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Introductions / Re: Introduction!
« on: Mar 07, 2014, 11:46 am »
Oh the internship hamster wheel. Ideally, I'll do one year-long internship somewhere and then progress into the real world. But that's obviously easier said than done. I am open to moving almost anywhere right now, and I am exceptionally skilled at living off of beans and rice and coffee, so hopefully everything will work out.
My time in Scotland was really great. At some point, I'm going to write up a big long post about it and add it to one of the study abroad threads for other SM students. On a day-to-day basis, we were mostly working on shows. I ASMed two shows while I was there. (Technically I actually SMed one, as the SM got sick right before tech and I suddenly had to figure out how to run a UK tech rehearsal all by myself. But that's a story for another time.). We had to be in 9-6 Tuesday-Friday, and we could also be called in the evenings or on Saturdays at the SM's discretion. SM teams are set up differently in the UK, so I spent most of my time building/sourcing props and doing paperwork, with the occasional rehearsal. On Mondays, we went to classes and couldn't be called for show work. I took the second-year Production Technology and Management class with all of the second-year stage managers/lighting & sound designers/electricians/technical directors - since there are only about 20 students per year on the PTM course, everyone follows a prescribed schedule. Our class covered everything from Production Management to Health and Safety to Pyro. I also did an Independent Study where I learned to play the Highland pipes and wrote a paper on Scottish traditional music and dance.
It was the first year that RCS opened up the application to all US universities instead of just CalArts, so I was essentially their liberal arts guinea pig. The language barrier was pretty difficult for me for a while - the accents and daily vocabulary were fine, but theater terminology is completely different. I didn't process until last year just how many acronyms we use in theater... it's not a huge leap to figure out that technical stage manager = technical director or production electrician = master electrician, but things get confusing quickly when everyone's referring to the TSM and PLX and you don't know that they mean the TD and ME! But it was a good experience overall, and it was great to spend so much time with other people who love theater as much as I do.
My time in Scotland was really great. At some point, I'm going to write up a big long post about it and add it to one of the study abroad threads for other SM students. On a day-to-day basis, we were mostly working on shows. I ASMed two shows while I was there. (Technically I actually SMed one, as the SM got sick right before tech and I suddenly had to figure out how to run a UK tech rehearsal all by myself. But that's a story for another time.). We had to be in 9-6 Tuesday-Friday, and we could also be called in the evenings or on Saturdays at the SM's discretion. SM teams are set up differently in the UK, so I spent most of my time building/sourcing props and doing paperwork, with the occasional rehearsal. On Mondays, we went to classes and couldn't be called for show work. I took the second-year Production Technology and Management class with all of the second-year stage managers/lighting & sound designers/electricians/technical directors - since there are only about 20 students per year on the PTM course, everyone follows a prescribed schedule. Our class covered everything from Production Management to Health and Safety to Pyro. I also did an Independent Study where I learned to play the Highland pipes and wrote a paper on Scottish traditional music and dance.
It was the first year that RCS opened up the application to all US universities instead of just CalArts, so I was essentially their liberal arts guinea pig. The language barrier was pretty difficult for me for a while - the accents and daily vocabulary were fine, but theater terminology is completely different. I didn't process until last year just how many acronyms we use in theater... it's not a huge leap to figure out that technical stage manager = technical director or production electrician = master electrician, but things get confusing quickly when everyone's referring to the TSM and PLX and you don't know that they mean the TD and ME! But it was a good experience overall, and it was great to spend so much time with other people who love theater as much as I do.