How to Save a Life.

For the most part, we start our infatuation with the theater and this art form as young child. Dazzled by the beautiful costumes, astounded by the glamor of our predecessors, in awe of everything you could become on stage, we began to blindly stumble into a world so appealing to our innocent imaginations. I've worked with hundreds of kids at this point in their theatrical career and I can honestly say that the look on those kids faces when the curtain goes up is worth every penny I have to my name. It's not even just that opening moment that has me hooked to working with kids. They have this wide eyed, wonderment that turns quickly into a work ethic and a sheer love for what they are doing. If I didn't have that experience with theater as a kid, that fascination that turned into a passion, I would never be where I am right now.

And then I see the cast of the CCM Prep musical: 70 children who are under a militant regime, producing a musical that will only be seen by their parents and siblings. Looking at those kids, forced to remain quiet at all times, yelled at for any minor misstepping, treated like they are older than they are, I saw the aspects of theater that make me hate it sometimes. Those kids were whipped. I saw them being put through exactly the same regiment that CCM puts its college students through that kills their love for what they are doing. Suddenly theater is no longer that glamourous dazzling wonderful place where kids experience and play on their passion for the craft. It becomes this fight to put on the most professional production a cast of 8 to 14 year olds can put on. I tried making faces at them to make them crack a smile and I got were blank stares and shh's. All I could think about was: "If this is what theater had been for me as a child or a high school student, I would be a math major."...and I hate math.

I can put up with a lot of things and I can take a lot of things as I am dealt them but children being whipped and those innocent spirits being crushed before they even get to experience the passion for what they are doing is not something I can turn a blind eye to. So my goal is to make this the best theater experience they've had here at CCM. I am going to make them laugh by making horribly silly faces and by telling them silly jokes and if their laughter is heard offstage then I am doing a heck of a job. I've learned all 70 names because every kid deserves the chance to be called "Jenna Susan Marie." I want these kids to love what they are doing now because if these children are the future of theater their spirits will already be crushed before college institutions like CCM get the chance to try and squelsh them forever.

I want the things that I had before.

CCM is all about self-esteem and a belief that you are good at what you do. That's the only way to succeed here because you are in the presence of artists who have mastered your same craft and nurtured their talents for just as long as you have. The only thing that can set you apart is your belief in yourself and your skills. Its a confidence, not a cockiness that you must exude.

Flashback to senior year. I've stage managed most every show my high school did. I stage managed at a community theater for adults and children. I stage managed in Boston at an opera company. I stage managed in New York at a small theater company in the East Village and got hired back. And I'm thinking: "I got this stage management thing down. My paperwork still needs a lot of TLC and I could use to be a little more proactive and professional. Sure, I have stuff to work on and that's what CCM will help with. I just need more experience."

Cut to now. Welcome to CCM, where we are all stripped down to bare essentials. Where prior experiences mean everything to you but nothing to anyone else. Where the only way to prove yourself is by being set up to fail and not doing that. I've accepted that we're in college and no one is going to tell you that you are doing well or to keep your chin up but I didn't expect to be faced with a program that just assumed you aren't talented. Where the only belief in your skills is the one you possess and take ownership for. It took a combination of PAing, crew assignments and lab hours to break me. I can't pin point exactly when it happened or exactly why but I lost faith in myself. The prospect of internships and job opportunities has started to instill fear in me. Was I capable of stage managing still? Would I fail horribly and forget everything I had learned over the past five years? Can I still do this? I've gone from being the girl who took a train to New York City to stage manage with a company of professional adults on a whim to the girl who won't accept her job back at her old community theater because she doesn't think she can handle the production.

I need to start believing myself again before I can convince people here to believe in me.

I just don't understand how
You can smile with all those tears in your eyes
Tell me everything is wonderful now
Please don't tell me everything is wonderful now

- Wonderful, Everclear

Up In The Flyloft.

Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. - Ryan Bingham, Up In The Air

Today, I finally had that end of the quarter breakdown. The one that seems to be looming just like the tear that needs to be shed or the words that have to be choked down. You feel it coming until the impending feeling becomes a part of you. It took the question: How heavy is water? for me to lose it. But this meltdown didn't come in the form of tears or resistance, it was just laughter escaping me for no seemingly logical reason. I laughed and I laughed and I giggled and I cracked jokes until I sought refuge in my room and sank into my bed. I turned on the movie Up In The Air and I vegetated.

The movie opens as I expected it would. The main character shows us how efficient and uncomplicated his life is without any human connections. Everything is routine and everything is peaceful. But, of course, it's all too good to be true and two women enter into his life. One, 'himself with a vagina' and one, a young girl wavering between the main character's life of sterility and seeking love.

The world of theater has always held this same mystique to me and I've always wondered what it means to truly give up hope on having a family, falling in love, having friends and what all that would feel like. The main character, Ryan, had it all until he met Alex and understood love and felt wanted and discovered what he'd been missing.

And to some degree, I think that's what has happened to me here at CCM. I'm not saying that I don't have friends at home or that the people I met prior to this place never meant a thing to me. That time in my life was just too raw for me. The window into what is reality was so obscured with crap that I couldn't fathom anything beyond it. So I relied on stage management and let that blind me to everything. I had 'people' that needed me and that I needed and that was enough for me. The bond was so surface but it was all I knew and all I understood and when everyone left at the end of a production it seemed timely and inevitable. This sounds so miserable and so saptastic and that I will sum up my experiences since being here at CCM as 'eye opening'. My best memories from this year all involve people...friends, coworkers.

So the question is: where do I find that middle ground between my career and the people I love? Where do I create those extra hours in a day to go to rehearsal and hang out with friends? When do I decide that I need to stay up with a crying friend rather than sleep? Will CCM manage to squelsh both goals and both unattainables? Will I strive to be the best stage manager and leave people behind? Will anyone care?

So really, there were a lot of questions and all of them will have to remain unanswered. Until then...

The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip passing over.

We expected something, something better than before.

Last night, a friend of mine responded to my blog post. He told me a story of how ultimate frisbee helped him survive freshman year here. Then he told me to find my frisbee.

Senior year of high school, you are sitting at your computer with the collegeboard up. An immense amount of colleges and universities sit in a never ending drop down list, just a mouse click away and you are thinking: "What on God's green earth do I want to do with the rest of my life?" And then you cogitate on what you love to do and what you are good at you and you have to seriously consider making something you love into a job.

Senior year of high school, stage management was my passion and my job. I knew nothing else that brought me that amount of joy and accomplishment. And now I am here at CCM "doing what I love" and I wonder if this is what stage management was destined to become, just my career and no longer the fire within me.

Freshman year of college, I am "living the dream" and looking for what brings me joy and reignites me and teaches me about myself. So I return to these things that has always been with me: my words. These are my medium and my first love. I've decided that I need to make sure that I don't let this part of me die. I need to just write it out sometimes and share with everyone.

Freshman year of college and I am going to start writing the first 'serious' play I've started since junior year of high school. I want it to scream for me and tell everyone what I want them to hear right now. And I want to perform it here because I want CCM to know that this kid is about making her own way and leaving her own unique mark wherever she goes. And I am going to do it.

Writing is my frisbee.

This is more than I bargained for...

I am officially jaded. And its the kind of jaded that you can feel in your head, in your heart, in your sore feet, in your exhausted eye lids and, worst of all, in your smile (or lack there of). It's a secret kind of jaded that I'd prefer to keep hidden behind a giggly facade of wonderment that gets me so far in this business. It's kind of a eagerness, almost, that is really just compensation for how hollowed out I feel inside.

I am the jaded jack-o-lantern. When the little candle is on inside of me, I shine and look full, even happy. But when it is daytime and I am all but exposed, I am just a hollow orange shell with a creepy smile.

