Look at my kit!

So I've been seeing a lot of SM's (mostly students) on tumblr posting pictures of their kits, and I figured I'd do the same thing on my old-school non-tumbling Blog About Stage Management, mostly because as I transition into the life of a free-lancer, knowing I've completed my last internship and have no plans to go back to school in the near future, I'm feeling a little older and a little wiser.  I want to offer a slightly different (OK a whole lot different) version of the SM "Look at my kit!" post.

So, here's a picture of my kit.

Uhhhh, guys? That's it. It all fits in that cute little makeup bag I got in the Target dollar section.

It contains my stopwatch, a tiny notepad, a clicky-sharpie, Frixion erasable hiliters, an AMAZING set of post-its in all different shapes/sizes in one convenient little book, my template for drawing accurate blocking, a pair of scissors, and Frixion erasable pens (1 blue for random notes, 1 red for line notes, 3 black for blocking and props).

That's really it.

Let me explain.

Currently, I'm freelancing as an ASM, and that means two things:

1- I DON'T HAVE TO PERSONALLY PROVIDE EVERYTHING THAT ANYONE COULD EVER POSSIBLY NEED. 

Now your mileage will vary on this, but with my current gig- the theater provides a first aid kit, tape, & hospitality (coffee, hot water, cold water, sugar, mugs, stirrers, plastic forks, etc) and the SM provides everything else in his kit, and by "everything else" I mean basic office supplies.  At my previous internship, the theater provided EVERYTHING- Centerstage literally has a road box filled with nothing but tape and first aid supplies. A full-size, 8'tall, rolling black case full of tape.  We had more office supplies than we knew what to do with. If you needed it, they had it, and if they didn't have it, they'd get it. It was beautiful.  The internship before that provided first aid, tape, and basic office supplies. 

Like I said, mileage may vary, but you notice a common thread here of "the theater provides these things." I realize that there are theaters that do not provide anything (at my current gig, the SM provides about 200% more than the theater does), but so far, I haven't worked for one.  Maybe that's hubris talking, or naivete, or maybe I've just been really lucky with the theaters I've worked for. Take it with a grain of salt, it's my personal experience.

2- PORTABILITY PORTABILITY PORTABILITY

I have approximately an hour-long commute- 10min walk to metro, wait for metro anywhere from 2 to 20 min, 15 min train ride, 20 min walk to the theater. The theater where I currently work is part of a community center, which means our rehearsal space does not belong to us, and our storage space is at a premium- what I bring to rehearsal has to go home from rehearsal with me. In addition to my tiny kit, I'm also bringing with me my laptop (which unfortunately weighs as much as a small child) & it's charger, my planner, my lunchbox, and my dirty little secret- I also have 2 other little makeup bags that transfer from backpack to oversized purse to whatever. One contains a mini hairbrush, travel-size lotion & deodorant, hand sanitizer, hair clip, gum, chapstick, ibuprofen, & allergy meds; the other has my iPhone wall charger, Kindle charging cord that conveniently plugs into the iPhone wall cube, headphones, thumb drive, and screen cleaning cloth.  

Bag o' personal hygiene

Bag o' technology

While I would not deny those items to a colleague in need of a phone charger, ibuprofen, or a hair tie, they are my personal necessities that I bring with me no matter where I'm going (with the exception of fancy parties that require dainty purses that match my shoes). I keep them in bags because I hate digging through piles of things and tangled cords & whatever to the bottom of my backpack. Things get crusty down there. Anyway, long story short, my backpack already needs its own zipcode. I've been known to bowl over elderly women on crowded trains (not really). Can you imagine what would happen if I added a full-size kit?! Holy cow.  My back would not survive the commute.

I still have my full-size kit, full of tape measures and screw drivers and crescent wrenches and hole punches and labelmakers and 584933485 pencils and and and.  When my show goes into tech & performances, what I bring with me will change- I won't need my template and my tiny notepad any more. I'll add my flashlight, multitool, & clipboard to my backpack.  

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I am responsible only for what I need to do my best work.  I know that some SM's view their kits as a redundancy, a "last resort" in dire straits (oh god the lead is allergic to latex and nobody told sound! quick, grab the non-latex condom from my kit!), and I'm sure that when I transition back to the role of SM, I will probably do the same thing, but right now? I am LOVING the fact that everything I need fits in a tiny little bag.

