12 Things I've Learned About Post Grad Life

It's been 8 months since I graduated from college, and here are some things I have discovered about life after undergrad:

1. Leaving home is really freakin' hard.

2. But it's the best possible choice to make, as soon as you possibly can afford it.

3. You can make anything edible with a broiler and some garlic salt.

4. You'll meet more people (interesting people, funny people, strange people, friendly people, unfriendly people, boring people, talkative people, annoying people) than you had met in all 20-something years of life in school.

5. And sometimes, doing something nice, bringing a smile to someone's face, or helping other people is an amazing feeling...especially when you're in a city.

6. Getting a drying rack for clothing is a fabulous way to save money overall and spend less time at the laundromat if it's a sketchy place like mine.

7. A roommate who isn't your best friend and who doesn't interact with you much can be an awesome thing.

8. Loneliness is, ironically, one of the most universal human experiences.

9. Picking out mousetraps for the first time is almost as bad as picking out makeup-- there are just as many choices, but in the end the basic familiar trap is the way to go.

10. Settling for the first job offer you get is not always the way to go.

11. Keeping #10 in mind...you CAN survive on an air mattress and/or living out of your car, if it means doing what you love or even just doing what you need to do. And you'll have a much different perspective on life once you do it.

12. And my favorite thing I've learned so far...I don't miss classes and homework! It is SO nice to work and then go home and enjoy a beer and be done for the day. (With my crazy jobs it doesn't always work out that way but it didn't during college either...and after a 14-hour barely paid day there would be homework to come home to...no thanks!) I like learning...and I learn new stuff every day at work. It's a win-win situation!

2012 Review

It's funny, looking back every year I always remember things by what show I was working on/which theater I was in. #nerd. I worked on a LOT of shows this year, so we'll see how many I actually can put in order.

Kicking off the year, I was at St. Mike's as a senior, working on my lighting design thesis (Appetite) and a scenic design for a classmate's thesis show, Notes. I also completed an independent study on Shakespeare, a survey connecting tech elements to his stories, especially Hamlet. I did random overhire work in the Burlington, VT area, including work with the Vermont Stage Company on The Clean House, Shirley Valentine, and As You Like It, and work at the Flynn Theater with the local I.A.T.S.E. 919 (stagehand's union) on a bunch of tours that came through, like Mamma Mia! and the Alvin Ailey dance show and more. I saw some good theater in various places, enjoyed the end of my senior year with my friends, took a trip to Florida with my parents which was awesome, watched my brother Andrew marry the love of his life, and in May, I graduated from Saint Michael's College with a Bachelor of the Arts, Theater Major, Spanish Minor.

I spent the summer at the Hangar theater as a scenic carpenter, which had its good times and its hard times, but overall was one of the best summer stock experiences I've had to date. We produced 5 mainstage shows, 5 children's shows, and a series of experimental shows called the Wedge. It was a crazy time, but I met some amazing people and realized how much I love building stuff.

Come September when the summer season ended, I went home to Vermont and worked a little at the Flynn and the Barre Opera House and Vermont Stage Company some more. It was nice living at home, but there is not enough work in Vermont for a freelancer like me to thrive. I considered joining the stagehand's union, but with no guarantee of liveable earnings, I decided I'd rather take my chances elsewhere.

So I eventually packed up Tiny Tim and drove down to Boston, where, thanks to my awesome contacts, I scooped up some overhire gigs in big scene shops and some side work at other places. I slept on couches and floors for a bit-- my air mattress and I became good friends-- and I want to put out a big shout out to my friends and relatives who let me stay night after night while I was apartment hunting and working all day!

I started at the American Repertory Theater working on the set for Pippin, which was recently announced to be going to Broadway later this year. I also worked electrics at Central Square Theater for The How and the Why and The Mountaintop, and with Moonbox Productions on Of Mice and Men, and finally started at the Huntington Theater in the scene shop in December. I am very excited about those last two companies: Moonbox is up and coming, but already incredibly successful in producing high-quality theater, and I am excited to be working with them in the future as well as for their partnership with non-profit organizations. I have found the Hunt an enjoyable place to work and hope to continue there for the spring and potentially in the fall for next season. So far I have worked on Our Town and Invisible Man with them, and am currently working on the set for Raisin in the Sun.