I am over CCM, in the best possible way. I don't want to be here. I know that that sentiment is just winter term and the exhaustion of living through heaps of shows, homework and snow but I still feel like a little, rational part of me feels that way too. This place is running us ragged just to run us ragged. I feel like it doesn't have a point, aside from making money off of the productions. I feel like we are all just hampsters running on wheels creating the electric current that makes this place run. And then what? We get jobs and we leave and we are just hampsters running from wheel to wheel because that's all we know to be good and holy. Is that it? Is that what this school was meant to do? Because it obviously wasn't intended to help foster connections between people. There is too much competition, too many divisions, too many expectations, too much gossip for that to actually happen. While we are here we create fake bonds to tide us over and keep us from trying to jump off that wheel to make life easier. It's like the military man who is still in love with his high school sweetheart just because he needs someone to occupy his mind in the strenuous world of war.

I am jaded because I know what I want to do but I don't want to be ruined and destroyed and beaten to a crisp in order to do what I want. This is not what I bargained for...

Tomorrow a Penthouse: Quest for Stardom in NYC – Day 2

Sadly sitting on my pull-out bed at 7pm, mourning the loss of my free wi-fi connection, I await confirmation that coming to New York was really a good idea at all. Yes, I love this city and cannot wait to live here someday. But, no, I do not enjoy the lonely confines of my aunt’s apartment with the two cats and bedtime around 10pm. I also do not enjoy waiting beside my blackberry for some form of communication from (a) my world at home or (b) a job opportunity.

I am not a patient person. Supposedly this is a hallmark of stage managers but when I am outside the realm of my job, I am just that bitch who can’t handle being a minute off schedule. I have come to terms with this aspect of my personality but I am not sure how it will affect my future endeavors in the theatrical world. In one way, it may help me because, well, stage managers are hired to keep things running smoothly and on schedule in a very artistic and often ill managed business.

In another way, it may hinder me because most theater people are artists and artists tend to avoid the concept of time. They are the first people to complain about people not getting in touch with them and the last people to return an important phone call while the information is still prevalent.

Tomorrow, apparently, I will show up at the Ohio Theater to work on god knows what with some woman I have only exchanged one email with. The lack of communication was not due to me not trying. I sent her approximately four emails to her one response and then appeared on the door step of the theater and begged for information.

Overall, I felt as though I was a starving actress, waiting for a casting agent to give me the time of day. And I didn't like it one bit.

Tonight, The Y: Quest for Stardom in NYC - Day 1

I am on a train right now headed to New York City. All I know is that I need to get to the City and then, bam, I will be in the cradle of my dreams. I’ll be so close to having my name up in lights that all I’ll have to do is reach my arm out and…

This is my pre-college attempt at making it in the biz. Every person who has seriously considered show business as a career has also considered packing up everything and heading to New York or LA to see their dream realized. I’ve been told that there are two ways to make it. Option A: Go to college and get a B.F.A. in your area of study, check out Grad School and then use the connections you’ve made over that period of time to get a job. Option B: Go to New York, start working as a waitress by day and apply to every theater in the city by night.

I chose option A because God knows that in this economy even getting a job at a diner isn’t the easiest thing in the world. But this mini adventure to New York, this is my one shot to see if I can make connections in the city that makes stars before I go off to Cincinnati.

Maybe I’ll discover that this is the way to go, leaving everything and everyone behind to pursue my dreams with a little less than $300 to my name. Because there is this nagging feeling inside me saying that once I graduate my BFA will do nothing more than be a wall ornament in my first apartment.

Going to a conservatory gets you jobs. Everyone who is anyone in the business looks to conservatories for the newest rising talent because that is where the best go to train. So who is to say that those connections aren’t all you going to get out of 4 years of college tuition.

When I interviewed at Cincinnati, my interviewer casually admitted that she would look at my transcript once she dug through the mail pile. I wasn’t too astounded that my admission to CCM had nothing to do with how well I did in math freshman year but it did slightly suck to know that I had a very good GPA that no one really cared about.

And I am all too certain that the same thing rings true for getting jobs in show business. Theaters just want to know that, yes, you do have an education in the field. Then it comes down to who they think can handle the job or looks right for the part. Your BFA is sitting in the pile of resumes and headshots that some producer will eventually dig through.