Just, you know, my first week at the dream job

So I started at RHT yesterday and I just couldn't be more excited about it. My first day was only a couple hours long because of an exam, but I got to do some paperwork right away. Today we went to their shops, pulled props, taped out the space, set up the callboard, and organized a kit.

This sounds really lame. I know.

But it. was. awesome. And here's why: the people I was working with never treated me like I was the kid. I got to experience all the parts of the building. All the prep work got done in a timely manner. AND on top of that? I really like the people I'm working with. I KNOW there are about a million things left for me to learn about stage managing, but it's so nice to know that people that are really doing it respect my opinion and value my help.

It's also made me really, really value what I had/have at UMD because the only reason this awesome stuff is happening to me right now is that I have an awesome mentor.

Angels in American: Perestroika

I saw Angels in America: Perestroika this weekend and I'm sort of torn in my reaction.

On paper I find the play totally fascinating. I thought the actors were incredibly talented, especially those playing Harper, Belize, and Roy Cohn. The play was staged in a way that was true to the playwright's intent and fairly dynamically interesting. And yet...

...I didn't love seeing it.

I was really confused about it at first. I left the theatre not understanding why I was disengaged and a little bored and feeling a little preached at, but I think I've come to a conclusion. There's so much about that text to find. There's so much text period. The show was something like 3 and a half hours long but it still felt like things were moving a little too fast for me. There were scenes that were really, really valuable to see life: a lot of stuff with Roy Cohn, the Kaddish scene, the Angel orgasm, the angel erupting onto the stage.

But a lot of stuff just became exhausting to watch. The scene with all the angels in heaven and the radio just felt like so much LESS than I was expecting and I feel like a vista one of those scenes you just want to SEE in it's full, incredible glory in a way that is not only impossible, but is also not prescribed in the text. Kushner does not want that sort of realism, but I really, really do.

I think it's hard to connect with the urgency of the end of a world without seeing a world with which to connect to begin with.

Yeah, so I'm still talking about Roundhouse

I basically can't talk about anything but theatre at this point in my actual life because I'm just so overwhelmed by it all. I copied all my rehearsal information for RHT and the opera into my calendar and then I just sat and looked at it for a little while. Basically at the end of December my life turns into afternoon/evening rehearsals at one my favorite places in the world. All that changes when I start classes in January is that I have class from 10am-12pm on Fridays before rehearsals with one of the most respected professionals in the area. Then at the end of February I switch to opera rehearsals in the afternoons and evenings. At the end of March/beginning of April, I add on some work attending meetings and rehearsals with the PM at UMD until the end of the semester in May. I mean, that's fine. That's only the most amazing semester of my life.

But I have no idea what's going to come after that... and I can prepare as much as I want but I just won't know until probably March or April. If I was getting paid to do all the things I'm doing in the next six months instead of paying, that could be my entire life. But I'm not. Getting paid, I mean. So what makes me think that my qualifications to work for free are going to be good enough to qualify me to be work for actual, living wages? Nothing, I guess, but a sense of purpose that I never had before I was 18 years old. Man, could I be more annoying with my constant review of my life's purpose and the same, unwavering conclusion that this is what I need to do?

And I'm Back

The Dead closed. I feel really good about how the show was run, about my paperwork, and about my final book. Good feeling. I start at Round House on the 15th of December. It's totally crazy to me that I'm starting a professional gig (albeit an unpaid gig) at my dream theatre in less than a month. It did not seem any less insane to me after I saw a show at my high school last night. It was Sondheim's Into the Woods and I was really proud of all parties involved. I heard about the upgrades the theatre has had since I was there, I talked to several of the teachers that really made me believe that this was what I should be doing, and I had some run-ins with parents whose names I didn't remember from when I was a "big deal" there. It's really crazy to me that it hasn't even been four years since I was the one freaking out about whether a show was actually going to happen or not because that just isn't how it works anymore. I guess I felt that way about fringe a little bit, but no where near the extent we sometimes were sure SURE that the sky was going to fall and our production of 45 Second From Broadway might. not. make it. I just don't know how the last four years have qualified me to be a professional... but a lot of people apparently think I know what I'm doing.

Christmas plans?

