billeyler | Thursday ups and downs (Reply)

The early part of the season at the theatre doesn't start with a whiz-bang of musical theatre or other touring entertainment company fare like most people might think No, indeed. It starts with volunteer training sessions, marketing parties for subscribers, and academia based chaos of convocations.

I'm really not used to all this, even after eight years working at a university. The summer has a somewhat gentler ebb and flow on campus, but it's never quiet per se. There are new student orientations, high school summer camps, lots of workshops for staffers (that choose to do workshops.) The summer is maintenance time in the theater, but in an ever shrinking time frame where all the work that needs to be done can get done. Most of the staff is gearing up for the new season over the summer, so there's never really a lull for us, especially for the overworked marketing team that's attempting to keep the subscriptions pushed to the limit.

But WHAM. Two weeks out from the first classes of the Fall term, there are people EVERYWHERE in a bizarrely interweaving of lives and needs, most new kids with parents in tow. If you walk out of the office during the first week of class, you can be sure that you'll be stopped at least twice from new folks trying to get directions to the poorly marked classrooms or admin building around what's become a very large main campus. It's just amazingly vibrant then with people hithering and thithering. The kids no longer "look younger every year"--they're just young. Period.

Tomorrow starts the rehearsals for the President's annual Freshman Family Day as the capoff of the weeks of orientation new students have. It's a big event with dozens or organizers involved.

One of the parts of this event I dread is the brass band rehearsal during the day. Literally, a huge brass band starts playing out in the lobby, comes down the hallways, then into the theatre for the big extravaganza. They've been playing loudly outside in the grassy shaded areas for two days. Tomorrow, it's inside.

I'm leaving work at 3pm tomorrow. That's the time this huge brass band will be coming up the hallway next to MY office, blaring away at top sound. OMG. It's the most obnoxious thing I've had to deal with, since they do it over and over.

Whew.

But the 'surprise' today was that our Development Officer, who has been there for just shy of a year gave notice. First to my boss 30 minutes before our 2pm staff meeting, then to the rest of us during the staff meeting. No one said anything--it just was.

It'll be chaos again in the office for some of us trying to deal with yet another staffing issue. Since I'm having to cover HR and staffing until we get yet another Unit Administrator, I'm not that pleased (although I figured she would leave sooner than later with the stress of the job). My boss is flowing out ideas a mile a minute of how to deal with this new wrench in the works; we'll see how it all works out.

Blah.

As for the real entertainment season, the Symphony starts their program in late September and our first shows in our own series are start in October with "Of Mice and Men" and "Cirque Dreams."