On 2013-08-19 06:44, jay leslie wrote:
AND Don't forger about all those venues where the band or DJ is set up behind you and they don't take a break. The times where you ate stuck actually sharing the stage with the DJ Even Though You told thembthst you couldn't.

"You must inspect what you expect"
That means you have to be the first one to arrive to claim your territory.

Once I showed-up to a glass-enclosed clubhouse. The windows turned into mirrors as soon as the sun went down. But since I got there first... No one noticed that all the candles were removed from the tables, lit at sundown, and placed directly against the wall of glass. This action illuminated the glass just enough do they weren't mirrors. There was no way to go-around and take the candles from the tables once that people had arrived and claimed their seat.

On 2013-08-19 00:44, Michael Baker wrote:
Sounds like you played your hand well. I've been in that situation before, many times.

Typical... Arrive at the gig to find that a band or DJ has "eaten" the entire stage, forcing me to work on the dance floor in front. Not the best situation because in a large room, those seated at the back have no chance of seeing the show unless they leave their seats. All you can do is hold things higher and play to the first few rows, making comments to the back row from time to time. You just hope the mood of those up front carries to the back rows.

In another venue, the room was extremely large, although the estimated audience was maybe only 500-600, less than half the room capacity. There was a sufficiently large stage with plenty of height, but there was also a HUGE dance floor between them and me. The closest tables were at least 50 feet away!! No chance to work on the dance floor because all lighting was directed at the stage. To have requested the house lights up would have killed the room ambiance. Needless to say, visibility couldn't have been much worse in dense fog.

Not exactly a dance floor issue, but... In one place, I came in to set up only to find that the stage was centered along a long wall of a shotgun room. This was in spite of my instructions made long before. We had been hired to do illusions, so our backdrop was to be situated several feet forward from the back of the stage in order to allow us room behind. Unfortunately, this meant that many of the tables were positioned left and right, with many of them behind the curtain line. I became a diva that night and made the banquet crew re-configure the entire room. Show went great, audience loved it... hotel crew hated me. Oh, well...