I'm not paranoid, this really is weird.

So I get a phone call from the lighting designer of A Child's Christmas in Wales, which opens in a little over a week. It's Saturday. She tells me she's having supreme difficulty hanging the lights because she's never worked in the space (common problem in community theatre), and wonders if I have any experience in that area. I don't, so I urge her to call the production manager, J., and ask for her help in finding a competent techie. (The SuperTech, R, is out of town) That's J.'s job, and she's very good at it.

The lighting designer tells me that the first cue-to-cue rehearsal will be on Tuesday, during the day, 9-5. This is extremely odd. You'd have to keep lots of people away from their jobs, not to mention kids away from school, to do this. In over a decade of community theatre work, I have never seen a weekday cue-to-cue. It's, like, the Jackalope of community theatre: People talk about such rehearsals in very abstract terms, but you never actually catch a glimpse of one.

That night I check my email and find a message from the stage manager, asking me to be at the theatre for Tuesday cue-to-cue at the more typical time of 6:30 PM.

Monday night I have trouble sleeping and am really worried that I'll be dragging my ass during the first day of tech...uncool. So I'm quite relieved when Richard tells me that while I was sleeping, a woman called to tell me that I wouldn't be needed for that night's rehearsal. She told him she'd call back with the exact time of Wednesday's rehearsal. I assume this was D., the stage manager, and happily take advantage of cheap night at the movie theatre with Richard (reviews later).

When we get home - still no message from the SM. But there's an email from her, asking why I wasn't at Tuesday's rehearsal. I ask Richard, did the woman on the phone sound old or young? The SM is an older lady, the lighting designer closer to my age. He says a young woman called.

So...this chick, whom I've never met, twice gave me wildly inaccurate times for the cue-to-cue and didn't bother to fill me in nor apologize. You have to expect some confusion during tech week (AKA Hell Week), but this is freakin' ridiculous. I will so be having a little chat with her tonight.