Casey and Finnigan

I’m taking a really fantastic class this semester called “Leadership and Management.” There are seven of us in the class–two each of producers, production managers, and stage managers (and one lighting designer, who’s married to one of the production managers), and each of us is working on projects with several people in the class. I’m working with three of them directly, and the lighting designer is working on my show as well, so there’s an element of working with her, too, although it’s not quite as directly as with the others in the class.

It’s basically a discussion class. Well, actually, not “basically;” it is a discussion class. We read several chapters of a book on leadership (Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” for Managers, Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, and Developing the Leader Within You are the textbooks for the semester) and then spend three hours talking it, both in broad, philosophical terms, as well as how it relates to our day-to-day work in theatre, whether that’s at the school or professionally.

Yesterday. we were finishing up Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, and one chapter was about balance and having a life. That’s hard to do in many professions, but especially in theatre. Most of us are in the theatre because we love it. It’s not just a job, and it’s a lot more difficult to leave behind at the end of the day. Many of our hobbies are related to theatre, and we have a real passion for it and a deep, ideological meaning for being artists. We don’t make a lot of money; we do it for love and passion, and hope to make a living at it, if we’re lucky. (And I’d extend this to most other art forms, as well.)

Add to that the fact that theatre is so cyclical, and it’s hard to achieve and maintain balance in the traditional sense. Most jobs have busy seasons, but the thing with theatre is that it builds up to a show, and then drops, and then starts building again until the next tech week. During tech, there is no balance. Balance means leaving campus for half an hour to run to McDonald’s instead of eating in the cafeteria. It’s impossible to be in theatre (or film, or music, or visual arts, or dance) and have a “normal” schedule. Dinner at 6 every night and the evening in front of the TV just doesn’t happen, and frankly, that kind of schedule is boring. I wouldn’t want to live with a schedule that doesn’t include the adrenaline and thrill of opening night.

Anyway, I was thinking about what balance looks like for Colin and me, and here are a few of the things I came up with:

• Not feeling obligated to answer work-related emails after 11 PM.
• Taking homework home at the end of the day, instead of doing it in the office all evening, so that I’m not physically able to be pulled into unscheduled meetings and discussions.
• Allowing myself to stay caught up on the TV that I watch regularly, even though I don’t often watch it when it airs.
• Deferring certain projects over the summer so that we have time together. This is more on Colin’s end than mine, but it applies to both of us. It means that fall gets a bit busier, and there are obviously some projects that can’t be put off, but some can, and we try to.
• Doing projects together. This form of “balance” doesn’t mean clearing the schedule; in fact, it often means adding something to it, but doing art together when we have the opportunity is a really important part of keeping our work and relationship balanced.
• Letting myself sleep in once a week.
• Choosing to not get upset when things are busy and we don’t talk for a week or more. No, it’s not fun, but getting overly upset and frustrated doesn’t change anything.
• Making a point of getting out of town and up to Calgary for as many breaks/long weekends as we can afford. I’m still accessible by phone and email if need be, but physically getting away from the school is a necessary thing sometimes.

There are more, but those were some of the first ones that came to mind during our discussion. Sometimes, I’m more successful than at other times, but these are some of the things I strive for. Some take planning and money; some are just little things that I try to maintain. During tech, things change. When it’s a busy week, not everything is possible. When it’s a down week, sometimes I wish that the balance swung the other way and there was more theatre and less downtime.

Speaking of theatre, I saw a production of Halo, the show I did with Fire Exit a couple of years ago. The production was quite similar, actually. Similar staging and concept, but it was, of course, slightly different, especially in the portrayals of some of the characters.

The thing that I found funny is that it’s a very Canadian play, set in Nova Scotia, but there were little things that weren’t quite accurate. For instance, I saw them using American dollars as props, and they didn’t have any twonies or loonies for those scenes. Also, when they referenced “Roll Up The Rim To Win,” the character looked under the lid of his coffee cup, rather than actually rolling up the rim. And the one that I laughed at was a line by a character named Casey. The line goes, “Casey? As in ‘and the Sunshine Band’?” and in this production, she responded, “No, as in ‘at the bat’.” The line in the original script says, “No, as in ‘and Finnigan’.” That reference is probably far too Canadian to be funny to an American audience, though. Tim Horton’s… okay. That’s believable. Casey and Finnigan? Apparently not.