Will the rain fall down?

Having finished a really lovely run at The Young Vic, the show went back out on tour to mac in Birmingham, a vibrant venue with great things happening all over the building.What is so scary about this show is that despite the huge amount of work from our brilliant technical team who rebuild the set and seating in each the space; re plumbing the pipes, rigging the lights, plotting the sound, hanging umbrellas, rain drops, rainbows, etc etc, when it comes down to it, we still wait with baited breaths at the first show in each venue just in case the unthinkable happens and the rain does not fall down!!!!Water will not be directed, it will not always fall at the right speed, or in a consistent manner, it will not cover the stage evenly nor lie on the correct area of the stage at the right time where the lights are focused to create the beautiful reflections in one section of the show, in some places it like to creep towards our young audience tempting them to dip a toe or thud a welly during the bits where we need them to see something really delicate occurring.So each time I leave a new venue in the capable hands of the stage management team, happy that the show is running smoothly and I give the actors some notes and  encourage them to keep doing their lovely work, I also have a quiet word with the water to ask it to please be good, because water does not behave! And that is why we love it.