iPope

To add to this, any work is good work. I'm not american, but that's not to say that there is plenty of people looking for new techs for little to no money, who lie about their connections and pretend they have future work. However, as I tell a lot of new people looking to get into the big leagues.. Sell yourself as a lighting designer (top role) and no one is going to talk to you. The shows are too big, too much money on the line, not enough time. Go out willing to do the nuts and bolts, people will use you. Do the grunt work, and it's more likely you'll do the big shows and meet the people you need to meet to be the "big time" LD. If your looking for an 'in' you'll meet more top league people pushing boxes and bashing truss than you will playing button pusher for your local pub band.

I don't know anything about the american market, but in EU every new kid wants to hit buttons, but there is a massive shortage of people who can run crew and bash metal.

They are claiming to build a colony on mars in a ridiculously short time span (2020's) and for $6 billion dollars. They say there biggest current backer is Big Brother (for anyone unfamiliar, a show about watching a bunch of people locked in a house together). They are not going to mars to build a colony for science - oh no! They are going to turn it into a TV program and a massive media spectacle (watch the astronauts on mars).

I know, it's awesome right? Well I'm not only a little suspicious, I also called bullshit and reckon this is a rebirth of a classic TV series that happened called Space Cadets. Space Cadets pulled a similar thing where they convinced a bunch of people to sign up to go to space, chose the most entertaining to watch (same criteria as MarsOne) and then it was all a big trick filmed for our delight.

For those who don't work in the industry.. kabuki is a product name that is used generally to describe (mostly) cloth drops. Imagine a coat hook on a strong magnet, when the magnet receives power the coat hook falls over, dropping what it's holding. For example, when a whole cloth is on 'kabuki' it can be dropped all at once suddenly revealing the stage for dramatic effect.

A classic in europe..

What's the difference between a rigger and a terrorist?

You can negotiate with terrorists.

To add to this, from a concert perspective it's a totally different way of working. Concerts are fast, hard and heavy but in short busts. You kill yourself for X amount of hours but then rest for Y and keep going (hard to be specific). My two cents for surviving any form of touring is much the same... Get as much sleep as you can, don't drink too much, eat healthy, stay away from drugs. If your touring keep as much the same every day as possible, reduce your cognitive load. Overall, don't stress too much, it's only a show, no one will die.