Unintended Consequences...

... or, where are the freelancers?

I was hoping to share with you two wonderful things we have done at the Drama School for this season, and then ask if you could possibly help with the unfortunate unintended consequence of our efforts.

Wonderful Thing #1: The End of the Service Posture

Over the past several years we have been doing a top to bottom review of what we do. One of the final phases of this navel gazing was to really look at why (pedagogically) we do shows. Toward the end of that discussion we arrived at the notion that production needed to be much more closely tied to class, instructors, and curriculum and that being faithful to that notion meant two things: 1. that someone ought not get the “sink or swim” experience of having an assignment prior to the corresponding class, and 2. that a student should never have an assignment just because we have an assignment that needs to be filled. An artifact of this by the way is that we shouldn’t have any assignment that is not associated with a class, a condition we have unfortunately had in the past.

So any assignment a student will get in the future is one that they are both ready for and will benefit from.

Wonderful Thing #2: Co-Producing with the School of Music

There is a history of Drama supporting Music’s shows informally. Our students have typically been their designers, managers, and technicians as side jobs. This has often lead to some unfortunate circumstances: people taking gigs they aren’t really ready for or aren’t really available to do, people working and not being paid, people doing very little and being paid enormously, students having problems and not having any support, and an incredible decline in the Kresge facility and equipment among other things. For the following season, the heads of the schools have decided to do a swap of sorts. In exchange for Drama providing design and production support for both SOM shows, the School of Music has agreed to provide Drama with a much higher level of orchestra than we have become accustomed to for our Musical. In addition to that, it inserts Drama staff and Faculty into the process to hopefully correct many of the above problems.

So, School of Music show positions go on the grid just like Drama shows and are evaluated for assignment under the terms listed above.

The Unintended Consequence: Real Need for Many Freelancers

The school has historically hired guest directors. More recently we have overhired occasional technicians and even freelanced in a designer from time to time. This coming season is more complicated by more than an order of magnitude. It will see hiring at Director, Designer, Technician, Manager, and even Actor.

What we have discovered in this process is that the freelance pool appears to be unexpectedly shallow, and by removing our own students, staff, and faculty it appears downright dry.

And yet there is quite a bit going on without us. So, the point, we need to know about any available freelancers in Pittsburgh or people with the means and availability to come to Pittsburgh and crash (it appears that while we can probably swing transportation, housing is likely beyond our means). If any of you are available, please let me know. If you know of anyone suitable, please let me know. And if you could please pass this solicitation on to contacts in your address book that might be able to help – either with work or the search – we would really very much appreciate it. Spread the word.

It would be very depressing to see such a no-brainer obvious good educational initiative defeated by a lack of available professional participants.