I occasionally write about ways that aspects of my job intersects with my life. People often expect me to be some kind of organizational guru because I’m a stage manager, but truth… I don’t think I am. It’s a little chicken and egg for me. Am I a good stage manager because I have good organizational skills or did I learn good organizational skills because I became a stage manager. I think a lot of it is the latter. I have to work really hard to not seem like a professional mess, and occasionally those skills in the workplace are useful in the rest of life.
Anyhow, this one isn’t actually a stage management skill, but more a mind blowing tip turned life advice I got once while on the job.
I mentioned a few weeks ago about attending a retirement party of a dear dear colleague who was retiring after thirty plus years at my company. She has taught me so much in the twenty years I’ve known her. One of my favorite turns of phrases comes from her, “Managing expectations.” I’d never heard anyone else say that until she came into rehearsal one days and said to the director, “I need to manage you expectations on what will be ready the first time you rehearse onstage.” What a gentle, level headed, non-panic inducing way of saying, “We’re behind in our work and there are things that won’t be ready.”
But this tidbit came from seven or eight years ago, we were working on a production of The Marriage of Figaro. There was a scene where the maid Susanna had to take her apron off. She starts the scene with her apron on, so at the top of every rehearsal, I would help her into her rehearsal skirt then tie the apron on her since the bow was in the back. Some days, during the scene, the apron would come right off, and some days it would be a tangled mess and the singer would get frustrated as she tried to sing and fumble with apron strings.
One day, my colleague M was watching rehearsal, and saw the singer struggle with untying the apron strings. At a pause in rehearsal she came up to me and the singer and suggested to the singer, “Why don’t you tie the apron on yourself. “
The singer did so.
Then M said, “Reach around and untie it.”
And then magically, the singer was able to reach around an with one tug smoothly untie the apron.
Afterwards, M said to me, “If you let them tie their own apron strings, they’ll know which tail to grab to untie it. When you tie it for them, the strings sit differently from what they expect and they’ll get tangled.”
It was such a clear and simple thing, but I had never thought about it before. Trust the lady who has spent forty years tying apron strings to point this out to me. By letting someone get into something themselves, they will be able to see (or feel) more clearly how to get out of it. (I mean there are exceptions, of course. Corsets, for one.) It’s similar to another piece of advice from a mentor early in my stage management days, “Never hand a singer their prop. teach them where the prop table is, otherwise you’ll spend all your time handing people props.”
It was hard advice for me to internalize – as a stage manager, I feel like I should help people. I want to make life as easy for them as possible, remove obstacles, give them as little to do so they can just concentrate on the work they do onstage. But I’m realizing it’s more work and potentially frustration- for me, for the crew, for the singer themselves – when they get everything handed to them without learning the ropes (apron strings?) themselves. They need to be able to find the prop table back stage and the correct apron string when it comes time to take the apron off.
I think about M’s words often in my non-work life, too – particularly with my kids. I turn around in my head the difference between doing something for my kids and letting them discover something for themselves. Of letting them climb to the top of the play structure, discovering where each foothold is, rather than giving them a boost and bypassing those footholds. Because those are the same foothold that they need to know to climb back down. If they don’t find them going up, will they be able to find them coming back down? Or so many other things – if they put away the dishes, they’ll know where to find them later; same thing with backpacks and bike helmets and homework and friendships – though, we are still working on all these ones, truth be told. But you know, you can’t rescue everyone. And sometimes inserting yourself just mucks things up even more.
So as as a tribute to the wonderful M on her retirement, I am passing along her wise wise words to the world – “Let people tie their own apron strings.”
Have you ever received advice from a work colleague that’s stuck with you?
This past week was pretty mild, but what a snowy, snowy week we hadthe week previous! I have to say, after having absolutely no snow last year, it was a bit of a shock to have so much snow last week. Of course, still not as much snow as in other parts of the country, but certainly what qualifies for a lot of snow here – maybe 3-5 inches.
The quick version: -Monday was MLK Day, so no school for the kids. I did have to work, so the Husband was home with them. -Tuesday: Snow Day!!! Schools were closed, and the building where we rehearsed was on a delay. Also, annoyingly, County summer camp sign ups opened at 6:30a am. So at 8am, I was on the phone with work re-scheduling rehearsal while at the same time on my computer trying to register the six year old for summer camp slots. The Husband worked from home. -Wednesday: another snow day! Although the 4 year old’s preschool was open. Let me tell you – she loves it when she’s the only one who gets to go to school. Again, the Husband worked from home. -Thursday: Everyone got to go to school. HOOORAY!!!! -Friday: Snow day! Again. I had to be in at work around 2pm, so I took the morning shift with the kids and the Husband went in to work. He came home around 12:30pm.
So yup – a grand total of ONE day in school for the older two kids.
In amongst all this – I opened a show and closed a show. I would say I also teched a show, but the process was so quick, I would barely count it as “tech” – just one day of rehearsal onstage. The show was a program of three newly commissioned 20 minute operas. It’s something we do every year and I love participating. There is such excitement about presenting premieres of new works written by young composers and librettist. One piece in particular was so quirky and fun – it takes place in a world after humans are extinct and the characters are microplastics and a tardigrade. I had to google tardigrade and now I feel that much smarter for knowing what a tardigrade is. (If you, like me, didn’t know, it’s a small microscopic creature that can live in extreme conditions and survive anything. They look like little bears. Apparently there’s an Aquanots episode about them.)
So putting up a show combined with a snow week was kind of … a lot. But at least I got to go to work. The Husband’s three day weekend stretched into a five day weekend, and he should get a medal for being home with the kids for all that time.
Things that worked this tech period: – prioritizing life and work things. I didn’t have an assistant for this show, so I had to really focus on what was important to getting the show up. There was one moment in particular that stood out for me when I declined a meeting invite. It was just a 20-30 minute meeting, and normally I would think, “It’s thirty minutes, I can squeeze that in.” But I decided that, no, actually I’m stage managing a show without an assistant – I need those 20-30 minutes for myself or I won’t get my paperwork done and I will be stressed out – the meeting can wait. It was a bit of a lightbulb for me, to be honest – to be able to say, “That isn’t a good time for me, can we re-schedule?” I have no bones declining meeting when I have to be somewhere else – ie. “I’m only available until 3:30p because I need to pick up the kids.” But somehow, saying, “I can’t do that because I need to finish my paperwork” I don’t know – that had never occurred to me. – Not worrying about things being pretty. Look, like most stage managers, I love nice paperwork – I love charts and diagrams and running times all lined up. But you know, ultimately getting the information out correctly is the most important thing. So yeah, there was some paperwork that had a mistake and I decided that I’m just going to correct that with a Sharpie rather than try to open the document on my computer and change it. Why waste the paper or my time? -Packing food, particularly leftovers. I always pack food, but it’s especially helpful because this theatre is farther away from the staff canteen than the other theatre I worked at. I think three out of four days last week, I had leftovers in a tortilla for dinner. Perfect thing to eat efficiently. -Four Color Frixion Pen. Frixion Pens are one of the best new inventions for stage mangers. Well, at least this stage manager. My favorite is a four colour Frixion pen in black, green, red, and blue. All those colours in one barrel so I can colour code cues in my book without having to pull out another pen. And also the ability to erase cues when things change. Amazing. -Riding to work with my work bestie. When I’m in tech, my social life suffers and I miss seeing friends. Which is why I love that one of my good friend works with me and we get to ride to work together and talk about life and work and all the things at Trader Joe’s that I miss buying. – Realizing I’m the stage manager. I have always been more of a self-effacing type of stage manager. It’s not necessarily a good thing. But twice last week, people have said to me, “You get to decide; you’re the stage manager.” Whoa what??? Right. I get to tell people that I want them at a meeting. And, this was the big moment – I get to decide that it’s okay that I wore my snow boots all day because if it’s between taking the time to change into my black shoes and not getting that one last thing done, versus just keeping the damn snow boots on but getting the thing done – I’m going to keep my snow boots on. And the world didn’t end. I mean I don’t think it’s an open invitation to be cavalier and dress unprofessionally, but … in the scheme of things – it’s okay to keep the snow boots on. -Taking time to go sledding. Last year I bought a sled. Then it didn’t snow. Bummer. So I was very determined to take the kids sledding this year when the snow hit. You know, if it was a choice between taking the kids sledding and making the paperwork pretty – I chose sledding. On Tuesday, I told the kids that if they wanted to go sledding, we had to leave the house by 9:30am and we managed to do it. We drove to the local elementary school where there is a nice hill and went sledding for 45 minutes. (Funny side note story -while sledding, we ran into a kid that the 12 year old knows from school, and he said snow days at after care were the best – the aftercare company was still providing care that day because the buildings were still open – because you got to play dominos and then after lunch, the after care folks would take all the kids to the hill and give them each a pizza box to go sledding. Doesn’t that just sound like the height of childhood memories?)
