EPTStart time: 12:52 a.m, 0 words
So here I am, sitting at the computer just one day away before I'm moving to college for my freshman year. Rather than packing and getting ready of course, I want to write this out while the timing is still good :D. I've been meaning to do this for awhile now, and I actually had written out the blog before, but then everything I had was deleted due to my log-in timing out lol. This is basically just going to be a life-storyesque blog of how I developed through high school and found a huge passion in theatre, so I hope you guys enjoy.
I'll help you guys visualize how I am(was) in three words that many of you yourselves might associate with. Shy. Nerdy. Asian. Yes, those attributes definitely described me throughout grade school and half of my high school career. For the first year and half or so of high school, I was that nerdy, shy dude. I didn't want to step out of my comfort zone. I didn't really want to be open and make an effort to meet new people. I just wanted to go to school, hang out with the friends that went to the same grade school as I did, then go home, play computer games, and do homework, rinse and repeat the next day. This was more or less how the entire freshman year was for me.
Thankfully, my second year was a a lot better. My friends and I started up an SSBM club, where we would play in one of the classrooms during lunch. Through our club though, I learned that my school already had a really big SSBM scene in the school basement of one of our buildings and I started playing with them on a daily basis. They were all seniors, which was pretty intimidating at first, but I slowly become really close with all of them and they considered me part of the group [for some reason they called me bombsoldier >_>] I didn't think of them as other students that I hardly knew, but rather as people that enjoyed playing that game like I did and I just wanted to compete with them. I didn't really realize it myself at the time, but meeting these people and befriending these people was what catapulted me into wanting to change myself.
Jump to third year! For some strange, unbeknownst reason I wanted to completely break out of my shell and change who I was. Maybe it was because of the year before, or maybe it was because I saw that I was wasting my time. I didn't want to be a dopey high school kid that did nothing new. I realized that there were so many great opportunities around campus that I never knew about and took them up asap. I joined enough clubs to keep my lunch hours busy throughout the week (If you're curious, I joined our school's anime club, asian game club [we played mahjong and go lol], ssbm club still, and asian society). I started talking with people that, although I've seen many times before in my classes and around campus, I never said anything to them. I started talking with..people that I might not have seen before. However, instead of being afraid that I'd fuck up in a conversation and look like an idiot, I just engaged with the other person in an open and wholehearted manner. Slowly, I evolved from staying with the same group of people in the same spot to traveling all over campus for my clubs and seeing people I know and cracking a joke or quip about a class we just had / will have.
<Enter theatre>
“Theatre tech is starting this week for the upcoming winter musical Bat Boy. New members are welcome, please come to the informational meeting after school”. This was a small tidbit that was part of our daily announcements one day. Now theatre tech was something that I've wanted to do since I first heard about it during my first year, but I was too shy to actually go to the meetings. For two years I stayed away from it, always wanting to try it but too afraid, but this was a different year for me. It was a year of change D: So after school, I said to myself as I stood at the entrance: “Okay, you're just going to go in and it will be all fine and dandy. Just shut the fuck up and do it you dumbass” And I did. And little did I know how much that day would change my entire life. (I mean it)
lol, I still remember how that day went. I came in a bit late so I quickly found a seat and sat down. The director was giving a speech about the show and then suddenly a group of students come running in from the scene shop carrying a really weird looking....thing (it was more or less a bunch of random tools taped together :>) and completely derailed the director. Some people in the audience shout something related to the show last season and then everyone bursts out laughing. I of course, had no idea what they were talking about and felt a bit out of place >_>. The director finishes his speil and then the technical director comes in and says that there's still shit to be done, like dismantling a few of the platforms first. And by dismantling I mean beat the living shit out of it and take it apart cause we sure as hell weren't using it again. People whip out crowbars and hammers and start beating on the pieces and taking them apart, all while laughing and having a great time. I'm standing around trying to do whatever I can and then a person calls out to me and asks to help him with something. And as they say, the rest is history (damn that felt cheesy >.<)
+ Show Spoiler [Details of what we did] +
There were three shows spread out during the school year, a fall drama, a winter musical, and a spring comedy. We would more or less work for every single day through the entire school year, minus the first week or two at the start of the year and during show weeks.
