Live theatre is a harsh environment. Sometimes you're working on a show, and there isn't enough time, and there aren't enough resources, and there isn't enough money, and the play is too big, and the space and the time-frame you've been given are both too small, and, with six days left before your first paying audience, suddenly everyone thinks that same thought that people in the theatre have thought since the dawn of time… "We're not going to be ready."
And that is where things get interesting.
Maybe the script is going through more daily changes than an infant on ex-lax. Maybe, with one week to go, you've been given a bunch of new lines to learn… and they're all in Russian. Or imagine that you have to swing, high, fast, and upside-down on a trapeze in the narrow gap between a 200lb. guy who's swinging at you, and a cement column – if you miss the guy by a foot, and the column by ten inches, you're golden… but you're going to be threading that needle about ten times a week for the next month and a half, and it only takes things going wrong once…
So, what do you do?
Take a few deep breaths.
Ask, "Do I know what I'm doing here?"
Yeah. Yeah, you do. This isn't a life you stumbled into. You've trained longer and harder than Marines do for war. This is your calling, and this is what you do.
Now, put down the ice cream, sign off instant messenger, stop bitching about some lost "old familiar" who clearly wasn't worth your time anyway, and GET BACK TO WORK.
You've got a job to do, and you'll be damned if you're not going to do it well.
Now… who wants to see some theatre?
-BR 9.2.2007 10.47pm
http://www.magictheatre.org/season0708/expedition.shtml
1 comment:
our job is just utter insanity, isn't it? what other job is like this? who else goes through the roller coaster ups and downs? the anxiety? the working with totally insane people? the having to re-interview for your job over and over and over and over....? who else has to worry about such bodily and mental harm? (well, okay circus people actually maybe have us beat there....)
it's pretty amazing how it keeps being worth it, huh?
i like your blog a lot. :) i feel like i know a little more about the brentster.
and never you fear - the cake is waiting for you in the fridge. :)
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