So we only have one sled – the other thing is a plastic tub that we use as a water table during the summer. It works great!
Then on Friday, the same thing. I told the kids that if they wanted to go sledding, I would take them, but we had to be ready to go by 9:30am, and again, they were! And honestly, I would have been really disappointed if we hadn’t gone. This time, we also took our neighbor’s kid with us. (I firmly believe in being a village and if I don’t have to be at work until 2pm then why not take an extra kid with us so her parent can have a few hours to work? Plus the kids always love having other kids around and they other family takes our kids sometimes in the evenings too.) I took a few runs down this hill this time in the sled which was really fun, and I thought ahead and brought a Thermos of hot chocolate with us, a lovely treat once we got done sledding.
Looking back on that list, what struck me is that a lot of what made the week go well on my end is that I made very mindful choices about what was important to keeping me going and everything else could be subpar or just dropped. There is a culture in stage management (and theatre, and really, I’m sure a lot of other industries) of pushing yourself and letting work drain every last drop that you have to give. It doesn’t need to be that way. I need to do things in a way that leave me mental margin, so that when the important things come up, I have the bandwidth to deal with that. Even things like taking my kids sledding – being able to step out of the job and concentrate on, “What can I do to make memories with my kids?” – it puts me in a better mood at work because I know that if nothing else, we had 45 minutes of joy that morning. I feel more like there is a bit more balance to me. It relieves a bit of the mental load of wondering if my kids’ are having a good day and the guilt of not being home at bedtime – because you know what? They at least had a good morning and I feel like there’s a bit o (I do still have a lot of guilt and struggle over the fact that the Husband does 95% of the parenting when I’m working and I know it’s a lot to put on his plate… I need to work on how to achieve balance when there is no balance.)
Hopefully writing those “things that worked” will help me remember them next time I’m in tech. Which won’t be until May. That’s a little wild for me to realize that I don’t have a show to work on for a long stretch.
Fun Family Activity – We went to a concert by Elena Moon Park. Park is a musician who reimagines folk songs and children’s songs from around the world, mostly from East Asia – yay Asian representation! I had heard her at an outdoor concert two years ago and I really loved her music so when I had a chance to hear her again, I was really excited to hear her again and take the kids. During the concert, the kids were kind of clingy and they didn’t participate in any of the clapping games or hand gesture-y parts, and I was worried that they weren’t liking it. But afterwards, they were singing bits of the concert, so I guess they did enjoy it after all.
Other nice things this week: -The six year old reading Dogman to his little sister.
– Dropping the 12 year old and her friend at voice lessons and then going for a walk and re-discovering the Glass Forest. The Glass Forest is a really neat little bit of forest where someone has hung bits of glass and metal and what not from the trees to make a series of sculptures. When you walk through it, the wind knocks the metal and glass together and it’s like walking in a windchime. It’s a little creepy, a little magical. I was on a walk while the 12 year old was at her voice lesson and I happened upon the Glass Forest. I had come here years ago, on some kind of mission to find hidden gems of DC. This definitely fit the bill of “hidden gems” but I had forgotten about it in the years since, so it was a nice surprise to find it again.
-Okay, I feel super pretentious recounting this, but it was such a sweet moment – after sledding on Friday, as we were enjoying our hot chocolate and taking in the snowy views, the six year old says, “Mommy, it looks like a Robert Frost poem!” Lest you think the six year old is some kind of genius budding English scholar – he knows exactly one Robert Frost poem. We have an illustrated version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” – and the cover did indeed look like the scene before us:
…miles to go…
-And this made me laugh – The Husband and I stayed up late to watch the football game one night. And the 12 year old tried to convince us to let her stay up too. The reason? it was not because she was a huge footballs fan. No – it was the Kansas City game and she wanted to see if she could catch a glimpse of Taylor Swift. We sent her to bed, though I did take a picture of the tv when they showed Swift during one moment.
Current woes – Homework. The first grader has started coming home with homework and he is very reluctant to do it. I alternate between threatening/pleading/cajoling/bribing/etc. him to do it, and just saying “F*ck it! It’s first grade. If he doesn’t want to do it, why should I spend energy getting him to do it?” Then I have a tiny panic spiral about how I’m not setting him up for success and I go back to threatening/pleading/cajoling/bribing/etc. This is not where I want to spend my energy. So truth – it usually only gets done 50% of the time.
I’ve grown very hands off with the 12 year old’s homework. This is not some bold parenting choice. This is just lack of energy. At any rate, she has told me that many of her teachers don’t believe in homework (Great! They should meet the 1st grader’s teacher!). So it is entirely possible that she doesn’t have any homework. I for sure only very rarely see her do homework, and her grades keep coming back solidly average, so I guess she is doing what she is supposed to be doing, whether or not it is homework. As someone whose parents were very involved in my academic progress, I’m feeling a little bit like I ought to care a little bit more.
Grateful For: -The Husband having the flexibility to handle all the snow days.
-All the super talented people I work with. I know I say this every time, but I work with amazingly competent and supportive people. Everyone knew that I was working without an assistant and there were so many offers of, “What can I do for you?” I guess this is another thing that made last week good – when people offered to help, I let them. I let someone else check the sign in sheets, I let someone else buy me a Coke to get through one long day. I let someone else start rehearsal when I couldn’t make it quite in time after dropping the 4 year old at school following a delayed opening. There is no room to be a martyr here and I’m glad I don’t have to be.
-How beautiful everything looks blanketed in snow. I know living in snowy weather is not always easy or ideal, but it sure is pretty, and I always feel lucky that I get to see it. There is nothing like being cozy inside with a cup of hot tea (or cocoa) while watching the world being buried in snow and silence.
-And also -grateful for snow plows and snow shovels so I can get safely to work. And an all wheel drive vehicle.
-The twelve year old’s friends for coming to celebrate her birthday. We had six kids over to belatedly celebrate the twelve year old’s birthday, with three of them spending the night. The next morning we had waffles and bacon and fruit and then a group of them went to see the new Mean Girls movie. It was a pretty hands off affair for us. We helped them make pizzas, then gave them the run of the basement. I did go downstairs and turn off the tv at 12:30am to a bit of minor protesting. Afterwards, the twelve year old said to me, “Thanks for turning the tv off. I’m really tired and I would be even more tired if you had let me stay up all night.” Wow. That’s a nice bit of self awareness there. Anyhow, I’m glad that her friends came over and that she had a good birthday party.
Looking Forward To: -I signed up for a slot at Career Day at the 12 year old’s school. I went back and forth on whether or not to sign up – I think I have a pretty fun job, but it’s also a very seasonal job (for me – there are people who do this full time), and I don’t know if non-full time employment is really what Career Day is about? Oh well. I’m nervous – what am I going to talk about for thirty minutes??? But it’s good to do new things, particularly things that scare you a little bit.
-Lighter work load and time to focus on house things. The two big projects are to figure out what to do about my car and moving forward with getting window treatments for the living room. Both projects carry a lot of mental and emotional stress. There’s also little projects like cleaning out the pantry and linen closet. And I really want to label the spice jars on our spice rack. Who knows if I will get that all done, but good to have aspirations.
-Listening to more of this audiobook – narrated by Julia Whelan. Julia Whelan is an amazing audiobook narrator. This book itself has some questionable plot holes and devices that normally would not appeal to me, but Whelan does such a great job that I’ve been sucked in. I can’t tell whether I would like this book if I read it vs. listened to the audiobook.
What We Ate: Saturday: Parmesan Mint Pasta. The Husband cooked because I was at work. The kids had requested mac and cheese (from the box), and the Husband said this looked more interesting and made it instead. Surprisingly tasty even though it was cold when I ate it after getting home from work.
Sunday: Scavenge. Sundays we usually try to eat down the fridge. I think there was frozen tortellini with red sauce for the kids. Not for dinner, but at lunch I had salt and vinegar stir fried potatoes, to which I added julienned golden beets. A friend had given me a bag of beets from her produce box because she didn’t like beets, so I was looking for ways to eat them. I actually ate some of them raw too – the beauty of golden beets is that they don’t stain your hands deep purple-red.
Monday: Funny story. Before I left for work, I told the Husband that there was tofu in the fridge and he should use it up. Later that day, he texted me asking if the tofu was in a red lidded container. I said, no the tofu is shrink wrapped, still in it’s own packaging. <I put that in the dinner. > he replied. <It melted.> Then, I realized what was in that red container. <That was feta> I texted him. <Lol!> he writes back. <It is still feta. L said hmmmm that’s smooth, dad!> So I guess for Monday, they had kung pao feta for dinner. With noodles.
Tuesday: Tofu stir fry. For reals this time.
Wednesday: I made vegan gnocchi soup, a recipe that I’ve made many times because the family loves it. I actually made all of it before I went to work, except the gnocchi and coconut milk – the Husband added that before he served it.
