Yesterday at 5:45 pm I finished out my contract with Wichita Children's Theatre Touring Company. It was bittersweet. There were so many rewarding parts of that job. I got to perform for thousands of kids and a new group every day. Sometimes a group wasn't as into the show, but there was always at least one kid dancing in the audience having the time of their life. You had instant gratification to demonstrate the impact you were making.
There were parts I am most definitely glad to see go though. I hated being away from Josh. When you go from seeing someone for a good chunk of your day every single day to seeing them only on the weekends, it sucks. It was hard, too, because he was having fun! He was living the college lifestyle. And as selfish as this sounds, I wasn't. I was having to keep track of three other people's schedules, manage car problems, hotel bookings and appease schools. It was a lot to jump into that first part. I also learned a lot about my style of working. I am constantly routing things out in my mind to develop the most efficient way to do things that I can think of. I want quality work done as quickly as possible. I know it doesn't usually work that way with a lot of people in theater, but this time all of my tour members were on a different page. They had a much easier-going (what I could only see as slower paced in the beginning) way of doing things. I had to change. It was hard. I am one stubborn person. But as we got into the second part of tour, I began to force myself to take a deep breath. Time really was not an issue. We were not going to change what time we arrived at schools or what time we left in the mornings. Sow why did it matter if it took us 15 minutes more to set it up? Needless to say, it's not easy working with a group of people that have such a different work style than you. But time was the only thing changing, not quality. I had to change my way of thinking, to separate the two in my mind. It was good training for me for my summer job.....
I'm moving to West Virginia with Josh a week after we get married!!!!!!! He interviewed with the West Virginia Public Theatre for a Master Electrician's job and got me hooked up to be the Seasonal Resident Scenic Charge Artist! He got his job as ME as well as Assistant Lighting Designer. Pretty sweet. It pays a little higher than summer stock here at ESU did and they are giving us a travel stipend. Our big hope now is that our visit to WVU went well enough to get us both accepted into their grad program..... But we won't hear anything from them before April. I hate waiting....
I will say, everything did seem to mesh better the second half, but it was just unfortunate feeling like we weren't sufficient enough because the three of us worked in different ways, on top of that hearing things that were being said about us being lazy or stupid behind our backs didn't help either. I'm glad you got the experience and hope you learned from it, I know I did. Hopefully you will have a better sense of compromise for future jobs because it was difficult at times. It was either briann's way or we're stupid.
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ReplyDeleteI am sorry you felt that way. I did not talk about you behind your back - as I told you when you confronted me, the person who told you that had never once spoken to me about tour. It was my job to make sure we had the best quality possible. Sure, the way I am used to it being done was different than the way it needed to be done. I never felt the three of you were incapable of doing the job. I recommended YOU for the job when they were looking for another guy! I did learn a lot and I really do hope I can take a better sense of patience with me to another job.
ReplyDeleteI had heard on more than one occasion things were being thrown around, but what's done is done, and I think it's safe to say we all were glad it was over for a variety of reasons.
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