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Well, that was interesting. A couple of months back, my mate Dom approached me about New Year's Eve. What am I doing? Nothing much. How would I like to come along as part of the crew for a Steampunk night at a London nightclub?
What was I going to say?
I ended up playing Boriz, the chef, and having three responsibilities. I was to help run the Now Infamous Saratov Wodka Game, to manufacture a prop to detect the drunkenness of a guest about to play said game, and I was to build an alcove-shrine to hold and backlight some rather lovely tarot cards, along with miscellaneous other shrinefluff as tends to accumulate on such things: candles, flowers, votive offerings and the like. Not particularly onerous responsibilities: I've done prop builds and scenery stuff before, and I'm a LARPer, so improv and "being ambient" in character is pretty simple.
The problems kinda started with the breath-tester build, to be honest. It was built to call to mind a small pressure vessel, with brass and aluminium panels and little slot-head screws everywhere. A little breathalyser keyring drove the whole show, with the LEDs rewired to drive a nice moving-coil gauge, with a jointed pipe for the user to breathe into. It was to be mounted on a leather vambrace, it looked lovely and as I was putting the final touches on it and getting ready to fix it to the vambrace I did something (still don't know what) and the sensor stopped responding. I either shorted something or opened a fatigue crack in one of the solder joints, and the whole thing stopped responding, at all. Given that there was prep work to be done for the alcove and my lift was due to arrive in a couple of hours, there wasn't much I could do but give up - debugging would likely take more time than I had, and the project was already massively over time-budget. I'd only slept about four hours the previous night because of all the effort I'd put into it, and it wasn't coming with us. Not the best way to start a party.
Still, cut the parts for the alcove, packed all the tools, character kit, duct tape, para cord and the usual rigging accessories, got in the car and travelled to London. Cable is a bizarre and interesting space under the Bermondsey railway arches, near London Bridge station: Victorian brickwork, huge industrial air-conditioning and a slight damp problem. We were led through to our "space" (the chill-out room at the club was to be transformed into the Servants' Quarters, which was our domain, while the rest of the club ran a fairly normal service), and started installation. Now, due to the trouble I had with the Wodkameter, I only had a fairly loose plan of how the alcove was to go together: I knew where all the parts went, but not their exact measurements or how they would be attached. Myself and a man I still only know as "Triumph" (his IRC nick - we were introduced, but I forget) got straight into it, and the next few hours were filled with the measuring of gaps and the driving of screws. The original design used a string of anchor bolts to run wires across the front of the alcove, from which the cards would hang, and to screw some shelves to the wall at the back to mount lights and offerings, etc. This plan went out the window when we learned something interesting about Victorian brickwork: our drill bits could barely scratch it. The 8mm bit was blunt within 5mm of penetration, which took the best part of two minutes (and while I'm inexperienced with masonry drilling, I'm not THAT bad). With four 60mm-deep 8mm holes to drill, and seven 14mm holes for the anchor bolts, and two hours till the club as due to open, we needed a new plan and I was running on vapours and prayers, having not eaten or rested since we got there.
We were absolutely saved by the Production Manager, Santi, who suggested we run wire along the front of each shelf and hang the cards from that, supporting the shelves by fixing them to the back of one of the modular staging units sitting idle nearby. We had just enough spare screws to be able to make it work, and half an hour later the shrine was finished. It looked pretty creditable, as seen in this photo (part of a set of photos from the night taken by Ara, a professional photographer who was also crewing the NYE event). The shelving Triumph and I near-sweated blood over almost completely disappears in that shot, eclipsed by the lights and cards, which is of course exactly how we wanted it :)
So, Nightmare Build over, and everyone else was in costume, briefed, fed etc. This is something else I'm entirely used to from my backstage days during high-school and college, and I don't begrudge them it. Five minutes to decompress, ten to jump into costume and eat some of the chips someone had thoughtfully acquired for us, and I can put Dan down to wibble and twitch in the corner, while Boriz runs the show for the rest of the night.
The rest of the night. The rest of the night was good. Boriz was written as a miserable old wretch who has been dragged to the party by order of his lord and lady, and I mostly managed to play him as such (though it was difficult when Doktor von Science was prestidigitating in the corner and the Sullivan Singers were singing showtunes on stage). Tricky to maintain the facade when the room started filling up with people I know from other places, trickier yet when I had to do some running between rooms to handle a complex situation I don't mean to go into here, and had to interact with some Normal revellers as well as the Steampunks, but I think I mostly pulled it off. The fact that the club polarised pretty rapidly into Steampunks in the Servants' Quarters and Normals in the Techno Room once all rooms were open was kinda amusing, but also useful, as it meant we didn't have to deal with drunks and scallies, for the most part. The fact that our dressing room and out-of-character area was outside, accessed via the smoking area was less useful, but livable. The Wodka Game, incidentally, went without a hitch (except a few irritating bits of tangled string, but that's a story for another time, perhaps).
I get the feeling I'm complaining a lot, and it was a really draining, tiring night what with one thing and another. The other thing it was, I'll say again to reinforce, was a Lot Of Fun.
Now, I just have to try and fix my sleep schedule...