Week 5:
Revving Up

June 24, 2018

Last week, everyone was preparing for tech week of 9 to 5. I’ve heard even more singing than usual in the office, and a lot of it sounds absolutely fantastic. I’m enjoying everyone being a bit more relaxed than usual because I know that they’re all going to be a lot more stressed once tech week comes along next week. Since I work front of house and development, I haven’t been as involved in the preparations, but I still feel everyone’s energy, and I’m still very excited for the show to go up. I think it might be our best yet this season.

In front of house this week I worked my very first late night shift, from 9:30-10:30 pm. Most of our shows begin performing at 7:30 pm (or 1:30 pm for matinees), except for one notable exception: Boomtown. Boomtown is our improv show, and I’ve heard that it’s excellent. A lot of the year-round office staff that I work with acts in Boomtown, including the Executive Director, John DiAntonio, the Artistic Director, Jess Jackson, and my supervisor and head of Development, Graham Ward. I haven’t gotten the chance to see Boomtown yet, but I want to badly, and I’m planning on seeing it next week if possible.

Boomtown is definitely the most casual show for Front of House (we’re allowed to wear CRT t-shirts to shifts), but that doesn’t make it any less busy. On my shift, a group of twelve people came in 10 minutes before the show started wanting tickets. Lucky for them, we still had some available, but it was definitely stressful. Not only that, it was the Boomtown premiere, and over 20 company members wanted to watch as well. I’ve never experienced a box office shift that was that easy at the beginning and stressful towards the end. Not only that, it’s the only show that we make popcorn for, which is fun for all the patrons but really stressful for concessions. I’m glad that Boomtown can be casual and fun, I just wish that people planned ahead for Boomtown like they do for our other shows. We sold less than half the seats for the Boomtown premiere ahead of time, and by the end of an hour of selling tickets, we had a full house. I liked the busyness, but it was very stressful.

This week we also had some homework due for the internship program. We have bi-weekly internship meetings with the Education Director, Johamy Morales, and we discuss things ranging from how our weeks have been to what we want to do in the future, and other work and career-related subjects. This week, we had to make a website- in past weeks we’ve had to write resumes and cover letters. All of these are super useful skills to have, taught to us by someone with many years of experience in the theatre industry. By the end of the summer, I should have a finalized and polished resume, cover letter, and website. I’m hugely appreciative of all of the care and attention that this internship program has been giving all of us. Here’s the link to my website, if you want to check out my work: https://noellegb.wixsite.com/website

In non-work-related news, I spent eight hours on Tuesday night with my supervisor, Graham’s house. Graham is a huge board game and D&D nerd, and he was the Dungeon Master for a session with me and a couple other people he knows. It was really fun! I’ve played D&D before, but not with a DM as talented and knowledgeable as Graham. He actually invented the entire world that we were playing in, and has published a campaign book with hundreds of pages of information about the world. I played a vampire sorcerer, and although I almost died a few times, I was the one who got the killing blow on the evil vampire boss. I really love how much I’m bonding with Graham, and I can’t wait to start playing with the front of house group that we’ve been planning for weeks. It’s going to be amazing!