This week the Drama kids have been rehearsing for the school play, which is this coming Monday (my students have their big Spring Concert this coming Tuesday, 28 April 2026).  That means yours portly has been rehearsing with the kids this week.

I run the sound and lighting for these plays.  It’s not too difficult, but it’s quite an undertaking nonetheless.  I essentially do what would typically be done by three or four  people, in that I mix the sound; play the sound cues; run the lights; and troubleshoot any sound and/or equipment issues that arise during the play.

Issues always seem to arise.

Many a-time have I scrambled to swap out batteries in a wireless pack that decided to go on the fritz in the middle of the performance (even if I put fresh batteries in right before showtime).  Maybe a floor monitor gets unplugged and I have to plug it back in—stealthily.  I’ve often fixed one problem and run back to my cramped little sound booth just in time to hit a crucial sound cue at the right moment; alternatively, I’ve sometimes been just a few seconds late to hit such a cue, resulting in the kind of awkwardness that is typical of school plays.  It probably just looks like a kid forgot his line, but I don’t want it to look like that, either.

It’s fun but a bit demanding on the old noggin’, as I have to keep track of about twenty-five (25) different microphones.  Most of the kids have a cheap little headset mic, and we also have a number of wired mics to pick up unmic’d kids in different scenes.  There are also some wireless handhelds being used, and six hanging condenser mics that are designed more for chorale work than live theatre.  Because our main mix that outputs to the gym speakers (Lord, running sound in a gymnasium is the worst) has only six channels, I have to get creative with connecting separate mixers to the board.

Indeed, I made a YouTube Short last December to show the setup for the Christmas Play; the video garnered a good bit of commentary:

We started rehearsing on Monday of this week, so I have had much more time than usual to troubleshoot the system.  I don’t always have that luxury.  I love solving the puzzle of how to get everything connected if I have time to think about it.  I don’t like solving it when I have thirty kids running around in the gym and I have thirty minutes to make everything sound reasonably good (or as good as an amateur sound guy can make cheap Chinese headset mics sound in a hollow, echoey gym).

Dress rehearsal is this afternoon.  Even with the rehearsal times, the kids have yet to run the entire musical.  That’s not uncommon:  it’s a combination of stopping to work on blocking and choreography, and the kids not knowing their lines.  I don’t think there’s ever been a student production of a play that hasn’t resulted in the main characters not knowing their lines until literally opening night.

That said, it always comes together.  A disastrous rehearsal or dress rehearsal usually means opening night will be fine.  I imagine it’s the fear of public humiliation that gives that last little push over the top.  Whatever it is, kids figure it out or they don’t.

That’s a positive quality to live theatre (which otherwise seems to possess a pretty rotten, corrosive, narcissistic underbelly):  it’s do or die.  You either learn your lines or not.  Once you’re out there under the lights, you perform or you don’t.  Under such conditions, when there’s no safety net, you usually perform.

There’s a lesson in there for life (and probably welfare policy):  when one lacks a choice—or when the choice is between a hard-but-good one and one that clearly leads to disaster—one pulls through out of necessity.  It’s been observed that when unemployment benefits are short-term or near their expiration, people “magically” find work.  I think the same principles are at play in both scenarios.

Whatever the case, yours portly is ready for the weekend.  The first part of next week will be insane, but then it will be a long, mostly smooth coasting to the end of the school year, in that dead period of May in which everyone knows school should be over, but we still have to go through the motions for a few more weeks.

Pray for me!

—TPP