Thursday: I’m not sure what the family had for dinner. I had a ktichen sink sandwich – pickles, hard boiled eggs, cucumbers, avocados, mustard. It was quite messy to eat and now that I think of it – I could have just mashed all that into egg salad and it would have been less messy.
Friday: I had leftover curry eaten in a tortilla wrap at work. The family had waffles.
Saturday: Pizza, make your own as this was the sleepover night. And there was lots of soda and chips involved. But also carrots, cucumbers, and apple slices.
Sunday: Again – scavenge for dinner. The kids had hard boiled eggs and half and avocado each. I’m sure there were other veggies and fruits in there too. I had kimchi friend rice and golden beets pan fried on the griddle. I feel like this is my go to Sunday scavenge dinner – kimchi fried rice and whatever other veggies are in the fridge.
Another show closed. Well there was only one performance, so it opened and closed on the same night. Someone backstage was wishing people “Happy Clopening!” This was unlike any tech period I’d ever done before. First of all, we had fewer onstage rehearsals than I’m used to, so everything felt rather ambitious and there was no day off before closing so I definitely had to pace myself a little bit. But the biggest adjustment for me is that because it is an outdoor venue, we had all our lighting sessions at night, after the evening rehearsal. It doesn’t do much good to write light cues during the day with bright sunlight everywhere. So for three days, we would rehearse until 11 or 11:30pm, the cast would go home, and then we would have a little break and then come back and light from 12:00 midnight until 2:30am. Go home, sleep, and come back the next afternoon. It’s funny how coming back to work at 2 or 3:00pm can feel just like arriving to work at 10am – the same kind of groggy, anticipatory energy as you walk in the door for the first time, chai in hand.
I guess many outdoor opera companies do this over night tech session, but it was my first time experiencing it. Thankfully the company provided us with food after the evening rehearsal and before the midnight tech session. As the big boss said, “It’s easier to work the third shift with a full belly.” I know some jobs, particularly in the for profit sector, the company providing food, or being able to expense food, is a given, but it’s not that way where I work, so I’m always grateful when we are included in company provided meals.
Anyhow, the show is now closed, farewells have been said and the summer opera season is over or me. On to the next.
Tech week stats- Average Steps / day, over 4 days of tech: 18, 623 Average flights climbed/day: 23. The set had two levels, rather high ones actually. There was one staircase that took you up 30 feet in the air.
Here is the view from the top:
Some other fun tech week photos:
Paperwork – I did the wardrobe/wigs running paperwork, which requires a lot of time math to figure out how long someone has to change their costume.
The swanky outdoor patio off of the space we used for our office. The hammock was wet for most of the week, so I did not get to relax on it as I wanted. I might have taken a ten minute nap in those chairs at one point, though.
Our pretty pretty set. One night only then into the dumpster. Theatre is so ephemeral.
Our fabulous interns lightwalking at 2am.
The tower opens up to reveal these mirrored walls:
The view of the theatre as you drive up – how lucky to work in such a beautiful space!
Also – on a sartorial note – On Opening Night, I saw several ladies in these really elegant caftans. Now I’m at a stage where “cocktail attire” sounds completely uncomfortable and unpleasant to me. Plus there is no longer anything in my closet that might pass for cocktails attire. And heels… forget about it. So when I saw several ladies so elegant and cool looking in soft billowy caftans, I thought… “Am I old enough – and poised enough — to be able to pull that off?” and now I am contemplating adding a beautiful elegant caftan to my wardrobe that might be opening night worthy. Something like:
from Anthorpologie
or this;
From Banana Republic
Or this one is fun:
From Nieman Marcus – though definitely on the price-y side for me. But alos I appreciate the non-plunging neckline.
I’d have to figure out the heels situations though…. I feel like 75% of what makes something elegant is wearing heels.
The Husband took the kids out of town for three days to visit family, coinciding with the first few days of tech, which was extremely nice. For the second time this summer, I had the house to myself, though this time I was in the theatre for much of the the time so I didn’t get to indulge in my alone time as much as earlier this summer.
My first evening with an empty house, though I had a long date with a friend. It was blazingly hot so she wandered if we could do something in the air conditioning.
So I suggested ice skating. I had, in fact, just been at the ice rink that morning with the kids for their lesson and the 50 degree arena was refreshing. My friend thought it was a brilliant idea, so we went and spent two hours gliding lazy laps around the rink. Then we went for dumplings at my favorite dumpling house. Since the last time I was there the restaurant has expanded into the space next door to become some kind of karaoke bar, and walking in the hip new interior was a bit of a shock. This is the dumpling house that the Husband used to eat at every Friday for lunch when his office was a few blocks away. We used to come with our teeny tiny babies and there is one waitress who would hold our babies and walk around with them so that we could eat. When my friend and I walked in, the waitress asked me, “Where are the kids?”
“My Husband took them out of town,” I said.
“Vacation for you!” She said.
When she took our order, she said, “We have special vegetables today!” Apparently during the summer she grows vegetables in her back yard and then brings them in to the restaurant for them to cook and serve. She even pulled out her phone to show us pictures of her green green plots of land. It was very impressive. “In the Summer we are Farm to Table too!” she laughed. She was explaining what vegetables she brought in today and said we should try one of the dishes, one of which was a shrimp dish. The translation app translated the name of the vegetable as “loofah”. And indeed it was – it was kind of like a spongy cross between a cucumber and a zucchini. Very tasty. The cucumbers in our cucumber salad were also from her garden and they were the lightest crunchiest cucumbers I had ever tasted.
After dinner we walked over to a dessert place called Kyoto Matcha that I had wanted to try for a while. They have a lot of Matcha based desserts, including a “blanket cake” that looks exactly like it sounds – a swaddle of dessert. I got a Kyoto Cream Roll Cake which had a slightly salty cream filling. My friend go the red bean blanket cake – both were really delicious. We got our cake and sat in the plaza and ate cake and talked about life and such until it got late and then we went home. It was so nice to spend time with my friend, one on one, without the ids around, even though she is always the best with my kids.
Things that made life fun last week or so: -Getting the Wordle in one! I mean statistically it’s bound to happen since I use the same first word, but still it was pretty fun when all the squares turned green the first go around. Though I have to admit it is not as satisfying as getting it in six or three – three because it makes me feel smart and six because it makes me feel lucky. Now I have to find a new first word. Ironically, the weekend thread on Ask A Manager had a threadjack on Wordle first words – some good options. I liked poser and pinky. Stare seems to be a common one too.
-Before they left for the lake, the two older kids had their Theatre Camp performances. It was a harrowing week for camp because the storm the previous weekend had done a lot of damage to the park where they originally had camp, so they had to change locations. The new location was not as convenient for me, but some of the camps at the park had to cancel so I’m glad our camp was able to relocate. Each child was in a different show and it was so fun to see them up on stage – saying lines, singing, dancing, and having a good time. My favorite moment was when the six year old, playing one of the children in a Pied Piper of Hamlin inspired story had to be a frozen statue – he was such a great frozen statue. The little guy is surprisingly good at standing still and staring off into space. Theatre camp is expensive, but I think the kids get so much out of it, so I’m glad we can afford to send them.
-While waiting for the kids’ camp performance to start, I had enough time to take a very muddy run on a nearby trail, where I met this little guy:
-Just down the road from the new camp location is a produce stand. I stopped by one day because they had peaches and peaches are one of my favorite things about summer. “Do you take credit cards?” I asked the guy at the register. “We only take cash, check, or IOU,” he replied. I must have given him a funny look, because he said, “My boss has been here for thirty years every summer and it’s the way he does things. If anyone doesn’t have the money, we let them have what they want and tell them to come by when they have the money.” “That seems so odd!” I said. “Yeah, it’s not how people do business these days, but it works for us.”
So he sent me on my way with six peaches, and the next day, I came back with cash and bought another six peaches. So I guess it does work out okay for everyone somehow.
The IOU produce stand.
Grateful For: Tech Week Edition:
-Water, ice, and Gatorade and my insulated water bottle. Like I mentioned – we were at an outdoor venue. It was in the high 80s and oh so humid last week. The venue provided us with huge coolers of ice and bottled water as well as water coolers with both ice water and room temperature water. During the performance there was Gatorade as well. I’m not a Gatorade person, but I tell you, at intermission after being on my feet since 6pm, and sweating profusely, I drank a bottle and felt better. I had brought my black blazer to wear because I do believe in wearing long sleeves backstage, especially since the venue was so big that there were large swaths of the audience who could see backstage from where they sat. But I soon gave up on the blazer and just wore it when I was standing close in the wings. I also started googling “Black Linen Blazer”. My insulated Kleen Kanteen also got such a lot of use. So glad I bought a straw lid for it. I was having a conversation with my sister in law who lives in Amsterdam about water and she said, “Oh we don’t drink ice water in Europe; I’t sso American.” And I thought with sad dismay, “But ice water on a hot day is one of the great pleasures in life!” She is missing out, I tell you.
