For the Arts Festival Crew

So they won't think I was just making it all up:

Back to the Scanniverse

Classes being over has allowed me to get back to the "Great Boevers Scanning Project." This time I was doing 1975-1977. Let me tell you, it was very definitely the 70's. Earth tones and bell bottoms were all the rage.

This period is home to one of the seminal David photographs of my youth, captured by the wedding photographer at my Aunt Sari's first wedding. Likely this was not the type of behavior the tuxedo rental shop had in mind when they fitted me to be the ring bearer.









I think the photo from this album I found the most interesting was this one of my Dad, his parents and his brothers.

We don't have a lot of photos of this group. It was nice to stumble on one in our album.









The other day I happened to find this photo of all places on eBay. I was shopping for an exorbitantly priced printer, and along the way typed my last name into the search field to see what turned up.

What did turn up, among a couple of other less interesting things was this Celebrity Picture of my sister. The current bid is $9.99.

That got me thinking.





Now that I've been doing all this scanning, I have a boatload of pictures of my celebrity sister. I wonder what I could get for them. I mean, if an opening night picture could be worth $10, certainly candids of the star in her own element ought to be worth something, right?

I suppose if I do start a celebrity photo business exploiting my sister, I really ought to cut her in. Wouldn't be fair otherwise.

I wonder what I could get for pictures from her wedding? The crass possibilities just seem limitless. Perhaps this is an idea best set aside.

Safety Net?

Today I had a very "inside baseball" conversation with an author writing a book about jobs in theatre. I think we really got off track when we were talking about why people go to college. Principally, when you ask people what the advantage of college for theatre versus working is they respond that it is an opportunity to fail without consequences. It turns out that I think maybe this isn't a good response.

We always talk up the angle of learning through failure, and how as professionals it is important to become comfortable with the concept of failure. It is something I have always chafed at. Technical Directors don't get to fail like other people that are in theatre school. If a manager fails, then you have a bad process, or a lousy call. If a designer, director, or actor fails you get a lousy show, or perhaps a poor production. All of these things are in an educational sense positive failures, opportunities to learn from the mistakes.

If an engineer fails, people can die.

So I chafe at the recruiting boilerplate that says that this is a safe environment for failure. Usually I am the only rep for technology in the room, and so I tag on my point as an afterthought - that in most cases failure isn't a bad thing, but for a TD occasionally failure at school is every bit as important and imposing as failure in the world.

In an interesting change of perspective though, my problem with the stipulation this time was not about engineering. This time it was about repercussions. The root of the idea is that if one were to go out into the industry and fail that jobs would disappear and that your career would be in real jeopardy. I have to say I am not sure that is true. Again, in an instance where someone has a failure of engineering and there are injuries or property damage then yes, of course this is going to jam you up professionally. But, in the case of doing a bad job, I am not sure this is the epic problem that we make it out to be, or at least not something of such magnitude that it ought to figure strongly in a decision of whether or not to go to college.

The fact is that bosses expect people to make mistakes. How tolerant they are and what the repercussions are vary from employer to employer, but I really can't think of something incremental that would cause someone to have to leave the industry. Maybe your rate would slip, maybe your position on someone's call list would drop, but people would still pay you, and work would continue to manifest.

In reality, employers make evaluations of a person's skill with their own self interest at heart. Unlike school, there is nothing that says you have to be the Technical Director. So whereas at school you might get an early opportunity to TD and then fail, in the world an employer is going to take longer to put you into that position in the first place. This does two things: first it means that you are less likely to be in a position when you are likely to fail, and second it places some of the blame for the judgment leading up to the failure on the employer. Both of which mitigate both the chances for a failure to begin with and the possible repercussions form an occurrence of a failure.

So on the one end of the spectrum we have the expected or shared failures which are probably going to be fairly low impact on someone's career progress. And really how bad is the other end of the spectrum? Lets say there is a bad failure, something that costs your boss their profit or loses someone a client. In the worst case the employee is going to lose their gig. We often talk about this in fairly epic terms, but really how bad is it to be fired? Are these people such delicate flowers that being fired from a gig is going to derail their career indefinitely? Even people that get fired work again. Many of them actually return to work for the people that had to fire them to begin with. We all know people or companies that when we see them listed as part of a project we shake our heads a little and think "just how is it that they are still in the business?" But the fact is that in many ways the business is extremely tolerant of failure.

