C Dann Rogers

It was my great pleasure to have been allowed to play with the other techs, the musicians( I still like Al’s “Chicago” best), and the onstage performers. I don’t how many of you know I was in the club a long time ago as well as the more recent incarnation. I had the props job my first time through. This was during the scripted phase to the improved version. Props entailed waiting backstage while Denny Zavit did his dog and pony show then I struck his props and ran around the outside of the Warehouse in the back door and up the ladder in the house right upper corner of the theatre as fast as I could. Once on the grid I still had to make all haste but I had to be a Shaolin apprentice and not shake the cat walk lest all of the lites start to dance on stage. Once there I had to run a follow for parts of the show, make two inflated dinosaurs bounce up and down as though fighting, then come back down after the show sweep the deck, and reset Denny’s stuff. Some of my fondest memories of that transition are Layden doing his Dan Quayle sketch and dearest Budge coming out in his Yellow Gorton’s Fisherman slicker going “This is an egg, this is your brain, then smashing the egg on his head saying this is your brain on egg.” Little by little the old show fell and as new structures came on line I heard pyro coming and headed for the street before the complete transition. I returned in 2000 to a new gig altogather. I was now the lighting tech and Nazi in the window. I loved holding up signs to communicate show changes ang adding bits of atmosphere as best I could. I think my favorite structure was “Cliché” because I collect weird off-the-wall sayings. I also loved the moment the “out” person gets what’s being fed to them. Do they reveal it or play along ? Then all of the rest in whatever outlandish costume needed to convey their clue. It is sad to have ended the way it did but leave’m begging for more. C Dann