Come there and learn... and I'm (getting) ready!

Today starts the last week of Omega.

This also means that the summer is very quickly drawing to a close. Most people will leave in a week. I'm staying through the 12th (yay!).

I received studio class information this morning, and I KNOW I talk about how wonderful my studio is all the time, but really. They're incredible people. There's a Voice and Speech class for 3rd and 4th year Project track now. This hasn't been offered before (probably because they've never had someone with a strong undeniable interest in voice and speech AND directing before), and the fact that I came to them with this passion and now there's this class is an illustration of why I am so lucky and blessed to be there. I really want to hug everyone involved with this class decision. Unfortunately, I'm in NC and can't. :( (But no kidding, I cried a bit when I read this. SUCH A RELIEF.)

I still have a while before I return to New York on the 31st, but reminders that next semester is drawing neigh are popping up rapidly. People's projects are getting approved. We're pouring over curriculum listings and people are starting to think about who to ask to be on their design team.

A word about design at PHTS. Design is a big part of PHTS. Those of us who focus on directing or creating original work are not only required to design projects, but tend to love doing it. Some people dabble in everything, others focus on one particular thing. I tend to do sound design. Really, I haven't done much but sound design, because I REALLY LIKE SOUND. I care deeply about sound. While I think costumes are interesting, I don't care enough about clothes. I love working as a sound designer with PHTS students, because PHTS students tend to be very visually oriented (we use a LOT of images), and often they have trouble speaking about sound because they're so image-centric. Because of my synaesthesia, sound is visual to me, so I can speak sound on a visual level that tends to click with PHTS students, and translate their images into sound.

I also love sound because it's the most undefined design element. Costumes, lights, set all tend to have their designated "roles". They overlap, surely, and every show is different, but there do tend to be things that certain design elements always do. Costumes pretty much always have to do with character. Lights create atmosphere and location. Set is location and groundplan/playing spaces. Sound, however, has no set role. A lot of times it's used for transitions, or sound effects. But often not. You almost always use lights, costumes, and set. If there is a design element left out, it is sound. Therefore, for every single production there has to be a detailed discussion of what sound does in this production. The first time I sound designed a show, at the first design meeting the director told me, "I don't hear sound in this piece when I read it. You have to convince me that it's there." As far as my development as a sound designer, this is the best thing that he could have said. I mined through the play, searching for anything weak or confusing or exciting that sound could help with, something that was not covered by the other design elements, and went into the next meeting with the director saying, "I think sound is needed in the play at these points for these reasons." It was an enormously valuable experience, and I now read every play looking for where the play needs sound, how sound can help the production. There is nothing worse than a sound designer who wants you to know they're there. I've seen plays with completely extraneous sound and it's annoying and distracting. Constantly asking myself, "Is this serving the piece?" and being very willing to cut it if it's not, helps keep me focused on moving the play along and not getting bogged down with egotistical ideas of what "my design" is. ("My design" sounds stupid if it's pointless.) Once, the biggest bit of sound design for a show, that I spent hours building, was put with the actors during a tech run and absolutely didn't work. I immediately went up to the director and said, "I don't think that worked." He said, "I agree." I said, "Okay, let's cut it and put this in instead." Hours of work gone, but it was much, much better.

Another nice thing about sound design is I've heard that there aren't a lot of sound designers. One of my teachers, when she heard I was getting really into sound design, said, "All the sound designers I know are constantly working." In my Intro to Theater Production class my first year, when we had our sound class, the teacher said, "If you want to work in theatre in New York, be a sound designer." So if there's something that I'm very interested in that also may actually get me a job (!), I'm going to go for it.

It's funny, if you'd've told me in high school I'd be getting really into sound design, I would have been enormously confused.

We don't have a tentative production calendar yet, so the rush to find collaborators hasn't really started. However, I received an e-mail from one of my classmates, asking if I would tentatively be interested in working on his project (knowing that no one can commit to anyone until we have the production calendar). It was an extremely well-written e-mail that gave me an idea of the play and what the director sees in it, expressed an earnest desire to work with me and had broad, early sound ideas that excited me and got me thinking before even reading the play. Upon reading it, I thought, "THAT is how you ask someone to work on your play." I am, of course, stealing how he did that for when I ask potential collaborators myself. I feel like I just learned a lot by reading an e-mail. I love how much we can learn from each other.

This, and all the other things that have drawn my attention towards my return to the 3rd and 4th floors of a building on Lafayette St., really got me thinking about how to survive next year. It is clear to me that I must gird my loins before going back.

One of the craziest things about second year is being thrown into the production world. You get a taste of it as a first year on crew, but second year is entirely different. It's very trial-by-fire. Suddenly, you're in design meetings with only a vague idea of how this actually works, hopefully learning things from someone you're assisting, but also inevitably figuring things out when you have to just do it.

Usually, this kind of environment terrifies me. I tend to wait in the background for a while, observing, figuring out the rules of the system I am in, then I go in and start playing. Almost all of my studio evaluations from my first year of college said something to the effect of, "At the beginning of the year, Colleen was quiet and detached and I didn't know who she was, but now she's opened up and dived in so much!" It's not that I was actually shy. (Well, I am, but that wasn't why I was quiet.) It's that I like to know the rules of the game before I really play.

