Friday, June 19, 2009

Sunday 14 June

First day of work!

Weirdly enough, we don't start work until 10am, strange I thought, but whatever.

We get there, and we have a company meeting with everyone introducing themselves and also them informing us about the theatre. It ended up being the Artistic Director telling us how the theatre has no special reason to still be around and how we make it keep going and how we have to do the best we can and be a team player and all this great pep talk encouraging stuff.

And I'm totally on board.

Until I realize that I am the only one with any form of Props or Paints in my contract title.

Crap-monkeys.

They give us an 'official' tour of the place. The props room is pretty big and decent as well as the other areas of the theatre. They then dismiss us to go where we need to go.

I don't know where to go so I head off with the 2 Carpentry interns and we find the TD. We find him and he asks whose the paint/props intern, I say I am and he points over to the corner of the scene shop and says "that's the paint kitchen"

This is what a "paint kitchen" means at this place:

  • a space that is approx 8' x 12'
  • about 12 brushes total, nothing larger then a 3" chip brush and about 75% of them are ruined because they had paint left in them.
  • a sink that I am told I'm not really allowed to use because it dumps into a 400-gallon holding tank and it costs a lot to empty that out, so if I could go around the theatre and wash everything in the kitchen sink, that would be great.
  • 3 quarts of supersat, with about a spoonful let in each of them.
  • no extra mixing buckets
  • a ton of unorganized house paint that has been donated.
  • no mixing space
  • no overheadlight so you can see what you're doing
  • no 5 gallon buckets
  • no bamboo sticks.
  • no lining sticks.
  • And most importantly: NO PAINT DECK!
Trying not to flip my shit I am asked by the TD to help them out for awhile.

Apparenyly "awhile" means all day......doing carpentry work.

Remind you that I am contracted as a PAINTS/PROPS INTERN

I spend the first day loading in about 30 platforms, and legging them up and screwing in 3" screws with the other 2 carp interns and whoever else was helping them that day.

There was one guy helping them that day who I have come to believe will be at the top of my shit list all summer. Not that this has anything to do with it, but I'm pretty sure he's the gayest most flamboyant hippe on the face of the earth and I don't think my voice was ever as high pitched and airy as his is at anypoint of my life--my goodness!

Anyways, in all this scene shops glory of being illequipped and not having certain tools (like dead blows and stuff) I go up to this guy and ask him if I can see his tapemeasurer because I needed it for something.

"What color is it?" he asks me
"Blue" I reply
"There, you saw it" he tells me, and walks away without giving it to me.

?!?!?!?!!??!?!? Really?! Seriously?!

Sigh.

By the end of the day I drove myself out to civilization and was virtually in tears for the rest of the night on the phone with my parents, boyfriend, and my mentor from college. Everyone had different things to say about it. My dad told me to pack my stuff and get the hell out of there, my mom said the same. My boyfriend only got my hysterical voicemail and didn't get the glory of dealing with my crazy snot face. (Mind you I'm walking around the parking lot at the grocery store snot faced to the max--I'm surprised no one called the cops on me at times). And then I talked to my mentor and his wife and they made me realize that I needed to find a reason to stay at this shit hole of a situation I've gotten myself into for the summer.

Is it fair? No, not at all. But I need to stay here unfortunatey. Why? Because there seems to be only 60 people in the theatre industry and everyone knows everyone and if I bail out of this dump I can bet you anything it's going to come back and kick me in the ass at some later point of my career.

So what do I do?

I aim to ruin the lives of these hippies I live with one day at a time.

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