-Fans. There were giant fans everywhere backstage. I definitely adjusted my traffic patterns and took the opportunity to walk by them any chance I got.
-The Husband taking the kids away for a few days. Being at the theatre until 2:30am is a lot more manageable when I don’t have to get up at 7:00am to get the kids to camp/school. I did have to get the youngest one to school on the last two days of tech, but the Husband made sure that they didn’t wake me up too early. There was one morning when a child walked in and said, “It’s 8:00 – why are you still in bed? Are you okay?” then she ran downstairs in a panic to tell the Husband.
-2:30am traffic. Much lighter than 3:00pm traffic. Because the last thing I want to do when getting off work at 2:30am is sit in bumper to bumper traffic. So yeah, I’m glad there are only a few poor souls out of the Capital Beltway in the pre-dawn hours. It did also have me wondering who these 2:30am on the beltway souls were. I’m sure there are many tales to be told there.
-The past three productions of Don Giovanni that I’ve done. This is my fourth production of Don Giovanni. (I think the show I’ve done the most is The Marriage of Figaro – I’ve done six of those – there was a period of life when I did a Figaro every year. Good thing it’s my favorite opera.) Anyhow, every production is different, yet a lot is still the same. A lot of the music, even with cuts, is the same. The reason I’m glad for having done so many Giovannis is that I am very familiar with the music. And the score is very heavy – it’s like four hundred pages or something like that, plus it’s in a binder with all my other show running paperwork. (Some people just keep their scores in a separate binder which makes things lighter, but I like having things all together. I have colleagues who are starting to to work off tablets. I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.) Normally I carry my score with me around while I’m running the show, periodically parking it on a music stand. (This is actually somewhat controversial. Some people think you should always have your score with you. Some people think you should leave it on the music stand and run around unencumbered. I fall somewhere in between but do tend to carry it around a lot. But over all, I’m a “You do you” kind of person.) With a 400 page score, this gets very tiring. It wasn’t that our production was that busy, but with the heat, I was running water to singers practically every time they came off stage. Juggling five water bottles, a towel for wiping sweat plus a 400 page score was kind of ridiculous. So I just left my score on my music stand for most of the show. And the reason I felt like I could do this was because I had done three previous productions and I knew approximately how much time I had between cues. I didn’t have to have the music with me to know where I was in the show. I knew that the start of this aria meant I had three minutes to get to this wing to cue these singers onstage. I knew that the repeat of the A section of this line meant that that singer had two minutes left in their costume change. I mean even with a new score I have the timings written and and I could figure it out and learn the rhythms, but there is something easier about not having to look it up at all. So yeah, I’m grateful for those three previous productions of of Giovanni and for being able to run around backstage in the summer heat without having to lug my 400 page score with me.
-And as always, my amazing colleagues who are so good at what they do and who makes me laugh and keep my spirits up even at 2:30am. This job is so much harder when I don’t get along with the people I work with.
Looking Forward To:
-The start of School! There is back to school shopping to do and a few more days to wring out all the summer we can before getting back into the school year routine. I feel like I need to get the kids back on a school sleep schedule. They’ve all been staying up til 9:00p/9:30p even 10pm, and waking up around 7:30pm. Well except the 3 year old who wakes up at 6:30am no matter what time she goes to bed. The oldest will be starting middle school, which starts at 8:15am, so that will also be a big adjustment getting out of the house an hour earlier. She has a practice half day coming up, so we’ll see how that goes. Also – not sure how she she is getting to school. Bus is only provided if you live 1.2 miles from school and we live 1.1 miles. So walk, or maybe bike? It feels a little far to walk, but maybe not. There is one pretty busy road to cross and no stop light, only a cross walk, unless you walk two blocks up or down, which adds about five minutes to the walk. I do worry because we live next to the hospital so there is a lot of traffic on that road. But also I don’t have time to walk with her or drive her myself since I have to get the other kids to school (plus our neighbor’s kids). Maybe the first week, I can walk with her to the busy street and make sure she gets across safely. New year, new challenges!
-Also on that note: getting back to routines. I feel like I’m behind in everything – laundry, house chores, life chores, kids activity sign up. I’m looking forward to having time to think things through.
-Going to visit a friend at her house on the shore.
-Going to the County Fair! Rides! Fried Food! Animals!
– Getting my passport renewed. This is one of those “Looking forward to checking off the to do list” tasks. The Husband was going through our box of documents and said, “Hey your passport is about to expire.” “No, it isn’t,” I said. “I put a calendar reminder to renew it three months out.” “Oooookay,” he said. So I pull it out and looked at it. Friends, it expires NEXT MONTH. Oops. I thought I had put a calendar reminder to renew my passport this year, but turns out that was a calendar reminder to renew my daughter’s passport. So it must be done and soon. I’m glad I didn’t have any international trips planned. And hope that I won’t have to flee the country any time soon. Also I now need to find one day with perfect hair to have my picture taken.
-Reading this book:
It’s a book that feels quite personal to me and I can’t put it down. All my youthful and middle-age insecurities as an Ivy League student/graduate are right here in every chapter.
What we Ate: We ate pizza multiple times this week, and it’s not even counting the number of times the Husband and kids ate it while visiting his sister. Pizza just seems like the easiest options for these group meals, though I do want to grow my ideas of “food to feed multiple people and kids” beyond the many variations of cheese and carbs (pizza, mac n cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas…) Anyone have any other go-to feeds a crowd with kids ideas?
Monday: Miso Tofu, Broccoli and Udon noodles. There was leftover miso sauce from something the Husband made the week before, so I threw it on tofu, baked it and had broccoli and noodles with it. vegan.
Tuesday: Eggs, The Husband cooked since I was at work.
Wednesday: Pasta and Turkey meatballs. The Husband’s sister was in town and this was an easy meal to throw in the InstantPot. Pasta and sauce cooked separately to accommodate vegetarians. I made a double batch of meatballs and froze them for future me. ( I actually made these for Wednesday, but SIL’s plans changed so I just froze the meatballs and the Husband put them in the IP – I’m so proud of him because he usually avoids the IP…)
Thursday; Pizza take out. We were going to go to the pool, but it got really chilly and rainy so we ordered pizza and ate at home with my Sister In law and her family.
Friday: Pizza and movie night. I think they watched the Lego movie.
Saturday: Dumplings and green beans.
Sunday: Family was gone, and I went to the Dumpling House with my friend.
Monday: Leftovers. Start of single lady eating.
Tuesday – Friday: Made a big pot of mujadara for Tech Week and ate a combination of that and leftovers for the rest of the week. I used this recipe from Feasting at Home.
I am definitely a “last minute” kind of person – I tend to procrastinate and then finish projects just in time. I think it comes being a Questioner (of Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies). I like to keep asking questions, wanting to have to have all the information in place perfectly before I can start a project. I used to wait until we had staged every scene in an opera to start my show running paperwork, thinking that I wanted the complete picture of the show before starting. I’ve come to realize, though, that I don’t need to have everything in place to start my paperwork- I can start my paperwork with what I know and – gasp!- adjust when things change in rehearsal.
Two things I read recently have shifted my thinking of waiting til the last minute to finish things.
The first was a recent post by Seth Godin. I really love how Godin can distill ideas down to their essence, and one of his recent posts really was an “Aha moment” me:
The second was on a blog Headset Chatter, written by a stage manager Karen Parlato. In their FAQ they answer a question about dealing with deadlines:
I like to do things right away. Stage management is all about juggling many balls. I like to get the ball out of my hands as quickly as possible so it’s over and done and I can move on to others without losing track of anything.
These two ideas really shifted my framing about workload and deadlines. I didn’t used to see the value of finishing things early, wanting my work to be as accurate and finessed as possible before distributing it. And even when I did start projects with plenty of time to spare, I found myself still working up til the deadline because I wanted to fuss and adjust and re-phrase. The work was done, but I was not done with it.
For example paperwork for backstage – all the information for the stage crew will be in the paperwork, but I continue to make slight adjustments in fits of self doubt – maybe if I adjust this margin, the crew notes will be clearer to read. Maybe if I write Stage Left rather than just SL it will be less confusing. Maybe if I put this picture just this way or that it will be clearer how the tea try is to be laid out of for the singer. The possibilities are infinite.
But my time is not infinite.
Godin’s and Parlato’s posts, helped me realize that finishing something early is not an excuse to keep futzing with it – the value of finishing something early is that that it gets it off my plate and pushes it to other people so that they can start to do their jobs. Holding on to something does not diminish my to do list. Getting things done just in the nick of time is not necessarily a virtue.
I really like Godin’s idea that those last sixty seconds can be a moment of peace before submitting something, time to savor and enjoy completing a task. It goes hand in hand with the idea that “Finished is better than perfect.” Sometimes as I endlessly change margins and adjust image sizes, I just need to tell myself to stop, and just be done so that I can celebrate having planned an executed something well.