Today I had dinner with my parents for the first time in something like two weeks. Up to this point, I'd been seeing them about once a week and after we surpassed the one week point I started getting near-daily texts at really inconvenient times that I just couldn't respond to. This obviously really freaked them out. What freaked them out even more was the fact that when they told me the dates of a cousin's wedding a year from next month, I really needed to write them down for apprenticeship applications. Even more than that, they were upset when I told them I didn't know how long I could be with them over Christmas at the lake house because, well, I might have rehearsal. I have had a lot of time to slowly get used to how much time I have to dedicate to being a theatre professional, but I just don't know how easy it's going to be for them to process it. To be fair, they are a lot more relaxed about the fact that I need to come home the day after Thanksgiving to run a Board meeting than they were two years ago and the fallout I was expecting about this winter was limited to "Don't they have to give you off Christmas?!," but I just don't know how to break it to them that I'm going to have to start missing family things a lot earlier in my life than they perhaps had planned... unless they can schedule them a year and a month in advance.

You might think this would have taught me something about being up at 4am...

Friday night, I did not go out. I came home after rehearsal, completed my report and sat around my apartment with a couple of friends. I made a point of not going out because I had rehearsal at 10am, which meant a 9:00 call and an 8:05 wake up. I was ready for bed just before 2. I didn't even read or facebook stalk or turn on the tv. I did exactly what I was supposed to: turned everything off and got in bed in the dark.

Then I started hearing noises. It sounded like something tapping near the baseboard of the wall my room shares with the next appointment. I sat up. I heard a sort of squeaky noise near my closet. I listened for five minutes, then laid back down. I heard it again. I was up. I was standing in the middle of my bed. It took me, fearing in bed mice, 3 minutes to psych myself up to take one step forward on my comforter to the lamp. I got it on. I saw nothing. I thought I heard a sound again. I made some sort of guttural noises hoping to scare whatever was in my room away.

I'm still seeing nothing at this point, so I shake out all of my bedding and sit back down, tucking all loose fabric edges under me so as to be sure nothing could get in them with me. I turn the TV on, trying to make enough noise to scare any rodents out of the room. I finally convince myself to turn off the light and the tv after about 40 minutes of no sound. I start to get comfortable. Another squeak. At this point I text every boy I know. It's about 3:15 in the morning, so I obviously get no response. I leave the tv on through the informercial hour. I start texting all awake parties. I read webcomics I find through google. Anything to distract me enough to help me weather the storm. It's a no go. I ready 4:59 and I literally say to myself, outloud, "Bridget if you do not fall asleep right this second you will get less than 3 hours of sleep."

Then I wake up at 8:05 am lying tucked into my mouse fortress with a light on and the computer in my lap. The TV is off because I had the foresight to set the sleep function and in the light of day, the mouse, if there was one, is less threatening. I hopscotch to the shower, then rush to collect my belongings and leave for rehearsal. I spend the first hour or so of setup realizing slowly how absolutely ridiculous I was the night before. My apartment building comes pre-furnished with beds whose legs only reach the wall at the bottom. What I was listening was probably the guy next door passing out hard on his bed, jarring the wall at several points across the baseboard. The squeaks? Probably just my bed springs as I flailingly freak out.

Throughout rehearsal I'm getting texts from the various backup I tried to call throughout the night, ranging from:

"...I was very much asleep at 3:15am"

to

"I hope you survived the animal?"

to

"I'm not sure if you were referring to a real animal or Scott."

And the jig was up. I'm crazy and all my friends know it. ...Thanks, being exhausted to the point of humiliation.

I get to do some really cool stuff.

So I have been looking for a reason to start blogging again and it came upon me in kind of a surprising way.

A friend was in my apartment reading American Theatre Magazine, which is the Theatre Communcations Group publication and one of my favorite trade papers. It has some of the most useful information I can find about new works and big upcoming projects without the specificity of some of the design magazines. Beside the point. My friend happened upon an ad for UMD's theatre program.

This is it, a full page ad, and the large image is from the last show I stage managed. I looked at the picture, said to my friends, "that was a really hard sequence to call," then promptly had a small revelation. My job was to make what happened in that picture happen. I made sure we had the costumes, props, crew and actors to set the stage for that moment. I made sure the lighting and sound were right for that moment. Then I started the chain of events that led to that moment.

And that. Is. Awesome. I have the coolest job in the world.

I really cherish the moments when I get to realize that, because it makes the really hard ones so worth it. I've been thinking about the job a lot, because two of my closest friends are taking the stage management course at school. All the discussion has lead me to the following conclusion:

The bulk of my job is to ask myself, "How am I going to make sure this happens and how am I going to help make it easier for everyone to accomplish?" It really changes my outlook for the better when I can think about things in terms of how I can help instead of what I have to do and that's way easier when a picture of one of my plays is in a national theatre publication. Hey. I gotta take the recognition where I can... even if I'm taking it by force.