Also, something that Auburn did which I absolutely LOVE: they provide kits for their student SMs.  I am SO GLAD we convinced the department that it was unfair for the SM students to pay out of their (tax-deductible) pockets for the actors to have hair ties and pencils in rehearsal.  The department purchased and paid for 6 tackle boxes & supplies, which are checked out by the SM & ASMs at the beginning of each rehearsal process (we're a small department, we never have more than 2 shows running at once).  The SM is responsible for it during the process, and tells the student production stage manager if the supplies need replenishing.  The PSM inventories the supplies at the end of each semester, and restocks the kits as necessary.  It was WONDERFUL, and in my experience so far, closer to the way things actually work in the real world.

Just my two cents as a freelance ASM.  

J.Simps

We have a cast pet! The script calls for a betta fish onstage, and rather than have an empty bowl with some plants in the hopes that the audience doesn't realize there's no fish in it, we have an actual fish.

His name is Jessica Simpson (don't ask).

He lives in his bowl on my table in the rehearsal room and keeps me company during those long periods in rehearsal where the actors and the director are discussing silly things like "character" and "motivation" and I don't have anything to take notes about.

Most of the time he's pretty chill. Sometimes, though, with no warning, he will FLIP OUT and fan his fins out and start swimming around like crazy and bang into the glass.

Every cast should have a pet. It's nice.

Passive Aggressive Happiness

There are no perfect productions. No matter how much you love a show, it's going to have hiccups here and there. Conversely, every show, no matter how hated, has some redeeming quality about it.

Rather than dwell on the past or the negative, I want to blog about what is going well with my current show.

• There's no intermission. It runs under 1 1/2 hours.
• All of the cast is over the age of 18. Hell, they're over the age of 21.
• The script makes no attempt to replicate a film.
• The director has a very clear vision of what she wants and is able to communicate it with the actors and the production team.
• The director and the scenic designer do not hate each other.
• Production meetings consist of collaborative discussion and problem-solving. No one yells. No one dominates the conversation. No one dismisses suggestions off-hand.
• While the show mainly focuses on the arc of 2 characters, the fate of the production does not rest in the hands of one actor.

There are more reasons why I like this show, but I'm tired.

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.

Tape.

Today I taped out 2 sets- first, I helped our mainstage ASM tape out the Darling Nursery for Peter Pan in our main rehearsal room, then I ventured alone to the wilds of the 5th floor to attempt to tape out the set of A Christmas Story.

I was excited to tape out the Peter Pan set because it meant I could use my nifty little drafting of the rehearsal room that I made for the first time! I was without a task for a little while one day at work, and decided to get a transparency and draft our main rehearsal room onto it in 1/4" scale, so that we can lay it down on a groundplan and know exactly how much of the set will fit in the room and also where that damn pole will end up before we start taping it out and realize that it's smack in the middle of something important, which is what seemed to always happen. Anyway, I did that, and this is the first time we've used it. It was actually pretty helpful, we smooshed some stuff around to make the pole land in the middle of the bunkbed where it would be out of the way.

And then I went upstairs. To the 5th floor. Let me explain about the 5th floor- it is empty. It is a desolate wasteland of empty office space, not even used for storage. Mostly it's just empty- a few of the rooms have scary things in them, like the kitchen with the breaker panel facing on the floor, and the bathroom with no ceiling tiles because the roof leaks- but it's primarily a maze of empty offices. Well, A Christmas Story is rehearsing in this empty maze due to an utter lack of space elsewhere on POTS property, and while it is not an ideal rehearsal space (none of the rooms are really big enough to get the whole set taped out) it's actually starting to grow on me. I've spent the last few days vacuuming, changing light bulbs (which caused a breaker to blow and all of the lights to cease working for a few hours) and Clorox-wiping every surface I can imagine these children touching in preparation for rehearsals to begin upstairs. I've also put up signs with arrows leading from the elevator to the rehearsal room and from the rehearsal room to the bathrooms, and signs that say Homework Area, Props Go Here, etc. I'm enjoying the fact that this space is 100% ours- we won't have to share it with anyone, and while it is not ideal, it's not half bad, either.

