One of Many Roads to Broadway

Happy New Year, SoundGirls followers! As I reflected on the year gone by, it occurred to me that since the post-shutdown theatre reopening in the spring/summer of 2021, I haven’t written much about my specific career journey. In particular, I haven’t yet blogged about getting to work on my first Broadway show! Making my debut was a big milestone for me, and getting there has been a long and winding path. Also, the journey is different for everyone. So even though my story is individual for me, I thought it might be interesting and helpful to share. So, strap in for a ride on my road to Hogwarts!

Intro: A Catch-up to the catch-up

I’ll try to make this quick. Starting in the summer of 2021, my life was a whirlwind of mixing out-of-town tryouts (4 in the span of 12 months) and picking up freelance gigs in CT and NYC. I did NOT get to spend a lot of time at home, and while the opportunities were good for my career, the necessary sacrifices SUCKED for my marriage and my mental health in general.

So, in the summer of 2022, I worked on changing some of that: choosing my gigs more thoughtfully, reclaiming some of my headspace, and making plans to get myself actively moving toward some of my big career goals. I reflected a lot about that journey in a blog I wrote about the potential dangers of emotional attachment to one’s work which you can read here.

How to Own Your Work Without it Owning You

That period of reflection led me to make a lot of good choices going forward. I advocated for time off from my gigs to go to family events and a friend’s wedding. I reached out to an old connection who was on a show I wanted to be involved in, and he hired me for the entire 4-week shop build. I quit a show for the first time ever (!!) because I recognized that despite it being fun to mix, the overall process was making me miserable. And as fate would have it, that reflection and work paid off in a big way just a few weeks later.

Hard Work + Network = Broadway Debut!

First day at my new workplace!

At the end of 2022, I was offered a job at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as a substitute A2. Like many opportunities in this business, this one truly was proof of two timeless career adages: 1. Luck = preparation meets opportunity, and 2. Don’t underestimate the power of the network.

Bear with me for some long but important preamble…At the very beginning of that year, I lost out on a big job I had been hoping to get. While the hiring decision wasn’t about my work or anything personal, I was still devastated. For a while, I questioned everything about that experience and what led up to it; Had I not done a good enough job during the tryout to be worthy of moving on with the show? Was I kidding myself to think I might have been ready to mix on Broadway? Had the designer been unhappy with my work in the first place, and if so, had I failed to notice?

It is SO easy to get in your head about getting rejected, especially in this biz, and I let myself fall prey to the doubt at first. However, in the weeks that followed, a funny thing kept happening: every couple of days I would get these random emails from sound people I didn’t know saying that I had been recommended to them by the designer of this show that I didn’t book, and was I available for future work? I was relieved, humbled, and grateful every time this happened. It was a total validation of this designer’s trust in me, and getting these recommendations (plus doing a lot of unpacking with my amazing friends and my therapist) allowed me to slowly let go of a lot of that self-doubt I had been harboring.

Fast forward to August, and yet another of these emails pops up. This one says something to the effect of “Hi, my name is A, I got your name from B, who got your name from C [the designer from before]. I am looking for a mixer for this workshop of a musical and oh also by the way do you sub? I’m looking for another A2 swing for my regular show.” In the signature of the email, it said “Head Audio, Lyric Theatre,” which is where Harry Potter plays. I couldn’t believe it! At this point, I hadn’t even worked for B (the middle person in the network) yet, but this original designer’s trust in me was enough that this co-sign of a co-sign counted for a lot. My now-boss called me a few days later to talk over the details, and I started training at the Lyric (and working on the workshop) less than a week later 🙂

Broadway: the same, just bigger

So, there I am backstage on Broadway. I hadn’t been an A2 in a while, and of course I had never worked on a Broadway show aside from one shop build, so I was definitely nervous about jumping in on such a big show. It turned out, thankfully, that I had nothing to worry about. Everyone at the Lyric was so amazingly nice and helpful. From stage management to dressers to my fellow sound folks, everyone was quick to point out all the important details, like where I had to stand, what I had to do during each quick change, and even the order in which people needed to move so we don’t have a backstage collision! This may seem small, but it’s the combination of thousands of details like this that makes a show as huge as HP run smoothly.

HP is so big that, unlike many shows that just have an A1 and an A2, it takes a sound crew of FOUR to do each performance! 1 person mixes, 1 runs all the sound effects and playback, and 2 people deal with mics backstage. Any of those jobs would be too much for one person, given that there are many hundreds of sound cues, multiple mic swaps and quick changes, and 56 channels of RF to keep a handle on! When I sub there, I run either of the 2 backstage tracks and depending on whether the absent person is a FOH person or a backstage person, the other regular crew people shift around to the other positions to cover the absence.

The biggest thing I have learned/had reinforced for me the most over my year-plus at the Lyric has been that having a good attitude counts first, and then you do good work to back it up. As I mentioned, it has been ages since I had run a backstage track, but I was ready to listen hard, keep my head down, follow instructions, stay in my lane, and not make a fuss. And that almost counted more than if I’d already been great at any of the arts and crafts that go into building our mic rigs. The ability to stay calm and adapt when something goes amiss is truly the most important quality a good stagehand needs, and cultivating mine has served me well every time I am there.

Looking Ahead

All told, booking HP felt like a big culmination of my preparation and work finally paying off. I’m still chasing many dreams, but it felt perfect to have a few big doors open for me. I have gotten to work on a lot more Broadway shows as part of the shop, load-in, and load-out crews. This allowed me to network with even more people in the “big leagues,” and move into a much higher-paying tier of work at venues like Lincoln Center and The Shed. Thanks to these gigs and HP, I was even able to make my first year of Local One money. I’ll explain that in more detail in my upcoming blog series, “IATSE 101,” but basically it means I am now 1/3 of the way through the 3-year process of joining the New York City chapter of the Stagehands union, which will be a huge deal for my career when I finish. All in all, it feels really good to know I’m on the right track.

The interior of the Lyric Theatre on Broadway

So Happy New Year SoundGirls, and best wishes to you all for career and personal success in 2024! I’ll be back with the first installment of “IATSE 101” in the Spring. Until then, I’ll be in the dungeons of Hogwarts, pinching myself ☺

Some Theatre Things I’m Grateful for This Year

In the spirit of gratitude, this blog is dedicated to the late Brad Zuckerman, a brilliant mixer and stagehand who passed away suddenly this spring at the all-too-young age of 43. Brad’s original paperwork from the 2019 Off-Broadway revival of Rock of Ages is featured in some of my 2021 blogs. He was a cherished coworker to all, and something of a big brother to me in the industry. Brad: no one who met you could ever forget you. You were a fantastic sound human. But more than that, you always took my calls when I needed to vent or ask for help, and you taught me in two short weeks how to steer a ship through any storm, whether it be equipment or PR-related. I am grateful to have gotten to know you and worked with you as many times as I did.

Happy Belated Holidays, all! In the spirit of the season, I thought I would use this blog to reflect on some of the theatre industry’s biggest moments and milestones from this past year. It has been a big year, and while there is still a lot of work to be done to make this sector (and the world at large) more diverse, equitable, accessible, and welcoming, there has also been a lot of good progress made as well. And for that, we can be grateful.

So without further ado, here are my top theatre-centric gratitudes for 2023.

More Breaking of the Gender Binary on Broadway

This past June, J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell made history by becoming the first openly nonbinary performers to win Tony Awards in the performance categories. Newell won Best Featured Actor in a Musical for their portrayal of Lulu in Shucked and Ghee won Best Leading Actor in a Musical for their portrayal of Jerry/Daphne in Some Like it Hot. Notably, Ghee portrays a character who goes through a gender identity exploration as part of their character arc. The portrayal of more gender-expansive characters onstage and the well-earned accolades being given to these performers are both huge steps forward after similar groundbreaking milestones last year, which gave us the first openly trans acting nominee (L. Morgan Lee for her role in A Strange Loop) and the first openly nonbinary winner of Best Score (Toby Marlow for Six: The Musical, with co-writer and co-composer Lucy Moss).

In 2015, when Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron became the first all-woman team to win Best Score for Fun Home, Tesori gave us the quote “for girls, you have to see it to be it.” I referenced this back in my very first SoundGirls blog (https://soundgirls.org/my-new-years-resolutions-for-broadway-nyc-theatre/) and it feels resonant here as well. It can be hard for those of us who are not cis men to believe that we are capable of greatness when we have never seen someone who looks like us or identifies the same way as we do achieve it. And having not one but two performers outside the gender binary be voted best in their respective categories and get to give acceptance speeches on national television is a big deal.

Of course, there is still work to be done. A third openly nonbinary performer in the 2023 Broadway season, Justin David Sullivan (who plays the character May in the musical &Juliet), chose to remove themselves from Tony eligibility rather than have to choose whether to compete as “actor” or “actress.” Last season, the nonbinary performer Asia Kate Dillon (who had played Malcolm in a revival of Macbeth) also withdrew themselves from consideration for the same reason. Gendered categories in any awards are inherently exclusive, and the fact that they only seem to exist for performance-related awards speaks to the double standard that society has long held about the abilities of men vs. women. But nonetheless, these big wins by Ghee and Newell represent a step forward, and I’m grateful that their brilliant performances were recognized.

Hot Labor Summer/Year

The highly publicized strikes by workers in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA this summer and fall brought some much-needed attention to the current state of the creative economy in the US. All American TV and film production came to a halt for over 100 days. Daytime and late-night talk shows went off the air. Thousands of workers were willing to give up their incomes and livelihoods to band together and take a stand against the AMPTP, the organization of studios and producers with whom they bargain to secure a contract. Actors and writers were fighting for better wages (especially for streaming content) and against the threat of jobs being lost to AI, such as producers using scripts written with or by ChatGPT, or face scans of performers being used without their consent or compensation in TV shows or movies. And as of this writing, they seem to be on the way to prevailing. WGA has secured and approved a fairer contract, while members of SAG-AFTRA are currently voting on whether to ratify their new contract. Both unions (along with others who picketed in solidarity like IATSE and Teamsters Local 399) have returned to work. But the message of this strike has been heard loudly and clearly. Streaming has changed the way we consume media, and so the ways that we treat our entertainment workers must change too.

