Week 3:
The Wonderful Wizards of Creede

June 12, 2018

This week felt incredibly long for the entire company. We opened our first musical, Wizard of Oz, on Saturday and the scene shop and costume shop were working very long hours to get everything completed. Even though Front of House and Development weren’t quite as busy, I still felt the nervous energy and stress of everyone else around me. My roommates, who work in the costume shop, often didn’t finish their workdays until 8:30 or 9 at night, and everyone was scrambling. My friends in the scene shop were especially busy, as they were already down one worker and then another had to leave for personal reasons. The sound department lost the sound designer and had to get a replacement on very short notice, and everyone’s generally been very stressed.

I’ve had to do a lot of development work to prepare for the opening night of Oz. Immediately before the preview, I had to prep more skewers of meat and vegetables for the reception and generally help get everything set up. I was helped by about five community volunteers whose aid has been invaluable. CRT relies on volunteers for this sort of prep work, as well as ticket-taking and ushering, and several of them have been helping CRT out for decades. I’ve never felt disrespected by them, despite my age, and I honestly rely on them a lot to tell me how they’re supposed to do their job and get advice about more efficient ways of doing things. Another big project I worked on this week was a “paparazzi wall”. This was foam board that we glued images onto, mainly CRT’s logo and the words “opening night”. I only helped with the last part of it, the gluing and putting up of the wall, but it was surprisingly difficult to do. I’ve been consistently surprised by how much of the development work I’ve been doing is basically crafting

Opening night was a relief- everyone got to relax a little bit. I feel like I’ve bonded with my coworkers more over this busy week, but it’s been nice to get a chance to relax and play board games with them while they’re feeling less stressed. I haven’t been nearly as busy as the actors or the people working backstage- front of house scheduling has gone on mostly the same- but it’s still nice to get some stress relief. Living in the Bordello is really good for that- there’s almost always someone to talk to or play games within the house, and I don’t feel as lonely as I thought I might.

In some ways, I feel like I’m on the opposite schedule from everyone working in the shops. They have to work very hard in preparation for upcoming shows, and then once the show goes up, they can relax a bit. My front of house work amps up when shows go up, because I have to work during some of them, so I get progressively busier as the season goes on rather than less busy. Also, the front of house pretty much has set hours that we work- box office is open to buy tickets from 10-5, and if it’s before or after those hours, we don’t have to pick up the phone. It’s gotten a little different as we put up different shows, but we’re still consistently working hours while the shop works projects. Sometimes I feel like I’m slacking, but I just have to remember that the work I’m doing is just as essential to the running of a theater and that just because I’m doing “office work” doesn’t mean that I’m not helpful and creative.