I have gotten a second job!! I have gone from having a fairly relaxing 10-6 job to being incredibly busy and booked schedule. A normal occurrence in professional theater is the flexibility of people working on the shows. Many people have multiple shows going on at any given time (much like our Fredonia tech department) and it is not uncommon for someone to see the show through the rehearsal process and tech and move onto their next show before the first show opens. This is exactly what has happen with the current production with The Flick. We had a full stage management team shuffle when the production stage manager went to her next project and I am now also running the show 8 times a week after completing my internship during the day. So I am still working at the same theater just now doing two related jobs.
My position on the show is props run crew which is fairly straight forward presetting, handing off and receiving props. I am now not only responsible for the stock of our prop popcorn but also now I preset all the popcorn on stage for preshow and for the scenes. Back stage we actually have a really cool set up for popcorn delivery in between scenes, as every scene happens after the movie has ended and its the employees sweeping popcorn (Don’t worry that show is way more awesome than watching them clean!) So popcorn delivery method- we are using two shop-vacs in reverse with HVAC tubing to blower pods (picture drive thru banking pipes) where I pour popcorn and we flip the power and popcorn is blown into each row of the movie theater. Its pretty cool.
I do want to chat about the actual show. So the Flick is a new work, written by Annie Baker, directed by Sam Gold and its a modern, young cast working in one of the last 35mm movie theaters in Mass. Its a “slice of life” play following three of the employees who are 20-35 in age. At Playwrights the director and playwright work together throughout the entire process. We actually have a much longer than normal preview period for the shows we do so that they can really be fine tuned and make modifications and have had an audience for a number of times to really get a feel for how it is received. I did get to see a preview before I started working backstage for the show and I really enjoyed it. It is a long show, 3 hours, but if you go in prepared knowing that it is going to be a long show its worth it. characters are very true to life and it was quite funny.
Now the job itself is not super exciting or enlightening or challenging but I am getting to meet a lot more cool people while running the show that I wouldn’t normally as just the props intern. I now know the SM team a lot better and the deck carp (Who is dating a Fredonia alum! because there are lots of us doing cool things!!) And we get to chat about places they have worked or even just shows they have seen and what they thought artistically. So I have very little free time and its very challenging to find the time for those important things like cleaning my room and laundry but I feel very comfortable working in the city and being able to find work after my internship has concluded.
