Tech week

So. I haven’t blogged in ages, and since it’s now one of my busiest weeks of the year, it is clearly the best time to start again. You may not know this, but from time to time, I become a ninja. Or, as some call us, a techie. I do technical work for theatre productions. This involves being silent and knowing everything and making everything happen with no recognition and no thanks. It’s awesome. As a result of this thankless job, several sayings have been made popular such as: “tech; because no one would come to see a naked mime on an empty stage in the dark” and “I’m a tech. be nice to me. I control the two ton wall hanging above your head.” Techs make everything happen but the acting and singing its self. This is a normal tech situation: 

An actor, standing about, not caring much, while we run around like crazy people, one person doing eight people’s jobs, stressing out because everything needs to happen at once. The actor is all pretty and happy and carefree, while the tech are running around trying to be ninjas, moving several hundred  pound set pieces with PEOPLE INSIDE OF THEM.

Anyway, after the opening weekend, we have “dark week”. It’s great. You get a whole three days to recoup before going at it again. Still, dark week tricks you back into cheery-ness so that before, during dark week you become as you were. Then, after, on the second to last show, you’re ready to kill everyone. 

After all of this, the very last show comes around. And suddenly, you love these people, you can’t imagine not seeing them every day, and that tiny crush you had on one of the actors makes you feel like you’ll never find love if this particular person leaves your life. You may even cry. You become best friends with folks that you had not known existed a month earlier. It’s horrible, exhausting, dramatic, life consuming, and so very wonderful that I wouldn’t know what to do without it. Once you have the theatre bug, you’re done for. It has you, and your life will never be the same.