I guess I was wrong....

I got the job in Chicago at the Goodman. So I start next Friday. So yeah things are going well.

Stupid f-ing wedding. So last year I agreed to be my friend Bri's maid of honor and now it looks like its going to cost me a job. Its an overhire gig at the Goodman for the run of King Lear and it runs right through the wedding. And I don't think that it will be okay. ANd I really can't go back on my word. Yes my career is important but my friends and family are more so. So it looks like Chris almost gets hired again. Great. Now I'm stuck looking for another shit job so that I can make some money to get out of here, beacuse to be completly honest when I left in Febuary I hoped not to come back for a long time. A real long time. Well here's to trying to get back to where I want to be.

Why is it you always find where you belong when your trying to leave.

That pretty much sums it up. I'm back on the road and this time heading east. I went down to see my Aunt in Ashland ( Southern Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival)which was exactly what I needed. It was nice to have family around to talk to. Plus my Aunt Nancy (who is techincally my Great Aunt) is just one cool lady. She's somewhere in her 70s and is completely independant and extremely involed in the community, not only politcally but also she works a lot with the arts community there.
And I found out I really like Ashland, I now understand the stories I've heard about the people stopping for lunch and never leaving. The town is literally in the middle of nowhere (3 hours to Eugene and 6 to San Francsico) yet it manages to have a Shakespeare Fest that runs from Febuary to October, a Symphony, and several other smaller theatres. Its just this really cool extremly liberal town in beautiful moutians. I really want to live there some day.
Getting out of Oregon turned out to be a task, I've replaced 2 tires and a radiator hose. I swore to myself that if I had any troble leaving that state that I was going to take as a sign and turn around. But I didn't so I don't have to have that phone conversation with my parents.
So I'm exhausted in Salt Lake getting ready to sleep so I can continue back to Wisconsin.

Traveling Merices

I don’t know why I haven’t shared this with you all yet but I feel like I should. It was given to me buy my friend Peg Koller before I left Wisconsin this February.

“Broken things have been on my mind lately because so much has broken in my life this year and in the lives of people I love- hearts, health, confidence…

Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken- those of people we know, those of people we’ll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.

And then she went on vacation.

‘Traveling mercies’ the old people at our church said to her when she left. This is what they always say when one of us goes off for a while. Traveling Mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound.”

From Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, p 106

And surprisingly today some did at least seem to understand the second paragraph of this quote. I was getting my oil changed and finding out all that needed to be done and the guy was being level with me and we discovered that my front tire was about to shred. So I went back to the hotel to find out where the Les Schwab was. I was asking cause it’s the only tire place that I had heard anything about. I was going to the parking lot where I ran into this gentleman Mike, whom I had talked with when I was checking in. He and the hotel manager were talking and I was filling out paper work and chatting as well. He saw that I was visibly upset and asked what was wrong and I told him about the tire. The long and short of it was that he brought me to the local tire place and got me a used tired. It was only 25 bucks but he wouldn’t let me pay him back. He said it was nice to be able to help someone. Its moments like these that restore your faith in humanity.

As for Dave and me, we hashed it out. We both still love each other but right now each of our own lives is in such disarray it makes it really hard to be there for someone else like we should be able to. So were taking a break until shit gets shorted and then we’ll reassess and at that time if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t. We don’t want to throw away some that has the poetional to be good when we have our shit sorted.

So I’m glad I came out here and in general feel that I am in a place where I can move forward with life. Which was the entire point in coming out here. So all in all things have worked themselves out, with some help.

One Crazy Fucking Ride

So Utah's done. ANd in some ways it been great and in others it has been awful.

But the next three days are what's going to change things. Shit between Dave and I has been going downhill steadly for about a month now. And it seems after we hash shit out that each time it is over a lack of communication.

Well I'm hitting the end of my rope with it all and I'm driving out there to talk to him. I don't expect it to fix anything but I know for me that I have to do this. If I went East tomrrow things would just continue to detrieorate and quite frankly I want to deal with this and put it to bed. If something happens great, but if it doesn't at least I won't be saying "I wish I saw him one more time."

Mainly I want to see him cause then I'll know what's up. I figure that out from body lanuage etc. and before I make my decision I need to see him. I'll let you know what happens but needless to say its gonna be a little crazy for awhile.

