Monday, December 20
Lots of people wear several hats in their job. I mainly wear two, but sometimes I’ll wear, say, 16, (like at our last fundraiser where I wrangled performers, co-hosted the event, prepped food, transported speakers across town, tended bar, set up lighting, etc, blah, etc…). Of course any producer knows what that’s like but the added twist here is that I am not just an Artistic Director of TCT but also an actor in the company.
As actors we are often, mainly, at the whim of others in order to get our work done, heck, just in order to get hired. As a producer, however, you have the capacity to create work, not just to ask to be in it. It’s wonderful to be able not just to find great material that I can do but also that we can offer to other actors, that we have the capacity to hire people, to create work in this tough industry. After going in for ridiculous commercials and projects with terrible scripts, it’s such a joy to be able to work with writers like Wendy MacLeod, Lucy Thurber and Edward Albee. And not to have to wait to get hired to make those opportunities happen.
What can get tricky, of course, is carving out the time, and the boundaries, to inhabit each role fully. Thinking about how many rolls of toilet paper we bought for the opening night party is great! Just not while I’m in the middle of a tough scene in rehearsal. The challenge with acting is that that role never stops. When the writer has written the play, or the director has directed the show, once opening comes they can take a step back and focus on other things. But as an actor, my work is just beginning when the show opens. So managing the production side of things as well as being really present to perform every night can present a challenge.
So far, though, it’s been great! Aside from a couple Producer Moments in rehearsal (“Wait, what did you say we’d be using there as furniture? Um, I don’t know if we can get that”…and then a 5-minute conversation about set design ensues), I find it really freeing when I am working as an actor because I can put all that other stuff aside and just focus on the text and the work and the moment to moment stuff. And it’s great to focus on the questions and problems of the minute, like “What does my moving here mean for me? How does Ava saying that change my plans right here?” instead of all the bigger issues that have to do with mounting a whole show.
So for the moment I am loving my hat collection! Stay tuned for the inevitable hat burning that is sure to come in tech week…