Also in the entertainment world, a vote by IATSE Pink Contract workers to authorize a strike came very close to shutting down 28 Broadway shows and 17 national tours. These stagehands were fighting for increased pay (with a goal of achieving parity with the Local One employees working alongside them) as well as guaranteed weekly and daily rest periods to combat the long and exhausting days and weeks that are often faced by touring crews. Gains were made, and a strike was averted, but there is still more work to be done. And I am grateful that the population at large is now more aware of the power imbalance that exists between labor and employers, and that thanks to these and other big labor moments this year, public sentiment is more pro-union than ever.

Side note: This all was of particular importance to me because, after many years of effort, I was finally able to join IATSE myself this year (shoutout to Local 74 of Southern CT)! I’ll have a lot more to say about it in a coming blog series that I’m calling “IATSE 101.” I’ll go over the history and importance of the stagehands union, share my own union story in more detail, and try to answer common questions about ACT cards, Pink Contracts, Local One, the benefits of joining the union, and more. So, if you have questions about this, send them my way (beccastollsound.com/contact), and look out for those blogs later in 2024!

Conscious and Unconscious Mentoring and Mentorship

Over the years, but especially since I began blogging, I’ve had the profound and unexpected blessing of people taking the time to let me know that I have been serving as a role model to them or to someone they know, sometimes without knowing it myself. I’m always so incredibly flattered by this, and thrilled to know that someone out there is possibly benefiting from my rambling on about what it’s like to work in this industry. If you read my blog on mentoring (https://soundgirls.org/on-mentorship/), you’ll know that this has become one of the most important things to me, because as Jeanine Tesori tells us, it helps us to be it when we can see it.

So, for this gratitude, I’d like to shout out some people I’ve gotten to see and thus aspire to be. These folks, especially the women, have shown me through their words and actions that anything I want to do is well within my reach. While this list isn’t exhaustive, I want to shout out (in no particular order): Bridget O’Connor, Chris Evans, Dillon Cody, Chris Lußman, Darren Shaw, Lucas Indelicato, Nate Putnam, Josh Liebert, Sam Lerner, Mackenzie Ellis, Carin Ford, Max Gutierrez, and fellow SG blogger Heather Augustine (read her stuff here https://soundgirls.org/category/blog/heather-augustine/). Special recognition goes to Badass Broadway Mixing Mamas Jillian Marie Walker and Anna Lee Craig. I especially want to be y’all when I grow up

To all these mentors and more, thanks for paying it forward even if you didn’t know it. I promise to keep doing the same every time I’m given the chance.

Y’ALL, MY READERS!

Lastly, I am grateful to everyone who has read along and/or reached out to me these past two years through SoundGirls. Keeping up this blog isn’t always easy to do on top of a hectic freelance theatre worker life, but it brings me a lot of joy, and I hope it has helped you to learn a little more about the crazy world of NYC theatre sound! A big thanks also to Karrie and the whole SoundGirls team for all the work they do to support this community. Together we truly are empowering the next generation of Women in Audio.

Why I Support No More 10/12s (and a cap of 12 hours a day for all workers)

Summer stock season is upon us, and many young sound folks will take a variety of jobs working on a LOT of shows. And while many strides have been made in improving working conditions for these young workers, a LOT more work still needs to be done to support theatre workers of all ages. For that reason, I am taking this month’s blog to shed some light on an advocacy project that I strongly believe in the movement to abolish the “10/12” technical rehearsal, which is being spearheaded by nomore10outof12s.com. This fight feels especially relevant right now since this feels like the first summer that many theatre operations will truly resemble their pre-pandemic selves, with full use of indoor venues, reduced or eliminated health and safety protocols, and a full, ambitious slate of programming. So let’s dive into the practice, why it’s harmful, and what can be done to stop it.

What is a 10/12?

For those who don’t know, a 10/12 (pronounced “Ten Out Of Twelve”) is a type of technical rehearsal that is allowed to be scheduled a certain number of times over the tech process by most Actors Equity Association contracts. How many times exactly depends on the contract. On a 10/12 rehearsal day, the cast is called for a total of 10 hours over a 12-hour span of a day. So, for example, their schedule might look something like this:

12:00 pm Cast Half-Hour (dressing, mic-ing, and applying hair and makeup count as work)

12:30 pm-5:00 pm Tech Onstage

5:00 pm-7:00 pm Cast Dinner

7:00 pm Cast Half-Hour

7:30 pm-12:00 am Tech Onstage

12:00am Cast Released

Why is it harmful?

You may have noticed that the only people I have discussed in a working context so far are actors. As those of us working in theatre know all too well, a 12-hour day for the actors is likely a much longer day for just about everyone else. There are work notes to complete, the stage needs to be set, and the costumes, wigs, and mics to be ready for donning. For that all to happen in time, everyone else working on the show who is not an actor will have arrived long before that noon call. They will also likely stay at the theatre after midnight cleaning up, powering down, and resetting. As a result, the span of day for the technicians in particular is often closer to 13/15, or even 14/16, which is simply not okay, Additionally, there can be pressure on designers to spend their meal breaks accomplishing work notes or holding discussions with their fellow creatives rather than walking away completely to go and eat somewhere other than one’s tech table. Designers I’ve spoken to have also told me that while a staff stagehand at a regional theatre might only be in tech for a few weeks out of the year on various shows, they will need to design as many shows as possible in a year just to get by. This means that many designers and associates get stuck in a cycle of being perpetually in tech, particularly in 10/12s, with no time in between for the body to rest and reset.

Not only is the 10/12 a long day, but a growing amount of research on workplace efficiency has shown that more hours of does not produce more results. In my time working in theatre and working 10/12s, I have consistently noticed 2 things:

No one does their best work after 10 pm.
We inevitably lose time the next morning having to redo the mediocre work we did last night when we were exhausted.

Business Roundtable Studies suggest that there is a ceiling for productivity that exists around 40 hours a week. This means that working for 60, or even 80 hours in a week still only yields about 40 hours of productivity. Therefore, theatre companies that schedule 10/12s are, in essence, paying more money in the form of overtime for the same amount of work and no real gain.

Safety is also at even greater risk when theatre workers are overextended from practices like 10/12s. Multiple scientific studies have shown that physical exhaustion and psychological fatigue lead to poorer judgment and more time loss due to accidents or errors, especially in the 9th to 12th hours of a shift. One morning notes call on a 10/12 tech day, I was so tired that I told my coworker I did not feel safe climbing a ladder to fix a broken overhead camera. I was asked to climb the ladder anyway. At the time, I didn’t feel like I had the power to say no, and thankfully nothing went wrong. That said, it still makes me shudder to think about how this could have ended worse, and that 7 years later other workers might still be finding themselves in similar predicaments.

A disproportionate effect

My own stories and memories of the past 10/12s still haunt me, but then I think about what a privileged position I am in. I am a white, financially stable, childless woman, and I have a partner at home who can help with household tasks when I have an extra-busy week. If I am feeling this affected by 10/12s, then it would logically follow that other more marginalized groups are affected even more negatively by it. And the data bears this out.

Based on the reasons that I have already outlined, it is easy to see the ways in which the 10/12 perpetuates racism, ableism, and our industry’s existing stigma against caregivers, to name just a few of its crimes. No More 10 out of 12s has held multiple online seminars diving into why 10/12s specifically harm the BIPOC community, parents (and other caregivers such as those with aging parents at home), the disability community, lower-income folks, and others. These talks can be viewed at nomore10outof12s.com/events.

From watching these talks and reading the online testimonials, it is easy to empathize with someone who, for example, has a young child at home, and would therefore be additionally burdened by having to work childcare around such a torturous schedule. That person might get even fewer hours of sleep once they finally arrived home due to needing to pump milk or wake up early enough to do a school drop-off before going to the theatre. As someone who wants to have children in the next few years, the thought of having to balance my family’s needs with such a grueling schedule terrifies me.

If a theatre does not provide housing and someone’s socioeconomic status means that they live farther away than most of their coworkers, then we can see that this might make some workers’ days even longer than it already is. One testimonial on the website from a BIPOC lighting designer reads, “I can only leave my house so early in the morning to avoid traffic.” Another says, “Not all of us can afford cabs home late at night, trains run even slower, and the further out you live because of rent, the harder the cycle becomes.” And since the many regional theatres in the USA are located in city centers or downtown areas with expensive rents, systemic racism and NIMBYism in housing policy means that folks who are BIPOC and/or don’t come from generational wealth will be harder hit in this area.

We See You White American Theatre (WSYWAT) rightly points out that theatre writ large is still a PWI (Predominantly White Institution). Therefore the effects of having no life outside work (and no access to a support system or affinity group) will hit nonwhite workers harder. One designer says, “The culture of our business is a turn-off for them [her BIPOC students].” Multiple quotes on the website attest to BIPOC folks feeling like the long hours and poor treatment just aren’t worth it. Teachers report that their BIPOC students are not pursuing theatre for this reason. This is precisely why one of the demands that WSYWAT made in their manifesto was for the elimination of 10/12 rehearsals.

Looking at what 10/12s demand on the human body makes it easy to see how folks in the disability community would also be disproportionately affected by 10/12s. The long hours spent sitting at uncomfortable seats (or no seat) with few breaks are already hard on those of us who are able-bodied. Lack of sleep can exacerbate health conditions for many people, and the need to take medications with food or at certain times of day can be challenging to balance when working anywhere from 80 minutes to 2 hours at a time without a break. The lack of agency that marginalized workers feel can make it hard to advocate for one’s needs. And this isn’t something anyone should have to do in the first place.