My real adventure today was taping the set out... I fit the house in the bigger of our 2 rooms, and the school and Christmas tree lot are going in the smaller room next door tomorrow. I was taping by myself, which is always an adventure, doing the whole "pull a few feet of tape and then step on the end and stretch" thing. The biggest challenge is the fact that this room has brown shag carpeting covering every inch of the floor. I'm not sure yet how well the tape is going to hold up on the carpet, but I do know that none of my lines are straight- pushing the tape down makes the carpet move underneath it, which makes the lines all wiggly.

I think that taping on shag carpet might actually be worse than taping out The Producers this summer when we ran out of colors of spike tape and had to make more by coloring dots and stripes with Sharpies. At least then the lines were straight...

Anyway, the moral of my story today is this: USE SCISSORS. Or a box cutter. Or a knife. Or a sharp stick. Something other than your fingers to tear copious amounts of spike tape, cause my fingernails are jacked up, y'all.

Walkin in Memphis

So. Since the last time I updated I have finished my summer at The Vane and then opened and closed a show at my new theatre, and started rehearsals for the next one.

I am now the Stage Manager for the Circuit Playhouse at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. What I didn't know when I took the job was that, until February of this year, the theatre that I'm SMing was the mainstage, and the Circuit Playhouse was in another building a few blocks away. They just opened the brand new building across the street, aka POTS, and moved Circuit into the old mainstage, which is awesome for me- I was expecting a dinky little blackbox, but instead I'm in a 250-seat proscenium house (no flies though- boo!) in the historic Memphian Theatre (reportedly Elvis's favorite place to play when he came home to Memphis). How cool is that?!

My first show here was Superior Donuts, by Tracy Letts. I came in for the last few days of rehearsal, and then we started tech! That show was... interesting. All community actors, and I had no crew person backstage. That was a shocker for me- I knew I wouldn't have an ASM, but I was literally the only crewmember on this show. I ran the lights and sound through QLab (I wish so much that Sound Design hadn't been a complete waste of a semester, because it would be really helpful for me to know what the hell I'm doing in QLab), and there was no one backstage. I thought that was a poor decision on the part of everyone running the show before I got here- there were a lot of props in this show, and a few scenic things that needed to happen during Act 1 that the actors had to do. I did the intermission shift by myself, which took 12 minutes- so much for a bathroom break! Donuts ran for 4 weeks (man, it's been a while since I posted anything!), we closed on Sunday.

Now I'm in rehearsals for the next show to go up at Circuit- Black Pearl Sings! It's a relatively new play- it hasn't been published yet, and we're still in contact with the playwright, but it's been performed at a few other theatres (small world, my ASM at OTC saw it at Ford's Theatre when it premiered). It's a 2-woman play with music, and it's posing an interesting challenge with some historical inaccuracies and the utter lack of resources to find this music- the playwright sent us a CD of the songs, but we have been unable to find sheet music for most of it. It's tough going for some of this music, friends.

The work schedule here at POTS is tough- we basically work 10 out of 12's 6 days a week. 10-1, 2-5, 6-10. I work in the office in the morning, with the production manager/PSM, the props designer, and the mainstage ASM (once she arrives!) doing anything from photocopying scripts (which is what I'm doing right now, aka time for blogging!) to production meetings to helping make props. If I have anything I need to do for one of my shows, that's always my priority for the morning shift, and if I finish that then I get a job from the PM or props designer. If neither one of them has anything for me to do (which rarely happens) then I go play with the Master Electrician and the resident Lighting Designer. They like it when I come help- they were shocked to find out I actually know what I'm doing with electrics. The fact that I volunteered to cut their gel also endeared me to them somewhat.

For the afternoon shift, it could be one of two things- more of the same as the morning, or rehearsal. Directors have the option of having rehearsal in the afternoon in addition to the evening, but some (Donuts) don't use it, while others (Black Pearl) do. In the evenings, I'm either in rehearsal or a performance.

I've also run some auditions (A Christmas Story and Grey Gardens, both of which are mine, and Peter Pan, which runs on the mainstage at Christmas).

Also, another small world- a friend of mine from middle school was cast in the ensemble for the tour of Legally Blonde! I was so excited for him, and then a girl who used to work at The Vane was cast as Margot/Elle's understudy as well. I've had at least 3 friends from AU and 1 friend from The Vane that I know of who have seen this show. I wish I could see it so badly, but they aren't coming to Memphis. =/

Theatre is such a small world. Let me see how many times I can say that in this post, but it's true- 2 of the other interns (an acting intern & the master electrician) were on the National Players tour together last year, so I already knew them from OTC. How weird is that??

