Totally Crazy and Genuinely Awesome Theater Story

On Friday, October 25, 2013, I did a totally crazy and genuinely awesome theater thing.

There is a show that goes up this coming week, but as a result of a scheduling snafu, they were originally scheduled to be performing the weekend of the 25th. As a result of the administration messing up, they were given a very special opportunity to stage their show for the parents who could not change travel arrangements, and they got to do this in the theater where our ginormous January musical goes up. I will call it the Auditorium. It was the first space I ever worked in as a college student doing student theater, and it is one of my favorite places in the world.

So, I spent that Friday doing one of my favorite things (lighting) in one of my favorite places (the Auditorium) with some of my favorite people (the friends who were there with me). It was AWESOME! It was so much fun and exhausting in the best way.

This is no small undertaking. The space in the Auditorium is on a much larger scale than on the venue where the show was originally designed to be. Doing all that we did in 12 hours is the same as what many shows manage to do in a whole week. The fact that it just happened and is now gone really speaks to how fleeting theater really is because there is literally no trace of what happened. I'm having trouble believing we actually did it.

I wanted to write about this day because of the contrast I felt so sharply from how I was on my first show to how I am now as a lighting person. I literally sat in the same seat, on the same butt board, at the same tech table, with the same pain from my knees hitting the tech table, in front of the same Ion console as I did for my first show. It was a physical reminder of what I was like on that first show. The difference? Last time, I was blindly doing everything that designer told me to do without really understanding it. This time, the designer (different person) asked me to patch the show, and I just sat there and did it, and I knew what I was doing.

I felt weird and conflicted, because the stupid freshman version of myself is still in me; I've just grown and learned in the last few years. However, I really struggle to take ownership of the fact that I actually do know things. It scares me a little when a person I've just met tells me that the reason they know my name is because somebody said, "don't worry, she'll be in the room." It's a lot of faith to have in me, and I don't want to let my friends down.

I think the best parts of the day were: (1) teaching freshmen how to do things, (2) just getting to do lighting-I focused the entire cove and balcony rail and just got to do things, (3) having the adventure with wonderful people, and (4) the moment when the woman who is in charge of the space professionally handed me bubble wrap to pad the tech table the same way I did as a freshman (when we met). So smile-inducing, and it was tons of fun to get to hang with her all day.

I really wanted to share this story because it was a day that was tons of fun as a result of theater. Those days happen a lot, but this one was very special, and I loved being a part of it.

Today is awesome because I'm riding the smiles left over from the crazy awesome adventure in the Auditorium.