Long time no Post

So I decided to actually post even though things are going how I would like them to. Its been espically frustraiting as I'm not finding work ( or almost getting a job to be turned down at the last mintue) and quite frankly I'm not getting what I need out of my realtionship with Dave. And its not for a lack of trying which is really frustraiting. If one was going right I'm might have a prayer of dealing with the other, with out wanting to shoot myself or anyone else.
Other than that things have been cool. I've had a lot of fun hanging out with people here and enjoying the random adventures.
Like going out to a Chinese buffet and finding ourselves at Antalope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. Which has to be one of the most beautifully desolate places I've ever been. Its this island covered in sage and small brush and no trees,in the middle of a lake that's so salty that it almost can't support life in it. I though growing up I would hate places like that. But I find that I don't. There is something so peaceful in it.
What happened was Christina, Jess and I had finshed eating and climbed into Jess's car (which she had just gotten the plates for after waiting for over a month). Jess wanted to go for a drive and we picked south. We thought we were going to Ogden until we realied we had never actually been to the Salt Lake and went. It was one of the better random road trips I've been on. Next week's adventure involes Indain Food and we'll see where that leads us.

So what's next

So Opening night has come and gone and life is okay. RIght now my main worry/concern in life is what next? Where do I go from the Opera. I've been sending out my resumes etc for months and have gotten to the first round of interviews and then gotten the nice rejection email. I'm just getting nervous cause let's face it I would like to continue to work in theatre in the near future. Its been espically nerve wracking lately as two of my friends out here have recently landed great gigs. And I am truly happy for them. They are both really wonderful people as well as being really good at their jobs. So I wish them the best but it makes me nervous. It will be what it will be and I'll keep sending stuff out until I have a job, however long that takes. Its just a little discouraing right now.

And the War of 1812.... What the fuck was that??

Peter to Rob our resident Brit.

I have to say that wins as my all time favorite 4 of July quote and I wanted to share it with y'all.

So life in Utah progresses, we're currently in tech and will be for about the next week. Ah the joys of teching four shows at once. Its not that bad though considering the prop shop is in good shape and for the most part so we have time to do our notes and do them well. figaro is going well and so far I've had no major notes save the flower pot hat, which has been fun bit I have a soultion that will work. So I'm not too worrried,
But I gotta sleep now so that I'm fuctional tomrrow.

Thank Christ for the White Owl

... No really that bar saved me from several murders today.

So its that time again in the prop shop. Its the week before tech and the adds keep coming. Not that this really a problem but it just adds stress on to us. That and no one ( including me) cleans until it gets out of hand.

My problem today was that my usual work station got taken over. This is the place that I have to work on small props and to plan out what has to be done for my show. (I'm the show head for Marriage of Figaro one of the 4 shows we're doing this summer, which isn't bad save they all tech at the same time.) So I kept having to carve a new corner out of our messy shop to work.

What really pissed me off about this was that one of my co- workers, summaraly took contorl of the big communal work table. And this is the latest in a trend of not treating the rest of us in the shop with some respect. Listen sweetie, you're good, really good, but so am I and I do know shit too. I really hate being talked down to and I know its not on purpose but seriously its beigning to get to me. I'm trying to come up with a way to tell her this constructivly cause if I just shoot off my mouth when I'm annoyed it will just add to more tension in the shop.

So after work today I went over to the one local bar, the aforementioned White Owl, and got the Tuesday Night Speical ( a 40 oz beer and a damn good burger). And finally I was able to laugh with my friends out here ( who I happen to work with).

And thank god cause this means that tomrrow will be better and I'll be able to take care of the things that are bugging me with out pissing to many people off.

Rock Climbing is like Crack...

....but more expensive.

So I've started climbing again and I'm addicted. To the point where I want to take my food money and buy a membership to the gym cause it will be cheaper. But then there is the cayon about 5 minutes up the road where the climbing is free save the fact that I need to invest in gear. Damnit I hate being poor, but I love my job so in several ways I don't care about the pay save when the choice is between food, climbing and beer (its $12 for a 6 pack of the beer I like.) I'll proably end climbing outside a lot but I hope to improve by the end of the summer.
So I'll leave y'all with my new ID badge picture

Climbing+ Rain

So life at UFOC is settleing in. It hasn't been to crazy yet but I'll have a lot more to do once we get the directors here. I'm really enjoying the way we're running the shop this year. Because of the commucation breakdown that occured last year we restructured things. So Bryce is our props master and is overseeing everyhting and the rest of us are working basically as Assitant Props Masters to him. So my major concern is getting Fiagro done on time. And as of the end of the 1st week of work I have 99% of the rehearsal props taken care of ( rehearsals start on June 10th) and managed to refinsh a table and learn how to gold leaf. So its been really good.
I've been having a lot fun in my free time too. Like today where we had a intro climbing day. I didn't get to far up the wall cause it was raining pretty hard. But it looks like we have like 8 climbers here this summer and some with extensive exprience. So I hopefully will be climbing a lot in my spare time. Other than that I've hanging out and meeting all the new people and catching up with returning people. So yeah life is good.