10/12s can also be a serious impediment to folks who are practicing religion. One anonymous testimonial of nomore10outof12s.com says, “I was working on a musical during Ramadan, 2 10/12 days while fasting…Instead of stage management moving the 2-hour dinner break to later in the day, they kept it as is.” Having myself been in tech on Yom Kippur (the holiest Jewish holiday, which is observed by fasting), I recall having to beg for the morning off to go to temple, and then watching everyone else eat on the 5 pm dinner break while I had to wait until 7 pm for my crew comrades to bring me a plate of snacks. I also remember being in tech on Easter Sunday once, and company management decided to put together a special ham dinner for everyone, but no alternative meal was provided for me or anyone else who didn’t eat ham, even though pork products are not kosher and, to boot, it was also Passover, which meant I and other Jewish members of the company was abstaining from eating bread.

Taken together, the research, coupled with these testimonials, clearly demonstrates the ways in which 10/12s cause both general and specific harms, and how a lack of recognition, validation, or even the slightest accommodation for one’s identity, needs, and practices can really add insult to injury.

The Future

As I mentioned above, the practice of 10/12s is not just harming people, it is pushing them away from pursuing theatre as a career. Multiple quotes on the website speak to this feeling of hopelessness: that even though theatre is the person’s passion, they can’t justify pursuing it if this is what the conditions will be like. Couple that with the chronic low pay, an expectation of invisible labor, a pervasive “the show must go on” attitude, and an overall culture that tells us simultaneously that we should be grateful to be here because we get to do what we love but also that we are instantly replaceable, and it’s easy to see that we are jeopardizing our own future as an industry. So, how do we fix it?

The first answers are obvious, and also the hardest. If Actors’ Equity contracts outlawed the 10/12 rehearsal, then actors wouldn’t be allowed to work more than an 8-hour day, which might have the effect of shortening hours for everyone else. Other unions such as IATSE could step in and make the overtime penalties for work days exceeding 12 hours even higher, but at this point, most large-scale theatres on Broadway and elsewhere have accepted tech overtime as the “cost of doing business” and accounted for it in their budgets. Theatre rent is usually extremely expensive, so producers on for-profit shows will want to get the show loaded in, teched, and playing to paying audiences as soon as possible. Therefore, it is in their financial interests to squeeze as much work as possible into as few hours as possible, even though it takes such a massive toll on the people doing the work. Additionally, since 10/12s are so baked into the culture, stagehands, in particular, have come to depend on the “tech bump” when doing their personal budgets and assessing their income, so taking it away in one fell swoop without raising the wages to a more livable standard in other ways could again have a disproportionately negative effect on the neediest among us.

Given that there is no national governing body of the arts in the US, legislation also seems unlikely to help here. And while I would love to live in a world where no employer is allowed to schedule any worker for more than 12 hours at a time, that just isn’t going to happen at the national level. So this leaves the obvious next choice of grassroots action and advocacy. The more theatre workers support No More 10/12s, the more theatres and producers will have to listen. And many already have. A list of companies that are no longer doing 10/12s can be found on the website, and, having worked at a few of them myself, I can say that the tech process overall was smoother, more humane, and more productive.

Of course, there are exceptions. Even this year, at a theatre that has eliminated 10/12 rehearsals, I and the rest of the sound team found ourselves working 3 consecutive 13/15 days because of morning band rehearsals and sound checks followed by a full 8-hour day of tech. I know that as evening came on those days, I could feel my productivity waning. I had even made arrangements to get rides home from coworkers because I knew that I didn’t want to have the pressure of having to drive even the 5 minutes back to my housing. Statements are nice, but one action isn’t enough. We clearly aren’t there yet if some departments (especially sound and wardrobe/wigs/makeup) are still putting in a lot of “invisible labor” around the tech day and working such long hours, even when the actors’ day has been made more reasonable.

As for me, I have made it a point to tell designers that I will not work for them on a show that is doing 10/12s. I’ve told them point blank that these working conditions prohibit me from doing my best work, and that I will not sacrifice my body and mind in this way ever again. And given that one of them once had to hug me while I had an inexplicable exhaustion-fueled emotional breakdown at the end of one such night, I’m guessing they believe me. But to risk losing a job over this takes a lot of privilege and self-advocacy, and I am lucky to have enough of a platform to be able to be picky about what work I choose to take. Most people working in theatre do not have this. So extra effort is needed from those of us who have a voice and some power to speak up for others. Directors and designers (especially those who are in demand) can tell theatres that they will not work there if 10/12s are being scheduled. Production Managers can appeal to their leadership about how 10/12s are limiting their ability to hire good candidates. Everyone can sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/producers-end-10-out-of-12-tech-days-and-6-day-work-weeks-in-professional-theatre so that those in charge see that “this is a top priority for our theatre community.” And lastly, we can all work to take better care of ourselves and each other by extending a little more grace when we find ourselves stuck in a system that is built to disadvantage us. I hope this blog has encouraged you to learn more about this cause and to join the movement for #NoMore10OutOf12s!

Readings and Workshops and Labs, oh my!

In a previous blog which you can read here, I detailed some of the key differences between mixing an existing work (or revival) and mixing a new musical. New musicals, as many of us know, are their own special beast, always evolving and keeping you on your toes as you process changes in real-time. But getting to the premiere production is already a long way down the road, and before that, a show will go through various iterations and phases. Often those phases won’t have a full production design with sets, costumes, etc. Perhaps they won’t be more than some actors with binders and one musician at a keyboard. There will, however, almost certainly be a sound designer and a mixer. In this blog, we will be diving into the specific challenges of mixing presentations of shows that are in development: what they are, why we do them, and how to set yourself up for success as the mixer.

A still from a staged reading of the musical “Theory of Relativity” produced as part of Goodspeed Musicals’ annual Festival of New Musicals.

What are the different ways to present a work in progress?

The three most common terms for a public presentation of a show in development are readings, workshops, and labs. First, some quick definitions are in order.

Reading: A presentation of a musical where the show is read and sung aloud for an audience by a group of actors. As its name would suggest, reading is almost always done with scripts in hand, i.e. the actors are not “off book.” Sometimes readings are more of the “concert” variety, with actors at music stands delivering their lines; sometimes they include more staging and choreography (hence the term “staged reading”). Since most readings are not considered to be fully staged, someone will often be tasked with reading some of the stage directions aloud to give the audience a sense of what’s going on in the play. The actors will not usually be in wireless mics and the sound support will consist of some handheld mics set up near music stands, or at other strategic locations around the stage. Other times the actors will be in wireless mics for ease of mixing and moving around. The orchestration will typically be minimal (e.g., a keyboard and possibly a rhythm section).

Workshop/Lab: A workshop is a fully-staged presentation of a show where the actors have memorized their lines and are performing the show “full out,” complete with choreography. Technically, as of 2019, a workshop of a show is a “lab,” but we’ll get to that in a moment. There might be a few minimal props, or a large-scale approximation of the set, much like you might see in a rehearsal room for a full production of a show. There aren’t usually costumes and there is not a lighting design other than “lights up, lights down.” The actors will be in wireless mics, and the expectation is that the presentation will be mixed line-by-line, like a standard musical. There is almost always a band, and likely a larger audio support package including either foldback wedges or a personal monitor mixing system like Avioms.

Fun fact: The history of the workshop dates to the 1970s, when a director/choreographer named Michael Bennett gathered a bunch of Broadway dancers in a room for a few weeks to try out writing songs and scenes based on some cassette tape interviews he had done with them about their lives working as what we in the biz call “ensemblists.” The result was the musical “A Chorus Line” which went on to run for over 6000 performances on Broadway.

Today, the words “lab” and “workshop” are often used interchangeably to describe a developmental process where a show is “put on its feet” and “presented” to either the public or an invite-only audience.

Side note about the word “lab”: Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said that all workshops are technically labs? “Lab” is now the technical word used to describe all developmental presentations or work sessions governed by the Actors Equity Association, the labor union representing theatre performers and stage managers in the US. The new lab contract has multiple tiers that delineate how much staging or props can be used, how many weeks of work can be done, and how much the actors and stage managers are paid per week. Additionally, as was the case in the former workshop contract, actors and stage managers who participate in a lab of a show that goes on to turn a profit on Broadway are now entitled to a small cut of the box office gross (https://broadwaynews.com/2019/02/08/actors-equity-reaches-agreement-on-lab-contract-ends-strike/). This is to account for the fact that even though they may not have been the directors, writers, or choreographers themselves (and might not even be working on the show if/when it gets to Broadway), the work and contributions they made back in those labs are an integral creative component of the eventual full production and should be recognized and compensated. The lab is meant to be overall more flexible as to how the producers and directors are allowed to use the time that they have their actors on payroll.

Why do shows do these developmental steps?

Two big reasons: to experiment and make changes to a piece before investing lots of time and money into a full production, and to “pitch” your show to potential producers and investors who might be willing to get behind a full production of the work if they think it has potential. It’s basically a place to work out your show’s kinks before putting on a “backers audition.” The team is here to “sell” folks on their idea for this musical. As the mixer, you are there to help them make their case by delivering the dialogue and music as clearly as you can so that they can decide if the songs are catchy, the jokes are funny, the story is meaningful, etc. This means that your goal behind the faders will be a little different than just “making it sound good.”

So without further ado, let’s get into some tips and tricks for how to do this!

DON’T. GET. FANCY.

This is probably the single biggest and most overarching piece of advice I can give when mixing developmental work. This process is going to feel like mixing a new musical on OVERDRIVE. The changes will be flying at you even more quickly, and you want to be able to adapt and react quickly and efficiently.

