TALKING WITH DAVID HANSEN

Photo by Joan Marcus: The Company performs “Hannibal”

Buzz Extra spoke with David Hansen, the Advance Stage Manager for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA National Tour. He has been with PHANTOM since the first national touring company in 1989. Mr. Hansen has also worked on large shows in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles and Chicago. He has traveled with the National Tours of Wicked, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Singin’ in the Rain, 42nd Street, Fiddler on the Roof, and Hello, Dolly!

EXTRA:  We are excited that you’re coming back to Cleveland.

HANSEN:  I love it there! I was in Cleveland with 42nd Street in 1986. I was also there the first time Wicked was at PlayhouseSquare. And I was in Cleveland with Phantom, the first national company.

EXTRA:  When did you start stage-managing?

HANSEN:  I first went on the road in 1981. But as a kid, I worked in theater. In high school, I worked in theater. And in college, I was a theater/English major on an acting scholarship, performing and stage-managing.

EXTRA:  Did you fall in love with stage-managing?

HANSEN:  Actually, there was more work.

EXTRA:  How many stage managers travel with PHANTOM?

HANSEN:  Full-time on the tour, there are three, and my title is Advance Stage Manager. I’m part-time. I come in every time the tour moves, to get the show up and running.

EXTRA:  How does everything get up and running?

HANSEN:  We do an entire week called the advance week. For example, when a show closes on Sunday, we start setting up the previous Monday in the next city.  We unload nine trucks and get a lot of the show set up in the theater ready to go.

EXTRA:  So, you travel with two sets?

HANSEN:  When we’re in the theater, the amount of scenery, sets, costumes, everything is in twenty 48-foot semi-trailers and out of those 20, nine of the trailers are duplicated. That’s how we can do the advance week. We have two stage floors, two proscenium arches, two show decks, two chandeliers. Those are always jumping ahead of cities. Two of what I call ‘the foundation of the show’ is duplicated.

Then there’s one more trailer we call our Shop Truck. It’s actually a traveling scene shop. We have welding equipment, saws, lumber, anything and everything to be able to do an on-site repair.

EXTRA:  You need an entire week to set everything up?

HANSEN:  The advance is five full days set up in the theater and then the show-to-show (once we’ve closed in the city we’ve been running in) is two additional days. So that’s seven full days in the theater to get everything up and running for an audience. 

EXTRA:  How many people are on crew for the set up?

HANSEN:  Crew specific, we have about 60.

EXTRA:  How many crew members do you use for the advance?

HANSEN:  There are nine PHANTOM employees for the advance week.  Then, we hire 50 local stage hands from the Cleveland area.  For the show-to-show, we have 80 local stage hands, because we have to unload 11 trucks in five hours and get everything into the building and the pieces where they need to go. For the load out, we have up to 100 locals, because we work around the clock and need all of those 20 trucks out of the building in under 12 hours.

The Allen Theatre is tricky because from the loading dock, it’s an elevator up to the stage. That adds a little bit of time because pieces are not coming off the truck directly onstage as they would if we played the State Theatre.

EXTRA:  That must be very challenging since every place you go is different.

HANSEN:  Sometimes we park the trailers in the street, ramp down and use forklifts to shoot everything up onto the dock and into the theater.
PHANTOM has a ton of scenery. 

EXTRA:  What facilities of PlayhouseSquare do you use?

HANSEN:  When we go into the Allen Theatre, it is empty. Anything we need, we bring with us. We carry our own lights, we do use the fly system, but we take out 36 of the pipes and put our own pipes in. We also have to do steel work in every theater we play for the chandelier points, the prose and the service trusses. It costs between $100,000 and $250,000 just for steel work to prep a given theater to have PHANTOM run there.

EXTRA:  You have to do that at every single theater you go to?

HANSEN:  Yes. Remember, the chandelier hangs over the audience, so we can’t risk anything happening with audience, our orchestra, the actors, or damage to the building. 

We also have pyrotechnic effects. Yesterday was our first performance at 8:00, so at 12:30 the fire marshal came in and once we show him all the effects, we get a permit for a given city.

EXTRA:  What happens when the show closes?

HANSEN:  Once we close Sunday night, the crew has to load all 20 trucks, working through the night. The trucks are a very specific load and they are packed to the gills.

EXTRA:  In between the shows, what do you do?

HANSEN:  I am answering phone calls and e-mails every single day, dealing with the moves and set-ups in the upcoming cities.

EXTRA:  Amazing!

HANSEN:  PHANTOM still amazes me, I know how much it is, and every time we make it work. I don’t know if we have good angels watching over us.

EXTRA:  You do have angels watching over you, because you put them up on the proscenium arch for the Paris Opera House.

HANSEN:  I guess we do. We have to put the wings on in every single city.