The Dreaded Stage Door

by Chantelle Francois

Now, there are many jobs us production assistants have been asked to do in the past few weeks. Everything from hoovering the office to photocopying 61 scripts. We do them all with minimal fuss as we are aware that in order to make this huge project a success, we all need to help in every part of the operation. However, the one job that we all dread is working on the stage door.

For those of you not in the know, this is where all the producers, actors, contractors and visitors come in and out during the day. Here they must sign in as part of our strict health and safety/security measures. It’s pretty simple really.

We welcome everybody with a smile and an enthusiastic: “Hi, how are you? Just sign your name there” and “Have a nice day!” Not too exciting, but it has to be done.

We work the door in shifts of six hours. There is the early shift and the late one. I still haven’t quite figured out which one I prefer.

Being there for six hours at a time makes finding ways to pass the time very difficult. There’s music, books, magazines and newspapers. We have tried them all. However it doesn’t matter how hard you try to make the time pass like the speed of light, whenever you look at your watch it seems like only five more minutes have past.

The best part of the job by far are the colourful wristbands. We have to put them on every person who enters the building for security reasons. As I write this it sounds so lame, but seeing what colour bands are being used on a given day is the highlight. You might laugh and tell me to get a life. Yet I think this perfectly shows just how mundane the job is. After all, we are getting animated about coloured wristbands. We have well and truly regressed to our baby years when we were attracted to bright and colourful things. It’s funny really.

We are never alone on the door as we have lovely security guards with us at all times, but still the time passes slowly. Now I have this blog to write I think I can occupy myself for hours. However my fellow production assistants are not as fortunate. But they will be glad to know I have just been informed via email that we won’t have to do this much longer.

Wahoo...Celebrate good times...come on!!