While I maintain that my default method of observation can be really useful, I acknowledge that sometimes it does cause me to miss opportunities and that there's a lot to be learned by just going in and doing it. So I have tried to be more open to that, and this past year one of my phrases was, "I do a lot of things that I have no right doing, but I do them anyway." In telling people about some projects I worked on, and in what capacities I worked, they said, "Wait, you do that?" and my response was, "I do now."

What this means, though, is that you're thrust into a world that is not in your control at all as you try to figure out what's happening. And with second year being your first real design-team production experience, a lot of second year is figuring out how you work.

In a conversation about the rigor of PHTS, my sweetly concerned mother said something about the stress of second year, and my optimistic belief that it would get better in third year. She asked, "Won't it only get worse when you're directing your OWN piece?" I acknowledged that the stress would be tremendous, yes, but the difference is that when you're directing your own piece you are responsible for process. You set the tone of the room, and in doing that, you can create an environment that YOU want to work in.

It can be argued that you can actually do this in any situation you're in. I certainly know people who do. But it's your JOB when you're a director, which begs for more attention. As I've been thinking about how to survive next year without constantly wanting to die, I've been thinking about this and how to create environments that are healthy for me. A lot of it, I believe, is a shift in attitude and energy. I feel the shift starting, but quite frankly, it will take discipline and ritual for me to keep it going throughout the school year. Prayer rituals. Absolutely necessary.

Having an idea, now, of how much I can handle and how much I can handle well, I know that I have to limit the number of shows I'm designing. I'm stopping it at two, which is the requirement. Considering I'm working on other shows in other capacities, this seems to be a good stopping point for me. This means I will probably have to say "no" to a lot of people who I would love to work with, but I want to what I do well. If I'm involved in too much, I will not be able to give full time and energy to what I'm working on, which is not fair to anyone.

Besides, I would like to think that there are plenty of people out there who have not done sound design before but would like to try it. Thinking about this, I realized that what's probably stopping a lot of people is a fear of the technical side. It is scary, definitely. I learned how to operate a soundboard by trial and error. It was one of those, "I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out!" times. (Thank God I never really had to set up mics.) Now, of course, I've had a lot of training and experience working all kinds of sound, and while I'm by no means an expert, I know a lot more than the average PHTS sound designer even needs to know. That soundboard in the Black Box? No problem.

This led me to a line of thought about one thing that I would LOVE to do, as part of these environments I'm setting up for myself. I'd love to help enable others. I think other people saw this in me long before I acknowledged it myself, but I would love to teach. Because I really do love people, and I love watching people grow, and if some information or experience I have is something that can inspire them, I'd love to share it with them. I don't see myself as a high school drama teacher or anything like that, but I could easily see myself teaching voice and speech or some specific class that doesn't exist yet, or being a dialect coach or working with lay readers and preachers or incorporating teaching into whatever I'm doing. Also, I care about things, and I tend to care about things others don't care about, and in teaching, usually you can get people to care about those things in one way or the other.

While taking on a load of projects won't help anyone, what I could do is act as a kind of technical adviser to new sound designers who don't know their way around a system. I could help take away the fear of having to operate a board (or, worse, the strange system in the White Box) to help enable someone to go ahead and try sound design.

On a similar note, I'm planning on working with assistants. Sound design tends to be a rather individual job, and having "assistant sound designed" during my second year, I can say that it's very difficult to find a sound designer who actually knows how to use their assistant. Last semester, when I worked on too many shows, a classmate of mine approached me, having heard that I was sound designing a certain show, and asked to assist me. Since this show was in the middle of my three consecutive tech weeks, I jumped at the chance. She's got a brilliant mind and ear for sound, and we complimented each other very well (we were both interested in different aspects of sound, which made for a very complete collaboration). While the process was almost cursed and a lot of our ideas didn't end up making it into the final product, it was a joy to work with her and she was absolutely vital to the process.

I've heard some of the newly-minted PHTS 2nd years voice an interest in sound. 2nd years are required to assistant design shows, and I'm definitely planning on using them. I've also heard some 2nd years talk about an interest in voice and speech. I'm going to find a way to get them involved in my own show, Tongues, which is voice and speech centric. Sound and voice are things I care about, and if how much I care about them can help other people care about them, then I would love to do so. I truly can think of nothing more lovely than helping to inspire an interest in someone, especially being enormously grateful for all of those who've sparked the various interests in me. And I would like to think that I have interesting thoughts about voice and design that people could learn something from me.

Thinking about these particular plans for next year both thrills me and calms me at the same time, which is a bizarre-but-wonderful feeling. It makes me think I'm on the right track. These thoughts, I've noticed, are both about how I can make next year better for myself AND about how I can use my gifts to serve the world I'm in. I must never forget that I am called into service. In serving God and God's world, in a healthy way (this is important), there is such happiness and freedom.

Also: AV Crew played Wii Bowling in the Aud today, and one of the DPTs played "Final Countdown" over the system for theme music. We are the coolest people you will ever meet.