Today I was given another award type thing from the wonderful Debbie over at Debbie: The College Years.  Debbie is another theatre person, in fact she is currently studying theatre.  We theatre people seem to have a knack for finding eachother in the world, it is a very bizarre and cool thing.  This award is the “You are Going Places Baby” award which I suppose is kind of more like a meme than an award, but hey, we don’t have to play down calling it an award!  Who doesn’t like to be loved a little, right?  The idea behind this one is to share where you see yourself in ten years and then pass the award on to ten people.  I think that I can handle that.

I actually get asked often what I want to be when I grow up.  I started to find that a little odd after I graduated from college and got a job.  I mean, I am doing what I love to do, what I went to school for, and I am enjoying doing it.  I am working at a great theatre and living in a fun place, and I am happy.  The fact that I have a job, support myself, and live on the other side of the country from my parents makes me feel pretty grown up.  However, I am pretty sure that I can’t really stay where I am forever.

Ten years from now I will be 36 years old and certainly see myself still working in some aspect of the theatre/entertainment industry.  I have always thought that at some point in my life I would end up back in the academic world, teaching theatre, and it wouldn’t surprise me if I was doing that within ten years.  In this industry you often have to move out in order to move up.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and where I work now, but I think that in order to continue to grow as a professional I will have to move on eventually.

People often ask if I see myself ending up on Broadway.  To be honest, I am not sure if that is the kind of theatre that I really want to be doing.  Sure, there is lots of money to be had working on the big commercial shows, but it is a very different beast than the theatre that we produce on the regional level.  I also just don’t really see myself living in New York City and being happy.  I know that there are plenty of people who love being in NYC, but of all the times that I have been there, I could never see myself living there.  A vacation there for a few days, not so bad.  Living there, I just don’t think so.

Hopefully within ten years I will have settled in to whatever job I have to the point where I can be happily married to my wonderful girlfriend.  I am not sure if children will be on the table at that point, I suppose it would depend on what we were both doing, but it it possible.  I certainly would like to have a family at some point down the road.  When you live in Utah, you are the odd-ball-out when you are my age, not married, and don’t have at least two kids, but hey, I was always the odd-ball!

In general, I am not really a person who does a lot of planning of things far in advance.  I like to live life as it comes at me.  I don’t spend a lot of time worrying or even really thinking about the future.  I feel like if you are too concerned with where you see yourself that you don’t spend enough time where you are.  Life is relatively short and if you don’t enjoy the now and only work towards your “ideal future,” will you really feel fulfilled when you get there (if you get there)?  I am very much a person who lives by the saying: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there!”

I suppose my answer to where I see myself a decade from now is a little ambiguous, but that is how it is in my mind.  The future is what it will be!  So, the lucky people who I would like to pass this little award on to are:

• e_mily from The Infamous Sun she doesn’t call herself a blogger, but if I am lucky maybe she will do this one
• Island Gal from NYC Island Gal
• Risha from You can Read me Anything
• Penny from There’s Beauty in the Breakdown
• Mel from Mel Learns her Lessons
• Ruth from Ramblings of Ruth
• Kris from Because or Why Not
• Kisekae from Diary of a Doll
• Bobby from Inside the Mind of Booya
• Ms. Harmony from Miss You Love

Rick & Rocco’s Final Exam

This year is the last year that classes will be held in the building that I went to high school in.  Frankly it is about time.  They have been working on the new building and it will open for use next year.  The class of 2010 will be the last class to graduate from the Newton North High School that I knew.  Ironically, my mother’s class was the first to graduate for this building.

Over the past week there have been lots of celebrations, commemorations, and events related to the move.  Last week the theatre department had a big reunion performance called Kiss the Stage, which I was a day late to be able to go to.  However, last night, in the very last performance on the Lasker Stage was the final Rick ‘N Rocco Show.  Rocco is a 50′s rock and roll show that started when my mother was in school and continued until I was in school and then stopped, and for one last time they got the band back together to do one final performance.

When I had heard that they were doing the show and I would be around I knew that I wanted to go.  Of course yesterday morning some of the guys at NNHS gave me a shout to ask if I wanted to help.  So I ended up being involved with the show which was a lot of fun.  I got to run the lights for the last show at the theatre.  Sure, some people may say that it is only high school, but it is kinda sentimental.  I mean, I haven’t really been back there for a long time.  There were a bunch of alumni involved in the show and there were even more who came just to see it.  I can’t think of a better send off for the building.

