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

At the request of some of my followers, this weeks photo is from the archival photo call for 42nd Street.  It is rather apropos as lately I have mentioned working on the show in a number of blog posts.  Also, we are going into the closing weekend today, so if you count tonight’s show there are only three performances left.

Beth Glover as Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street

This is one of my favorite images from the shoot and from the show.  The scene is the “Shadow Waltz” where Dorothy (an older actress who was hired to be the “star” of Pretty Lady) “auditions” for the part.  The lyrics of the song talk about shadows on the wall so she plays with shadow puppets as well as later going on to a big shadow-play dance number.

I also think that this image has some fun artistic merit as well.  I try to get some more “artsy” shots when I can, as opposed to just standing in the center of the house and shooting the scenes.  This was not the easiest subject to get close to on account of the angles of the lights for the shadows.  I had to work pretty hard to not get my own shadow in the shots (no one wants to see my shadow anyway).

So, now I am counting down the days to get ready for my photo excursion in Moab and hopefully will bring you a few fresh images!  For now though, as always, comments, questions and critiques are welcome!

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.

Our production of 42nd Street opens tomorrow.  That marks the final opening night of the 2009-2010 season here at the theatre.  It is really amazing how it feels like we just started, and yet we have been at it for almost nine months.  As usual, the weeks leading up to this opening (like this week) have been completely chaotic.  I think by the time the curtain falls on Friday night and we head out to the opening night party I will have clocked more overtime hours than regular hours this week.  All things considered this is not a bad thing aside from the fact that I am amazingly tired and I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with Ruth, who just had her wisdom teeth out and could use some TLC.

Even though things will really slow down after Friday, I think this is the time of year where it feels like things will go really fast.  There are a lot of things that are going to happen in the next month.  We of course will have the performances of the show, but we won’t have to be working on the next show (this is nice).  Ruth will be heading off to London for six weeks soon.  I have my photo workshop in Moab, then at some point I have to arrive on the East Coast in time for my sister’s college graduation (I still have to get a plane ticket).  After that I head off to camp where I will reconnect with Ruth.  It’ll all happen pretty fast, it is crazy.

The fun thing about winding down the season at the theatre is that we can start to look ahead to next season.  Next season we are taking on some big challenges and we are switching things up.  We will be producing eight shows instead of our usual seven.  There were a lot of factors that went into this decision.  First of all, we lost the rights to Spamalot on account of the fact that there will be a non-equity (AEA is the actor’s union) touring company in town for a three day engagement.  To me, this seems like the kind of thing that someone at the licensing company gets fired over.  I mean, we would make them a lot more money, but whatever.

So, in lieu of having that big name show to close our season, the powers that be decided that we would assume the risk of doing an eighth show as opposed to having to cut back on budgets and possibly salaries.  We won’t be getting raises (for the second year in a row) but we will get an extra 5-ish weeks of work.  In theory, the season that they have planned should be a pretty good seller, and I certainly can’t argue with the extra work as in those weeks I will make more money than summer camp.  One of the other ways that the theatre will save some money is that one of the shows will be a co-production with Indiana Repertory Theatre.

Hopefully by now you are wondering what the heck those eight shows we are planning to do will be.  Well, guess what, I am going to tell you.  Though I don’t think that the information officially goes public until tomorrow, I am sure that plenty of people know because most of our staff and crew can’t keep their mouths shut anyway.  So, here it is, the 2010-2011 season line up for the Pioneer Theatre Company:

• Hamlet
• Dracula (to play over Halloween)
• White Christmas (to play during the Christmas season)
• Black Comedy
• In (a brand new play, this will be the first performance)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (the co-pro with IRT)
• Sunset Boulevard
• Rent

So, I bet those of you who read my earlier post about possible shows are wondering why we are doing White Christmas when no one really wanted to do it.  There are two reasons for that.  One is that a Christmas show generally sells well at that time of year.  The second reason is that since we have added Rent to the season, we figure that we balance out the edgy show with the classic.  Hopefully all the theories are correct and we have some shows that sell!  It will really be interesting to start the season with a straight play in stead of a musical next season though!

All things considered, the coming season should prove to be a very fun season.  There are a lot of dark shows on the line-up, but they are good shows.  I really hope that Rent does well so that we can prove that we can sell the edgy shows in this demographic.  I also think that it will help bring in some younger audiences.

It also sounds like I will be taking on some additional responsibilities at the theatre next season as our resident sound designer is leaving.  I won’t be going into sound, but he did some other odd jobs like help manage our website and maintain some of our computers, like our ticketing server.  I am happy to take on these jobs, and there is a little kick in pay for it, so it should be good for everyone.  It will give me something to do on the days that I wonder what to do with myself.  Hopefully next season there won’t be many of those days on account of having more shows!

So that is where we are.  Winding down to the end of the season.  In general, things are looking good for next year, which is great.  If any of my readers happen to be in the SLC area next year, give a shout and I can see about getting you in to a show!

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.