My experience at the Santa Fe Playhouse has been incredible. The theater is currently in its off season, which means that my job has mainly been working in capital improvements. This entails organizing the various props and costumes the theater uses.
I’ve been labeling and measuring all the costumes and shoes and adding them to a digital spreadsheet. The goal of this is to have a complete online inventory, with photos, dimensions, and item numbers for each costume piece.
It’s a repetitive, but very rewarding process, it is going to be so delightfully easy to find everything now! On top of that I got to see some really cool pieces. Like the Playhouse’s collection of flapper dresses, capes, or corsets. My favorite piece so far is a gray satin apron I photographed my third week.
I’m also reading their new union contract to take more accessible notes for the crew. It’s a really interesting read, I enjoy learning about workers rights within the industry and how you can ensure them. The specificity of hours in particular is something I appreciated, having worked several customer service jobs where I, or friends, had very long weeks.
I’m also extremely grateful for how much thought has been put into my internship. All of my supervisors check in with me regularly and give me many wonderful insights into their work, as well as letting me talk about mine.
The Executive Director and The Producing Artistic Director especially have provided me with excellent resources, the longer I stay here the clearer vision I get of what I want my major to be. The readings and discussions I’ve had are invaluable, the Santa Fe Playhouse has gone above and beyond for me and I am so thankful.
A hard lesson I’m learning this week however is how to advocate for my own interests. So many doors have been opened and I’ve felt myself paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of taking them, so they flutter by. This is something I need to work on urgently or all of the fantastic offers by the Playhouse will not be utilized to their fullest. This week I’m thinking about pushing myself to take initiative when things are offered.
My internship started a week later than everyone else so I’m still in the early stages of it. The entire company is currently gearing up for their fundraising gala, which is to be murder mystery themed. After that the very first show of the season goes into production, which I’m honored to be assistant directing!
It is going to be Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe. It is a fantastic one man show about a young boy’s relationship with the loss of his mother. It’s incredibly close to my heart for many reasons. I am also interested in its use of audience interaction to bring comedy into a tragedy and help with the catharsis. The story of Every Brilliant Thing is a tragedy c and the play warmly guides the audience through it by directly speaking to them. I can’t wait to see The Playhouse’ spin on it.
The experience so far has taught me a lot about how I would want to structure my own projects, and where my interests get specific. Just this week I read about Complicetė’s devising process and thought about applying it to my own creative process in my table top endeavors. They continually workshop a piece past the first performance, after spending months breaking down a text to build it back up. They split into groups to workshop and come back, allowing everyone to play audience and performer before moving forward.
This is a really good model of collaborative storytelling, I’ve gleaned a lot about how to structure group devising. Especially to keep the audience in mind, immerse yourself in research as a group, break into small groups and break up the story the same way before coming back together. It treats the story as another member of the group, in a way.
I’m interested in how similar or different techniques are used in the development of Playhouse’s Melodrama, a play written by several community members over the course of months before going into production.
Storytelling that emphasizes collaboration and the willingness to make changes over time is a superior storytelling method when it comes to having varying perspectives. Having no “head creator” and involving an audience as part of the devising process breaks down creative hierarchies, it makes the art more accessible. Along with that, allowing the art to be constantly editable creates a constant conversation with the audience that can have some degree of reciprocity. This way of making art is slowly becoming my focus, and I wouldn’t have been able to put it into words if it weren’t for my time here.
In the personal side of my co-op I’m finding myself struggling a bit more. Santa Fe is a pretty place, but I am having a hard time meeting people my own age. It’s making me a fair bit lonely. This does go back to the skill I have to hone where I push past my anxiety to make my own pathways. I’m sure if I were naturally more social I’d be having an easier time with it.
I feel disconnected from certain communities due to the limited scope and community of my workplace and having to start a social network from scratch, but I haven’t stopped trying, so we push on!
I’m loving spending time with my Pop Pop and cleaning out his house. I feel like I am telling a bit of a story as I find more and more things in my grandmother’s handwriting. I spend my free hours quilting with her fabric, machine, and measuring stick, it’s like we’re doing it together. I hope to leave their home better than I found it.
I am learning and growing a lot in this co-op but that doesn’t escape the horrible times we are in now. Amidst all the other work I committed to doing I am also getting involved with local mutual aid and learning more about how to support immigrants against this targeted campaign. I hope everyone is currently taking care of themselves and their community right now.
I am not going to end this with being overly positive about the political situation as I am with my job, but I know I will see you all tomorrow. Take care!
