professor tia explains it all

Good day! This is the blog post where I explain all the mundane particulars of The Theatre Actor's Life (or, at least, THIS Theatre Actor's Life). If you decide to skip this, I won't be offended. Pinky swear. But I myself have always been interested in the details of people's jobs or careers. Know the book Gig? If you share my workday-fascination, check it out!

And consider this my entry.

In a turn of events I shall eloquently label AWESOME, I have not needed a "second job" for the past year. This is new for me, and very well may change in a few months. But since September 1st, 2010, I have been steadily employed as an actor. Among other shows, I lucked into a 7-month tour (with a remount this fall/winter). Tour is its own world--I'll send dispatches on THAT particular life from the road in October. But my other gigs were both with a nearby children's theatre.

See, our life is a string of gigs. There are very few theatre companies out there that will employ actors for a whole season. So we have to go from show to show, with different companies, piecing together our own seasons (theatre seasons run like school years). There are almost always gaps, and we have to re-audition for companies year after year. The closest I've come to job security so far is the company that used me in 3 shows over one calendar year, and then lost funding and could not afford me anymore. SIGH. (I don't come cheap. I'm a union member, which means that with many contracts, you have to pay into my health plan on top of giving me a weekly salary. The health plan is what many smaller companies simply can't afford.)

Theatre is a funny thing, time-wise. With this children's theatre, for instance, I was very busy for the first 3 weeks--rehearsing for them 8 hrs/day, 6 days/wk, culminating in two "10 out of 12" days (when, you can probably guess, we work for 12 hours but with two hours of meal break). Then the show opens, and you have SO MUCH free time all of a sudden! On the weekdays, at least. I do 8-9 performances/week right now. This show is maybe an hour and fifteen minutes long, and very physical (as children's theatre tends to be). So I usually need a nap afterward:). But then...I still have a whole stretch of day left! Check it out:

Early morning: yoga! Wakes the body, gets the breath flowing. Mmm.
I arrive at the theatre around 9:30/9:45am. Say hi to everyone while I finish my coffee:).
Start getting into makeup/costume and double-checking my props around 10.
At 10:25, no joke, some of us have a 5-minute "tiny dance party" to get ready for the show:). It has become a tradition. 
10:30 = Places!
11:45 = Done! Fast & furious. Get out of costume, replace props.
Noon, head out of the theatre. With the drive, I am usually home 30-45 minutes later.
The aforementioned nap. Then...what? What do I do with all this time??

It varies. Yesterday, hubby and I had a meeting with a friend to discuss our baby theatre project. I then worked for a few more hours on the project at home. (We are devising a nonverbal play. Interesting stuff.)

..for tangential kicks, here is a fun example of what we call "baby theatre":

(Love it!!)

I am currently trying to put together a reading of my latest non-baby script. A handful of actors will meet at our apartment and read the whole piece aloud so I can listen and, well, judge myself:). Sometimes you don't know if certain dialogue works, or if scenes are the right length, etc, until you hear the words out loud.

Having just gotten hitched, there are still many thank you cards to write and send. Been working on those--a few here, a few there.

Etc etc etc. All these tiny little things make up a day. It seems about once a week, we will go see a show. Even though I make theatre, I still love to see it. And free tickets seem to fall into our laps in this household. It's pretty great.

Money-wise, theatre is also pretty funny. I am making an alright paycheck right now--can't complain!--but it would not be quite enough to live on in the DC area if I hadn't been able to save money from those months on tour. (That paycheck was larger, and came with a weekly food stipend that I was pretty stingy with). As a professional here, you can get literally anywhere from $150/wk to almost $1,000. It's a HUGE discrepancy. I'd say most of the contracts fall within the smaller half of that range.

In the past, I've been a barista, a cake builder, a bookseller, a costume character at a children's zoo, and a temp inbetween gigs, or alongside short gigs or lesser-paying ones. Come the spring, I may have to look for that second job again. And that's o.k. When talking to younger actors, I try to impress upon them that having to get a non-acting job is NOT failure in our field. We don't get paid to audition, after all. I went two years without any professional theatre prospects, so I cultivated another skill and volunteered my theatre arts where I could (in a benefit reading of "The Vagina Monologues," for instance). Those are 2 years that I would not go back and change. They taught me that a) theatre is not the *only* thing that makes me happy, and b) I am an actor whether I have acting work at the moment or not.

I guess this is true for all of us: the work can only define you as much as you let it. I am currently a working actor, but soon I may be an actor who is serving you a coffee. And I am quite alright with that. There are always more auditions, there are always the things I have already done, there are scripts in my head, and there are things to learn from other kinds of work that can shape me as both an artist and a person.

...and now you can all hold me accountable to these words when times get tough, friends. ;)

Class dismissed.