I was talking to a dancer in rehearsal the other day about onstage mishaps. She was telling me about a moment during the last show we worked on together, when she was in the middle of a huge fight scene, and her skirt fell off. She couldn’t get it re-fastened, and spent the rest of the scene clutching her skirt to her body while trying to scratch someone’s eyes out.
Hearing her story brought back many memories. I’ve definitely had my share of onstage mishaps:
-There was the time that I was doing a show and a giant chalkboard was supposed to fly in from above during a crucial moment of a scene. Well, we had been doing a different show the night before and in order for the set pieces of that show to fit, they had to fasten the giant chalkboard from my show off so that it wouldn’t swing. Welp… after the last show, the crew forgot to untie it for our show. So when I called the cue for the Giant chalkboard… nothing happened! There the baritone is standing with a giant piece of chalk, looking up, wondering if this huge piece of scenery is going to come in, all the while singing this very fast French patter music. The baritone, who is honestly one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with, was so confused and a little bit angry.
-One show a the soprano was supposed to sit in a chaise to sing her big famous aria. Well in the scene previous, another character was thrown into the chaise in a fight, and the force of him collapsing in the the chaise shattered it. Afterwards he told me that he tried to figure out how to put it back together while staying in character, but it was futile. No one was going to be sitting in that chaise. The soprano ended up singing her big aria about love and life leaning against a desk.
– There was the recital I stage managed, of a husband and wife opera singing couple where the husband, who wasn’t feeling very well, walked offstage in the middle of their duet. “I can’t,” he muttered to himself, leaving his wife and the pianist standing on stage and the audience completely befuddled. We took a quick fifteen minute pause. The wife and the pianist looked through all the music they had with them and cobbled together a solo recital program. It still ended up being an evening of beautiful music. The husband and wife singers are no longer married.
-There was the time when the clarinetist for a show thought that the performance was at 7pm when it was at 2pm. By the time we realized he was missing he was too far away to come in for the show, so the conductor and the pianist re-orchestrated the entire show to cover for the missing clarinet.
– Last spring, when I had to step in and call the show for a colleague, I accidentally left the lighting channel turned off during a crucial moment. (The lighting channel is the headset channel that I use to talk to the light board operator. Usually I have different channels to talk to different departments so that people don’t have to listen to all the different departmental conversations at once.) Anyhow, I left the lighting channel off accidentally, so when I called for the stage to go dark so we could execute a scene shift, the light board op couldn’t hear me and didn’t take the light cue. So the stage did not go dark, and the audience got to witness the somewhat awkward sight of the crew coming onstage to push scenery around.
Luckily these incidents did not involve injury, just lots of awkwardness and a bit of fast thinking of how to triage the situation.
As I was talking to the dancer about her skirt incident, she mentioned that her boyfriend had come to see the show and he said he thought it seemed like she was holding on to her skirt awfully tight. We had a good laugh about how sometimes things happen onstage and the show isn’t perfect. It’s very very rarely perfect, in fact. Often even though it is mortifying or stressful at the time, it makes for a good story afterward. She said that she felt bad that her boyfriend didn’t get to see the perfect show.
“You know,” I told her, “It’s live theatre. That was just the show that they got that night.”
I think that’s one of the beautiful things about live theatre – it’s not something that is to be experienced the same way over and over again like a movie might be. Of course we aim for consitency, and for safety’s sake that’s the goal. At the same time, things happen, things that you can’t predict, even though you can learn and prevent them from happening again. (putting an extra stitch in that skirt hook, writing a Post-it in my book that says, “Lighting channel ON”…) Friday night’s show is not going to be the same as Sunday afternoon’s show, and that’s okay. For Friday night’s audience, that is the show that they get to see; that’s the unique experience that they get to have.
And as I said that to the dancer, I realized that this is true of life too. We can plan and plan and anticipate events, but sometimes things happen, and this is just the moment/day/month/life that we get. It might not be what we rehearsed, but it’s still can be a very fine moment.
Well, the Husband has taken the kids to New York for the weekend, so I have a childfree couple of days. Wow. I didn’t go with them because I was working, though I did contemplate going up for the one day I had off, but then decided to just enjoy the time to myself.
It’s kind of intimidating looking at the blank slate – I mean it’s almost noon and I just pulled myself out of bed. Last night I came home from rehearsal at 11:30pm, spent about 45 minutes scrolling my phone, then cleaned the kitchen until 1:30am. Part of me said I should go to be early, but part of me – wired a little from the evening’s rehearsal – thought cleaning the kitchen and listening to podcasts was the perfect activity to do when no one else was at home asleep.
Some moments this week:
-I bought a sled. We have never had a sled which is fine except for the one week that we get enough snow for sledding. The past years I’ve had the kids sled in plastic bins and cardboard boxes, but I’ve really wanted a sled. The big issue is storage. This week, I was at a consignment sale that a local pre-school does as a fund raiser and they had a sled – a really sturdy Rubbermaid sled. In fact, my good friend has this sled from her childhood and her kids still use it. I was still on the fence about it, so I told myself if it was still there the next day, which was half price day, I would buy it. I went back the next day, and it was still there, marked down to $8. I had just enough cash to buy it, after I stocked up on some other clothes for the kids. Actually – I had to use my lucky $2 bill to buy it. I have a $2 bill that I don’t remember where I got it from, but it’s been in my wallet for a few years now. After they rang me up, I was one dollar short to buy the sled. And I thought… well what use is a $2 bill just hanging out in my wallet? So I handed over the $2 bill and took the sled home. Now that I’ve used my lucky $2 bill, it’s probably not going to snow this year… but this thing is built like a tank so maybe my grandchildren will use it.
I texted this picture to the Husband and wrote, “You don’t even have to know it’s in the house.”
-The baby continues to sleep erratically. One night this week she got into bed with me about 3am and started to cry and cry and cry. She kept saying that she wanted to show me her picture. I had no clue what she was talking about, and at 3am decoding baby was not really a priority. I eventually went back to sleep and I think she did too… it’s all kind of hazy. The next morning we get up do our morning thing, and then when I go into her room, I see on the bunk beds:
Sigh. This is why we can’t have nice things.
That was her picture. She was so proud of it. She even pointed out the W she made in the top right hand corner. (W is the first initial of her name). I did manage to remove it with rubbing alcohol, though the Husband said he had been reluctant to clean it off because she was so happy with it. I’m now contemplating maybe some kind of peel and stick whiteboard? But of course if I do that it will instantly render the surface uninteresting and she will move on.
-We went to the opera! All of us, including the kids. I don’t really have a regular sitter, and the Husband and I wanted to see the opera that the baby did the video shoot for. So I thought maybe we should all just go. The ten year old loves going to the opera, and I thought it would be fun for the baby and the five year old to see the results of the video shoot. We didn’t stay until the end because we didn’t want to be out too late with the kids, but we stayed for 3/4 of the opera. The theatre even had booster cushions for the kids – which I hadn’t realized they did. Now I know for next time! It was fun to see the three year old as a huge silhouette onstage – I could tell it was her by her wild hair. Watching the opera, she was a little fidgety, and said the opera was scary, but otherwise did really well. (I mean the opera is about witches and burning women and babies, so maybe she has a point… we did not stay for what I hear was a severed head at the end.) The five year old seemed really into it, and was actually upset at having to leave early. Though he did say at intermission that he wanted to leave so maybe he just really didn’t want to go to bed when we really left. I did bribe the two little kids with lollipops to get them to sit for the second half. The singing was beautiful, and music thrilling, and I thought the tenor’s Act 3 aria was stunning. All in all, I would say a successful family venture to the opera!
Booster cushions in tow! Going to the opera!
– I had a bit of a meltdown on Monday when I went to get my bike out of the shed to go to work, and I couldn’t find the key to the shed. I (embarrassingly) called the Husband, railed at him for a little bit, then felt defeated and went upstairs to change out of my biking clothes and into work clothes and drove to work. I had planned out my bike rides depending on this week’s rehearsal schedule, and there were really only two days that would work to bike, so I was super disappointed and frustrated when I couldn’t bike to work. Anyhow… I did manage to run three times on my dinner break and bike one way on one other day, so I guess I still feel pretty good about the amount of exercise I got.
-Speaking of running – some gorgeous skies and colours during my dinner break runs this week:
There was also one house that had a wish tree out front, and people wrote wishes and hung them from the tree. I especially enjoyed this combination:
In case you can’t read it, the red tag says, “That One Direction gets back together.” The Yellow once says, “Be Connected to my Community.”