I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but by theatre I mean technical theatre. The construction, lighting design, sound engineering, scenery painting, fly systems, carpentry, prop aspect of theatre. Everyday we would work from 3-4:30 after school, and on fridays from 12:30-4:30. At the start of the season, we would generally see if there was anything that needed to be tidyed up from the last show. Taking apart old set pieces, or cleaning our scene shop, things like that. We would then split into two groups: construction, and lighting. For construction, we'd get to work putting together the basics of the set, which included things such as platforms to raise the level of the stage (our theatre was super crappy, it used to be a library. Our stage floor was literally just a floor, so we often used platforms to define a stage) or flats to paint things on and to act as walls. Some people might be working on specific aspects of the show such as a moveable staircase or a trapdoor or a rotating bed that could spin around to hide behind a wall. The lighting guys work on their own thing, designing the lighting plots based on the directors vision and then they go about hanging up the lights. Sound work is usually done near the end where everything can be coordinated with the acting portions. Painting is also carried out at the end too, everyone is put into hard labor getting the painting done :<
And all of this goes on until the actual two weeks of show nights, which is preceded by what we affectionately call `hell weeks`, a two week duration or so in which we would incorporate the technical aspects of the shows with the acting aspects. We'd work w 3-4:30 finishing up various things, and then 4:30-7 with the actors and director. We would go through the entire show, making sure the timings of the light changes were correct, the colors were just right, and the positionings were spot on. We had to go over which microphones were on and off and that the sound levels for sound effects were just right. We had to go over which piece of the scene moves to where on stage at when and what prop should be in which actors possession at what times. It sucked. A lot. A lot of down time, and a lot of stress over trying to get everything done those few nights before opening night. What made it worse if there were things that we suddenly had to add in out of nowhere, or things that have to be changed at the last minute.(for example, during a show's hell week we had to actually remove a section of a wall we put up and then add in a window thing that could open and close like a door, but still be sturdy enough for an actor to sit on the window sill. The entire swinging SOB also had to be removeable
) And if that wasn't bad, shows were from 7-10. If a show was on a school night, a lot of us just stayed at school the entire day from 8 in the morning until 10 at night.I felt an immediate connection to our theatre, and to the people working in it. We didn't care who you were. And I don't mean that in a negative sense, but rather what I mean is that we don't care whether you were rich or poor, asian or white, a freshman or a senior, smart or an idiot, but rather how much of a hard, dedicated, quality worker you were. If you didn't do shit and only dicked around, you weren't going to be getting any friendly attention by anyone. But if you worked hard and can easily take a joke, you'd fit right in. We were an extremely easy going group of people, there weren't really any loners. Everyone was friends with everyone (well, except lazy asses :p)
The next months for the rest of my high school career go by in a breeze. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months eventually turned into senior year, which means getting ready for college. Now, during my third year I was still pretty iffy with what I wanted to do for college. At that point, theatre wasn't a huge part of my life, it was still just an extracurricular at the time. I was just kind of going with the flow when asked what I was considering studying. “Eh..iunno...a science or something. Maybe engineering” However, once senior year came around, I actually gave huge consideration into taking on theatre as my major. You see, at my high school everyone was pretty damn smart. We had students that went on to attend top tier schools all over the U.S. We had engineering majors, hard science majors, pre med students, the works. And there I was saying that I wanted to study theatre (which you can imagine would sound pretty weird coming from an asian lol) Of course as you might expect, my mom was NOT happy with it at all. She was completely against it and wanted me to become a doctor or w/e. I kept telling her that I honestly didn't want to (truth) but she was still disappointed in my decision. She kept telling me that this was just a phase, that it was all just a passing fancy and I would end up regretting my decision and then realizing that she was right. It's really demoralizing to not have your own parent supporting a decision of yours to strive after a huge passion.
But honestly, I didn't really care what anyone thought. I had spent countless hours and endless days working with theatre, and loving every minute of it. I've shed my sweat and tears and blood all over that stage floor. I've sighed with both relief and with grief; yelled with both joy and rage, closed my eyes with both stress and satisfaction of a job well done. A person that I greatly look up to told me that “You don't go into theatre for money, you go into it for the love of it.” And I take those words to heart.
Even if the hours are long, even if the days are countless, even if blood is shed...Even though the audience will never even see your face or hear your voice...To hear the thunderous applause of hundreds and hundreds of people captivated and brought into a completely new world by the work you and your friends have spent weeks putting together....makes it all worth it after the last curtain falls. Such is the life of theatre.
End time: 2:56 a.m., 2231 words
P.S. Making door frames perfectly fit a door and work flawlessly sucks. Hard. Making opening/closing windows also suck.
P.P.S. In the morning, I'll add pictures of memorabilia I've kept from shows as well as a description of the story that entails them
But I definitely know what you mean though. I'm for sure looking forward to getting into my schools theatre productions asap. Mt school's not exactly the best place for the arts...lol. It's an engineering and agriculture school >_> But I'm banking on getting working experience after college and then heading over to a more well known theatre school for my masters in design. (My school only has a general, dramatic arts degree)
