So in the picture above, Bert, aka, Marc Wilson has his life in my hands. He is suspended from the rafters by wires and I'm holding the ropes at the other end. I had to participate in 12 hours of training, lifting up Marc and others over 200 times before our trainer felt comfortable leaving us alone to run the show. I was in pain, especially my hands and fingers which felt like I had them pulled apart like an ancient English torture chamber.
Well my hands are slowly recovering. Oh my, was I over my head when I agreed to serve as a master flyman for CUTC's performance of Mary Poppins. 4
hours a day, 3 days straight of pulling ropes with lives at the other end wore
me out! Finally last night I had a night
off and today my hands aren’t in pain. It’s
a great upper body workout, but painful on the hands. Of course our grip weakens as we age J
The show is going well.
Despite the potential for a total train wreck, we managed to pull it
together and put on a great show. And
truthfully the play is better than the movie so the story is more
enjoyable to watch.
I get to the theater at 5:45 and rehearse all 8 of our flys,
then I don’t have to be back on stage until 9 PM. That’s the end of Act 1 when Mary flies
away. The second act I have 6 flys and
they happen about 10 minutes apart. Two
hard ones, one with Miss Andrews who is a large woman and has to be pulled
straight up into the lights. The other
with Bert during Step in Time when he swings from side to side (about 30 ft)
and does front and back flips in the air (see above photo). The hard part about Bert’s fly is that I have to land him 3 times on
stair cases and I have a split second each swing to decide if he is safe and
has his feet under him. Guess wrong, and
he breaks a leg. So far, my guesses have
been good J
In the end, this is just another chapter in my book of life experiences. Nothing dramatic to share except, I know I'm not as young as I think I am!!
