There's No Business Like Show Business

31 January 2007

Well hello to you readers, the concert finally took place after a lot of hard work it. For the last few weeks we have tried to advertise the show convince friends to buy tickets and make sure the performers have not lost interest.

On the day of the show Brian and I went up to Bevs to pick up her sound equipment, when we got there, she told us that she was having problems with a throat infection and she was in terrible pain. Despite this she still managed to get ready and come with us to the venue.

When we got there we then found out that the other singer Jean also had a throat infection but was willing to carry on. Eventually we decided how the show was going to run, Bev managed to set up her sound equipment and integrate it with the other singer's equipment.

I suddenly noticed that the public were already coming into the theatre at least we must of provided some unexpected comedy entertainment for them, we tried using the venue's sound equipment but it was incompatible with Bev's so eventually we decided it was best to switch it off, and rather than clever lighting effects, we decided to have a nice standard of lighting on the stage.

Kate had a great idea on Saturday of providing bottles of water for the acts, which she had brought on the day, but we had no glasses drink out of.

One of the best things all the way through was the time and patience that were shown by the management at the venue, in particular James and Chris, on the day Chris was a star, and put up with our strange demands, the latest was could they let us have some plastic cups to put the water in, bearing in mind this would reduce the profit on the bar, despite this Chris again came up trumps.

One of the good ideas James had previously was to put some tables out for the choir at the back of the room which would make it so that the room would look more full. This worked very well.

The other person who was outstanding was Jackie from the choir who at the last-minute took on the role of compere, providing a cheerful entertaining extra act between the others, bearing in mind that there were no rehearsals prior to the show, if you read this Jackie thank you again for helping to make this show a success.

I realised that the best place for me was behind the stage controlling the curtain so I could avert any disasters, so my view of the show was non-existent apart from looking at a pink curtain and listening to the acts.

Unfortunately this did not work because when I tried to decide how much to wind the curtain back I forgot initially to clear it so the keyboard player could see Jean, strangly the audiance actually noticed when the curtain suddenly started moving again just as Jean started singing.

The other thing I did that I hope nobody noticed was to get a drink from my water bottle which was okay until the plastic started to crackle, to me very loudly whilst one of the acts was singing, for me it seemed to reverberate all across the stage.

I really was impressed by the singer Jean who despite her throat infection managed to give a magnificent performance which I and all the others I spoke to agreed we really enjoyed.

Affetside Choir gave their usual professional performance which we all enjoyed, the Sax group conducted by Ruth gave a similar quality but very different style of musical performance.

Bev gave the audience yet another great performance, again despite her throat infection and pain she was suffering, and managed to get the audience to join in and even to dance along with the songs she sang.

Just to show however hard some of us work to make something a success, at least one person complained that the raffle had been fixed. This resulted in me doing a very rare task for me which was going onstage to explain what had happened in front of the audience, as usual the plug was pulled on the sound system just as I got into full flow. There are those who would say what good thing that was, no wonder I prefer to be backstage.

Well the good news, we managed to make a profit, all the people I have spoken to enjoyed the performance, and people even mentioned having another show.