Week 6:
1st Stage Theatre

January 22, 2014

As a professional theatre, we pay our actors and designers. And any time we pay actors and designers, we have to also pay our government. This week, I tracked down some stray tax forms and then learned how our tax software works and how to enter the amounts we’ve paid into the system.

This was also the first week that we really had anyone call to start reserving tickets for Souvenir. It had been several weeks since I’d made any reservations for Noises Off, so it was a good refresher to have to re-learn the material. I was very proud of myself for figuring it out again without needing to ask anyone for help!

My job shadow at the Anacostia Playhouse went really, really well. I was a little nervous about getting there. The metro by the playhouse isn’t in a super great neighborhood, but the stage manager picked me up, and everything went as planned. In fact, it went better than planned because the Assistant Stage Manager (ASM), Lynn, drove me all the way back to my house even though it meant an extra hour of driving for her. The biggest thing I’m going to take home from this internship is the big-heartedness of people in theatres in the DC area.

As I’ve mentioned when I went to simply see shows, it’s interesting to see how things change from theatre to theatre. It’s even more interesting behind the scenes. One of the things that was different from any other theatre I’ve ever been to is that each of the headsets can only communicate with the “Master” headset, which the Stage Manager gets to wear. It could get a little off-putting because I couldn’t always know if the stage manager’s needs were getting met. The Gin Game is a two-person play that only has one cue for the ASM (the job I was shadowing) so I didn’t miss anything important. As a fairly small theatre, there wasn’t a large backstage–but they didn’t really need it because both actors were onstage the entire time. Another thing I have found repeatedly in DC is that there are a lot of ways to get theatre done in less-than traditional spaces. While this might sound a bit like a backhanded compliment, it is actually exciting to me to see the variety of buildings that people have been able to use and still tell the story. Since I’m looking to start my own theatre company, I’m making note of all the varied ways people “re-purpose” buildings into theatrical spaces.

The set of The Gin Game was really well-done. The floor was painted in red and white checkerboard, to subtly add the element of chess and checkers to the more obvious gin. It’s all about playing with what’s there. The Anacostia Playhouse has a theatre that seats roughly 100 people, so it’s very intimate and having such a dramatically painted floor brings the audience into the action in a way that would never work at the Kennedy Center. Just another thing that encourages me that I can be really successful even without having a huge budget.

Watch for my next blog post where I describe the mailing of the postcards and getting to see Tribes with the world’s best volunteer!