Kansas! Also, blind kids!

So tech at Weathervane is NUTS. We have 3 days of tech- one day of spacing, scene changes, etc. (it's the first rehearsal on the actual stage) and then 2 days of dress rehearsal.

The thing about My Fair Lady that made this whole process even more intense is that because of the renovation, our second dress rehearsal was also the grand-opening-ribbon-cutting-gala-ceremony-extravaganza with like 250 donors, season ticket holders, etc. Too bad we didn't make it all the way through the end of the show in the first dress! Wahoo!

So for the gala, they got everything ready and all fancy and made a bunch of speeches that we didn't hear because we were rehearsing, and we start the show, and halfway through the Overture we hear a siren outside, and then the Artistic Director yelling "HOLD! HOLD! HOLD!" There was a tornado warning (watch? warning? whichever one is the one where there's actually a tornado). So the actors are all in the dressing rooms, and the audience is chillin in the seats for about 10 minutes. One of our donors is the county fire marshall, so he had his radio and was getting all of the updates on the situation, which quickly progressed to a tornado moving in our general direction, so we evacuated everyone into the Children's Theatre, which is the safer building- no windows, lower ceiling, etc. So then we had about 300 people in the Children's Theatre, which isn't completely finished being constructed yet, so the crew was frantically carrying in chairs for the old people (most of the audience was old) and flashlights in case we lost power and it was a MADHOUSE. At one point the Artistic Director started serving cake from the gala, and then the cast was singing to try and keep people from panicking. All of the crew and the theatre staff were remarkably calm and composed during the whole ordeal, thank God.

My SM & I decided that if the theatre is actually hit by a tornado, at any point in the summer, really, we will be getting matching tornado tattoos. We thought we were all going to get blown away, the weather was absolutely terrifying outside! Also, wouldn't it just be beautiful irony for the brand-new building to get blown away by a tornado during the ribbon-cutting ceremony?

Anyway, we finally got to resume the show, we got started around 9:15. A lot of the audience left, understandably, but we had a fairly large number who stayed all the way through. And when I say all the way through, I mean we skipped large sections of the show that we had run in the first dress so that we could make it through the end of the show before midnight, which we barely achieved. The result of all of this was that we opened the show without ever running it from start to finish on the stage in one sitting.

We opened last night, and it actually went very well, considering. The other crazy thing is that the first day of performance for one show is simultaneously the first day of rehearsal for the next one, so we rehearsed Miracle Worker from 10:00-5:00 and then went to open My Fair Lady.

Miracle Worker is one of my favorite plays, I really like it. I wish I could see it performed in Tuscumbia, they do it every summer in Helen Keller's actual house. The character of James is such a great part, the actor who's playing it is doing a fantastic job. I really just think James is so funny, poor guy.

We have two girls playing Helen- the main Helen and then her understudy. Her understudy is one of those obnoxious Broadway babies. Also a very bossy child. Helen is fantastic, though. We played a lot of blindfolded games with the kids and the girl playing Annie, which of course resulted in us being groped by blindfolded 10-year-old girls, because they put their arms straight out and up, which is right at boob height. Classy.

We're rehearsing at a Lutheran church in downtown Newark right now- no more rehearsal in the abandoned elementary school/architectural firm gym! The irony of this situation is that the church also houses the Licking County Center for the Visually Impaired. We share a wall with them, and can hear them on the phone all the time. It's a little uncomfortable, actually.

Silly rumors!

So Winny's ex worked at Weathervane a few summers ago, and when he found out I was working here he was like "Oh no, I wish you'd told me before you accepted the job there- their SM quit halfway through the summer because the company was so awful!" which of course freaked me the hell out. I finally got the skinny on what actually happened- two years ago (my SM's first summer here), the current SM was hired as the ASM, and this girl got hired as the SM. She quit after the first week, on her day off, and didn't even tell anyone. So they bumped the ASM up to PSM, which is the job she's had for 2 years now. According to her, the original girl was a terrible SM to start with. Anyway, that makes me feel a LOT better. I mean, nothing that I have experienced so far would make me think that conditions here would drive someone to quit- most of the backbone of the staff is the same as it was 2 years ago, and they're all pretty great.
We "ran" the whole show today, sort of. It's rough not having a stage crew yet to handle the scene changes. What's worse is that a lot of the furniture will be on wheels, so it can be moved on by one person, but our rehearsal furniture isn't, so it takes 2 people to move it. I can't wait until I'm not the one having to carry this furniture around!