So, what are some ways you can do that?

DON’T GET FANCY with your programming.

Write as few snapshots/scenes as you possibly can. Do the least amount of programming you and your designer can get away with. Unless there is a compelling reason to do more (e.g., it’s what your designer wants), your programming really shouldn’t be anything more than some VCA changes, a little bit of band mixing/fader wiggling, and maybe a little bit of reverb safing/unsafing.

My personal favorite way to program a workshop is using what I call the “All-Skate” scene. Basically, I analyze the script, figure out which characters have the most dialogue, and design one console scene with VCA assignments that will work for most of the show. For a standard musical, every principal will be assigned to their own VCA, with the ensemble in two groups. That way if the writers suddenly throw in a new scene/song, you’ll be ready to mix along with minimal adjustments. Here’s what that looked like in a workshop I mixed last fall:

This is my programming scheme for Norma Rae with everyone assigned to their “home faders.”

Once you’ve got your all-skate scene written, build every subsequent scene out of that template and only change what you need. On a standard musical you might eliminate characters who don’t speak from your VCAs; don’t bother with that here. The likelihood of things changing and people getting added is so high that you might as well be prepared. So, to return to our example from above, here is what my programming for the whole show of Norma Rae wound up looking like.

You will notice from the color coding that I have changed as few VCAs as I need to in each scene to make the programming work. So, even if REUBEN isn’t in a scene/song, I didn’t bother clearing him out unless I needed VCA 4 for something else

DON’T GET FANCY with your book.

I am a stickler for a clean book, but there’s not going to be time. Use all your shorthand. Be ready to erase, rewrite, rip out pages, glue in new lines, etc. For the last reading, I mixed I simply crossed out all the stage directions by hand with a thick pen and did most of the write-ins with white-out and pencil.

On a reading in particular, you’ll most likely not be changing your VCA assignments as much, since you’re just mixing on wired mics that are in fixed positions, and the people speaking at them are the thing that is changing. Make yourself good notes so that you are always on top of who is singing where. If a whole page is just 2 or 3 people having a conversation, I’ll simply write a huge “2+3+4” in the top right corner of the page and then park the mics up. That way I’m not having to follow the dialogue as precisely and I’m not risking missed pickups attempting to be fancy and do a proper “line-by-line” when I don’t really have to.

If you read music notation, working off the piano-vocal score is going to be very useful here. I found myself constantly scribbling on the PV for the 2 workshops I mixed last year, because even with a great script PA, sometimes the score is just more accurate, and gives you a better idea of what’s going on in a song. I mixed only a few songs on the score for the actual presentations, but even so, I was constantly referencing my PV notes.

I know some folks are moving towards digital scripts, but until you are a true workshop expert, I would highly recommend sticking to a good old-fashioned paper script. It will allow you to make changes more easily and get your thoughts down more quickly. You’ll also be able to process subtle and small changes in the room that might not make it into the PDF of new pages that will eventually be emailed out. This is especially true if your show isn’t going to “freeze,” meaning even once you’re into presentations the creative team might continue to make changes.

USE YOUR ALLIES AND GET INFORMATION

Much like on any new musical, the script PA and the music assistant are going to be your new best friends. They are the folks who will be the most aware of what’s changing, who sings when, and what email threads you need to be on. Make sure you are not left out of the conversations that are relevant to you, especially if folks on the team aren’t as experienced or used to working with a mixer. Sometimes they don’t realize how much work you’re doing, and why you need all this information. But hopefully, once they do, they’ll be on your side and will do everything they can to help you out.

BRING YOUR ARSENAL

The workshop mindset requires you to work quickly. There is so little time. You’re basically doing an entire rehearsal, tech, preview, and run of a new musical in two weeks. Be ready with your A-game and all your tricks, hacks, and cheat sheets. Be ready to program quickly, either by keeping things simple, using the “all-skate” method, or some combination of the two. In a reading, consider not using scenes at all if you don’t need them. And above all else, breathe, smile, and have fun. You’ve got this!

If you have any further questions about mixing developmental works, feel free to send them my way and I’ll try to answer them in a future post. I’m always eager to hear from my readers about what topics they would like to learn more about, so all suggestions are welcome!

How to Own Your Work Without it Owning You

Working in theatre can be full of ups and downs. You get some jobs; you lose out on others. You don’t always get to know why. Some production processes are smooth; others are nightmares. Since I resumed working in live theatre in 2021, I’ve had my share of all these experiences, and everything else in between. But one thing that has changed for me post-shutdown is how I approach those messier situations. And learning to survive them and still do my job well has helped me learn an important lesson about letting go of some of my emotional attachment to my work.

This is not to say that I don’t still love what I do! I remain deeply passionate about mixing musicals. There’s almost no place I’d rather be than behind a console in a theatre. However, working in theatre isn’t just a source of joy for me; it is also my job and primary source of income. And one of the biggest discoveries I made over the course of the pandemic shutdown when this huge part of my life and livelihood went away for a while, was that it can be unhealthy to tie my emotional wellbeing to something as fleeting as anyone show. And when I think back on how I approached my work then vs now, I can see that I am in a much better place mentally.

It turns out there is an important distinction between loving your work and being ruled by it. And my success at doing the former without falling into the trap of the latter is key to my current healthier overall psyche. Here are some tips and techniques that I utilize every day at work to stay grounded in calm and stormy seas alike.

Practicing Gratitude

Even within a dumpster fire, there is good. I try to remind myself each day, or even each hour, to take a moment to name one thing I like about my current job or situation. It could be anything from “I am grateful that I’m getting along well with my colleagues” to “I am grateful that tomorrow is payday.” Any small acknowledgment of gratitude that helps you to simplify what’s going through your head can be a great aid in re-centering oneself in moments of chaos. I use this technique when I catch myself falling into bad behavioral habits, such as getting impatient or passive-aggressive about things outside of my control.

Lane departure warnings

We may think of this as being a safety feature in fancy new cars, but checking yourself or asking others to check you when you begin to let your emotions rule your actions will help you resist the pull of the drama and tension around you. I have worked hard (with a lot of help from my wonderful therapist) to learn what my emotional defense mechanisms are and to recognize them before they get out of hand. For example, I know that when I’m stressed or low on sleep, I can turn into a bit of a control freak and micromanager. At times earlier in my career, I also tended to accidentally overstep my departmental boundaries when I thought I could help with a problem, even when the issue at hand was totally outside my responsibilities. I’ve learned that this behavior, while well-meaning, is ultimately counterproductive because it can hide flaws or issues that need to be solved by the team organically, and not fixed with slapdash “band-aid” solutions. So, learning to stay in my lane has proven to be both a gift (because it allows me to feel pride and ownership of that which is my job), and a relief (because I can let go of everything that isn’t).

Set good goals

Another way I try to cultivate a feeling of satisfaction at every job is by defining for myself what would constitute “victory” or “success” in this situation. For example, on a recent out-of-town show, my primary goal was to develop a good work relationship with a sound designer I had never mixed for before. On a different show that I supervised back in March, my goal was simply to get paid and save money for a future cycling trip. So, regardless of what happens on any of my shows in the end, I can consider them wins for me because I have met my personal goals. Anything more than that is gravy!

Work-life balance

To the left, to the left!

I’m generalizing here, but I’ve found that because of our long hours, atypical work schedules, resultingly small social circles, and overly cultivated sense of “family” or “community” among each individual theatre company or show team, we (the denizens of the theatrical workforce) are especially prone to letting the work-life scale tip in the “work” direction. Find things you value off the clock and give them the time, attention, and emotional value they deserve. Some tactics I use to maintain my balance are intermission phone calls with my spouse, taking my cat with me when I travel for out-of-town shows, going out on walks or bike rides on my days off, or cooking a simple meal at home that I can bring in to eat on my dinner break. All those things and more help me to remember what I really care about and what makes me happiest, and as a result, I am not expecting work to provide a sense of completeness (or to fill a void) in my life.

One of the great things about being a stagehand is that most of my work can only be done at work. I can’t exactly EQ a microphone or hang a speaker from home. For this reason, I try to take the act of clocking in and out very literally. When I’m at work, I commit to being there fully, doing my best, and devoting my complete attention to the tasks at hand. When I leave the theatre, I try my best not to take any of that home with me. This applies on breaks too. Of course, the existence of modern technologies like smartphones, email, and push notifications can make that hard, but at the same time, especially if you’re paid hourly, then you don’t owe your employer anything when you’re not on the clock. Try using an app timer or similar feature on your devices to limit the times of day that you can check work email. Leave your show paperwork and mix script at the theatre so you aren’t tempted to look at them after hours. If there isn’t enough time in your scheduled shift to get all the needed work done that day, then it’s ok that it must wait until your next workday. And that’s not on you.

Accept reality and measure expectations

We all know that just existing in a stressful situation is easier said than done. Here I am preaching about detaching emotionally from work, and the next moment I’ll be texting a friend to vent about how frustrating some part of my workday was. Being emotional is an extremely logical human response to stressors. It means your body is working as intended! But acknowledging emotions and then letting them go will allow you to keep a cool head and not get stuck in a state of burnout. As my meditation app put it, “Acceptance doesn’t mean apathy. It means seeing clearly from a place of calm, knowing when to act, knowing when to let go.” Someone might come up to you and say something like, “the show is so behind, we’ll never be ready in time!” And that might in fact be the case. But unless one of you is part of the show’s upper management, then all you can do is acknowledge that yes, the current situation is less than ideal, but it’s still ok. Know it’s not your job to fix everything, just to ask for what you need to do your job well. And if that isn’t available to you, at least you’ve made your issues known in a calm and rational way and can now go back to focusing on the here and now of the situation.

