Internship Day One- Town Theatre

Today was very cool. It felt very familiar to me.
I got up this morning about 7:45 (early, I know). Danny- the TD (Technical Director for all you non-theater folks) picked me up at my place around 10 or so, I don't really remember.
We got to the theater and I hadn't been there very long until I met the other intern. Her name is Jill and she goes to Coker college. She's a theater major also. She's a Sophomore. It was really nice to get to hang out with her because she hasn't done a lot of tech-stuff, so I got to help her do stuff.
Like today for instance, we were using the raiail arm compound miter chop saw. She had never used it before and was afraid of it. I just kind of gave her pointers on what to do and how to hold the wood against the fence and the way I was taught to cut wood on the saw. Interestingly, Danny was taught a different way than I was. I pull the saw forward, then chop down with the saw and push backward toward the back of the saw. He does it the other way, he chops down with the saw, then pulls forward with the saw. I tried it. It felt weird to me and I felt like the wood wasn't going to stay against the fence that way, but to each his own I guess.
Another interesting difference was that instead of using 2x4s to build platforms, he uses 5x4 board, which is more commonly used for decking (Thank you Dad for telling me that) I did notice that using that seemed to make the platforms a little bit lighter. Which is important when you're carrying quite a few around.
Another exciting thing going on at the theater right now is that the fly system is being re-strung- meaning the ropes and pulleys are being replaced. The guys are also adding 7 more line sets, meaning that the theater will now have 18.
This theater is pretty small, just in terms of dimensions. The Prosenium is 25ft wide and I think he said 15 feet tall. I don't think he told me how deep the stage is but there is only about 9 feet of wing space (and we thought we had it bad at Winthrop). The neat thing about replacing the fly system is that the way it's weighted is being updated to the system I was familiar with at Winthrop. For weights here, they used sand bags. I threw away about 20 or so today, they're messy when they leak.
I also got to meet the sound guy Chuck. I had been warned that he wasn't a nice guy (donno what it is about those sound guys), he seemed pretty nice to me. We were talking about some of the things I had done and the possibility came up that I may run sound for a few nights during the production. He said that he'd be glad to show me how to use the equipment, his sound board is something I've never heard of before. He also mentioned something interesting about certain frequencies that are no longer being allowed to be used because of emergency stuff. I think he said it was somewhere around the 1700mhz range, but I could be wrong.
Needless to say, today was a lot of fun.
Tomorrow I ride the bus to work instead while Danny gets a U-haul. We're going to move some scenery from the shop and take it over to his warehouse, and then bring some stuff back. I've seen the model, this set is going to be cool, and there will be a lot of flying.
Oh and this is really cool. His Gini life is so cool, you can drive it while standing inside it! Winthrop needs a cool one like that!
All right, think I'm gonna watch a movie or something.
Update more later.
Later