Other than work, the end of 2012 was jam packed with fun stuff. I was the maid of honor at my best friend's wedding; learned I am going to be an aunt by summer 2013; and found a great apartment in Somerville that I moved into with lots of help from my family! I've made some friends at my various workplaces, been out on a few dates, settling in well. I still go home often-- especially over the holidays at the end of the year there-- and can't imagine traveling as much as I used to want to because of my family ties in Vermont. And that is OK :)

Overall....Wow! What a year! I learned a lot. A lot of bad things happened in the world in 2012, but we're still here, and personally my first year out of school was a good one. Here's to hoping the luck carries on....and spreads to as many other people as possible!

Thanks for reading

Happy New Year!

Wow, has time been flying or what? I haven't posted in a month or so, as my Dad pointed out to me over the holidays.

December was a pretty awesome month, involving lots of work on scenery at the Huntington Theater in Boston on Our Town and Invisible Man; snow; visits home for my Grandma's 80th birthday and again for Christmas; electrics work with an awesome company called Moonbox Productions; fun times with my friend Meg from the summer in Ithaca; and New Year's with Anna & Steve, my friends who got married recently and are living in Norwood.

Some of the work I did on Our Town (being, y'know, the woods expert around here)

A fun piece of Invisible Man for the electricians... we did a lot of rigging on this ceiling beast

Walls, beams, flooring, and more going in for Invisible Man

I was very happy to be working with the Hunt, and hope to continue to work with them during the winter and spring. Our Town has been extended until January 27th; Invisible Man opens this week and shows through February 3rd. For more information, visit the Hunt's website.

I was also pleased to work with Moonbox Productions on their recent show Of Mice and Men, which was a hit. Their next show will be A New Brain in March, and I am very excited to be working with them again. Moonbox partners with local non-profit organizations for each production they do to raise awareness, which is an awesome use of great theater.

January will be an interesting month of networking and planning for me. I would like to get out of Boston for the summer this year, but the logistics of my apartment and returning to the city and such are TBD. (Not to mention getting a job for the summer!) The month has kicked off well, however, with a few days of work at the Hunt and also at Central Square Theater, and with a quick trip home to visit (and do laundry). Some things don't change...

Me & my cousins <3 br="br">

Thanks for reading!

Pippin

photo source: American Rep facebook page

Pippin is going to Broadway! How exciting! No, I am not going with it. It was awesome to see the show here in Cambridge though, and the many scenic elements I worked on put to use! 

December

This month is going to be a good one, I can tell! I have work lined up with the Huntington Theater Co, with Moonbox Productions, and the Central Square Theater, taking me straight into January. Hopefully I will have more time to get out and about around Boston with friends more; moving in and working full time has been pretty overwhelming. Now I am getting used to public transportation and settling into my new apartment. There was some confusion over my lease and security deposit and such, but I will be getting paperwork tomorrow, which makes me feel better.

The first day of December started off with snow! An excellent way to kick off the holidays-- though I expect we will all be tired of it soon enough. This first week is going to be a little nuts; I am splitting my time between working with the Hunt on Our Town and possibly Invisible Man, and doing some electrics work for my good friend Jeff Salzberg on Of Mice and Men with Moonbox Productions. Luckily enough, both Our Town and Mice & Men are at the Boston Center for the Arts, meaning I will be able to walk a few hundred feet from one gig to the next.

More updates to come! Thanks for reading.

A Day in the Life

I looked up 30-day blog challenges for inspiration to write more. While a lot of them feature very personal questions and things I would rather cover in a personal journal, there were a few interesting ones. One suggested post was "Your day, in detailed bullet points." Since every day is a crazy adventure in my life, I thought this might be fun. Let's see how much I remember.