At the end of the day, it’s ok to walk away

This blog was intended to dive a little deeper into tactics for maintaining good mental health and objectivity in stressful work situations. However, I want to emphasize that I am not writing this to condone improper work conditions in any way. Everyone deserves a workplace where the expectations of their job are laid out clearly, where each employee is treated with humanity and compensated fairly, and where issues that arise can be brought forward without fear of repercussions or retaliation. That is a bare minimum of what one deserves when one enters the theatre to work on a show. And if your current employer is not meeting those standards, feel free to go find one that will. While not every job will be ideal in every way, you are not “weak” or “a failure” for deciding that a situation you’re in is not the best for you as an individual and that the appropriate solution for your own mental health is to extract yourself from the project. It is hard to remember at the moment, but it’s always true that the ultimate power you have as a worker is the power to walk away, and no one can take that from you or make you feel bad for using it.

Above all, take care of yourself

Theatre is a job, but theatre is also objectively interesting and fun. That’s part of why I and many others choose to put on plays for money instead of seeking employment in other fields. However, “love of the art” does not mean one has to be married to it, as the saying goes. Any emotions that come up because of work are just emotions, no different than the rest of the time. I hope this blog has highlighted ways that creating an emotional separation from your work can ultimately make you a better worker because you will no longer be counting on a show to make you happy. It may do that anyway, but that’s a perk, not a job requirement. You also won’t feel like you’re carrying so much of its baggage if it makes you sad, angry, or stressed. If you can live by the philosophy that your job is to show up, do your work, get paid, and go home, you’ll hopefully find satisfaction in yourself even in less-than-ideal situations, and feel pride in your work at the end of the day regardless of what else happens.

A great tool for making a self-care action plan, courtesy of the Mental Health First Aid Association

Music Reading for Drama Technicians

This month’s blog will go over some basic music theory concepts that I have found useful in my work as a musical theatre mixer. Full credit for the title goes to Professor Thomas W. Douglas of Carnegie Mellon University, who taught a class by that name when I was an undergrad. I know that not everyone working in theatrical sound has a formal music education (and I am not suggesting that it’s a requirement) but I think that being able to understand what is going on in a score, follow along in the music, and in some cases, line-by-line mix from the score, are good skills for anyone in this field to have.

Part 1: From the Top

Here’s a full-size cheat sheet of music theory 101! Courtesy of Thomas W. Douglas.

As with any piece of writing, the most important information about a score is at the top of the page. This first set of symbols gives you a roadmap for what the song should sound like and how it should feel when played. Some of that basic information includes:

Tempo: the “speed” of a song. Sometimes delineated in Italian terms ranging from the slowest (largo) to fastest (prestissimo). Often in modern shows, and especially new musicals, you will see more descriptive tempo terms such as “steady rock beat” or “upbeat.” Some of the tempo descriptions for the new musical I am currently mixing include “bluesy protest song,” “Dylanesque,” “pop 4,” “feverish,” and my personal favorite, “Tempo di ‘Four Seasons.’” Also common in modern and new musicals is a specific bpm marking, e.g., “quarter note = 120.” This is often included even on songs that aren’t played to a click, just to give a specific sense of how the tune should feel.

Time signature: the “meter” of the song. Shown as two stacked numbers, with the top number representing the number of beats in a measure (or bar) of music, and the bottom one showing what note counts as 1 beat. So, in 4/4 time, 4 quarter notes, or any other combination of notes adding up to 4 quarter notes (such as 2 half notes), makes 1 bar of music. Since 4/4 is overwhelmingly the most common time signature, it is often abbreviated by just writing a “C” for “common time.” Additionally, time changes within the same song are more common in show tunes than in pop music, as they can be helpful ways to revisit motifs from previous songs or highlight a shift in plot, mood, or tension.

Key signature: what “scale” the piece is in (or at least, much like tempo and time signature, what key the song starts in.) A good way to learn key signatures is by studying the “Circle of Fifths” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths), and learning the shortcuts to analyzing sharps and flats to quickly discern a key. The “signs” section in the graphic above shows the symbols for sharp, flat, and natural.

: Some basics about key signatures. Courtesy of Thomas W. Douglas.

: Some basics about key signatures. Courtesy of Thomas W. Douglas.

Clefs: what note range this part is written in. Most vocal parts for musical theatre are written in treble clef or G clef. A piano-vocal score (or PV) for a show will have the vocal lines in treble clef (sometimes with bass parts shown in treble clef 8vb, meaning that the notes are written in treble clef but should be sung down an octave), and then treble and bass clef lines for the piano part.

Part 2: Following Along in a Score

While plenty of music, both classical and pop, contains a common set of musical conventions, there are some things that I specifically look for when analyzing a musical theatre score. Some of those things are:

Repeats, Codas, Vamps, and Safeties

Repeats are exactly what they sound like: a section of music played through twice (or more times if indicated, but always a specific number of times). See the above glossary for a picture of the repeat symbols in music notation. Repeats can be useful when a song has a clear verse and chorus that are melodically identical, therefore the copyist can just write them into the music once (with both sets of lyrics under the vocal line) and delineate the first and second endings instead of writing the whole figure out twice.

Another thing that repeats allow for is Codas. A coda is the “tail” of a piece and is only played the last time through a repeated piece. When a piece of music says “D.C al Coda” this means “play the piece through as many times as the repeats indicate, but on the final time through, skip ahead to the Coda where the music indicates to do so.” Coda markings look kind of like a set of crosshairs and are often accompanied by the words “to coda” or “al coda”.

What about vamps? Romanbenedict.com defines a vamp as “a section of music that is repeated several times while dialogue or onstage action occurs. It is usually directed by the conductor’s cue, and as such can cope with the unpredictability of long stretches of dialogue or indeterminable theatrical machinations.” Vamps might be used when a song has a scene break in the middle of it because, while an 8-bar section of music always takes roughly the same amount of time to play, the pacing of the script (or the speed of a scenic transition) is not so precisely timed and may vary in length from night to night. The cue to move out of the vamp could be a certain line of dialogue or a scene change completing and will be clearly cued by the music director. It’s good to know where the vamps are in a musical number so that you can keep track of where you are in the song and not accidentally miss a pickup, band move, or a snapshot.

Safeties can be thought of as “optional” vamps, meaning that they could be played or skipped entirely based on timing variations from performance to performance.

Dynamics: Dynamics, as we learn in audio, are variations in loudness. Similarly, in music, dynamic descriptions tell us where this piece of music lands on the soft-to-loud, or in this case, “piano” to “forte” spectrum. In scores, you will find dynamics abbreviated using p for “piano” aka soft, f for “forte” aka loud, and m for “mezzo” or moderately (used in combination with p or f such as mp or mf).

Changes in dynamics: the Italian terms for these are crescendo and decrescendo. A crescendo is a gradual increase in volume and decrescendo means a gradual decrease. They are written either as the abbreviation “cresc.” Or, more commonly, by putting an elongated “<” or >” symbol under the bars of music encompassing the duration of the dynamic shift. There may also be an indication of what dynamic you are moving to or from (such as p<f, meaning crescendo from piano to forte), but this is optional. Crescendo markings are one of my favorite shorthand symbols to use in my mix scripts, so rather than write out “fade band up to -8” I will simply write “B<-8”. I also often use crescendo markings at the end of songs to indicate a big band build, or decrescendo markings on the first lyric after the intro to indicate a small band decrease when the vocal starts.

Changes in tempo: there are a lot of Italian terms for slowing a tempo down; the most common one is ritardando, often abbreviated as “rit.” Other terms include rallantando (rall. for short), or “moso” which means movement, and can have further elaboration such as piu moso (a little faster) or meno moso (a little slower).

Key changes: also called modulations. These can be everywhere in musical theatre but are most common in the final verse of a song, where the music and action take a big emotional shift. You will know there is a key change because in the middle of the music there will be a new key signature that now supersedes the original key for the remainder of the song (until you get to the next key change).

Rubato: this means played freely, without a clear tempo.

Fermata: a long-held note, often at the end of a song as part of the “big finish.”

Button: Buttons aren’t necessarily explicitly defined in the music, but they’re hard to miss. A clean, 1-beat ending to a song. Here is a great thread from Lin-Manuel Miranda explaining the emotional intent of buttons and why some songs do or don’t have them: https://twitter.com/lin_manuel/status/951215051633037312

Pickup note(s): this is when a song begins with an incomplete measure of music. For an example of a pickup, we can revisit the opening of Les Misérables which I dissected in part 1. The song begins with an eighth-note pickup, such that melodically the music starts on the “and” of the 4th beat of the 0th measure.

The circled notes are the pickup and first beat.

Part 3: Putting it together

Now armed with the tools to read a score more clearly, the next step is to apply your music theory in action as a mixer!

When should you opt to mix using a PV instead of a script? The answer is “it depends.” Also, the decision to mix from a score does not have to be universal but can be decided on a song-by-song basis.

There are many reasons to use score or not, such as personal preference, designer preference, lack of access to an updated or well-formatted script, and many more. But basically, as always, it comes down to picking the best tool for the job, the job in this case mixing this number of the musical.

So, for a real-world case study, here are some example PV pages for “Finale Ultimo” from my mix script for The Drowsy Chaperone, which I chose to mix on the score for ease of clarity in making the pickups for the layered vocal parts that flow in and out as the main character, The Man in the Chair, sings the melody. This section of PV matches up to approximately 0:30-1:39 in the recording from the cast album linked below.

I hope this blog has made you a little more musically “street-smart” and as always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions or suggestions for future blog topics!

