Author Topic: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?  (Read 4747 times)

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NomieRae

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Recently I've been getting to know a lot of people outside of the theater realm (crazy concept, right?) and find myself having to re-explain my job and what I do and every time I hear myself tell a story I think just how incredibly odd some things are to other people.

Very often I get asked "You get paid to do...that?" which always makes me laugh.

So what are everyone's oddest stories of things they did on the job?

My personal favorite from the last year:
- Undressing a male stranger in under 30 seconds, 8 times a week (I never even get to know their names!)
--Naomi
"First, I honor life, and with it my life in theatre." -- Jacques Burdick

bex

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #1 on: Feb 12, 2012, 06:45 pm »
I recently had dinner with a friend of mine from elementary/middle school that I haven't seen since before I started college in 2006- she and her fiancee were amazed by literally everything I said because it's sooooo different from her job working on technology contracts for the government... the sentence "My boyfriend is a lighting designer, he's going to LA next week to design a dance concert" provoked an insane amount of conversation.  She's jealous of how "fun" my job as an SM intern sounds, I'm jealous of the fact that she has job security and benefits and raises and vacation time.
You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

lsears

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #2 on: Feb 13, 2012, 08:24 am »
One rehearsal immediately comes to mind when I try to explain to people how it is our job in rehearsals to approximate performance conditions.  We were doing a lightening fast remount of the opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, and the Assistant Director insisted that the other ASM and I stand in for missing set elements while staging.  I got off easy - when singers were putting away luggage in a train car I had to 'be' an overhead shelf.  Easy, right?  Take bags from singers, hold them up anything there was business of riffling through luggage on shelf and when they had to be removed - otherwise it was run my side of the rehearsal room as usual.  The other ASM had to stand in for a wall plug for a singer would understand her limited motion when she was singing holding an iron.  Just taping the cord to the stand-in shelf was unacceptable, the ASM had to sit on the floor holding the cord for every scene that occurred in that location.

ChaCha

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #3 on: Feb 13, 2012, 10:37 am »
 'the Assistant Director insisted that the other ASM and I stand in for missing set elements while staging.'

Made me laugh. I remember stage managing a production of Elisir d'Amore. It was a touring production and featured a smallish chorus and large fence. I was required to be the fence at many rehearsals !

Strange life indeed!
ChaCha

Maribeth

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #4 on: Feb 13, 2012, 11:12 am »
The other ASM had to stand in for a wall plug for a singer would understand her limited motion when she was singing holding an iron.  Just taping the cord to the stand-in shelf was unacceptable, the ASM had to sit on the floor holding the cord for every scene that occurred in that location.

Believe it or not I have done that as well- the first show I ASMed in college featured a vacuum cleaner, and the other ASM and I traded off who had to "be" the wall plug for the vacuum. :)

missliz

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #5 on: Feb 13, 2012, 06:54 pm »
I've been half a clothesline!

In that same show, there was a moment where I had to throw a pair of bloomers from offstage to land on the actress' head as she ran DS to US.

For Lizzie Borden, I ran all the blood FX and had my very own "blood gun" (a modified power washer), which was pretty cool.


And of course, my girlfriends were suddenly VERY interested in my job when I was working with 22 naked men playing rugby players. (Being recently single at the time, it didn't hurt!)
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least. -Ionesco

jenkoldsm

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #6 on: Mar 17, 2012, 09:18 pm »
It was not my own task, but one I had to delegate to an intern one show. We had an actor who was so old -(how old was he?)- he was so old that my guy had to go to his dressing room before his entrance, wake him up, lead him by the hand to his entry point (we were in the round), lead him to his chair in the blackout, and go get him in the next blackout to lead him back to his dressing room, where- you guessed it- he fell asleep.
but onstage, this man was a fireball!!

Kelasaurus

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #7 on: Mar 20, 2012, 04:48 am »
I am still young, with not a ton of experience, but I have a few:

-A show with 12 actors that spent most of the show naked (it was not erotic nudity).  There were a few moments where I did prop passes/held out costume pieces, and had to be extremely aware of my hands and where my eyes were trained.  It was a little awkward at times.  I was newly 18.  But at the time, I could officially say that I had seen more naked guys than all my friends combined.

-I got to "be" the trick arrow target on a production of Robin Hood.  ie- hit slam pads to push the arrows through the back of the target.  Creating theatre magic is fun.

-Same production, we had 3 days of archery practice, that ended with a tournament.

-On one show, I got to clean a large amount of toothpaste out of a diaphragm (the contraceptive) every day.
 
‎"We keep moving forward, opening new doors... because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
- Walt Disney

bex

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #8 on: Mar 21, 2012, 08:17 pm »
Sometimes I like to think about what I'm doing in terms of literally what I am doing as a non-theatre person would see it- I'm not helping an actor with a quickchange during a blackout, I'm standing in a dark stairwell helping a man I barely know change his clothes.  It really puts my job in a whole new perspective...
You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

Maribeth

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #9 on: Mar 21, 2012, 09:01 pm »
For a recent show, we had to (literally) make porn. There was an amateur porn scene (which thankfully was not very graphic) written into the script, to be projected on the set. So we set aside a few hours to do the shoot, with the props department dressing the set, and the makeup person doing touch-ups between shots. I ended up holding up script pages as "cue cards" for one of the actors during the filming, and I had a moment of thinking "I can't believe that this is my job."

BARussell

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Re: "You get paid to do that?" - What's your oddest story?
« Reply #10 on: Mar 24, 2012, 02:22 pm »
The list from my current gig would be ridiculous:

Basically hanging out with 50 naked people every night. Looking for nipple covers, dodging flying bras, cleaning giant blue dildos, these are just a few of my tasks...
« Last Edit: Mar 26, 2012, 03:56 am by BARussell »
"We don't negotiate with weirdos!"

 

riotous