Roadies

I am fascinated by roadies.

At CY Stephens, often they schedule calls to load in and set up a travelling show before performance. If you are signed up for the whole thing (load in, performance, load out) it can be a very long day. Especially for the big shows. I haven't gotten on a performance call yet. But anyway, a load in call needs things like electricians, lights, and your basic stagehand (me). The stagehands are basically at the beck and call of the roadies.

Most shows run with one or more roadies. These are people in the employ of the show and they know how everything goes together, where everything should go, what they need for power, for lights, for rigging. They tell us what to do and we do it. This sort of thing has a decent amount of specialized language, most of which I don't know. The most basic thing they ask is that you know your stage directions: stage left (left facing audience), stage right (right facing audience), downstage (toward the audience), upstage (away/back from the audience). When you unload stuff, they will tell you where to drop it. Often with stage directions.

Some roadies make the stagehands do all the work, some don't want any help, some are really nice and teach you and learn all your names, some have short tempers and are rude.

Roadies travel with the show. They spend long days setting something only to rip it down that night, load it back up, sleep on the bus on their way to the next show, rinse and repeat. That's crazy, I don't know if I could do that. I have moral issues with both setting and striking. I don't mind one or the other, but if I built it, I don't want to be the one to destroy it. A day off is a day of travelling. And the people that choose that life, that are away for weeks and months at a time, are going to be unique people.

The first one I worked with was a wiry guy with tattoos, glasses, a tam in Jamaican colors (possibly hiding dreads), black tank top, black Dickies shorts, reddish blond sideburns dangerously close to mutton chops. He went by the name Scarecrow.

Unfortunately they aren't all quite that interesting.

I asked and I guess there are sometimes girl roadies, generally lights or electricity.

Maybe I'll get really good at stagehanding and then I can join Jacob's band as show crew when he gets famous and see what it's like.