I'm a new stagehand - My body hurts...
Hello everyone,
I'm almost 40 and been in love with moving heads since I was 12. A few years ago I bought 4 Robe 250AT, second hand all of them because of this love. Also 6 years ago, thanks to a friend who had "connections", I worked as an operator (Could I call me LD?) at a night club for a season. It was quite cool but I saw the bad side of the nightlife light operator being problems with sleep and metabolism.
Since covid I stopped and had an office job.
But now I think of quitting my office job and I asked a company to try this.
Yesterday was my second event. First one was last week. Both of them from the time I arrived at the venue till the time we left to go home, took us 24 hours. Not rest no hotel because the crew was from town they went home for 4-5 hours. I couldn't. I live about an hour way but I was needed with some other people.
Was it fun? It was when we joked with other people. We had so much fun. And we liked the show, the music, the lights.
Was it hard? It was hard as hell. And I have worked at a cement factory. And it wasn't that hard. I couldn't imagine how hard it is to setup all the trussing, cabling, move the impossibly heavy speakers and the amps that I feel they weight as much as a car. (And the boss reminds us of the costs. He keeps saying that our safety is number one but please be careful with the equipment because that cost that and this cost that.)
And guess what... The last venue did not had access for the crew. So we carried them down the stairs of the open theater. Like 5-7 tons of equipment. Yesterday I was asking god to help me carry on.
Every single part of my body hurts. I can't imagine how people do this for life for living. I need to pay my respects to all of them.
This week we have another one that will take 3 days it's far away from base and thank god we will have a hotel. But I feel it's going to be the last one.
Do you have similar experiences?