-5:45am first alarm went off
-6am second alarm went off, I got up, dressed, gathered lunch that I packed last night, headed out
-6:36am caught the bus for Sullivan station, the orange T line from there to Back Bay
-7am walked to the BCA Calderwood Pavilion, where I am working for the Huntington Theater Company. There is another show loading in across the hall, covered in swarms of Boston University students, and other companies and such in the building, so it's a little chaotic at times. 
-Waited in our break room and ate breakfast
-7:30am we started working on laying the deck for Our Town, a bunch of 4'x8' sheets of crappy lauan painted to look like golden-brown wood flooring.
-Unloaded a truck of flame retardant-ed trees, boxes of paint stuff, doors/frames, windows
-Worked on assembling a curtain track/its attachment to the front of the set under the supervision of Jesse, a staff member at the Hunt. It's basically a curtain which will hide the kitchen we've been working on until the "reveal" moment, and it slides open and closed.
-10 (ish)am break. Went to the 7-11 for an energy drink and a chocolate bar (saved the candy for the afternoon break, which always means I'll finish the day strong). Worked on my crossword puzzle.
-10:15am Worked on actually attaching the curtain track to the set. It goes on the front of the ceiling of the kitchen with mega bolts, which took a lot of drilling and lining up and lifting the damn thing between several ladders, several times.
-(During all of this, other people worked on laying the flooring more, electricians were working on scaffolding across the stage, the Master Carpenter installed doors and windows, and a few other overhire carpenters worked on various molding projects)
-11am started attaching panels to the black, non-kitchen parts of the set. They have bolt heads to make them look like the theater's normal architecture, as per design with this show.
-12noon lunch! I don't mess around these days when it comes to lunch. Meat and cheese packed sandwiches, granola bars, cookies, yogurt, fruit, chips...hung out in the break room and worked on my crosswords more, enjoyed talking with my coworkers.
-12:45pm back to work: more of the "bolted" panels, to be leveled and screwed in from the back of the set.
-Also worked on crown molding for inside the kitchen (a very cramped space at this point; ceilings are an interesting choice onstage) and fake foam beams for the kitchen ceiling. We think these beams were painted with cow shit, they smelled so bad. Needless to say that job was done as fast as possible.
-Washed hands.
-Unpacked soft goods (curtains, usually) from RoseBrand...sold to us by my very good friend Peter Monahan, who is a sales rep there and a mentor of mine! It was awesome seeing his name on stuff I'm working on. We got a white muslin drape of some sort and a 9'x24' black velour curtain, which I worked on getting up into the track we hung earlier. We need to work on the attachments for this curtain: the higher-ups like the nasty noise of metal carriers for each point of the curtain, but they don't fit properly in the track we have, so the curtain doesn't open smoothly. We looked at plastic vs. metal carriers and have yet to try out the latest decided upon ones.
-I built a block of several 2x4s and some smaller pieces to fit behind the curtain track facing, which would cover one end of the track so the curtain can't be pulled right off the track. Someone else did the other side-- they are custom fit plugs for each side of the track, and mine is not yet installed so that we can still pull the curtain off and try those different carriers in the track.
-3:55pm unloaded custom flooring pieces from the van.
-4pm break. Chocolate bar and crossword puzzle. I feel like picking up the free Metro every day on the T will be a win for my crossword habits.
-4:15pm back to work, with fewer people now: some of our overhire are also crew for the evening shows and they need travel and dinner time. We finished the "bolted" panel pieces, worked on installing fake I beams on the very top of the set (continuing the theater's normal architecture). This took longer than expected, partially due to cutting bevels in the corners of these I-shaped pieces (interesting time getting them on the small chopsaw we share with the BU students loading in a door away) and partially because my partner is a slower worker. That is often my biggest challenge these days: not letting work partners hold me back from doing my best.
-5:40pm clean up. We organized our extra materials and things to still be installed-- very few at this point-- and got our tools and such out of the way for electrics. We also piled the trees out of the hallway of the building and shuffled some carts around.
-6pm Gathered up my things, filled out my time sheet, and left on foot for Back Bay station. I spent my public transit time today listening to music and texting my friend Meg from the summer, who is in Florida working at Orlando Rep. I am already comfortable with my route to the Hunt and the Pavilion, having worked for this company just a few days. I think people find me an interesting sight to see: bandana and work clothes and my tool bag and Joker bag (sorry Mom) but I'm also used to people being taken aback by what I do for a living so it's easy to ignore.
-6:40pm gave up my seat on the bus for an elderly woman. My stop was coming up anyway. (karma points?)
-7pm At my apartment and looking at emails, scheduling work into January at this point, which is awesome! Also planning for December: working with the Hunt and more, I want to see Our Town, see the Memphis tour when it comes through since I will probably get a backstage tour, visit home for my Grandma's birthday and Christmas, and to visit with my friend Meg when she comes up for the holidays.

