A day in the life...

Let me give you a representative sample of my day as an electrician, so you can get a feel for it.

Our call is generally a full hour to two hours later than that of the carpenters. And even then we're usually late, generally due to stopping for bagels and coffee on the way to work, and then eating them outside the stage door when we're supposed to be working. The other day, our call was 9am, and we were for sure there, but we ate breakfast until 9:20. From about 9:20 until 9:45, we sat and talked about what we were going to do. Then I put on a climbing harness, and made a ridiculous climb to hang and circuit four lights. It involved me putting a 12' step ladder on top of a (supported?) platform, propping it against a wall, and climbing to the top step so I could clip in my harness and hang from a pipe. Sounds safe to me.

After that, I cut a hole in one of the platforms the carpenters had built so I could run a cable through it. But I had to unscrew and move a stair unit to get under the platform. So I stole a screw gun from the carpenters to take out the screws, leaving a four foot drop with no escape stairs. Then I stole a jigsaw to cut the platform. And broke their jigsaw in the process. And made one of their interns fix it. And then cut apart some more of their platform. I don't know who put those stairs back, but it sure wasn't me.

A little later, we had an impromptu meeting with the set designer, to discuss a practical unit that had to be rigged from the grid. Then we went on break. When we came back from break, we sat around the light console doing a dimmer check, and pretending to look busy until it was time for lunch. Sometimes its fun to roll color scrollers back and forth, and pretend to be “troubleshooting.” It really throws off the people who are working onstage, because their light keeps changing color.

I even hear that electricians sometimes pretend to take lunch break and then just don't come back to work. Yeah, I bet that happens.