Shop Prep 101

One of the biggest things I had to learn about when I moved from working in regional theatre to working in NYC was the process of shop prep (also called “shop build” or just “build”). It’s a phase of the production process that is kind of particular and unique to doing theatre here, and there is a lot to learn and money to be made doing this kind of work. Almost everyone who works as an A1, A2, or audio stagehand in NYC takes shop calls from time to time, sometimes for shows that they are mixing or A2ing, and sometimes as an additional hand on another show’s shop prep. It’s not uncommon for a sound stagehand to be building one show during the day and running another one at night (though “double-dipping” like this can get exhausting quickly). So, for this blog, I thought I would provide some basic information about shops and shop prep: what it is, who will be there, what goes on there, and a few other things that I wish I had known before showing up more or less clueless at my first shop build in January of 2019.

Part 1: Definitions

What is shop prep?

Shop prep is the part of the production process where all the audio gear that the designer has specified for the show is assembled, labeled, and tested. It takes place before the load-in period, and the goal is to get the sound design package ready to be installed in the theatre.

Why do NYC shows do shop preps?

Unlike most regional theatres, Broadway (and many off-Broadway) houses do not own any gear of their own. Everything the show needs from every department is brought in on a per-show basis and spec’d by the respective designers, especially for use on that show. Rather than purchase expensive new gear for every new Broadway show that comes to town, practically all the audio gear (including cable) is rented from one of the 3 major NYC-area audio rental shops for a weekly fee that is paid to the shop by the producers. Prior to shop prep, the sound designer, production manager, and producers will often go through a bidding process to see which of these 3 shops can fulfill the order closest to what the designer wants and what the producers have budgeted for.

Does every show do a shop prep?

With very few exceptions, every Broadway show and most touring shows will do a shop prep process. Many Off-Broadway shows do a shop prep as well, though some own enough gear that the sound designer can put together the desired system using the venue’s “rep system” or gear that the venue already owns. Some regional productions will also do a shop prep, particularly if the show that they are mounting is a “pre-Broadway Tryout” aka a show doing a run out of town before hopefully moving to NYC. In both Off-Broadway and regional theatre, sometimes a venue’s existing gear will be supplemented by a shop rental, which may or may not be complex enough for the show to need to send a team of workers for a proper shop prep. This is often the case for venues that do mostly plays and therefore might not own the gear that they need for musicals, such as a large-format mixing console and wireless microphones.

What are the “Big 3” shops, and where are they located?

The “Big 3” shops that supply the audio gear for most Broadway and Off-Broadway shows are Masque Sound, Production Resource Group (PRG), and Sound Associates Inc (SAI). Masque and PRG are both in northern New Jersey, and Sound Associates is in Yonkers, NY, just north of The Bronx.

Part 2: Know Before You Go

Ok, I’ve booked my first ever shop prep! Where is the shop and how do I get there?

DISCLAIMER: this travel information is current as of March 2022, so check with a knowledgeable friend in case things have changed since then!

Masque Sound

Address: 21 E Union Ave, East Rutherford, NJ 07073

How to get there from NYC: If you don’t have a car (or a friend with a car), the NJTransit 163 bus from Port Authority Bus Terminal is the easiest way to get there. The bus lets out right by the Staples store on Union Avenue in East Rutherford, and the shop is just down the street from there.

IMPORTANT NOTE: for the morning commute, not every 163 Bus stops at the Staples! You must be on the one that leaves at either 7:40 am or 8:10 am. Look for other sound folks with Pelican cases at the bus station, and they will help you get to the right place.

How to get back: The bus is also an option for returning to NYC, but it’s much easier to walk to the East Rutherford train station and take the train to Secaucus. From there you can transfer to a train to Penn Station.

PRG

Address: 915 Secaucus Rd, Secaucus, NJ 07094

How to get there from NYC: Take the NJTransit 129 bus from Port Authority, Gate 314. You’ll want to make the 7:50 am bus if your build starts at 8:30 am. The bus stops right outside of PRG!

How to get back: The same bus will take you back to Port Authority from the same stop where you got off. But check the schedule because if you miss it the next one might not be for a while!

Sound Associates

Address: 979 Saw Mill River Rd, Yonkers, NY 10710

How to get there from NYC: A friend with a car will be your best bet here. Often shows will rent a car for the Production Audio to get to the build, so reach out and see if you can ride with them. There is a Metro-North train that goes from Grand Central Station to Yonkers (also you can take the subway most of the way there), but neither of these options leaves you within reasonable walking distance, so you will still have to take a cab or rideshare from there to the shop.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you are driving to SAI from NYC, put “Star Auto Spa” (999 Saw Mill River Rd, Yonkers, NY 10710) in your GPS, not Sound Associates itself! The shop is literally right next to exit 9 on the northbound side of the Saw Mill River Parkway, but you must get off one exit earlier (at Exit 7 – Tuckahoe Rd) to actually get there. Otherwise, you will arrive at the off-ramp for exit 9 only to find that you are on the wrong side of the fence, and Google/Waze will think you have arrived at your destination when in fact you’ve gone too far.

IMPORTANT NOTE WHEN TRAVELING TO ANY OF THE SHOPS: many productions (particularly Off-Broadway) will reimburse your travel costs, so ask your Production Audio if this is the case on your show, and be sure to save your tickets and receipts!

Who all will be there?

On the show side, your team will likely consist of some combination of these people:

Designer – in charge of the entire sound design of the show. They will stop by your build a few times but probably not be there every day.
Associate/Assistant Designer – acting on the designer’s behalf to answer questions, print labels, and coordinate between departments. This person also often manages the label database and provides rack drawings, so that you know what gear to put in each rack and what labels to put on what cables.
Production Audio – this is the position in charge of executing the designer’s vision and making it a practical reality. As part of this, they are the supervisor of the shop build and crew. You can read more about being a Production Audio in Heather Augustine’s excellent blog article here: https://soundgirls.org/production-audio/
Advance Audio – if your Production Audio is on another show or otherwise booked, sometimes your show will have an Advance who acts as the Production Audio prior to the show’s load-in into the theatre.
A1 – will be responsible for mixing the show; in the shop, they will work as a shop hand like everyone else but with a particular eye towards setting up the console and Front of House, since it will be their domain for the run of the production.
A2 – will be responsible for wireless microphones once performances start, but much like the A1 they will work as a shop hand, but with a focus of setting up the backstage area affectionately known as “ampland,” “rack world,” “RF world,” or any manner of similar descriptive nicknames ☺.

On the shop side, your main players are

- Sales Representative – this is the person from the shop side of negotiation that is assigned to work on your show. They will need to approve any adds, substitutions, or other alterations to the package that may occur between the time that the bid for the show is approved and when it leaves the shop at the end of the build. Your Production Audio (or Advance, if applicable) will be liaising between Team Design and Team Shop on anywhere from a daily to hourly basis to make sure the show gets the gear it needs while staying within the agreed-upon budget.
Shop Key – think of them as the “boots on the ground” for the sales rep. Your shop key will pull all the gear that your show is going to use and bring it to your zone (the physical area on the shop floor where your show is being built). They will be a great resource throughout your build process when you think of extra things you need but forgot to ask for (or things that are on the show’s order but haven’t yet arrived in your build zone).

What tools should I bring?

Most of what you need can be provided either by the production or by your fellow shop hands, so definitely don’t feel like you have to go spend all your money on nice tools before you’ve even gotten your first shop paycheck! That said, once you do a few builds you may find it nice to have your own tools for certain tasks. A great way to carry them is in a Pelican case, and you will see many sound folks bringing theirs into the zone on the first day of a build. But do whatever works for you and your budget. Perishables such as tape, tie line, and zip ties will be purchased by the production; there is no need to bring your own.

Here is a list of the tools and other accessories that I like to have on hand for shop use: screw gun (plus a variety of bits); multi-tool; crappy knife for cutting electrical tape without gunking up your good knife; good knife for non-electrical tape jobs; tape measure; crescent wrench,; headlamp; flush cutters for cutting zip ties; scissors; screwdriver; a good pair of work gloves; Allen keys; jeweler’s screwdrivers or other precision bit set; pens/pencils, P-Touch label maker; cable tester; BNC tool; and my personal favorite: knee pads (for when you’re stuck on the ground building a rack or holding something).

Here’s the inside of my Pelican case with most of the above-mentioned tools in it! My label-maker is in the red bag off to the side.

Part 3: Let’s Get to Work

Ok I’m at the shop! Now what?

Rather than describe the tasks of shop prep based on how much time they take, I find it helpful to think of the prep process in phases. Shop preps can vary drastically in duration, depending on the show’s budget, how big the rental package is, and how many crew members are available. Typically, a Broadway show or 1st national tour will spend 3-4 weeks in the shop, but some builds may go for even longer if there is a lot of specialty equipment and assembly needs. Smaller Broadway shows and off-Broadway shows might spend between 2 days and 2 weeks in shop prep, so it totally depends. But in most cases, there are some universal tasks that will need to be done, and usually, they go in this order:

Phase 1: Bundling, Labeling, Rack Building

When you arrive in your zone on the first day of your show’s prep, you will likely find a smattering of gear, some empty rack boxes, and lots of cable. To make the load-in process smoother and more efficient, a set of cables that runs from point A to point B (for example, from ampland to front of house) will be loomed together into a bundle. Every single cable will have a specific label, and most designers (or associate designers) will include spare runs for anything fragile like network and video cables. XLR runs will typically be done using G-block multi-cables, which come in varieties from 3-pair all the way up to 19-pair. The associate designer will have put together some version of a piece of paperwork called a “bundle sheet” which tells you the name of the bundle, what cables go in it, and, very importantly, which ends need to be grouped together so that no cable is run backwards! The associate designer will also sometimes generate cable labels using a database program such as FileMaker Pro. Many production audio people and associate designers have spent years putting together their databases to make this process easier for themselves and to avoid having to start from scratch on every new production they do.

