Quality time with the Photocopier…

Printing scripts into book form is one of those chores I try to get done as soon as I can, not just because it helps when your actors actually know what’s happening, but also because it is usually long and boring, with short bursts of frustration when the photocopier prints upside down, chews up the paper, or just sulks and refuses to respond.
Then, when you’ve cajoled it into action, opened it, pulled the remains of the paper out, turned the remaining sheets around twice to make them photocopy correctly, and finally got a booklet together, you find that for some reason page fifteen is missing on half the copies.
Then it comes to stapling, with a long arm stapler, three times per script because scripts are subjected to a lot of abuse and they need to be as strong as possible. This sounds simpler than it is because the stapler we have only works once every three to five times. The rest of the time it spits out a mangled pointy thing that would be quite at home in a modern art gallery but has zero effectiveness for holding a script together. After a few scripts there are enough of these kicking about to start a small scrap business, or make a medium sized sculpture.
After you do this someone usually points out a spelling mistake on the cover. Fortunately this time we caught that before this process and saved unnecessary bloodshed.
Some people may be wondering what the point is. After all we could save this by printing the lot on A4, one sided. Well, it saves paper as we use both sides of a sheet and print in a very compact way, and the scripts thus produced are far easier to carry and hold and read from in a forest, and when the team are giving up so much time I like to make things a bit easier for them.
So, the scripts are now ready and handed out, the cast can get to grips with learning them, and I can start painting the set and get back to working on the Christmas drama.
Speaking of Christmas, I’d like a long arm stapler.