Parlor Games

Director: Rachel Hutchins
Assistant Director: Laura Williams-French
Tech Director: Mark French

The first live production at Lynden Christian High School after covid. Our goal was to find a comedy to lift peoples spirits and enjoy a goofy, yet sweet story. Parlor Games is a story about a man who plays a prank on his friends by announcing his funeral in the paper. He waits in the funeral parlor to find out what his friends would say about him. His wife stands by disapproving as chaos ensues.

When we came in to the school, there was no adult tech leadership, just a few students trying to make things work. We did a full assessment of technology in the space and began to work up a plan to improve the space and put on a great show. The Fire Marshall had shut down their lighting system because of the extension cords and power strips gaff taped to the bars. We started by pulling every instrument from the lighting truss and performing a deep clean on every single one. We purchased new lamps for the nearly half of the instruments which were burnt out. They showed me a closet full of 14 ETC ColorSource pars no one knew how to use.

The students showed me their small lighting console and explained how it would crash 2-3 times per performance so they would try to keep their cues to a minimum just in case. I wrote up a proposal for a new ETC Ion XE 20 and submitted it to the school board. I felt it would be a solid console to build the lighting system on and a great way to teach students a professional level of lighting design.

Once our instruments were clean, we drew up our lighting plot and laid out all of our instruments. We hung and aimed all of our lights and cleanly bundled cables on the truss with velcro ties creating even loops. It was very refreshing to see an organized bar.

For the show we tried to use a mix of practical lights as well as conventional stage lights. We wired in sconces and a chandelier to the dimmers. One of the gags of this show is that when someone rings the doorbell, the lights would flicker and the tv would flicker and show a camera for their drive-thru memorials. We coordinated a lighting flicker effect, video cues, and sound cues to make this happen.

For a little added effect we added a light in the hallway to show time of day through an “exterior window” so the audience could register the passing of the day.

Overall this was a fun show to run tech and train a new crew.