A Little Something I've Learned (Part 1 LONG)

Gentle Readers --

Most of you know that I am a stage manager, that I work in the live entertainment world as a non-touring freelance community (mostly) theatre stage manager, but there are two things you don't know:

A) I have been involved in live theatre in some way or other (with an alarming digression, courtesy of my mother, into child modeling -- for Sears -- when I was 9 or 10 years old) for 30 of my 36 years. True. My first show in front of paying audiences was my first (and last, and only!) ballet recital when I was 6. At 9 years old I was in summer stock in Chicago, by the time I was 12 I'd discovered technical theatre (in our summer community in Michigan) and by the time I was 16 I was working backstage doing props and backstage managing in San Diego, CA, for a well-regarded community theatre organization there. When I was 18 I managed my first backstage as a production assistant for my college, and from there I've never looked back.

The reason I'm telling you this, Gentle Readers, is so that you will get a feel for why the other thing you probably don't know (and what I'm about to tell you) is such a big deal. In short, theatre was my life for a very long time. So much so that everything else went down before it. Friends. Romance. Alan Doyle isn't the only one who's missed funerals (it was my grandmother too, and my favorite, but what could I do? I was in a show . . . ).  If I had a choice, and I was in a show, there was no choice. The show came first. In my way, I've been as dedicated and ruthless in my chosen field as any of the core members of Great Big Sea, except that it's a thousand percent harder to make it in my field than in theirs, believe it or not, merely because the 'pond' (as in, big fish, small pond) is SO much smaller. There aren't nearly as many chances to make it big or to claw your way up by your own bootstraps with what I do, so it's that much smaller, that much harder, that much narrower to succeed.

But I was *focused*. I was like a narrow beam of light. I was sure I was equal to the task. I knew what I wanted and wouldn't let anything stand in my way. I fought for every step up the ladder I could get. My life was nothing but theatre. My wardrobe was nothing but black. The only time I was aware of the outside world was if one of my actors happened to mention the whatever-it-was, or if my director needed me to know it. I spent 6 years in a totally unsuitable university, chasing a degree, because I thought it would help.  I understand Dear Home Town better than many because I have been there and walked in their moccasins and I have made the same decisions. I sold my soul also. That song, for me, is intensely personal and I can't listen to it without wincing. Great Big Sea is not telling me anything new. But . . . there is more to the story.

And all of that which I just told you, Gentle Readers, is why, B) in 2008, after a disastrous first time out with one of the big companies here in town (and it really was an epic fail, I took the job of stage manager against my own better judgment and paid dearly for it) it was such a big thing, for me to take a leave of absence. A sabbatical. A break. Whatever you want to call it.

Many things happened to make the very easy decision to walk away from everything. I turned my back on my world and cut every single tie. I left entirely. I had to. There was no, partial separation. It was like a divorce. It had to be complete.

I was in my mid-30's and still not making a living. Making money, despite being in the arts, was a higher priority the older I got. I'd met a very good man -- and THAT tends to change your priorities!! And during my last show the 35W bridge collapsed. People died. In a way, it was worse, to me, than the 9/11 attacks, because though I'd known people who were all supposed, for one reason or another, to be in the towers or on the planes, and who weren't, thank God, when the bridge collapsed it was intensely personal. And intensely horrible. I couldn't find all my actors, some of them weren't answering their phones and I knew -- as did the rest of the cast -- that they all would have driven on that bridge, as I'd done, not an hour before, to get to rehearsal. They finally showed up, late, eventually, having not heard the news or checked their cell phones, but those moments of carefully hidden panic and terror and despair were enough to make me rethink things. A LOT of things. A stage manager is not supposed to show any feeling beyond a cheerful competence. We are supposed to be a badge of reassurance to our actors that nothing is wrong. And as I kept that rehearsal going that night, being a rock, taking care of everything, calling people to make sure they were safe, gently but inexorably forcing the people who were already there to work (because the director knew that action was better than inaction) while waiting for our missing people, when what I really wanted to do was teleport home to put my head under the covers and shake, I knew right then that I would not be able to do this again. A disaster of that magnitude changes things. And all of a sudden, I started thinking about my priorities and what I *really* wanted out of life that I wasn't getting. And then I knew that to get what I wanted something else would have to give.

So, I quit. I had thought, and planned, that quitting was going to be a permanent thing. I wanted to actually experience LIFE. I wanted to not be at somebody else's beck and call, constantly, I wanted to say YES when my friends invited me somewhere, instead of always saying "I can't, I have rehearsal", I wanted to do the simple pleasures -- go to a movie on Friday night with my boyfriend. Walk the dog on Saturday morning. The little things that people who AREN'T in the live entertainment business take for granted. Grocery shopping during daylight hours. You know. To do laundry without having to do it all on one day -- Monday. Have an actual birthday party instead of bringing a cake to the green room. To wake up without a schedule regimented down to the second. Remember, I hadn't really had any of this as an adult. There was a lot I'd missed out on, that I wanted to experience, that everybody else in the world just does and doesn't think about.

And then, when Fish and I started getting serious and we moved in with each other and then he put a ring on my finger and then we bought a house together, I was happier than I'd ever been. And I was amazed to discover that other things had taken precedence naturally. There was no angst. No sorrow. I was actually happy to not be working. Of course, I was also planning a wedding virtually singlehandedly and then I had my first bout of iritis, but life was good.

And I got married and got the sight back in my left eye and had a garden and dogs and I was even more happy. Then . . . about 3 weeks after I got married I got called by a desperate director of a MN Fringe Festival show. Would I . . . could I . . . did I mind . . . it was in the summertime. It was only for two weeks. It didn't pay anything, but it was the FRINGE (do you know how hard it is to get in there? HARD.). I couldn't resist adding it to my resume. I was a last-minute substitution because their original had a sudden conflict (a death, I think) that made them have to leave.

So in the 8 weeks or so between my marriage and my honeymoon, I was being the stage manager and board operator for a live theatre production for about 4 of those weeks including rehearsal time.

Which should have told me something right there, I suppose. After we got back from a glorious week in Disneyworld in Florida, I decided that I wasn't ready to go back to the theatre world, indeed, I didn't know if I would EVER be ready. I told myself that the Fringe thing was just an oddball little deal, that it didn't matter.

And I stayed strong, happy and secure in my new life, for another year and a bit. But then . . . well . . . you can read about that, Dear Readers, in Part 2, which will happen later this week once I get some news that I've been waiting on, one way or another. The news forthcoming will dictate what I write, so I have to wait, and so, perforce, will you. But it will be worth it, one way or another. I promise.