-And speaking of exercise: Friday was our first tech rehearsal in the theatre. A day that is always super busy where I’m on my feet all day, running around the stage and theatre. I looked at my Health app on the phone, and yesterday’s stats:
Which is apparently 9.2 miles
I feel like the number of steps/ distance is about right for a day of tech. Though 2 miles of that was my dinner break run. The 34 floors, however, is more than normal. I do often climb a lot of stairs during tech – our office is in the lower level of the theatre and there is a rehearsal room on the 2nd floor. This tech however was a lot more because our set has two levels and there are a lot of singers and dancers going up to the second level and coming back down, so I was running up and those steps a lot to cue them onstage or to deal with issues. Plus the stage itself a platform about two and a half feet up from the floor of the theatre so even just stepping on stage is 1/3 a flight of stairs. And I went on stage a lot yesterday. I always think it’s fun to look at these metrics as how they reflect in the day. The dip between 12n-1p was lunch break when we sat on the back terrace and enjoyed the fresh air and view of the Potomac. The spike between 5p-6p was when I went for my dinner break run. The spike in flights climbed between 8pm and 9pm was probably that part in rehearsal when one of the singers left a sword on top of the second story of the set and then we couldn’t find it so I ran up and down the steps five times looking for it because I though it might have gotten kicked off the platform and I was worried that it was under the set. (Someone else had retrieved it and put it on the prop table.) Anyhow, I always think it’s fun to look at the data from tech and compare it with other techs.
Something I read that made me think this week: This article about digital detoxing and technology norms in a collective society. The article talks about how and why the idea of a “digital detox” has come into our vocabulary and made me really think about the amount of time I spend on my phone. Well, not strictly the time that I spend on my phone, but rather the material I consume while on my phone, and how that reflects who I am. The author is a media studies professor and she writes: “Studying digital-media breaks can reveal what individuals and collectives value in unmediated spaces, and the measures they take to protect it.” I’ve been thinking lately about this idea of the offline values that I want to protect. I was looking back on my five year journal and I realized that it was this time last year that I decided to take a break from Facebook because I felt like it was a time suck. Now I don’t necessarily spend less time on my phone, but I think I spend different time on my phone. I read more books. I read and comment on more blogs. I play Wordle and DuoLingo. I still scroll a lot of stuff in Feedly and spend too much time researching purchases and go down internet rabbit holes. I think, though, if I can remember the things that I find fulfilling and satisfying offline, then it will help me be more purposeful with the time I do spend on my phone. So if I value things like connecting with people, stimulating my mind, doing something physical – I will use technology to do those things, guard them and prioritize them, and be more cognizant of when random scrolling doesn’t check those boxes.
Anyhow, my weekend aspirations so far: – Wash my bras. I, sadly, only have two bras that are currently comfortable and they both need a washing. (They are nursing bras, but are so comfortable that I still wear them. Though I do truly need new bras.) Anyhow his is kind of the sad state of affairs where I have to put “wash bras” on a list to remember to do it. – Pick up the house. Cleaners are coming Monday, and we always do a tidy before they come. Which usually involves lots of screaming, bribing , and withholding things from the children. Well, they aren’t home this weekend, so let’s see if it will be any less stressful to just do it all myself while they are gone. – a yoga or a gentle strength workout video. I ran three times this week, plus tech last night, so I’m feeling like something on the short and easy side this weekend. – ten year old’s Halloween costume. Perpetual October task. -put oil in my car. It is due for an oil change, but I don’t see that happening for another week, so this is the stop gap measure. -sleepover with my friend. We might go see a movie (This one with Cate Blanchett as a charismatic conductor. right up our music nerd alley.) Or we might just stay home and have an in home movie night. -Hike and picnic with sleepover friend. -Work Sunday Night. -random internet chores – bills, activity sign ups, still on the quest for black shoes
What We Ate:
Saturday: Hot Pot Restaurant (mentioned last post)
Sunday: Chipotle and Papa Johns at Friend’s house.
Monday: Turkey Meatballs loosely from this Smitten Kitchen Recipe. I didn’t do the broth part; I just premade the meatballs and marinated the squash so the Husband could just toss it all on a sheet pan when he got home and they ate it with pasta. I made a double batch of the meatballs and froze them, which I think future me will thank me for. This was really tasty – I ate it cold when i got home from work and the kids took the leftovers for lunch the next day. The three year old, who says “I don’t like vegetables!” ate all of her yellow squash and then some, but refused to eat the zucchini because it was green.
Tuesday: I had leftovers at work – the last of the mushroo wild rice soup from a week and a half ago. The Husband took the kids to dinner with a friend.
Wednesday: We went to the Opera this night and ate at the terrace cafe at the theatre, which is always pricy, but the food is good and I get a tiny discount. I had a Cioppino which straddled the line between briny and salty.
Thursday: The family had leftover pizza – something easy as they were packing for their trip. I had some kind of leftovers grabbed from the fridge. I’ve started packaging the leftovers in smaller containers when possible so I can just grab them out of the fridge on my way to work.
Friday: Husband and kids were away. I brought a kale salad for dinner – Massaged kale, roasted butternut squash, almonds, avocado, cucumbers, radishes, cheddar cheese, olive oil, salt, shallots, lemon. It was really tasty. And a good way to clean out the vegetable drawer.
So many Post-Its! A page from my score for the opera Radamisto.
(So I realize, after the it was written that this post got a little in the weeds about stage management life… hopefully there isn’t too much theatre lingo in it! But happy to explain if anyone is confused by the terminology. I think I take the terms for granted sometimes and assume it’s pretty clear what we are talking about.)
Sometimes, when calling a show, I would get a note from the director that something was called late. And I will look at that page in my score or script, where things are a rainbow of post its which tell me when to call the cues, and I think to myself, “Oh yes. It was. There is a sound cue and a light cue at the same time and I had to page the cast, and the rail cue right before…. I need to just practice reading those Post-Its so I say everything in time for the stage crew to execute the cue when the director wants it.” That’s the internal monologue.
To the director I’ll say, “Yes, I felt that. It will get better. Stage managers need rehearsals too.” (Because it doesn’t get said enough – Singers get three weeks of rehearsals to figure out what they are doing onstage. Stage Managers are expected to make everything happen onstage perfectly the first time when we tech show.)
And the next rehearsal the same thing will happen and the cue will be late again.
And I just keep thinking, I need to practice and do it a couple more times so that I say “go” at the right moment. Sometimes I get frustrated that I missed it and blame the conductor’s lack of downbeat, or the noise backstage, or what not…. Before the next rehearsal, I’ll listen to the recording of the opera with my score in front of me, and practice calling, so that I’ll feel prepared at the next rehearsal.
And I’ll call it late again.
And after rehearsal that night I’ll stare at that page, and there will be a moment when I look at it in defeat and confusion and frown…
… and then I’ll just move one of the Post It.
Maybe I’ll move it one bar later, or half a page sooner, but regardless – I’ve realized that one of those Post-Its has to move. Not, of course a Post It that says “Go” for when the cue is supposed to happen. But maybe a Post It for a “Standby” to warn the crew that the cue is coming up, or a “Places” call for when I ask the cast to come to stage. And amazingly, just moving that one Post-it opens up space and time and allows me to call the cues with a little more room.
In my head, I need to page the singer to Places five minutes before their entrance – this is the standard. But I can in fact page the singer five minutes and thirty seconds before their entrance. I can move that “Places” Post-it thirty seconds away from the “Light Cue – Go” Post it. And that extra thirty seconds gives me the time to call the light cue in the right place and stage magic will happen exactly when the director wants it to.
I was thinking of this lately, how shifting one thing can make everything else easier. As the weather here turns chilly and the sun is still too low at 8:45am to have dried the dew from the windows of my car so that when it is time to take the kids to the school bus the car is still covered in moisture – it feels like there is one more Post-It on the page than I am used to. There were a couple of days last week when we were almost late because I had to wipe down the car so I could see safely out the windows. And as the weather gets cooler, there will be more tasks between the school bus alarm going off and getting to the school bus on time. Right now the tasks are: Shoes on, jackets on, backpacks on, get in the car, drive. But in a few weeks, there will be frost on the car windows. There will be winter coats and boots and hats and mitts. There will be letting the car warm up. There will be shoveling of snow.
And I’m sure the first few times there will be almost misses of the school bus. And I will be frustrated and annoyed that the September “School Bus” alarm does not get us to the bus on time in December. And then I will remember that light cue that I never called right until I moved the other Post-it. And I will move the metaphorical Post-it and set the “School Bus” alarm five minutes earlier. And that will give us the space we need to get make morning magic happen. Morning magic being: arriving at the school bus without any yelling or panic.
Having a routine plan is good, but only if it gets me where I need to be. I have to remind myself – if things aren’t working, sometimes I just need to move a Post-It.
The view from my pew – the show takes place in a church.
There is a t-shirt floating around in theatre circles that says, “I can’t. I have rehearsal.”
I feel like that is where I’ve been the past two weeks.
