This will tell you how big of a nerd I am. So last night, I got home pretty late after a meeting in Salt Lake. I was in the mood to pull out a book, but there wasn't really anything I was in the mood for. Get this: I ended up pulling out my Honors undergrad thesis, and I read the whole thing before I went to bed.
Yes. I am a nerd.
But it got me thinking this morning. My thesis was about the Art of Stage Management. I have to tell you, that this meeting last night (and all the meetings like it) have seriously employed the skills I gained as a stage manager. Committees of any kind need someone to organize them, or they're useless.
Here's my thing: I don't necessarily consider myself a leader. In the theatre, I wasn't ever the Director, the one with the vision. But I was the Stage Manager, who organized and enabled the visions of others to come to pass. Certainly I was deeply involved. I had my fingers in everything. But it was only to add upon the skills and vision of others, to enable them to accomplish their tasks.
I have carried these skills, inclinations and abilities with me, as I probably will for the rest of my life. Everything I do is affected by the fact that I am a stage manager. It's only the venue that has changed. Instead of Henry V, I have an adoption conference. But I remain the same.
Notes About Wilmington, MA
2 years ago
1 Additional Hiccups:
One of the things that I experienced during my time at school was the inevitable reaction when I would tell someone what I was majoring in: "Technical Theatre? Oh." Sometimes this was followed by the person asking what, exactly, made it technical - as if learning useful life skills while studying an art form were mutually exclusive. I find myself applying much of what I learned as a prop master in my "real" job right now, and I apply what I have learned at this "real" job when I work in the business. Knowledge gained is never knowledge wasted.
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