Things I'm Thankful For- Theatre Themed!

I saw this on Mallory's blog and thought I'd give it my own Thanksgiving theatre twist-

Auburn

I am so grateful for my Auburn family, the Auburn tradition, and my time spent in the Loveliest Village. War Eagle!

Black Sharpies

Sharpies of all types, really. I'm a huge fan of labeling things.

Copy machines

What would my life be without a photocopier? Even though I have a love-hate relationship with the POTS copier...

Days off!

Pretty self-explanatory.

Erasable Hi-liters

You have no idea how much I love my erasable hi-liters. Seriously, I've started to actually color-code things again!

Family

My parents who never really questioned my decision to major in theatre, my grandparents who still aren't entirely sure what my job is, but come to see as many of my shows as they can, and especially all of the support (emotionally and financially) they give me.

Grace!

The best props designer I've ever worked with, hands down.

Headsets

Working without reliable headsets has made me realize how lucky we were at Auburn to have such a nice comm system.

Intern family

Yeah, we fight a lot. Sometimes we get pissy. But at the end of the day, we all love each other. This has been true of every Intern Family I've had, and for that I am blessed.

Katharine & Kendra!

The best SM team anybody could ask for.

K is also for Kelsey: such a good SM- I learned so much more from her this summer than I expected to.

Laptop

I am grateful that my laptop wasn't ruined! Only minor water damage. Heart attack averted.

Microsoft Office

Another self-explanatory one.

Night-vision Cameras

I'm not a spy or a stalker, but I do have to call cues during blackouts. Having a night-vision camera pointed at the stage with a feed to the booth is seriously one of the most useful things for calling a show. I can't even remember what it was like to call cues without one...

Olney Theatre Centre

For taking a leap of faith to hire me for 2 weeks as an emergency substitute replacement temporary ASM, and for taking another leap of faith to hire me again to stage manage a show. My first professional contract(s)!

Playhouse on the Square

I am so thankful for a year-long contract and a whole season of shows that I am stage managing, a whole year of professional credits!

P is also for Pip- mentor, advisor, and artist extraordinaire. Auburn misses you and all your advice, your radical ideas, your motivational speeches, and your hard work.

Q-Lab

I'm actually starting to enjoy running shows in Q-Lab...

Rain onstage (or the lack thereof)

I am thankful to be working at a theatre where it doesn't rain onstage. After 4 years of tarping scenery & keeping towels backstage in the TPT, and a brief stint with a leaky ceiling at OTC, the fact that The Vane had just fully enclosed their theatre was a blessing, and even though Circuit is old, it's not leaky! Knock on wood.

SMNetwork.org

I'm a giant nerd and I love stage management. Everyone on SMNet is as well, & it has proven to be a wonderful resource for advice & just sharing stories about the absurdity that is our job.

Tech staff

I am thankful for a tech staff that I can trust, that knows what they're doing, that always has their shit together.

Useless (useful?) knowledge

My constant stream of useless facts actually come in handy sometimes, if only to give Jeffries a run for his money in Trivial Pursuit. I love to learn new things, whether it's who was the governor of Texas in 1933 (Ma Ferguson) or how to rewire a stagepin plug, and that is a personality trait I am glad to have.

Volunteers

Without volunteers backstage, I could not function.

Weathervane Playhouse

For an unforgettable summer. I learned a lot...

It's not quite the whole alphabet, but gimme a break! It's pretty darn close.

What is my life?

Today I spent 10 minutes with my arm shoved all the way inside a box covered with glitter, attempting to dislodge a wad of tissue paper with a wooden spoon. Then I swept fake snow, went on an Easter egg hunt for prop food scattered about backstage, and threatened to fire a 7-year-old.

Is this real life?

Surreal. That is the only word to describe the first run-through of A Christmas Story. At one point the actor playing Grown Ralph looked at the director and said "Is this for real? Is this really happening?" The director and I looked at each other and she said "We just did not think this through, did we?"

We were rehearsing in two different rooms- one for the Parker house, and one for the other scenes. Not ideal, but we were making do. Then came time to run Act I. If you've ever seen or done A Christmas Story, you'll know why this was a problem- the play is, essentially, the movie onstage. It relies heavily on cinematic-style montages of scenes- 2 pages in the house, 1 page at school, 1 page outside, 3 pages in the house, and so on. For 77 pages. The run-through took about 2 hours, for 1:09 of actual stage time (I'm pretty pleased with myself that I even managed to salvage an accurate run time from that fiasco).

Yesterday was The Great Rehearsal Migration of 2010- the Ballet moved out, which meant that Peter Pan moved their rehearsals from the small rehearsal room to the big rehearsal room, and so A Christmas Story moved downstairs to the small rehearsal room. This meant moving 2 sets of rehearsal furniture and props and all of the ensuing detritus that accumulates in rehearsal spaces, as well as taping out 2 groundplans.

Frantic taping ensued- the floor of the big rehearsal room is unsealed (whose bright idea was that?) so spike tape pulls the paint off the floor. Which means the sets had to be taped in painter's tape, and then spike tape got laid on top of that to color-code the various sets.

In other news, I worked the overnight electrics load-in for Peter Pan, which got me out of the Monday all-call for the scenic load-in. It was fun, and even though I worked from 1:00pm on Sunday-7:00am Monday with an hour break for dinner, it didn't feel like that much. I'm not going to say I was full of energy at the end of it, but I definitely wasn't as exhausted as I expected to be. We started with a bunch of set-backs- couldn't start hanging until midnight for various reasons, spilled coffee on the plot, and had to frankenstein the gel cuts for the cyc fixtures (you can get 4 cuts with the grain going vertically, but only 2 if it goes horizontally. Guess which one we needed? Guess what the ME didn't know when he ordered the gel?) but we prevailed! The hang went really well and we got everything done!

I say I started work at 1:00 on Sunday, but really I just watched the ballet. Ballet Memphis was in residency at POTS for the last 3 weeks, performing A Midsummer Night's Dream. I watched the show from the booth- our lighting designer ran their board for them, so I sat with him and listened to their PSM call the show. I wanted to shadow her, but she called the show from the deck and there wasn't really room for me to stand with her during the show. I really enjoyed the show, it was pretty gorgeous and surprisingly funny. I wish that there were more of the Mechanicals- it's just Bottom and Quince. I guess that's standard for the ballet version? I don't have anything to compare it to, so that's pure speculation.

Right now I'm sitting at the light board- I'm running the board for our lighting designer/master elec while they focus the show.