We’ll stray away from theatre for a moment to take a heart to heart look at my first year experience at college. Most people write about these problems, because, at some point, every one who went to college was a freshman, and no matter how many buzzfeed or odyssey posts you read, no one had the same experience. Not everyone was happy. Not everyone found their place. They will never tell you about the students that left due to stress. They will never tell you about the students who had no friends, and who were miserable all year. Who had mental breakdowns because already in the middle of their first semester they were afraid to continue where they were. What if they love something else more?
            I stuck it through, though I did consider all of those options. I was stressed, but not from the amount of work I had. I’ve always prided myself on my time management skills. And for all those in high school who told you they were giving you hours of work to prepare for college: they were wrong. What they don’t tell you in high school is that you only have class for 2 and a half hours a week, the rest of the time you would normally spend in class in high school they devote to homework. College has massive amounts of free time. The trick is to take the responsibility to use that time wisely.
            One struggle I had personally was making friends. I was not the typical college student who gets away from their parents and goes around to party after party because they simply can. While I don’t have a problem with those who do go to party, I never went. I felt and still feel ridiculously uncomfortable around drunk people, and weed gives me headaches. I refused to go to parties because I was afraid to get caught. It was hard to make friends.
            Eventually, through residential life and classes, I found my group. My friends were sober. We watched movies over the weekend, we went to meals together and we played video games. On Thursday nights at 9 when people were getting ready to go out, we were cozying up in our pj’s about the go to bed for our 8 am classes.
            On the topic of friends, as the year went on, I learned that the friends I made first semester, while still great friends, would not be my best friends forever. I like to now call them my “emergency” friends. I love them all still, the day we moved out we all were thinking about how weird the future would be. They were the friends in my building. The first people I made a connection with. They lived across the hall or upstairs and we spent many hours together. But as the year went on, we made friends in other places. When I started assistant stage managing, I inched closer to friends in my department. I got to know them better and began gravitating towards them. They are now my closest friend and I spend most of my time with them, but there will be a place forever in my heart for my first semester friends. I even have friends that I refer to as my "family." They are my college parents, they take care of me even if they do not like to admit it, because being away from my actual parents was hard. They were the closest thing.
            The final struggle I faced was not knowing myself. I was afraid that I was not making the right decision in field. I was afraid that living at college was not right for me. I thought I was the only one. But those friends I was just talking about, they had the same problems. We all came from far away and had trouble making friends, we never drank the first year and we debated on leaving. We were not sure if theatre was the best thing for us.
            Though they’re going into their final year, and I’ve completed my first, and we’ve made it this far. You can too. It’s okay to feel out of place, and it is normal.
            You can make it.

This last week I had no time to write because I was working as the media operator for Plymouth State University’s Contemporary Dance Ensemble. I have never been familiar with dance, only in the fact that as a child, I wished that I was forced into dance when I was younger, and as I grew older and wanted to start, I was too scared to for fear of falling behind. Over the past week, I learned that no one should be scared to dance.
            Let me preface by saying that the show was incredible. The first piece was an hour long and showcased a variety of different styles of music and dance. I was captivated by each dancer and over the week I made a point to watch a different one each night. I learned that dance is more than looking beautiful. It’s about showing the relationships of people, movement, and space around us. Each individual dancer brought their own personality into their movements in a stunning version of communication.
            Though there were not many understandable lyrics, I felt like I knew what each performer and each portion of the piece was telling me. Each dancer connected with each other and with the audience to tell an incredible story. Pain, evolution, and strength followed each moment to come to a beautiful conclusion.
            As media operator, I had not much of a job to do until the second act. The first act only had one projection and it went in and out, no worries. In the second act, I was constantly opening and closing the projection shutter, and starting the projection along with the music. We used a WatchOut system to operate, which I did not get a chance to learn much about, but I worked a little with our designer to understand how to fix things when she was not there.
            There were two main challenges for my position. The first was being in house. Not being in the booth made it hard during the first act to hear my cue to GO. I turned my headset up all the way and asked my stage manager to talk a bit louder. This was not difficult, but it still offered some trouble. Through the second act, I had less of a hard time hearing due to the quiet music leading to my GO’s.
            My biggest struggle was other people in the space. Our projector sat on a platform that was stable and could not move. Though the slightest bump would alter the entire image on the cyclorama. Friday night we had it just perfectly, but I came in before the designer to check and it was ever so off.
            Earlier in the week, our designer taught me how to adjust in the program. Because our projector was not head on with the cyclorama, we had to adjust the image to not be straight in the program. This is tedious but necessary work. The other issue was the projector itself. If it got bumped, there was no way to tell. The Saturday night was a simple bump that I was able to move about an 8th of an inch. Problem solved. But previous to that, it was not that simple.
            My experiences as media operator were not that exciting, but my experience as a spectator to the art of dance was incredible. I encourage every artist to experience dance. There just is no art form quite like it. Don’t be afraid to dance.

 
            “Why did that gun just go off?” is probably not something the average person would like hearing. It’s also not the most ideal for an assistant stage manager.
            In our last production, we had a lot of variables. Extension chords, perishable food, and a blank firing gun to name a few. Each of them came with their own complications, and almost none of them went perfectly.
            Let’s start with the extension chord. In our scene, characters had to blend a piece of paper in a magic bullet. In a perfect world, we would have installed a power source into the unit it was placed on. The downside: we didn’t have time. It resulted in a 30’ extension chord across the floor. At first we just wound it up and brought it out during the scene change, but it kept getting tangled and caught and caused the magic bullet to either be unplugged or worse, fall out of the unit which would have ruined the gag.
            I started basic, I tried shorter chords, coiling it differently, everything. It was hell. Finally I took gaff tape and lined the side of the chord that was visible to the audience with gaff which made it less likely to be caught within itself. Then I took some tie line and coiled the other side. Tying it actually made it almost impossible to move and it helped very much. It solved that issue.
            Our perishable food struggle came directed from eggs. In one sketch our protagonist was Wacky, the waving inflatable arm man who stands outside of car dealerships. It was a day in the life of wacky, starting with breakfast. Since he had no control of his arms, he ends up flinging raw egg into a frying pan. Our struggle came from the assurance of it actually landing in the pan. Each day it did, but our first day with costumes got egg all of the sleeve. We had to hold and quickly clean up before eggs were flung all over the stage.
            Our last mistake came from the blank firing gun. Regardless of the fact that I could hardly ever load the gun on my own, it gave us super anxiety. The one instance was when it was fired offstage.
            Again, Wacky, comes onstage kicking an old cardboard box. We later find out he has decided to kill himself. The box contained the gun. One of the runs, the gun mysteriously went off in the box. After examination we tried to figure out what happened.
            Our speculation was that it got caught on the side of the box, there was a hole just a few inches above the mark of black powder.
            The real purpose of this was to discuss the panic that ensues from situations like this. A lot of times, first time stage managers and assistants freak out from these scenarios. They do not know how to handle this overwhelming issues. Also, even when they do find solutions, things do not always go perfectly. Accidents happen, like guns going off, eggs splattering, and extension chords getting unplugged. The important thing is to stay calm. Panicking makes the entire ensemble panic. Instead keep control and you’ll be in control.
            So remember, Accidents Happen, Chill.