squeeze through. It freak mishap triggered once when a pipe fell off the catwalk, hit the deck offstage, bounced, tripped the release, and started running in... In the first minute... Of opening night... For Suessical, if I remember right. The ASM managed to grab the rope line and stop it before it hit the floor, then labourously had to haul it out foot - by - foot. I'm sure it was very interesting as an audience member.

We also used to bring it in on show closing and have the cast sign the upstage side, lots of history there.

Hamilton Place used to do that too, but then everyone realized asbestos was dangerous and they had to chuck it.

Shaw's have little "break in case of fire" boxes with kitchen knives inside to slash the line with. I'm certain there's more to it than that, never seen them come in. But also the mental image of someone filing through a rope with an old dinner blade amuses me.

This is why we say you can’t put anything under the fire curtain. It is basically a large garage door covered in canvas. Life Safety Systems accidentally set ours off while testing during the pandemic shutdown and this is what I found when I went in to check on the building. It crushed a chair underneath the weight. Can you imagine if someone had been sitting there?