The other really sentimental thing about the night was that we also celebrated the retirement of T (yes, we all called him T or Mr. T when we were in school and he also plays Rick in the show).  T was the choir director at NNHS and he also was the musical director for the musicals that the theatre department produced.  As I spent four years singing in the choirs and working on the shows it was really great to be invited to his retirement party.

T was an amazing teacher and a great friend.  I spent most of my weeks at school looking forward to the times that I would get to spend in his classroom.  I loved to sing then and I still do now.  I sang first in the freshman ensemble, then in the Concert Chior and in the Family Singers both my junior and senior years.  Yes, that meant that I was in two choirs for two years.  We had the opportunity to sing some great pieces and do fun concerts.  I even was a soloist in The Messiah which was a great experience.

Here is one of the piece that we sang in Family Singers.  Right now it is one of the only ones that I have on my computer.  I have more on some of my other drives, but they are not with me right now.  This piece however is a good one.  It is called “To You I Call.”

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Singing in the choirs in high school under the direction of T was probably one of the most important things in my musical career.  Learning how to sing in both large groups, small groups, solos and quartets was invaluable.  Learning to sing in mixed groups not standing with your section or singing with an orchestra was great.  We learned how to be independent, to work in groups and collaborate.  There were plenty of life lessons that came out of that classroom, things that are probably more important and more useful in day-to-day life than came out of other classes.  I certainly never asked myself: “When will I ever use this?” about anything in the choir room.

Mr. T had a great influence on many people’s lives.  Going to the show and then to the party and seeing not only the people who I knew from school, but the alumni spanning a whole range of years was amazing.  As T put it, everyone who came to wish him well you could sit with and talk to for hours about their experiences at NNHS and in his classroom, and how that helped get them to where they are today.

Of course, when you put all of these musical people in the same place at the same time what should happen but the instruments come out and the singing starts.  We had people playing guitar (including myself), we got T playing the piano and everyone sang.  Songs from all over the place.  It really was a great thing to stand around the piano again with a whole bunch of people who stood around the piano with T over the years.  This is what we do, it is really the best way to celebrate anything!  I mean, we sang until 1:00 in the morning.  At least we didn’t get in to singing something like “Kiss Today Goodbye,” because, while it might have been appropriate for the occasion, I think we all would have been crying by the end.

Well, everyone has to move on sometime, and while NNHS will be a different place without T, hopefully whoever takes over that position will have the same lasting impact on the students.  I am sure that I would not be the same person I am today had it not been for the time I spent in Room 127 at NNHS, had it not been for T.  I wish him and his family all the best and I hope that he enjoys his retirement.  I will always keep the memories of his classes close, and I will always be thankful I have them.

Thus ends an era as we bring down the house.

I made my PTC stage debut today in quite an unfortunate situation.  We had a flying piece that snagged on one of our curtains as the curtain was moving and it broke one of the pick lines.  These pick lines are made of 1/8″ steel aircraft cable, so it take a pretty goodly amount of force to break them.  It seems that as our nice velvet drape was going out (up) it snagged the scenery, a lighted sign, and probably lifted it and then dropped it, breaking one of the two cables.  I think that my electric cables were probably bearing some of the load of the sign.

Well, we saw this thing swing into view and immediately stopped the show.  We cleared the cast off the stage and removed the piece of scenery.  In all it probably took less than ten minutes to do all the work, but it felt like forever.  The adrenaline was still pumping as I started to write this.

It is amazing how things slow down when you are in action mode.  I also think that it is interesting that some people feel like the shows problems can be solved with the biggest hand-held cutting tool that you can find in the shop.  All we had to do was disconnect the rigging hardware and unwire the electrics and the piece was free.  It was probably a good thing that I was mostly calling the shots with the removal of the piece or things might have ended up getting cut.

I remember getting out on stage and helping one of the ASMs get the piece on the deck.  Then there was some cheering from the audience.  Then I disconnected the electrical and rigging hardware and the crew took the piece off stage.  I capped the electrical and then they were about to take the lineset out when it finally occurred to me that the aircraft cable had broken and was just hanging on by tape.  So, we removed that as well and got the line out and clear.  The strangest thing was that I left the turnbuckle in the shop but for some reason I ended up taking the broken cable back up to the booth with me.  Stranger things have happened.

That was the excitement of the evening.  It wasn’t good excitement, but it excitement none the less.  One more show for the books I suppose.

For those of you who don’t know, glitter is like the herpes of the theatre and crafts world.  What do I mean by that?  Well, if you get glitter on you, that is it, you are stuck with it for life.  Then if you go near anyone else, or if you come in contact with anyone else, they will then be stuck with glitter for life.  Maybe that is a little extreme, I mean eventually the glitter goes away (or at least you will think it does)!