A new-ish development in post-pandemic shop work is that show build crews are often doing the actual bundling of cables themselves. Some shows may pay to have the shops do the bundling for them, but this has not been the norm in 2022 in my personal experience. The act of bundling is done by flagging all the ends that begin at one origin (such as ampland) with colored gaff tape, then wrapping friction tape around the entire “girth” of the cable bundle every 3-ish feet, so that all the cables in the bundle can then be easily coiled up and run out together as though they were one very thick cable. It’s gonna feel like major “arm day” by the time you’re done, so prepare yourself. I personally recommend wearing long sleeves and gloves for when you’re laying out 250’ of cable and inevitably getting various dirt and schmutz all over yourself!

Here are some of the completed bundles for the Broadway production of “A Strange Loop.” This is a relatively small Broadway musical, but it still had 70+ bundles!

In most cases, the ends of a bundle will find themselves getting plugged into racks. Racks of gear will be designed on a per-show basis by the designer and associate designer and be articulated in a series of rack drawings. These can be made in software such as Vectorworks, Excel, OmniGraffle, or sometimes just sketched out by hand in a pinch.

Building racks means wrangling up all the gear that goes into that rack, screwing it into the slots where the drawing indicates that it should go, then elegantly labeling, running, and connecting the gear’s power supply (if applicable) and short cables known as interconnects that go between the front of the rack (where most of the gear is) and the back of the rack. On the rear side of the rack, you will usually add some sort of panel mount or Stek (brand name) panel with connector barrels on it that merge the bundle ends to the interconnect ends. That way once the crew in the theatre gets the bundles, all they have to do is plug the labeled ends into the back of the rack at the labeled ports without having to dig around inside the rack to find the right port for each connection.

“L: the rack drawing for the Deck Automation rack for the Broadway production of “A Strange Loop”. C&R: the finished rack viewed from front and rear! Rack drawing by Sam Schloegel.”

Phase 2: Testing

Once most of your racks and bundles are built, it’s time to move on to testing! Basically, this will involve setting up a mock layout of your show’s ampland in your prep bay, then running out all your bundles between ampland, Front of House, and the other various rack locations. Simultaneously, your A1 will likely be setting up a mock-up of the mix position, both building FOH racks and setting up the basic console file. Just about everything in your bay should be tested before being brought to the theatre in as close to “show conditions” as you can get it. So, for example, to test the conductor camera, you will plug it in near your mock band area, run the bundle that goes between it and ampland, run out any other bundles out from ampland that carry the conductor image to its various destinations, then plug in every video monitor to make sure you see the image. To keep things neat and clear, a common trick when testing cameras is to stick a post-it in front of the lens labeled with what the shot should be, that way when you have 4 monitors all next to each other you can easily diagnose which camera is “MD” vs “FOH IR” vs “LADDER 3” etc. Additionally, all wired inputs, band mics, monitor mixers such as Avioms, wired and wireless com, and program feed sends will be tested, plus any other equipment that is pertinent to your show’s design.

A big stack of com racks for tech rehearsals all ready to be tested!

Phase 3: Packing and Pushing

Finally, your build is coming to an end, and it is time to prepare the gear to be transported to the theatre for load-in! Racks will get packed into foam-lined rack surrounds with wheels so that nothing gets damaged on the journey. Hardware, such as mic stands and speaker yokes will usually get packed into gray road cases known simply as “greys.” Cable will get packed into road cases. Then your Production Audio will advise on where everything should be packed so that each road case can get pushed to the most relevant location upon arrival at the venue, and you aren’t carrying cable from one location to another excessively. Every box will have a box label with a box number, the contents of what’s in the box, and, for large shows, which truck the box goes on. This also helps streamline the load-in process so that things you need first, such as feeder cable, arrive before things you don’t need until later, such as spare cable.

Depending on the shop schedule, the shop may ask you to leave your boxes packed and labeled in your prep bay, or you may push them to the loading dock yourself before leaving on your last day. Whatever the case is, hopefully, you have set the show up for success so that when the truck arrives for the first day of load-in everything is ready to go!

Truck 3 for the Broadway production of “A Strange Loop” is lined up at the dock and ready to get packed!

I hope this article will help you feel less overwhelmed than I did at my first shop prep! Please feel free to reach out with any additional questions you have about this process. If there is interest, I would be happy to dive deeper into any aspect of shop prep in a future blog entry.

Interview with Anna-Lee Craig, A2 for Hamilton on Broadway

As I’ve outlined in previous blogs, getting advice and guidance from role models and mentors is a huge part of why I have been able to make a career in theatrical sound thus far. I’ve gotten to develop relationships with a bunch of amazing glass-ceiling crushing women, many of whom are mixing and designing at the highest levels on Broadway and elsewhere. There are other folks in theatre whose work I have simply admired from afar; you might even call me a “superfan” of theirs. And Hamilton A2 Anna-Lee Craig is certainly one of those humans!

ALC, as she is known, is someone I have looked up to for a few years now. Not only is she working on one of the most well-known Broadway shows running right now, but she is doing it as the parent of twin toddlers! And did I mention she designed a new style of mic rig for Hamilton that has now been NAMED after her?! Total badass. In fact, so much badassery that I couldn’t possibly fit it all into one blog!

So, without further ado, I am so pleased to be able to share Part 1 of my profile of ALC in her own words! Check back for Part 2 in early 2022, where we will discuss Hamilton specifically and the challenges of being a parent of young kids with a full-time Broadway gig.

Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Want to learn more about ALC and the sound design of Hamilton? Check out the two episodes of the “Hamilcast” podcast in which she is featured! https://www.thehamilcast.com/anna-lee-craig/ She is also part of the team that was interviewed for the Hamilton episode of the podcast “Twenty Thousand Hertz”: https://www.20k.org/episodes/hamilton. You can find her on Instagram @frecklessly7 and on twitter @craigalc.

What is your theatre sound “origin story”?

I went to school at James Madison University. Originally, I was focused on performance, I had acted in all the school plays in my high school, but I also had an interest in the technical aspects. Fall semester of my freshman year, my first crew assignment was helping the sound designer, a Senior named Jared Singer, strike after a dance concert and we really hit it off. I assisted him on his next sound design and winter break I knew I wanted to change my focus from performance to sound design. I love how sound can transport an audience to a time, a space, or a state of mind. I love how it can be wielded subtly and still have a dramatic impact on a scene.

What was your first professional job in theatre?

I was an A/V Intern at the Santa Fe Opera the summer after my Sophomore Year.

Was there a particular teacher or mentor who encouraged you to pursue a career in sound design?

So many. One professor, Dr. Dennis Beck, I still work with. He taught me the value of deep collaboration or building a narrative in step with a director, and I really think I’ve taken that lesson with me in all aspects of my work.

What jobs or networking opportunities did you avail yourself of in college that helped you prepare to break into the job market in New York?

I attended USITT (http://www.usitt.org/) every year while in college, which definitely helped me get my position at Santa Fe Opera. Many of my subsequent jobs came through word of mouth, recommendations from professionals I worked with either at summer stock or when they were guest designers at JMU. My big break came through KCACTF (Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival – https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/opportunities-for-artists/pre-professional-artist-training/kcactf/) where I competed with one of my sound designs. That won me a stipend to intern at Williamstown Theatre Festival which is ultimately how I met most of my future bosses, including Nevin Steinberg (sound designer of Hamilton).

Sidenote from Becca: I love this answer because it really highlights the importance of networking in our industry, and how the best thing that you can do for yourself is to get into those rooms where people you want to work with/for will be! I too got my first professional job because of attending a USITT conference and can trace many jobs I have gotten since then to the networks I have established by being a part of TSDCA and working at places like Williamstown Theatre Festival. I also want to acknowledge that huge barriers, both systemic and financial, still exist that stop otherwise qualified people from getting into these rooms to compete for these jobs. Attending conferences like USITT in-person can be cost-prohibitive for many people, and college students may not be able to get approval to miss school days to do so. And while the formerly “pay-to-play” internship at Williamstown specifically has been abolished in favor of a paid position called “Second Assistant,” much more work has to be done there and at other summer stock theatres to open these opportunities up to folks who may not be able to take low-wage (or no wage) work, or who do not have theatre sound classes/programs at their schools, or who are not financially able to study theatre at the university level at all. Our workforce will not diversify unless we radically change how we see folks as “qualified” or “having the right experience,” and move towards paying living wages across all 50 states, even at the entry-level. Ok, back to ALC!

Did you move to NYC right after college? Why or why not?

I stayed in Harrisonburg for an extra school year working as the Production Audio Intern at JMU’s performing arts center. It was a steady job, and I was unsure of what I was going to do next, so I took that year to save money and figure my next steps out. I was on the fence about whether to go to grad school or not.

What was your path to joining the union?

I worked for a couple of designers while I was freelance in NYC. I had been working as an A2 on Off-Broadway shows for Nevin Steinberg, and in the summer of 2013, he asked me if I was interested in going on the first national tour of Porgy and Bess. That’s the show that got me my ACT Card.

I really feel like getting in the union was when my career really started to ramp up. But also, maybe my “break” was even earlier, maybe it was meeting Nevin as an intern at Williamstown. Ever since then, one job led to another, a little more challenging, and I kept growing as an engineer.

Sidenote from Becca: ACT stands for Associated Craft Technicians and is colloquially known as the “touring local” of IATSE. Unlike the other numbered locals in IATSE, which are based in specific towns/cities (for example, IATSE Local 3 is Pittsburgh stage employees), ACT members are not all geographically based in one place, even though the local office is in New York. Joining ACT or being offered an ACT card in order to accept work on a union touring show is how many folks in theatre gain membership to IATSE.

Thanks so much to Anna-Lee Craig for taking the time to share her story. Again, check back in January of 2022 for part 2 of this interview!