More Coherent Utah

So this time I'm a little more coherent writing this. Last night's post was after 14 or so hours of driving on 3 hours of sleep. And dealing with a car that really tries to overheat going up hill. Just to clairfy for all of you, Dave and I are still together but he's not in Utah, which kinda sucks but we'll make do. That and myself and about 5 people (so far not everyone's here yet) are trying to get him to visit us. Hopefully he'll be able to.
But on to picturey goodness.

Gratuios Dave shot but then again this is how I started my trip.



The beautiful Colmbia River Gorge when its a rainforest. Which I love. But then....

Welcome to the not rain forest part of Oregon.

And the hill that Fred had to climb. It was pretty icky until we hit the Blue Moutains in Eastern Oregon

And know welcome to southren Idaho ... the most desolate place you'll ever drive through


And the last shot I have was of the sun going down knowing I had about 3 hours to go.


But I made it here and was really glad. So far its been pretty good if a little intense. I'm just not used to haveing so many people around, but its good. I'll post more later and I apolgize for how long this took. My internet just got fixed. So yeah that's my trip.

Utah again

So I made it to Utah after about 14 hours on the road. Leaving Dave behind this morning was on of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I’m still surprised I was able to get in the car and drive away from him. It didn’t really hit me that I was really leaving until Pendelton. And from there to Bosie I was a wreck. After Bosie I just hit the point where it would be a longer distance to turn around so I had to keep on going. So I got here and the werid thing is that I’m in Dave’s old apartment though not his room. I’m living with Magic Matt and Cassie which rocks even though we’re in the basement. I have a tv and internet. I would have loved to live Christina and Maggie again but this should be a good living arragment though the apartment needs some work, like towel rack’s in my bathroom so I’ll let Gary ( the guy in charge of this ) know about it tomorrow. Its just werid to be here without Dave. I hope that I get to see him before August. Yeah I’ll post pics of my drive tomorrow. Talk to y’all then. And Matt I’m gonna try my luck with one of the mountains here. However I want to see your pictures of Mt. Hood. Well, I’m gonna go sleep now.

Mt. Hood

So yesterday I finally got to go meet a volcanoe, and in the process check out a really beautiful lodge. I think Dave had to psyically remove from it. That and it was on huge moutian. I never realised how high 11,000 feet is. So since I now can take digtal pictures I thought I share Mt. Hood with you all.

A Good Quote

Yeah, well, I've got a dream too. But its about singing and dancing and making people happy. That's kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And well, I've found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And it kind of makes us like a family.
~Kermit

AHHHHHHHH!!!

So I'm in the middle of a condrum that I don't find myself in. I have two potiental jobs for next fall, one is an internship with a Childern's Theatre, and the other is a Props Artisan Job at the University of Delware. My problem is that the Childern's Theatre wants an answer and I haven't heard back from Delware. The job with the Chlidren's Theatre pays $100 a week and I'm also the Scenic artist which I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with. The job in Delware is to assit the Graduate Props Masters as well as help organize the stock etc. Its a nine month contract that is salired and it has benfits which really has my interest. And I think i have a chance to get it. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot and end up with no work next fall. So i'm sitting here trying to figure out what to do. Normally I only get one potental offer so I take it but now I have to wonder if I keep hunting or take what has been offered.

The American Dream involes Cheese??

So I finally got I job that I'll have to give notice for in about 3 weeks. Eh such is life. However its a pizza joint in town that is pretty fun. The place I'm working is called American Dream Pizza and I'm in the Prep kitchen which is kinda fun espiscally since they let me use the hunge industrail mixer to make cookie. Its a local independant place that's motto ( or what's on the back of the shirts) is "Music, Art, Beer, Pizza." so I dig it. Plus people are gernerally laid back and pretty cool. So it will be fun while I'm here.

I guess Thorton Wilder doesn't suck

Let me explain, I HATE Our Town. I've worked on two productions and whie one was in high school the other was at Bay Street Theatre with an extremly talented cast and amazing designers. The set ( yes a set, it was a back wall and a floor) is still one of my favorites, it was a wood floor where the planking radiated from a centeral point and contiued up the wall with gaps between the wall planks to create a really cool lightbox which ended one of the acts with a sunset. And yet with all these things I still hated it. I never got the point of what Wilder was doing because I thought that it was the characters that mattered. That's not how it works, the ideas are important and the characters are just vechiles for them.
What made me realize this was not rereading Our Town, but reading another Wilder play The Skin of Our Teeth. Which sets you to care about the idea, primarlly the fact that no matter what the human race seems to survive and rebulid, but just barely. What makes it interesting is the first two acts take place before the impeding "end of the world" ( the ice age and the Biblical Flood respectivly) and the thrid takes place after it ( a pre nuclear era post aplolitic war ( the play was published in 1942). We see all these events in through the Antrobus family which is made up of Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, there two childern ( Henry and Gladys) and their maid Sabina. Its interesting cause it is a juxapostion of mid 20th century anachorism mixed in with thing like inventing the wheel and the alphabet. And the way that Wilder wrote it makes it apparent (at least to me) that the characters don't matter, in fact they don't change at all until the thrid act. Even so it made and interesting read and I would love to see it performed. So yeah I guess I need to reread Our Town and past the veener of the play that sentmentalizes life at the start of the 20th century. So I guess that Thorton Wilder doesn't suck.

