I stumbled across and subsequently asked to join this group a couple weeks ago, after discovering it one Monday evening while perusing DKos. I was waiting for my cue to go upstairs to the stage and do a bit of my job. Currently, and for the last decade, I've been working on one of those long running Broadway Musicals that every serious "theater person" loves to hate. Aside from the fact that this is the longest stretch of continuous employment I've ever had by a factor of at least five, it's not the worst show in the world.
I like the fact that due to having a regular paycheck I've been able to do all those things that used to seem so common place to folks outside of the freelance world.
Especially those who work outside of the (as I like to refer to it) Entertainment Industrial Complex.
Wacky things like create and stick to a budget (it's difficult at best to create a budget when you have absolutely no idea of how much money you will earn from week to week). Take a vacation confident that I will have a job to come back to.
1st --- A little background. ----
I'm a stagehand. My specialty is moving lights, and the programming, maintenance and repairing thereof. If you've ever been to a show that has lights which move, change colors and beams without a person directly touching them I can take them apart, put them back together, program them to do cool things, sometimes hanging upside down over your heads.
I used to tour a lot. 300 days+ per year away from "home", though for most of those years I kept an apartment in various parts of NYC, whatever roommates I had loved the fact that I was never late with my share of the rent and almost never there. They usually had a guest bedroom that paid for itself.
After the true love of my life and I got married, we decided that my wandering days were over, and Broadway bound i was. (I had actually been working on B'way for at least half a decade before I took this current show, but we all knew this one would run, so... I get to go home to my dear sweet wife every night! How cool is that?)
When I joined the group Theatricals I considered writing diaries more specifically about my 25 years plus in "The Biz". I may still do that - I've had many unusual experiences, met wonderful people, and seen the heights and certain depths of the "human condition".
However, I thought I would start off with some musings, and direct you attentions to a fabulous source of much amusement and wonder within the live theater community.
(one of the main reasons I'm starting off with this dairy subject matter is that this is an expansion of a diary I posted on my mostly overlooked and ignored (even by me) blog, which I've essentially abandoned. If you go there, you'll see I haven't made an entry in over a year.)
Join me on t'other side of the Orange Kosiastic Frieze and we'll look at a couple elements of the theater that have broader implications.
Your call is "places"
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