Also, I found out an interesting tidbit today- Weathervane's tech rehearsals are from 5PM-midnight, which SUCKS, and is NOT the norm. Turns out that the reason they're so late at night is because the theatre wasn't fully enclosed (hence the current incomplete renovation) and they couldn't start tech rehearsal until it got dark, because they couldn't set any light cues while there was still daylight. My SM was hoping that since we have a roof now, we could move the rehearsals earlier in the day, but the answer to that request was a resounding no- they've scheduled focus and scenic painting to be on stage during the day, so it's a no-go on us moving earlier. That was such a foreign concept for me- having to start tech at night because of the daylight. Also, we're concerned about actors not being used to actual blackouts now. We'll see what happens on Monday!

You know that old phrase...

So you know that old saying about theatre, "Never work with children or animals"? Well, we have decided that it should be changed to "Never work with old people." It is seriously ROUGH. You have to explain things to them over and over and over and then they just forget it again by the next rehearsal!
Speaking of never working with children or animals, we've cut the dog from Miracle Worker thank the lord, and we also requested (and were given) a child-wrangler for rehearsal. She's the associate choreographer/dance captain, so she doesn't technically have a job during Miracle Worker.

The lack of responsibility is refreshing.

I haven't been an ASM in a while, and I was afraid that I was going to despise it, but in all actuality I am loving the fact that I have almost zero responsibilities.
Today I:
-sat at a door & let people into the building (aka 2 people, the rest of the time I just read my book & drank my coffee)
-turned pages for the music director
-ran errands (for myself, not for the theatre)
-hung out with the shop staff in "the cabana"
-sat in rehearsal and drew pictures
-moved a few pieces of furniture around
-talked to the props designer

That's pretty much my day every day. I have to say, it's nice not to have to be the one in charge of things for once.

Scrumbles

We stumbled-through Act I today! Sort of... we didn't make it all the way through. I'm just amazed that we have Act I blocked in 6 days of rehearsal. That is so insane to me, it is SUCH a short period of time.

It was SOOO hot in the gym today, we opened all the doors to the outside to get a breeze in, and from where I was sitting (hidden in the corner so I could plug my computer into the one outlet with a ground so I could do paperwork) I could see these little boys playing in the yard of the house by the back door of the gym, and they climbed up on a picnic table by the fence and watched our stumble-through. It was absolutely precious.

Talking to Meg last night, and talking to Corey today, I realized I've been pretty lucky to work with legit companies and legit programs. I mean, as much as we bitched about our department, Auburn has a pretty good theatre program (definitely better than Belmont's!). And then talking to Corey today, the theatre she's working at right now? Geeze. Her SM is apparently a Nazi about where people sit in rehearsals. And also called 3 ASMs for table work. I'm just sayin, I've worked for some legit companies.

I really wanted to write something tonight, but I'm SUPER tired and have rehearsal at 10AM so I'm going to bullet-point:

- My SM arrived today (had a flat tire on the way, poor thing!). So far she's pretty fantastic, I really like her personality and she was super competent in rehearsal today, even running on literally no sleep in 36 hours.
- A bunch of us went to Columbus tonight to a pay what you can production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women at a theatre called Theatre Daedalus. The play was fantastic, I'd never read it before and I really liked it. Two of the three women were fantastic, the other one was only meh.
- Theatre Daedalus literally has lights made of coffee cans and paint cans. It was amazing, I was absolutely enthralled.
- Went to dinner after with the sound intern, costume intern, artistic associate, and artistic director at a fabulous restaurant downtown. Stupendous. Ate fried green beans and had a great conversation with them all.

This is my 2nd day of rehearsal for My Fair Lady at Weathervane. My SM won't be here until tomorrow, so I've been running rehearsals for the last two days. People keep saying "OH you just got here and you got thrown into this blah blah blah," but it's nothing that I haven't done before. Sitting in music rehearsals and taking basic blocking notes are the same no matter where you are, and the rest of the staff is super helpful.

The weirdest part of this whole situation is the fact that the theatre is still under renovation. They're almost done, supposedly. They keep telling us that the mainstage will be completely done by the time My Fair Lady opens in two weeks, but I'll be interested to see how that goes. It's been really rainy for the last week, which has thrown them off.

