THINGS ARE LOOKING AWFULLY GLIB...

Our wonderful stage manager, Vikki, contributed this latest entry, which she'd written a few days ago. She tells me another one is on its way and will most likely touch on our tech foray last night.

Be vigilant, my little Grimminites.

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Stage managing is not, by definition, an intrinsically creative part of the production process. No more so than being a parent is considered a creative role. It takes ingenuity to meet certain goals, but they are clear cut from the start, in both cases: raise this being up right. Whether it flourishes once you step out of the picture is another story.  I'd like to think our show, if it were human, would be rough around the edges but not even toeing the line of sociopathic killer. And really what more can you ask for as a parent?

This role fell into my lap in high school. I love theatre but I feel like an anthropologist amongst the natives. I can understand some of the language, recognize the various dialects, try to translate the hieroglyphs on sheet music. Art is thoughtless, but not senseless. While the typically artistic side does not come to me easily--you'll never find me tearing down the house with a Broadway ballad or building up the set I solely conceived--it makes sense. For an organizational mind, this is my idea of fun.

I've  always been functionally OCD; what people would lovingly call efficient. Catholic school survivor syndrome. I was always the kid watching the magic show and saying "But why? How?" Stage managing is about making the magic possible, but not participating in it. Occasionally I get to speak up, but usually in a logistical discussion. Not "does it look good" or "does it make sense" but "does it work."

Working on a show used to torment me in a good way. The way some people love the butterflies they get before taking a Regent or SAT, or the way an athlete gets nervous before a game--but don't quote me, the closest I've been to a gym was sharing a building with one back at our Little Theatre. Oddly this show isn't setting any internal butterflies alight. In fact, I have an unnerving sense of calm with this production, however numerous the calamities so far. Maybe I'm the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water. Chaos has become a constant, and therefore been downgraded to status quo. Or I can pull back even farther and say that the eight years of doing this was time spent bubbling.

Maybe that's why I'm feeling so nonplussed about everything: I know how it works so I'm no longer searching for missing pieces. That's not to say the way I know is best or I don't have more to learn. What I do know is that this group (the core of BIG and the cast) has "it" and will work "it." Faith is illogical but potent.

So we've lost three actors (two being leads) and a costume designer. We have an actor doubling as a designer and a producer doubling as an actor. Pennies are left in our kickstarter piggy bank. The demands of the festival has slightly reigned in the theatrics. In the midst of it all, the cast has bonded, we've gone on. We're more creative in spite of the hurdles. So maybe the talent isn't in the pomp and circumstance of a drama but the quiet victories. The skill is not in the what the audience sees but what they don't. Sure the cast and crew are traditionally artistic. They're also versed in this skill--and that's why I do theatre. This is the language I understand; from the anthropologist's perspective, this is the smile after the untranslatable sentence.