“Why do we care?” I hear you ask.  Well, for the same reason that I think you read my blog, if you didn’t care you wouldn’t be here.  ”So what’s the big deal with glitter then?”  Well, yesterday we finally got around to finishing up putting ropelight on one of the pieces of scenery for 42nd Street.  Needless to say, this piece of scenery was covered in silver glitter.  Quite shiny like most of the rest of the scenery in the show.

Affixing ropelight to scenery is an art and a royal pain in the ass.  My crew and I are getting pretty darn good at it  as we use a lot of ropelight on scenic pieces.  Most of the ropelight in this show was handled by one of my crewtons, but as we have been working very long days this week, I gave them the morning off, so I ended up finishing this project with a different person.  Well, when you spend a couple hours under a sign covered in glitter and drill holes in it, well, you end up covered in glitter.  I came out looking like I belonged in the Twilight movies (and no I have not seen any of them!).  If someone had given me some fangs I could have passed for a vampire (but not a flaming, teenage, virgin vampire.)  While being covered in glitter may not be everyone’s idea of fun, it was amusing to watch the glitter plumes every time we fired the pneumatic stapler!

It was all worth it though.  The sign looks great with the ropelight on it and everyone was happy.  The glitter started some very funny conversations with other crew people.  I got some great looks from our scenic charge artist.  Even the server where I went for dinner thought it was amusing.  A little bit of gaff tape took care of a bunch of the glitter and I think that I actually got most of it in the shower this morning.  Shaving my face too care of a lot of it (I needed a shave anyway).  I am sure that I will be discovering glitter in places that I never thought it could be for at least the rest of the week.  I wish I had a picture to show, but there was so much going on yesterday that I really didn’t think about it.

Well, now we are back to the wind and grind of getting this show on it’s feet to open on Friday.  Hopefully I will get a couple more posts out this week, we shall see, it is very busy here.

There are nights that we finish up work at the theatre early and we head out to some local place to hang out with the crew.  Sometimes we head over to The Pie, which is a great pizza place right around the corner where they serve heart-attack-on-a-plate (basically more cheese than you have ever seen even on an extra cheese pizza).  Sometimes The Bayou, which is a great bar with the longest beer list in the state: Beervana!  And when we have the young-uns but still want a drink we often hit up Squatters, a local brewery and restaurant.

So, why do I tell you this?  It all has to do with a keeping up morale.  My personal philosophy has always been that you should be happy doing whatever it is that you do.  It has always seemed so strange to me that people go off into the world and take jobs or positions that they don’t really enjoy.  It seems even stranger the people who go through all of their schooling studying things that don’t really make them happy or excited.  I know that not everyone does this, but it seems to me that a lot of people do.

In my line of work, theatre, there are very few of us that are doing this for the money.  Most of us are in this business because we love doing it.  I think the same goes for most people who work in fields like education as well.  We find the jobs exciting and rewarding, and even on the long and hard days that we don’t feel motivated to do anything, we still do it.  There are definitely days that I would rather be at work than sitting at home, even if there isn’t much to do.

There are a few things that I tell all the people who I hire to work for me.  Most of these people are college age and recent post college age.  First of all, I tell them what I just stated: “If you are not having fun doing what you are doing (whatever that may be) then you are doing the wrong thing.”  I want to see people here who want to be here and enjoy the work that we do.  it makes people much more productive when they are excited about coming to work.  So, I try to make sure that I always provide an atmosphere that encourages that kind of excitement.

Second, I tell them that if they are not having fun while we are working, let me know.  I realize that we can’t be chipper and happy all the time, 24/7/365.  It is just impossible.  Everyone has off days, people get tired and start to burn out and get snappy.  However, I do my best to make sure that we don’t get too far down that road, and I hope that my crewtons will let me know when we do.  Whenever we drift that way I can feel our efficiency slip and many times we will get to a point where we are better off calling it a day and coming back later to finish things up (unless we need to meet a deadline).

So, how do I keep my people happy.  Well, I try to really establish a family atmosphere.  We get to the point over a season where we know how everyone works and we work very well together.  If people get edgy we figure out how to work with it.  Sometimes people just need a break.  However one of the most effective things to keep people happy is good and drink.  So, we go out and enjoy when we can.  I try to go out with my crews and have some fun at least once every show.  It is usually pretty effective.  I am also hoping to be able to organize a group paintball game after we open the last show.  All things that help us bond and gel and keep everyone happy.

Be happy about what you do, enjoy work or school.  If you are not enjoying what you are doing, do something different.  Try a new sport or a different class or even a whole different job!

What do you do to keep your job or school exciting?