Monday morning adventures

I turned up at the venue about 10 am Monday morning as it takes a while to set my show up. The dressing room/green room was unlocked - great I thought. A short while later the technician, Jo arrives and says the venue keys aren't where they are suposed to be, so she'll ring the stage manager who had them last night. No answer - its her morning off and she's still asleep. The Pleasance duty manager is called over via the radio and alerted to the situation.

At this point I'm still preparing my balloons and self for the show and mildly amused at the conundrum of doing a show in a locked venue. The duty manager calls the university security, at the same time AirCon Jim arrives to sort out the aircon in the locked venue. He says he has a whole load of tools, and then begins an enormous array of possible things to do to get in the room. He includes things like taking hinges off, cuttung the glass out of the door panel, unscrewing the door handle etc. Meanwhile the security guards have checked for spare keys and report back that the Pleasance venue have ALL the keys.

I'm starting to get a bit concerned now and go and check on the growing queue. Some friends were coming to the show and I explained to them the predicement. I head back into hear the security guards state that the door should not be broken down if at all possible as it will compromise fire regulations.....

My show is supposed to start at 11.30am, I am the first one of about nine shows in that venue over the course of a day. I did wonder how if we would have to cancel the show. At 11.2oam a window was broken and someone climbed in and opened up from the inside. With the fastest set up ever the show went on to my largest Edinburgh festival audience to date - 107. The show was fine in the end but I wouldn't want to do that everyday.