Time gets away from me

It seems that the opportune time to write a post never happens in theater (spelled American style, just to mess with you), thus I am writing in the 45 min break between Tech run and Tech Dress. I'm sitting in the semi-darkness of my top bunk. Aimee Mann accompanies me in this brief spell of anti-social behavior, as does the last of my baby carrots. It's a stressful day, but there is no reason to resort to junk food. I already ate it all anyway!

Since my humungous first update from TriArts, a good deal has happened, as you might imagine. It seems silly to talk about going out for Italian food nearly two weeks ago, as I said I would, but I will say that the stromboli is delicious and you should seek it out!

I spend my day working with two girls, Madeline, the shop supervisor, and Mallory, the other intern in the costume shop. When prepping for a show, it's actually one of the less stressful areas at TriArts. Other production staff and interns often come by to escape, and we're more relaxed, have no clocks and tend to be watching film or television on our laptops. Our first production is A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which coincidentally is one of the shows I worked on at Stratford. The funny thing for me is that today is the first time I actually got the complete rundown of the plot! Just in time, too, because tonight I will be backstage making sure the quick changes happen when they should. Something tells me I will sleep soundly tonight!

Sharon, Connecticut is a tiny, idyllic little place. It has a Main Street, a Gay Street, and roads leading away to other little towns with Main Streets and gay streets. I, of course, mean gay in the classic, happy way. That's how it is... in Connecticut! I'm lucky that most people have cars here, because it's a long walk uphill just to a convenience store, and a twenty minute drive to a grocery store. That's even worse than Stratford! Still, it's very beautiful here and in some ways it's hard to believe it exists. I laughed at young Phill when he told me that he had never been to a small town in North America, and thus doubted their true existence, but there is something to be said there. Living in the city, I do forget that people live so quietly, and in many ways: simply. This morning we joined most of the town at the firehall for a pancake breakfast. That same firehall emits the sound of a WWII air raid siren when there is a fire, which has happened twice just since I've arrived.

On the whole, wardrobe seems to get the most time off but the most panic backstage. It's a huge change working back in small theatre, but in many ways, a welcome one. I mentioned before that there are no clocks, and that's true, though we do check out laptops and phones to check on lunch time and dinner. At Mirvish or Stratford, it was a constant check on the time because each costume had a completion time target and each show had a time budget. It was like balancing a checkbook at the end of the day, only instead of dollars it was fifteen minute intervals. Now I feel more rhythm and less anxiety. I still want to be a faster sewer, and I think if I worry a little less about absolute accuracy (which is not the expectation here), than I get used to going quicker.

By far the greatest challenge, over top bunks and limited food and over eager teenagers (I am the oldest here by at least two years, in most cases, 4-7) is being away from John, Toronto, John, Cake, John and Grover... yeah, I can't help it, saying I didn't miss my co-blogger would be omitting a major element of this summer! The good news is that Skype seems to be working for the most part, and after the first little adjustment problem, we've been able to connect most days even for a few minutes. The hardest thing may be that I can't picture what he's up to day to day, but hopefully we can both start taking pictures... and posting them here!

Earlier I actually went to Tech Dress, and it went so much better than I thought it would! I actually managed all the quick changes, other than when Mallory took some costumes to the wrong side of back stage and I couldn't physically do the changes. No one in lighting or sound noticed the difference, and were impressed with how quickly I got the quick changes out. Tomorrow we finish off the notes as best we can, then Tuesday we do dress rehearsals most of the day, same Wednesday, and then Thursday we open. That means no day off in a two week period for anyone, which I wasn't expecting, but there isn't much way to avoid it.

Now, I think it's off to relax and try to get enough sleep to make it through tomorrow!