Showgirl Story Time: Defining “Light Booth,” “Officer Randy,” & “Notes”

Welcome to another show girl story time. Today is another showgirl vocabulary edition. And this is in preparation for the release of my friend, Rachel Zinn’s podcast. There are a few things that come up in the podcast that I think people should know about. So they’re not really confused.

So we’ll go with the quickest and easiest, the like this, or lighting booth, as Rachel talked about a little bit, so the light Booth was, basically, in the very very back of the theater, and it was pretty much like a wall of glass, and it looked out over to the audience into the stage, and that was where the, I don’t know what his, his title was, but his name was Howard and he ran all the cues for the entire show. So he, I guess he’s a stage manager, so he would announce and everything was on speaker. What cues were next, so the stagehands would hear what what was next for the cues and if there was a problem he would relay those messages. Same thing for the dancers.

If, for example, there was an issue. When that gosh I think, I think it was when Dirk Arthur was doing his magic and some. One of the tricks didn’t go as planned. And so he was like, dancers, you better get ready because we are cutting his act short or something he was so, like, we were like, hustling because we thought we had time we usually we would hear in the music like oh we have plenty of time. But then something didn’t work and we were like rushing to our places So, Howard lived in like booth, And then there was spot operators. Three for three or four of them, and they would upgrade the spots. So we spent time in the light booth, when we had a special guest that came to see the show.

They would come see it from like booth Vantage which was a little different. But it wasn’t like sound wasn’t great because it was we’re behind glass, you still hear the show, and you can, you know, hear people running around and, and the call like he’s being called and all of that. But when we were in rehearsal learning the show, we had to watch the show every night.

So we would rehearse all day and then have dinner and then watch the first show, and then go home, rest and do that. So that went on for about two weeks. And so when Rachel brings up that she remembers watching for the light because that was what, what she was talking about. So, hope that clears up elect booth, or the lighting booth.

The next one was officer Randy. This is not in order of the podcast by the way, that’s just the easiest to talk about. Officer Randy was our designated security guard. He would, we would literally say, “Randy, there is a camera.” And we would tell them about what which row because we didn’t want. Well, it wasn’t allowed to have pictures of the showgirls Hello we’re topless how like, why would you be taking pictures of topless dancers on stage and like, yeah, it was just stupid.

So, this was, I was in the show before the age of smart smartphones. So you actually had a camera in order to like take pictures, and we actually saw a few like sketchy cameras. Like they were hidden in their lapels or in their glasses. It was crazy, but you could always tell when people were trying to like film the show.

So he was our favorite security guard, and I hope to maybe have him on the podcast one day, Because I’m sure he has a lot of stories. And, yeah, he was just he was a great guy and he would, he would, you know, be our rescuer and go take care of the bad guys for us. So that’s officer Randy when she’s talking about officer Randy.

And when he talked about the reunion. And then last thing is notes. Okay, so she talked a little bit about notes and notes are basically what we used to call corrections. When from the company manager and assistant company manager. They would watch the show every night. And the reason they would do that is to make sure the show stayed in peak condition. Costume things, and mostly it was mostly choreography and spacing and.

Because when you do a show that much, 12 Shows a week for years. You kind of get a little lazy, you get a little sloppy. Sometimes the people would phone it in meaning, they’re on autopilot. So it happened. And so they would watch the show and we will have to be you know like on our best behavior. I just, I just danced, I just love to perform.

So, the notes were basically corrections that were given to the line captains and and they would sit there, Diane, assistant company manager would sit there with her legal pad and write down corrections. And the corrections could be something like your three fingers are not straight, they’re bent during tiller. So like that that was, that was a common correction, a lot of girls got. Because it’s hard to do that for Tiller when you’re like high kicking and moving fast and like you have to get it there and then put it down, or on your hip or whatever really fast.

So, they were basically constant reminders like hey, you’re getting a little sloppy. So notes is basically like the connections and when Rachel talks about it she has some great input for budding professional dancers.

So there you go. This is the first video of specifically defining terms that were mentioned in the podcast. So I hope that you will have a listen to the podcast, tomorrow, or if you are a patron you probably already heard it. So have a wonderful time listening. I know I did. I listened to it about four times now and enjoy. See you next time. Bye.