An introspective look at my career choices, or, Why I'm Not a Lighting Designer

I had a discussion today with a couple of lighting designers about my color blindness, and it got me to thinking about my career path.

I wanted to be a lighting designer for a while. The fact that I'm red-green color deficient really didn't factor into that decision, it was mainly based on the fact that I "designed" the lights for every show at my high school my junior & senior year. This is due to the fact that I was the only person who knew how to use the light board, I did some research to learn the difference between a par & an ERS, and I knew how to pronounce the word "fresnel." Basically I was a glorified master electrician. I made sure that all of our 75 lighting instruments were plugged in and we had some vague sort of wash onstage, achieved via bounce focusing on our 4 motorized electrics (everything else was dead hung to the ceiling). Occasionally I'd go really crazy and convince Pruitt to order a gobo.

Anyway, the point of my high school reminiscing is to say that I was much happier as an electrician than as a designer. I like following the plot, I like reading the paperwork and putting gel and templates and all the accoutrement in order. I don't like having to make actual artistic decisions.

I'm the same way with scenic painting- show me what you want it to look like, give me the paint (mixing paint is not my strong suit, you know, with the color deficiency), and I'm your girl. Stage makeup, too- I loved stage makeup, loved the class, loved everything about it except the designing. I liked following instructions and making it look like the chart. Designing my own? Not so much.

That's why stage management is so perfect for me- the director and the designers decide what it looks like, and then I make it happen in every performance. Give me a cue sheet, some spot charts, a whole bunch of spike marks, and I'm golden. I am the facilitator of the art, but I do not make the actual artistic decisions, and that is just the way I like it.

On mentorships

So I've started a long-distance mentoring program through SMNetwork.org, which is an amazing amazing resource for stage managers (and really anyone in theatre). I am a guinea pig- there has been discussion for a while on the site of getting some kind of mentorship program up and running, but nothing really happened with it until one of the mods stepped up to the plate and volunteered to mentor up to 3 people- 1 in high school, 1 in college, and 1 in the early stages of their career. I volunteered to be a mentee, and here we are!

He is an AEA SM who has worked in regional theatre in the DC area for several years and just recently made the move to the world of NYC commercial theatre. We'd been emailing back & forth, and talked on the phone on Monday. He had some great advice and insight into working in DC, which is where I want to be. It was so reassuring to have a conversation with someone in the business whose career path is so similar to where I want to be in 10 years and who basically told me I was taking the right steps, moving in the right direction for where I want to end up. I'm looking forward to continuing- hopefully we can get the ball rolling for some other mentor/mentee pairs.

On a slightly similar note, I skyped with the AU Stage Management class a few weeks ago! It was honestly a little surreal- I am by no means an expert on anything (as evidenced by the fact that I am in a long-distance mentorship program right now!). I really enjoyed talking with them, though, and I hope I was helpful. Our other SM intern was with me, so we gave them a little bit of an internship/young professional viewpoint, I guess.