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A Career in Production Lighting: Cruise Line Industry

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Hello, my name is Ralph Curtis and welcome to my Blog. During the Mid 90's I started to get burned out on Club Med, the lifestyle was fan-freakin-tastic, the relationships and friendships I made will last a lifetime, but I wanted to try something different. The Club taught me all I was going to learn as far as Cabaret lighting goes, it was time to move on.  What I couldn't quite let go of was the traveling beach bum lifestyle, that was a hard drug to kick, so I decided to move up a notch and revisit the idea of Cruise Ship Lighting again. When my last Club Med contract was over, I returned to the Cape and landed a series of Jobs, I needed to buy another car, so I started working 3 Jobs to build up funds quickly. I worked UPS overnights, then a Construction gig during the days, while 3 days a week I would work at a Supermarket in my town from 5pm to 9pm decorating cakes... yeah, I did that.  I worked this madness for a few months until a coworker from UPS told me about a produc...
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A Career in Production Lighting: Club Med

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Hello, my name is Ralph Curtis and welcome to my Blog. Club Med  was an interesting gig to say the least, it was a beach lover's dream for sunbathing and frequent interactive activities. In the 90's Club Med had 110 villages worldwide, it was staffed by young and attractive people from every corner of the globe, Kids who worshipped the sun by day, and celebrated the night with an insatiable passion. The Club employed professionals from every career path you could imagine: Office staff, to Nurses, Chefs and Bartenders, Tennis Pros to Boutique staff, Child care professionals to Circus performers, and instructors for every known beach activity possible., then there was us, a full blown production crew: sound, lighting, set designers, choreographers and costumiers. I worked at 5 different Clubs total: Sandpiper in Florida,  Paradise Island in the Bahamas, Club Med in St. Lucia, Club Med Ixtapa in Mexico, Club Med Turks and Caicos, and back to Paradise Island for one last dose of I...
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A Career in Production Lighting: Life after the Paradise Garage:

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Hello, my name is Ralph Curtis and welcome to my Blog. The closing of the Garage was hard for a lot of people, no one more so than Larry. This particular story has been told by others closer to Larry, people like David Depino, Michael Sampson and Joey Llanos, the ones who knew him best. You can find these stories on the internet with a simple search. Larry and I had a working relationship, I really didn't socialize with him much. For the most part we kept our relationship professional. We did the hello and how are you thing, but we never really got to know each other... We hung out in groups situations in the tech shop or in the stars dressing room, in Mike Brody's office, or occasionally in the Booth, but this was the extent of our interactions. I never got to know Larry well, and I wish that I had. It was around 1986 or so, I started looking to do some lighting outside of the club. Derek Vasquez, one of the other Garage Techs, had turned me on to a local Production Company ...
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