The result of that is that we are rehearsing in a borrowed space- the gym of an abandoned elementary school that was bought by an architectural firm, which obviously has no use for a gym. It's actually a fairly nice rehearsal space- it's pretty much the perfect size, has good bathrooms and kitchen we can use, so as borrowed space goes it's pretty sweet. It's really close to the theatre, too, and easy to find. The weirdest thing about it is that this elementary school is so old, there is only one set of outlets in the gym that have a ground! All of the outlets only have 2 plugs, and of course the one with the ground is on the opposite side of the room from where we set up the tech table. There's also no internet here, which blows, and the internet has been super sketchy at the theatre because of the construction. I had to go to a coffee house yesterday to email production meeting notes to the SM! At least it works on campus.

First Company Meeting

Our first company meeting was on Monday, after the BFA Performance Outcome. I think it went very well.

I got everything organized, albeit somewhat last-minute, with all of the forms and things. I also made all of the extra copies of the script- they only ordered 11 bound copies, and the Director double-cast Rona, cast 2 understudies, and cast the 2 Dads as separate actors (plus ASMs & the Assistant to the Director) so we obviously had more than 11 people who needed scripts. The tricky part was that the cast members needed copies of the score as well- I had a photocopy of the script and one of the conductor's score, but not one of the libretto (and not knowing till the last minute that there weren't enough scripts meant I didn't have time to copy the libretto out of the book), so 2 cast members ended up with the full score. They seemed pretty ok with it though, so I don't think it will be a problem except the sheer size of it.

I passed out all of the forms (Class Schedule, Actor Agreement, Emergency Health Info, Bio Form, & add slip for Applied Acting), and then passed out the scripts, the CDs from the MD, and their assignments from the Director & Dramaturg. It was a lot of paperwork for them all to keep track of, I feel like I should have put them in a folder or something, but I didn't want to have to buy them myself, and there was no one in the office when I was working on it.

I wanted to elect a cast deputy then, but I forgot to talk to the Director & MD about it beforehand so we will just do it at the first rehearsal. I know that Panch & Olive were both cast deputies once already this semester, so I think I'm going to tell them that they have to elect someone else. Also, should the Wranglers be included in the vote? I'm inclined to say no, but I feel like Daydrie is 100% about inclusion, so she might overrule me.

Speaking of the Wranglers, FTP has very graciously agreed to work around their schedule so that they can still audition for Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing. That's good, because I think that 3/4 of them would have opted out of Wrangling in favor of auditioning for Tales.

After the meeting, the Director and I realized that Rocky Horror was having auditions that night, and wanted to use the Smart Classroom to put the video on the big screen. The director had not heard anything about this, and was very concerned about leaving the Smart Classroom open. I also did not know about it- no one in charge of Rocky has keys to the building. Granted, it was only about 8:45 when this was happening, but I was not about to stay in the building to babysit while they had auditions, and there is a reason why no students have keys to the Smart Classroom. She left me in charge of the situation, and I ended up just locking the door. I told their director what I had done, and I apologized for putting them in a tough place, and then went to lock the building. While I was doing that, I realized that there were about 20 people in the green room and I knew 4 of them, plus a couple of non-majors that I knew. I was super uncomfortable leaving them alone in the building, so I called the TD & let him know what was going on. He ended up coming up to the theatre to deal with it, so I left. I felt really bad because I love Rocky, I wish Rocky could be in the theatre every Halloween, but I was not about to leave that building unlocked with that many non-majors in there. Epic communication fail, in my opinion- they had signed out the space, but the sign-out sheet goes to 10:00 because that's when rehearsal is over and the SM kicks people out. Without rehearsal going on, the building gets locked up whenever the last person with keys leaves. I technically could have told them that they had to leave, but I didn't want to do that. Also, I am one small and unimposing person, and they were a lot of sketchy-ass people in fishnets. I almost got in a fight with someone about it, because he saw me locking the doors and asked what I was doing. I told him I was locking the building cause I was leaving, and he said "Well, I guess that's ok..." He guesses that's ok? Is he serious? Having keys to the theatre is a responsibility that I take pretty seriously, and I was not about to leave them alone in there. I don't care if they're having a performance- they didn't get permission from a faculty member and none of them have keys to the building, so I'm in charge. /rant.