1. Arrive at theatre. Conduct dimmer check approximately 30 minutes before the house opens.
2. Discover that about 10 dimmers will not shut down.
3. Power cycle light board several times. Nothing changes (usually ghosts and whatnot will resolve themselves once the board is off). Attempt to control the dimmers with commands, to no avail. Inspect dimmer rack, nothing obviously wrong. Double check everything.
4. Call ETC support. Leave a message.
5. ETC support technician Heather calls me back within five minutes. Calmly walks me (who is not very calm) through some diagnostics, and then instructs us to reset the dimmer control module. Explains what we are doing and why it is necessary. Psychically predicts and answers my question of “is this likely to happen again, like in the middle of the show where it’d be inconvenient to have a big yellow light up in the middle of the stage?”
6. We are operational again with 15 minutes until the start of the show.
This will go into an email to ETC tomorrow. It is nice to find out that when ETC says that they will do everything to make sure the show can go on, they mean it. And seriously, too. Five minute callback from a tech who can solve the problem in another five minutes? Wow!