Why do they call it burning a CD when you don't light it on fire?

I mean fire is what I think of when things are burning, or least extremly intense heat. The reason this question is floating around in my brain is due to the fact that I have burned a shit ton of CDs today.
No I haven't stolen a ton of music, they're picure CDs that I'm sending out with my resumes and cover letters. After talking to a lot of people at USITT the general consicenes was along with a resume and cover letter a web site or some other digtal version of your portfolio is a good idea. So I went into mine selceted what I wanted and have been fighting with windows ever since. (I can hear the Mac users among us saying "See Macs are way cooler than PCs.") Now while Macs have there moments, if I did have one I would have a lot harder time playing games like Kirby's Dreamland etc. And that would make me a sad panda. The reason that Windows is pissing me off is the fact that it has decided that best way to organzie my pictures is not the way I set them up but in Alphabetical order. So finally everything went into a folder by show or class and went off in the mail. Well at least four of them did. Hopefully I'll be hearing something soonish. But I must return to the dread world of the cover letter. Ugh I hate reworking these damn things.
Toodles

Woo HOO More Interviews

Except that they're the good kind this time.
So I've been spending my time here at USITT learning a lot about this industry and also feeling kindsd of out of the loop. Now I don't mean this skill wise, I feel that I know a good deal ( not that I can't learn more) but I feel lost when people are talking about important designers. When I hear there names, I have no clue who they are or what they have done, all I can tell is that they are imporant. I normally realize this because of the way that people say there names etc. For instance yesterdy there was this session with the Scenic Designer, the TDs (there are 2 of them) and one of the Props Master of Actors Theatre of Louisville. Now I went since this particaluar session was about how they dealt with the Humana New Play Festival. The thing about the Festival is besides being New Plays is that it is rep. So for the month of March they are running 7 shows in rep. Now since I'm working rep again this summer, I was more interested in how they do things ( this is how I think) and some of the soultions that they have come up with to deal with change overs etc. Well that's not what 99% of the people in the room were interested in. They were interested in what Paul Owen the Scenic Designer had to say. Over the cousre of the hour and a half I realized that this man had been a driving force in American Scene Design for at least the last 30 years and that I had never heard of him. So I went hmm, who else here is important that I don't know about. I've found what I need to learn next, I need to learn about all of these people who came before the current generation of designers and techincans.
Other than that realization in that part of my knowlege its been pretty good. Yesterday I got to attend this great session on paper props and learned about a lot of good rescorues, (induling this one guy Herb who in his retirement is makeing a collection of paper good available via Cd) and some new techniques. I also was able to let the people there know about the water color paper trick with plotters as well as about the Tate online. Then I got to hear Jon Jory ( the retired (I think) Artisic Director of Actors Theatre) speak. Which was great. The other really cool session i got to go to was about Handmade Scene Painting tools and it was done by Rachel Keebler the head of Colbalt Studios, who is really nice and had a lot of good info. ( By the way she was giving out drawings of the tools and if people want them I am willing to make copies and mail them.) And I ran into people that I worked with last summer and some that I will be working with again. And got hugs so that was great.
Today I didn't go to that many sessions. The first one I wanted to go had too many people , so I didn't get in but I did get to wander around the stage expo and check stuff out. And then after some debate I hiked over to the Marriot and signed up for interviews (there was a fee involed which lead to the debate). So tomrrow is a portfolio review and 4 interviews. So hopefully I'll get some work out of this. ANd then I finally got into this session about Non tradtional product use. It was awesome. The two presenters talked about what they had found and opened up the floor, there must have been at least 150 people there all with a lot of good knowlege about werid things used in productions. Finally it was decided that some how we needed to make a list and add to via email so hopefullu I'll get that info to whomever is interest. Oh and for those Scene Painters amongst us, if you add some lysol or Pine Solv to your paint it will keep the bactriea out and keep it from going bad as fast. And then the really cool thing that happened was that I got to go on a tour of Actors Theatre and I got to meet and talk with one of the Props Masters there. He was really nice and answered my questions about how do you deal with rep and delicate props and stuff like that. So it was really cool, but I need to eat and then head on back over. I'll let you all know what happens.