I went to visit a close friend recently. A few days after I arrived home this post appeared on her newly launched blog. I’m here to tell you that I am not brave, just lucky, and this is how it happened.
Let’s jump back, almost 25 years (holy SH*T, I am I really old enough to say that?) I am attending Smallish State College with a really awesome music program. Am I there to study theatre? No. I am there because I have some misguided idea that there might be a back door to the music education program for which I am too chicken to audition. While I am searching for aforementioned “back door”, I find myself spending a lot of time with the theatre program, and liking it. (Right now you are saying, whAAAAT? Wasn’t she too chicken to audition for the music program? Guess what? No audition needed to build and paint scenery.) So, after two years, zero back doors, and loads of laughs, I declare a theatre major. After all, I’m having a blast and I have all the classes I need so far. (And I haven’t touched my saxophone in two years.)
At this point I get a little serious and consider transferring to another school closer to “The City”. I think, if I am serious and want to “Make it”, Smallish State College really is not going to cut it. This “period of consideration” lasted about a week. My major complication? Love. I was already engaged and frankly couldn’t bear to leave his side. Around the same time I also considered a psychology major, or minor (as a back up). Mostly because it was kind of interesting and I had most of those classes too. Ultimately, I decided it was too much work.
The love of my life was quite driven and has arranged by his junior year to attend grad school at Major University. So naturally, I applied there and no where else. Fortunately, they had a theatre program too. I studied hard for my GRE. Not because I was ambitious, but because I liked being a student and didn’t really want to leave the academic world. To my great surprise I was accepted into the MFA program and awarded a teaching fellowship.
So, now I’m in grad school studying scene design at Major University, AND I”M REALLY BAD AT IT! I’m under-prepared for grad school and my first produced design is a disaster. I took a lot of pictures. (Hey! Remember film?) Almost none of them came out and I was glad. No record of my folly.
Summer. A lot of time to think. My husband (oh, I forgot to mention we married the summer before grad school.) spends all his time in the lab. I am working a night job and completely unsure if I will return for year number two. So, what to do? I want badly to start a family. But, we are young, and we know it and decide to wait. I think about other jobs. None of them are appealing enough to keep me from theatre, even if it is bad theatre of my own making. And it seems a good way to keep busy until we can have our family.
I return to school for two more years. Perhaps I am more relaxed and more focused because I have convinced myself that I am just passing time until the next phase of my life can begin. I improve, a lot.
So, now I somehow have earned an MFA. I need to stay in town because my husband is still two and a half years away from his PhD. The professional theatre associated with the university hires me as a properties artisan. As I graduate, the current employee leaves. Lucky me.
For the next two and a half years I make stuff. ALL kinds of stuff. Pillows, curtains, puppets, fake food, fake bear skin rugs. I learn how to to dye fabric, upholster furniture, and navigate the stormy politics of a professional theatre company. I learn more than I ever could’ve in grad school. And, although I don’t know it at the time, it is my dream job.
The only thing that could drag me from my dream job was, the next part of my life. Hubby finishes his P.h.D. and we leave town for his post-doctoral position. I am excited. A bigger city, with many more opportunities to work in theatre. But, the most exciting part is we are now grownups, school is done, and I hope to start the family I have been waiting for.
We move soon after Thanksgiving. Three days to unpack. On the forth day, job hunting. I find two part-time jobs within two days. Cool. Now I can look for theatre work.
By mid-January I have found two theatre gigs. One is a design job at Painfully Small Community Theatre. The second is the props coordinator at Big Time Theatre Company. I had been hired to do props because 5 of the 6 productions would use sets that were already built; this meant there was no set designer on staff to design the needed props for the shows. Prop packages for rental sets are notoriously full of holes, and certainly don’t address the needs of a director who was probably 10 years old when the set was built. I was a hole plugger. (Picture small dutch boy next to the cracked dike.)
Six musicals in one summer, each show only has one or two weeks to prepare. This is actually a very typical summer stock schedule. What made this job challenging is the scale and prominence of the company. The theater’s stage (in sq. feet) is the second largest in the country. Additionally, I would be a non-union employee of the theatre company directing a union crew.
This was a really hard job. I considered any day less than 10 hours long an easy day, and they were rare. There were no days off. I was blessed with a dependable, smart intern and some other experienced staff members who looked out for me and steered me away from trouble more than once. They also had the uncanny ability to know when to take me out for a beer. This was the scariest job I had ever attempted and I was actually good at it. The down side to the job was that it was only for the summer (not that any human could’ve maintained that pace of production year-round) and the demands of the position were hell on a marriage. At the end of the summer, the crew of union guys I had worked with told me that I had done pretty good, and they wouldn’t mind if I came back next year. Apparently, this was the first time they had ever offered this invite to someone in my position. So, you might be thinking that taking on this job was brave. Actually it was pretty dumb. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into and was motivated by the fear of someone yelling at me. There is a LOT of yelling in a place like that. I don’t respond well to yelling and will do most anything to avoid it, including work 90 or more hours a week. No wonder I was asked back. Now I just needed work from August until May.
As the end of the summer and the end of my contract neared I let co-workers know that I was looking for work. One of them must have listened. A few days before my contract was over I received a morning phone call at home. A VERY well trained voice at the other end of the line announced, “Hello, my name is Dr. Well Trained Voice and I hear you are looking for a job.” I was so stunned I almost hung up. Turns out one of my co-workers was a faculty member at Local Ultra Large University and Dr. Well Trained Voice had called her to see if she had any recent MFAs looking for work. She didn’t, but she gave him my name. He called directory assistance, and then called me. Dr. Well Trained Voice was the department chair at a theatre program at Pip Squeak Woman’s College just outside of town. I interviewed for the Scene Designer/ Technical Director / Lighting Design / Teaching/ Half-time position that evening and was offered the job on the spot. The were not wasting any time, the semester started in two weeks.
There was no logical reason for me to get this job. I did everything wrong at the interview. I was not prepared, I was sleep deprived, I knew nothing about the school or the program, my portfolio was a ghastly mess, and I told Dr. Well Trained Voice that I would not be able to keep the position more than two years, and (YES!) there had been others interview for the position. How I got this job is still a mystery to me.
As I write this I am now starting my 16th year at Pip Squeak Woman’s College which has grown into Small University. I am still in a half-time position but fortunately wear far fewer hats than I have had to during the first ten years. I have been asked back to Big Time Theatre Company many times as a props coordinator and more recently to design shows for their smaller side ventures. I am fortunate to have a husband that earns a healthy wage so that I can continue what really should be considered a self-supporting hobby.
How did I get here? Let’s review: 1. I was too lazy in school to pursue an additional major. 2. I went to grad school because that is what my husband was doing. 3. I stayed in grad school because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. 4. I got a job at a professional theatre because I was in the right place at the right time. 5. I moved to a bigger city to stay with my husband. 6. I was hired by a Big Theatre Company because only ignorant “new in town” people ever take the job. 7. I was once again in the right place at the right time to get a teaching position.
See. Nothing happened because I was brave. Honestly, I had time to pursue theatre because having a family did not come quickly or easily even once we got around to trying. I needed to stay busy to stay sane. That bad luck ended up having a very positive effect on my career. It is not the life I would’ve picked, but it is the one I have.
This is the really frustrating thing about teaching theatre. No matter how hard you work, or how “talented” you may be, it really just all depend on dumb luck.
