Managed to grab tickets to the rescheduled Phoenix show today. Center section, Row K, pretty much dead center. I'm really excited to see DT in such a small venue for a change.
I managed to grab the first couple of seats on the center isle of the CR section in row H. Pretty good ones as well.
Did you not see them the last few times they came through town? The place they usually play, the Mesa Theater for Performing arts (or IDEKA) is about the same size. Looks almost identical in the pictures I've seen.
What do they mean by the 'tour production did not fit'. Are there a lot of extras besides screens and the normal sound equipment?
Most likely stage size. They have minimum requirements in their tour rider for their stage setup. Somebody drop the ball big time and did not read the rider thoroughly (promoter side). It probably gained DT's attention when most likely promoter started going over it and realized stages were smaller than the requirement and started changing venues. Not sure why management on DTs side did not check this before putting out the tour dates.
For the Phx gig. I've been to the Celebrity Theater and I just don't see how the Current tour stage setup was going to fit there. The setup and screens look very wide.
What do they mean by the 'tour production did not fit'. Are there a lot of extras besides screens and the normal sound equipment?
No idea since it doesn't even seem to be a big show.
I feel like the band are being pretty dishonest here.
Admittedly, I was gobsmacked when I saw Celebrity Theater listed as the venue. I worked on DT's local crew for a couple midwestern shows as a PA tech a few years ago on the BCSL tour. (I think I did a thread here way back then with behind the scenes pictures).
They do have a pretty large production footprint and it doesn't look to have shrunk much since then.
Even if there's not a lot going on onstage with props and such, that doesn't mean there aren't other requirements they need to put the show on. For example:
They've always had a pretty intricate lighting program, dependent on a specific configuration of Box Truss downstage, upstage and overhead to place properly. The Celebrity Theater's round and minimalist layout would have made that darn near impossible to pull off and probably would have required reprogramming of all the scenes. This is something no lighting guy wants to do once the show is set, especially with the odd ball timings required.
They also have some pretty large screens on every tour I've seen them. They could have hung those, but it would have forced them to only use about 1/4 of the theater's capacity as the stage is meant to rotate, giving everyone a view from all sides. If the screens were facing only one way, only about a 1/4 of the audience would have been able to see them properly.
Not to mention Mangini's kit would have taken up a large portion of that stage. Most likely they have a specific stage size requirement listed on the rider (40' x 20' minimum or something). The ability for the production crew to get everything in, set up, placed properly and working in time depends on a standard configuration. One offs like a round stage complicate the fuck out of things when you're trying to manage a crew of people all working on different teams.
Yes, I was very surprised at the Celebrity's booking but also looking forward very much to seeing them there if they were going to pull that off. It would have been amazing to see them in that kind of intimate setting, but I'm not surprised it was booked in error. In the band's defense, they probably had no idea the clusterfuck was happening until it was too late as that's what they pay other people to deal with.