We had three days of rehearsal in the rehearsal hall then five days onstage, three of those rehearsals with orchestra. Certainly it’s a truncated rehearsal period from what I was used to. Even still, it was nice to be back in rehearsal and getting a show up off the ground and making things happen for other people. It’s also my first time working in this venue with this group and everyone has been incredibly supportive and positive even though we are doing something fairly ambitious. I’ve been at my main stage management gig for fifteen years now (whoa! when did that happen?!?), and there is an easy familiarity with the crew that I regularly work with there – even so, I’m being reminded this past week that there are kind competent (beyond competent, really) people in many theatres all over and it’s good for me to work with and for new people. Getting to work for a stage manager that I’ve known for years certainly helps makes things easier.
Anyhow, the show opened last night. I think it’s a great show – the music is stunning and the cast, many from the musical theatre world, really sing their hearts out. There is a certain raw physicality that musical theatre performers have that opera singers don’t necessarily always display and I’ve had a lot of fun watching the show come together- it’s like they sing with their whole body, and they aren’t afraid of making the music sound ugly.
Some things on my mind lately: -I’ve barely seen the kids lately – because of being at the theatre late, I tend to sleep in late, waking up just in time to pack lunches and maybe feed the little kids breakfast, though the Husband often does that. Big props to the Husband for holding down the fort and solo parenting in the evenings. Of course, it should mean that I cherish and savour the time I do have with my kids, but it’s kind of been… not relaxing. I’ve been turning over in my mind why I struggle with parenting and how I can feel more confident about how I help my kids launch into the world. I think a lot of it boils down to resetting the expectations I have and learning to see my kids as their own people. I’ve been listening to The Puberty Podcast, and this episode on helping kids thrive really helped frame some of my struggles.
– I’m giving myself gold stars for good tech week life habits. I squeezed in a run on my dinner break one day, even though it was raining. I packed lunch and dinner and lots of healthy-ish snacks. (Though I did buy a cookie the day of final dress because the work cafeteria has the best fluffiest chocolate chip cookies, as big as my face and I thought by then I deserved to indulge). I went to bed pretty much as soon as I came home.
– Having said that, I will say, I did stay up an extra half hour one night to scroll the news of the Queen’s death and all the pageantry and protocols that are involved in laying her to rest. The breadth and depth of her life amazes me. Also, on another level, I keep thinking about the amount of work and planning that must be involved in a royal funeral and a coronation and everything. And there hasn’t been a change in British monarch in seventy years so there is no one around who can say, “Well the last time, we did this, this, and this.” I’m sure all the protocol and procedures are written down somewhere, but as someone who puts on shows for a living, I bet there will be things that come up where they say, “Wait… how did they do it last time? Why didn’t they write that down?” The logistics of how to figure out what to do fascinates me as much as the actual logistics of the proceedings.
-I do not give myself a gold star on life admin during tech week, though. The life to do list is a little lengthy right now and it’s causing a little bit of stress for me. The Husband and I had lunch yesterday and I didn’t have the brain to think about the litany of house/life maintenance that we need to get done this fall.
-The kids take any opportunity when they see my phone lying around to take pictures. Some days I open up Photos to find fifty nine pictures of the baby’s foot. But sometimes, mostly orchestrated by the oldest child, something like this appears in my photo roll, and it makes me smile.
– These lines from one of the arias in my show:
When the thunder rumbles now the age of Gold is dead. And the dreams we’ve clung to, dying to stay young have left us parched and old instead. When my courage crumbles, When i feel confused and frail. When my spirit falters, on decaying alters. And my illusions fail.
I go on right then. I go on again. I go on to say I will celebrate another day. I go on.
I’ve been so intrigued by the last five lines – is the idea that there will always be another day, and we should celebrate that day? That is to say, just having another day is cause for celebration? Or is the idea that even if today is hard and we don’t feel like celebrating, there will be days in the future where we will want to celebrate the things that we hold dear, so we should push forward? I love both sentiments.
These are the deep thoughts that I contemplate during rehearsal sometimes…
It’s a beautiful piece. You can hear this aria sung in a piano arrangement here.
Things I am grateful for: – The stranger behind me at a stoplight who got out of his car to flag me down and tell me my gas cap had rolled off my roof five blocks back. I thought I was trying to be efficient by cleaning the garbage out of the car while I pumped gas, but it got me off my rhythm of pump gas, replace gas cap, get receipt. -The Husband for getting the kids fed and to bed every night by himself. He even took the ten year old to basketball practice and the five year old to skating lessons, hauling all the kids around. -The kids for (mostly) getting themselves ready in the morning, so I can sleep til 7am most mornings. – Supportive colleagues and kind people to work with. -The cooler weather. Fall is here in the mornings, though summer still lingers in the afternoons. -The Husband for getting my bike tuned up. I went for a little bike ride this morning as I had neither work nor children to stop me. It was hard, but felt like a perfect fall activity.
What we ate – I did manage to prep dinner for most of the first week of rehearsal, even though I was working and didn’t make it home in time to eat with everyone. Most nights I had leftovers from the previous evening for dinner myself. The second week of rehearsal, the Husband planned and cooked dinner all on his own. I might have pressed tofu one night, but he handled everything else. I have no idea what they ate, so only the menu from the first week below.
Saturday: Pizza and Movie Night. We watched Secondhand Lions, a movie from 2003 that was really charming and delightful. The film, about a boy who is left with his eccentric uncles (played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine) was the embodiment of “family movie”… I think the word “wholesome” feels out of style right now, but that would describe this movie. I don’t think they make family films like this these days; everything is superheroes and explosions.
Sunday: This was the day we went to the Renaissance Festival. We got home around 7pm so all I could muster was snack dinner, which the kids actually loved and have asked if we can do it again. I just assembled a bunch of stuff, made sure I had all the food groups, tossed it on a plate and put it in front of the kids.
Snack dinner.
Monday: Labor Day – It was proposed that we ought to grill. So, I decided to grill some meatballs from the Milk Street Tuesday Night Mediterranean. The recipe called for broiled, but I thought they worked well on the grill. I guess grilling a meatball is not much different form grilling a burger – ground meat on fire. Also grilled eggplant and Zucchini
Tuesday: This favorite vegan Gnocchi soup – at the request of the five year old. I made most of it ahead of time, so that all the Husband had to do when he came home was to bring the pot to a boil and add the kale and gnocchi. Apparently the baby even ate the kale bits. Surprising because she is in a “I don’t like vegetables” phase. (Which isn’t entirely true, but veggies are pretty hit or miss with her).
Wednesday: The Husband made stir-fry and rice.
Thursday: Instant Pot pinto beans, made before I went to work. Eaten with corn tortillas and a simple cabbage slaw.
The picture and directions I sent to the Husband for Thursday night’s dinner.
Friday: The Husband took to the kids to the golf course for the outdoor concert, and they ate sandwiches.
The show has teched and opened and closed and I’m ready for summer. The weeks of work was an intense time. Now on the other side, I am amazed a what a big push it was for us to get through those two weeks of performing a large show in the time of COVID. I don’t pretend that putting up an opera is anywhere on the scale as organizing and army or surgery – in fact we often say “It isn’t brain surgery” when things feel overwhelming. But mounting an opera is a project that takes a couple hundred people to pull off, and there are 1500-2000 people watching every performance expecting to be entertained, so it does feel like a large undertaking.
This show, though, felt particularly daunting at times. One main reason was that part way through the run, I was asked to step in at the last minute for the stage manager, bumping up from my assistant stage manager role. Stepping into someone else’s track is not always easy, and being the stage manager requires a level of visible responsibility that can be intimidating for me. But someone needed to call the show and the company asked me, so I was nervously excited to do it. And turns out, when you are calling a show cold without rehearsal, people are really forgiving when you bungle a scene shift cue and the audience gets to watch a bit of awkward stage business that they really shouldn’t witness. Hah.
Everyone was super supportive and encouraging and I really felt lifted by that support. And the chorus, our wonderful wonderful chorus, gathered backstage around the stage manager’s console at the end of the first show I called and gave me a huge round of applause. Oh my goodness, I was so touched by the gesture, my heart almost exploded from gratitude.
When I stage manage a performance, I have a little ritual where I write some variation of the following in my notebook as I prep for the show to start:
Each line is kind of like a mile marker. As the show goes along, I will write the time next to each section when it starts – Curtain Speech, Orchestra Tune, Act 1 begins, Act 2 begins, etc… At the end of the evening, I can easily calculate how long each segment of the show was because I know what time they each started. Actually, even more than “easily” because I have an excel table that will calculate the time math for me – I just input the start times of each part. Time keeping is a big part of stage management – using it well and knowing where it goes.
I read an article recently that talked about the difference between routine and ritual being one of intent and mindfulness. The article quotes Mason Currey who wrote a book called “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”, as saying that “Rituals create and mark a transition towards a different kind of mental or emotional state.” While a routine might just be a repeated action, rituals can help focus the mind to an upcoming task. Writing the mile markers of the show is certainly routine – it’s a task that has a practical function and needs to be done before every show – but I think of it also as a ritual, something I do methodically to introduce a calm to the start of my show. There can be many unknowns, but I do know that I will look at the clock at these points in the evening and it’s helps me mentally prepare to get there.