Also, I am taking requests for what topics you’d like to see blogs about next year. Reach out to me via my website, beccastollsound.com, and have a great end of 2021 y’all!

We Need More Arts Workers in Arts Advocacy

One of the biggest blessings for me over the pandemic was that I finally had time to get involved in my community. I explored undiscovered neighborhoods, tried lots of restaurants that had always been closed by the time I got home late from my shows, volunteered at a food pantry, and started following local news and politics. As part of this, I became more involved with local arts organizations and in statewide arts advocacy. I attended Zoom meetings to learn how other artists, arts workers, and arts organizations were weathering the storm, and to simply meet others from my city who were working in the creative industries.

I found a lot of camaraderie in these Zoom meets and from getting to meet other politically motivated folks in the arts, but I also felt a little out of place. I showed up at my first Connecticut Arts Alliance virtual meeting a few months ago and quickly discovered that I was the only person there who was just an individual, and not from an arts organization of some kind. Additionally (and possibly related), I was overwhelmingly the youngest person on the call at most meetings. And I learned that our perspective, the perspective of actual real-life arts workers, is needed, welcome, and totally missing from these meetings. So, here’s my pitch to all of you to get involved in supporting the arts loudly and proudly in your own communities, states, and countries, especially here in the US, where the arts are both so vital, and so lacking in government support.

First, some background. For those who aren’t aware, every US state has some sort of government body tasked with arts, culture, tourism, and/or some combination of the like. In my state of CT, it’s the CT Office of the Arts. According to their website, the CT Office of the Arts is tasked with creating and distributing grants, running programs and services “that connect people to the arts and help build vital communities across the state,” providing training and professional development opportunities, and serving as a resource hub for the statewide arts community.

In addition, most states have some sort of primary advocacy group that exists to ensure that the state arts office is meeting the needs of the communities it serves. In CT, that’s the Connecticut Arts Alliance (CAA). Funny story, I learned about CAA for the first time, not because of any outreach they did specifically, but because they rented the stage of the theatre where I was mixing full-time to host two of their live events (pre-pandemic, of course) ☺. One was a “Create the Vote” event prior to the 2018 election, then another one to hear reports from a task force formed by then governor-elect Ned Lamont about how to better support arts, culture, and tourism in the state.

Besides these two events, who is CAA and what do they do? To quote their mission statement, “CAA is a statewide non-profit organization that works to build political, financial, and grassroots support to ensure that the arts are a vital part of life for everyone in Connecticut.” The membership includes leaders of regional arts advocacy groups, such as the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, Greater Hartford Arts Council, and more. It also includes members of local arts organizations from every corner of the state, from Thrown Stone Theatre in Ridgefield, all the way to La Grua Center over by the eastern border with Rhode Island. Yes, I know our state is geographically small compared to most, but it’s still a lot of people from a few hours’ drive away from each other, and it’s no small feat getting them all together and on the same page! The CEOs, directors, artistic directors, and curators of the many organizations who belong to CAA represent every facet of the arts, and so too should the artists themselves who are on the committee.

Arts Council of Greater New Haven and Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County are two such local arts organizations in CT. One I was a member of for 2 years, and the other I hope to join soon now that I’ve relocated within the state!

I am eager to represent my portion of the arts community, but I can’t do it alone. Nor would it be appropriate for me, a white woman who works primarily out of state, to even pretend that I can articulate the needs of all the art workers in CT. Just like the disparate companies and art-making groups that CAA brings together under its umbrella, we arts workers are not a monolith. What CAA and other statewide arts advocacy groups don’t have enough of, in my opinion, is individuals working “on the front lines” as it were. These groups comprise lots of people who do the hiring and managing, but not enough of the folks who paint the murals, stage-manage the concerts, and of course, mix the musicals 🙂 It’s important that they get the feedback and perspective from the people who stand most directly to benefit from support, both political and financial.

Despite all our differences, there are some key things that many arts workers have in common, which became only more apparent during the pandemic. First, most of us are on the knife’s edge when it comes to economic and employment-related stability most of the time. In my line of work, I don’t always have jobs lined up even a week in advance. So, when all the work dried up at once in March of 2020 and I went to apply for unemployment, I had no way to prove the loss of future income from projects that I hadn’t even signed contracts for yet. Second, many of us work many jobs for many employers to piece together a livelihood and a living. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means that in the US, the way we work is completely at odds with a social structure that assumes most people have one job that they can expect to keep unless they quit, die, get laid off, or get fired. Our system also assumes that that one job is the source of most people’s healthcare and retirement savings. Outside of union work, my experience in live theatre has been that I must put all these things together for myself. And with the onset of the pandemic, even union workers weren’t safe from hardship, as many of the health plans used by Actors Equity Association, American Federation of Musicians, and IATSE directly tie access to benefits to the number of weeks of union work one works in a calendar year.

And you know what? A lot of people outside our industry don’t know ANY of those facts. So, it’s up to us to inform them so that they can best serve us!

I got a key opportunity to do just that this summer when a group from CAA met with senior aides for each of our 7 federal legislators (2 senators and 5 representatives) as part of National Arts Advocacy Week. We each took a turn talking about how the pandemic had affected us or our organization and then tied that struggle to bills being debated that could directly help our cause if passed. I had never done any sort of lobbying before, and it took some serious prep to figure out how best to spend my allotted 90 seconds making my case. I focused on things that the pandemic response got right, but also where some of those initiatives fell short. For example, I think there is now a more universal understanding among the “muggles” about the existence of the “gig economy” and the “gig worker,” but even that definition falls short of encompassing all of us who work in the arts. I, for example, do not consider myself a gig worker, because even though I work many jobs in a year (my record was 29 in 2019), it’s almost all as a W-2 employee, not a 1099 Independent Contractor. Therefore, while I did qualify for unemployment, having to enter 18 months of work history took me hours, and some of those jobs lasted only a single day!

After the last 18 months, I can truly relate

Additionally, I focused my speaking time on requesting funding for government initiatives that would create new opportunities to employ arts workers and grant them better protections at work. For example, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) represents the city of New Haven, where the employees of the local concert venue, College Street Music Hall, had just voted to join IATSE 74 but were struggling to get management to agree to a fair contract. So, when I was lobbying her congressional aide, I focused on how the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act could directly benefit arts workers by strengthening protections for workers in unions and those trying to unionize. This in turn would bring more good-paying union jobs to her district and strengthen the huge role that the performing arts plays in the local economy for the whole city of New Haven.

IATSE 74 members and supporters holding an informational picket outside College Street Music Hall. Photo courtesy of the Official @IATSE Twitter page.

When speaking with an aide to Sen. Chris Murphy, I talked about how the expanded unemployment benefits had kept so many arts workers afloat, and that even with other industries going back to work, we were collectively being left behind because it wasn’t yet safe for our businesses to reopen. Finally, to tailor my message to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, I implored the aide to talk about how eager creatives were to get back to work, and how so many of us had translated our theatre skills so beautifully into jobs such as working for the census, registering folks to vote, or helping with vaccine distribution. We arts workers stand at the ready to be put to work helping the cause, and we have the training to do it well. We just had to put two and two together for those who don’t see that connection.

A little blurry, but here we are in action getting ready for our Zoom session with Alison Council, an aide to Sen. Richard Blumenthal! Photo credit Chris Tracy.

As we all well know, the arts are an under-appreciated economic driver in this country. In just the state of New York, Broadway shows are a billion-dollar industry. That’s more than the revenue generated by all 9 major NYC sports teams COMBINED! And that number only represents official Broadway ticket sales, it doesn’t even factor in ancillary spending that theatergoers often do, such as eating at restaurants, paying for parking and taxis, or buying souvenirs. Nationwide, a $1 investment in the arts generates a $7 in economic boost. That’s an INCREDIBLE return on investment! Yet, art departments in public schools are being gutted everywhere across the country. Arts workers are notoriously underpaid, exploited, and berated for not “getting a real job” or not being willing to “do it for the love, not the paycheck.” I’m here to tell anyone who will listen that our industry is full of the greatest, smartest, most innovative people and that a career in the arts can lead to a great life and a good-paying job if you work hard enough at it. And without the arts, life just wouldn’t be as rich. So, I hope you’ll be inspired just as I was to get involved in your local arts organization, call your representatives, or donate to groups like CAA that are fighting this fight for new laws, new grants, and a public showing of the importance of the arts at the highest levels of government.

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Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

One of Many Roads to Broadway

Intro: A Catch-up to the catch-up

Hard Work + Network = Broadway Debut!

Broadway: the same, just bigger

Looking Ahead

Some Theatre Things I’m Grateful for This Year

More Breaking of the Gender Binary on Broadway

Hot Labor Summer/Year

Conscious and Unconscious Mentoring and Mentorship

Y’ALL, MY READERS!

Why I Support No More 10/12s (and a cap of 12 hours a day for all workers)

What is a 10/12?

Why is it harmful?

A disproportionate effect

The Future

Readings and Workshops and Labs, oh my!

What are the different ways to present a work in progress?

Why do shows do these developmental steps?

So without further ado, let’s get into some tips and tricks for how to do this!

USE YOUR ALLIES AND GET INFORMATION

How to Own Your Work Without it Owning You

Practicing Gratitude

Lane departure warnings

Set good goals

Work-life balance

Accept reality and measure expectations

At the end of the day, it’s ok to walk away

Above all, take care of yourself

Music Reading for Drama Technicians

Part 1: From the Top

Part 2: Following Along in a Score

Part 3: Putting it together

Shop Prep 101

Part 1: Definitions

Part 2: Know Before You Go

Who all will be there?

Part 3: Let’s Get to Work

Interview with Anna-Lee Craig, A2 for Hamilton on Broadway

We Need More Arts Workers in Arts Advocacy