Busy times!!

And now...it's time to shower and eat dinner :) It might be a Netflix night of Dr. Who and/or Battlestar Galactica. My oldest brother will be proud.

Thank you for reading! 

My Tool Kit in the Theater

I started work at the Huntington theater yesterday, where I'll be working for a lot of this upcoming month. It is already a very different experience than my time at the American Rep: with a small scene shop located downtown, at the theater shared with Boston University students, the Hunt's shop is small and chaotic, but fairly efficient. They build for their own mainstage shows as well as various contracted works, and share the shop with students. We have started off the week by loading in Our Town at the black box space at Calderwood Pavilion.

A fully decked and roofed kitchen...to be seen briefly during the final scene of the show. Such is life in the theater.

One big change for me coming to work at the Hunt was a lack of available hand tools in the shop. Staff and overhire are told to bring their own tools in many places, especially IATSE (union) work calls, but other than the very basics (leatherman/multi tool, C wrench for electrics, gloves, tape measure) I haven't had the need to pack more of my tools. And I usually try not to, if a shop has the tools, because then mine will last longer and have less risk of disappearing. On calls for small shows, or say, when I helped my music teacher brother build sets for his elementary school's musical, I will haul my tools out of my car and use them more.

I know staff members at shops prefer their own tools often; and Tech Directors for smaller shops have their tools on hand often because they own more than the theater does, often, but I haven't been working in positions like that yet. (So this is possibly me moving up in the world? Or at least getting ready to!) I am more used to having my stage management kit (filled with anything one and one's actors could possibly need during rehearsal: pencils, sharpener, cough drops, tissues, first aid stuff, sticky notes, tape, etc...) wherever I go, so this is like a different version of that, I guess.

I have a pretty decent setup as far as tools go. For my sweet 16, my dad bought me a Ryobi battery-operated kit with a tiny circ saw, a drill, some bits. I've accumulated more, like hand screwdrivers and racheting screwdrivers, pliers, tape measure, random theater stuff like gobos and gel color booklets, and a little level, since then. Dad and I connect well over tools and mechanic stuff, so he usually gets me something fun for my birthday or Christmas, which is amazing :) Most recently, it was a head lamp, which is awesome for in the theater because no matter whether you are a carpenter or an electrician, the lights will go out at some point, or you will have to navigate and work behind scenery that blocks work lights, or crawl through some dark space to fix a connection or stabilize a platform leg. Painters often use them for the same reason; it's a steady, consistent light.

So tonight I pulled together my essentials to bring in tomorrow. I have a few tools that are red handled, so I gathered those and will keep the rest separate. I have phillips head and flat headed hand screwdrivers, a small level, a tape measure, a small hammer, a decent drill bit set, gloves, my leatherman and small maglite, a matte knife, and a few electrician's tools just in case: a multimeter, C wrench, and speed wrench. And my head lamp! I wish I could take my larger bit set in; it has drill bits, various screw head bits, a racheting wrench, and more...but the case is too large for my smaller tool bag and I don't want to deal with my larger bag with public transportation. My Ryobi drill is sadly outdated; it works well for home projects but wouldn't stand up to the Makita impact drivers a lot of shops have today, so I don't need to worry about bringing it in.

  Thanks for reading! Hopefully this wasn't too boring of a post...for many people I know this is standard stuff, but many of my readers also find day to day practices in this lifestyle quite different and interesting, so I figured I'd share something that is somewhat new for me.