At any rate, the first time I had to call the opera I was subbing on, I stood at the console before the show and had my little ritual of writing down the points of time that I needed to note. Then I took a deep breath and, looking at what I had written, suddenly it all seemed very manageable. This huge show I had just been thrown in charge of…. I just had to get from “[Curtain] Speech” to “End [of Bows]”. What I had to do was laid out right there in black and white. So very doable.
For as much calamity that had been thrown at our show in the days, hours, and minutes before the orchestra downbeat, I realized then that there was an end point and I just had to get there. Simple enough. Indeed, I don’t know that I could very well avoid getting there. Sure, I could not tell the orchestra to tune, but that was a very unlikely as it would probably raise eyebrows and cost a lot of money. Looking at my list of mile markers brought a kind of “ah ha!” moment for me, a realization that the end of the show will happen- there is it, written in my notebook, as if it were preordained. It was like a road map, I just had to arrive at “End bows” and my job was done (mostly) and I could go home. There was a great sense of reassurance in knowing that I just had to focus until “End Bows”.
There is a saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. And if it isn’t okay, it isn’t the end.” I think of this a lot when things get hard, or even when I anticipate things getting hard. Work in the moment, but know there is an end. There are times I will even break things down even further and tell myself that I just have to get through the next ten minutes. After I get through enough ten minute sections, I will get to “End of Bows.”
Sometimes in life, when things seem daunting, I know when the end will be – “End Bows” for example- and sometimes I don’t – waiting at the hospital with my sick Father-in-law. Either way, it helps just knowing that there is an end point, a time when this show, this task, this moment of life will be finished and I will be able to look back and reflect and move on.
It’s half way through tech week, and it’s been a particularly hard one. The show is on the large side – there’s ninety performers onstage, a gazillion props and costumes, and, the realities of doing theatre in a world that is very much still in a pandemic, people are constantly in and out on five day isolations or ten day isolations. Precautions are being taken, but … life, you know. I’m feeling constantly like I’m playing catch up, barely getting people onstage in time with the right prop and often in the wrong costume. It will get better and we will have a great show, but everything feels hard right now. As I keep saying when things don’t go right – everyone needs rehearsal. The singers get three weeks to figure out the show and for some reason everyone expects the crew to get it right the first time. But they need a chance to figure things out too and some shows are easier to figure out than others.
It’s my first time back in this particular theatre in over two years. Strange to think about. The crew is mostly familiar, but everyone has a wary air of tiredness, caution, and welcome.
Sunday was Mother’s Day. And a day off. I think if I’d had time to think about it, what I really wanted for Mother’s Day would have been three hours alone to catch up on bills and other computer tasks. And also to deal with the growing mountain that is my “floordrobe”.
Actually it’s more like a “bench-drobe”. Coming home after midnight, when everyone is asleep means that I don’t want to turn on the lights in the bedroom for fear of waking the Husband. So I fumble around in the dark to get into my pjs, shedding that day’s clothes onto the bench at the foot of the bed, and fall into bed. Inevitably it leads to a mountain of clothes, a week’s worth in a pile on the bench , spilling on to the floor. I could pretend that when I am not working til past midnight I carefully and thoughtfully hang up my clothes, or put them in the hamper, but truth… when I’m not working til midnight the pile is still there, but usually only three days worth.
A lot gets said these days about self care, but for me I think a big part of self care is tackling the looming things so I don’t stress about them. There is a passage in the novel Fleishman is in Trouble where the newly divorced main character’s therapist tells him to buy nice curtains for his new apartment, telling him to think of it as an act of self care. And Fleishman remarks that self care isn’t spending his money on new curtains, it’s saving his money so that he can move into a less crappy apartment. I think of this a lot when the question of “self care” comes up. I find that it’s easy to find twenty minutes for yoga or a run or to sit and read a book, but it’s harder to find the energy to tackle the things that really would make life better. Like figuring out summer camp for the ten year old (still not done yet!), squaring away the bills for the rental house. Buying pants.
This last is a big one. I came out of the pandemic without black pants that fit. Which is problematic when a large chunk of my job requires me to move around in the dark wearing black clothes. The last few shows I just pulled out my old maternity pants. Which was fine because I was stage managing so I pretty much stood i once place and my headset was attached to my console. Now that I’m Assistant Stage Managing, I need pants with a firm waistband so I can clip my flashlight and headset belt pack to a belt. Yoga pants do not serve this purpose. Post pandemic stage manager woes.
Anyhow, back to Mother’s Day…despite my desire for some life admin time, it seemed to me, that shutting myself in my room and leaving the Husband on child duty after he’s been solo parenting in the evening for two weeks was not the nice thing to do, Mother’s Day or not. So I said I would be happy getting some tasty food, going on a walk, and not having to think too hard about dinner.
And we did indeed do all that. Everyone let me sleep in until almost ten and there were pancakes waiting when I woke up. Sleeping til ten sounds positively indulgent but when I figured I didn’t get home from rehearsal until 2am the night before, 2:30am- 10am is actually a regular night’s sleep.
There was a card and a gift bag waiting for me. Inside the bag were a bag of almond flour and a package of lychee gummies. My reaction was a combination of “Huh… ooookay” and “They know me so well!” And then there was this priceless card:
I had originally wanted to give the Husband the day off from kid duty, but he insisted since it was Mother’s Day, we should do some family things. So we took the five year old to Sunday language class, then with the other two kids in the car we went for fun drinks and snacks at a new-to-us Cuban place. Empanadas and plantain chips for the win!
When the five year old was done language class, we went for a walk on the trails surrounding one of the local nature centers. We wandered down by the stream and practiced skipping rocks. I managed to skip one three times! I’d never been really good at it, but the Husband gave me some tips and I think I sort of got the hang of it. Then we ordered Indian food for takeout.
After dinner the Ten year old offered to clean up so the Husband and I were going to take some time to discuss all the life things that we hadn’t had a chance to connect about since we hadn’t really hd any waking hours together. But I fell asleep on the couch and that was the end of things for me. I think it was 7:30pm. But, we did check off all the Mother’s Day wishes on my list, so I think I will call that a win.
Some things that made the week better:
A Haiku for this week:
April turns to May. Spring teeters on summer’s brink. Rain and sun and green.
Some time during the pandemic, our rehearsal rooms had larger windows put it, and the resulting flood of light is quite wonderful. During evening rehearsals, when we have almost ninety people in the room trying to stage a very busy village square type scene, I can look out the window and take a moment to savor the pink and orange sunset. I snapped this picture the other day of the late afternoon transforming my little corner of the rehearsal hall into some kind of of Dutch still life.
The toddler has started saying, “I love you, mom.” That makes me feel pretty good. She also, an independent soul, has developed her own “ism” where whenever she wants to do something, she says, “I want to do it by my own!”. I love it too much to try to correct her.
Also – irritating, but makes me laugh – the toddler getting ahold of my phone and filling my photo roll like this:
View from a toddler.
Scheduled a happy hour with the mom’s from my mom’s group. Something to look forward to.
Been baking some pretty good loaves of sourdough bread, using this no-knead recipe. My starter seems to have gotten back on it’s feet, after being somewhat lackluster for much of the spring. This recipe, is pretty hands off and each step fits easily into the windows of time when I’m home.
Overnight camping with some friends. The time outdoors was nice, and even though sleeping in a tent with a toddler is not restful – six o’clock in the morning she wakes me up with yelling, “It’s too bright!!” – there is something peaceful about being surrounded by dew and bird calls first thing in the morning.
morning view from the tent.
Re-discovering the tv show Pushing Daisies – whimsical, romantic, funny and visually stunning, I remember watching this series about a pie maker who can wake the dead when it first came out. The Husband and I have started watching it again, fifteen years after it originally aired. We watch one episode at a time, knowing that there are only two season and wanting to prolong the delight of watching it.
Discovering another lovely tv show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. This show out of Australia and based on a series of books is also great fun and super stylish. Some days when I work late, I tell the Husband to leave the kitchen for me to clean up. Partly I’m being nice, but also partly I want an excuse to watch an episode of this show, which I stream while I do the washing up.
Then of course, my co-workers who make me laugh even when we are literally in horse shit.
What We Ate:
Saturday: I was working, but this was the night the Husband took the kids camping with some friends. I showed up at the campground after work and had a couple sandwiches and ‘smores for dinner. I think everyone else had hot dogs and burgers.
Sunday: Leftovers.
Monday: The Husband made a tofu stir fry.
Tuesday: Not quite sure what everyone ate. It might have been Thai take-out.
Wednesday: Black Beans, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Eaten with tortillas and pickled onions.
Thursday: Chicken tortilla soup. Also made in the InstantPot. Recipe from America’s Test Kitchen
Friday: Pizza and Hercules. I was at work.
Saturday: I think the family got take out. I ate leftovers at work.