So if that is the case, then just how important is the concept of school being a place where it is ok to fail? And if in fact it is ok to fail professionally, then what are we talking about at all?

And as long as we're asking questions, just how safe an environment for failure is school?

Certainly the mechanics and ramifications of failure in an educational environment are different than they are in an employment environment. But is different automatically safer, or desirable? As a professional who lives partially in the educational world, my observation is that in many cases failure in an academic setting is actually worse than in an employment setting. Now, we won't fire people and we don't blacklist people, but its not really about the tenure of your position in a school as it would be with a company or a production. In a school it is about the relationships and about the crushing weight of your future.

To begin with, educational failures are not without real work consequences. As professional mentors, instructors are placed unfortunately often in the position of hearing "if I don't get a B I will lose my scholarship" or "my parents just won't understand a C" or "what would I do if I don't continue as a student here?" The fallout for a poor performance rating in an educational situation is sometimes actually worse than it would be in an employment situation and is nearly always perceived as being the end of the world. So because of the emotional load, even when the failure isn't vocationally detrimental, it can be very, very hard on the student.

Secondly, the employer/employee relationship is actually a little better at dealing with failure than the mentor/student relationship. No matter how much I liked any of the companies or bosses I have worked with, I have never valued their opinion of me the way a drama student values the opinion of their teachers. In some cases, students are more worried about what their teachers are going to think of them than any other dimension of the incident. Just like the difference in assessment above, while an instructor's opinion may carry little real world weight, it does come with a heaping barge load of stress. This school stress just doesn't manifest in the same way in the workplace.

Speaking of stress, the instructors are only a tiny little piece. School has an immersive quality to it that acts as an amplifier for stress. The confines of a professional project are much more defined and much easier to navigate than the artistic/family/social/production web that is scholastic theatre. The educational environment produces other stresses, what your friends are thinking of you, how hard you are working compared to others, your one chance at bat to get things perfect; all of these things are stressors that are in addition to the normal confines of time, energy, and office politics. Having your production team also be your social network magnifies every single action. While this happens to a degree professionally, it doesn't manifest to nearly the degree it does at school, except perhaps in stock - and I think we all know that the stock posture isn't sustainable, and yet we all believe that the school posture ought to be.

The commitment to the artform produced by the immersion, and the drive for perfection fed by that immersion and by the relatively few opportunities to work within a defined time period (like I only get to design one show in my time at school) weigh very heavily on students. Sometimes to the point of defeating a collaborative experience. A situation where someone won't even listen to another's ideas for fear of wrecking their one shot to shine is a product of an endgame scenario fed by a student career. One that is non-existent within the scope of a professional career.

Really, if the safety net of the stress of thinking my mentors dislike me, having my friends hate me, and screwing up my one real opportunity to show what I can do is the gain from an educational environment, maybe it would be healthier to get paid and then get fired.

Its just a thought.

Also, I can't help but think how much of this is formative. I am a product of that stress factory. Is the way that I relate to my work forever (or at least substantively) colored by the nature of my formative experiences? Long after finishing with school I did get fired from a job. When I was talking to my boss at the time he cited "you're just not happy here" as part of the problem. Upon reflection I would have to agree that I should have quit that job more than six months before they eventually fired me. Is the educational environment of diminished overall opportunities and peer constructed self esteem partially to blame for sticking in such an awful situation? School is definitely a place where people are pressured to make things work rather than quit. Is it possible that professionally this is a bad thing?

Often within the theatre industry you hear people that have come up through the ranks rather than having been through the school experience disparaged for not caring if the show turns out good, or for caring more about their paycheck than the product. It would be very difficult to successfully complete a college theatre program with that type of attitude. Someone that elects to work their way up rather than benefit from the safety net of school gets a very different formative environment. Is it possible they are right? Or if not right, is it possible that their relationship to their work is healthier?

As with many things, the best posture probably lies somewhere in between the person that went to school and did stock and the person that started unloading trucks and worked their way up to department head. But one thing that does appear to be clear, the work is definitely harder on one group than the other. Not the job is harder, or the experience is more difficult, one group runs at a higher duty cycle, the emotionally laden experience is more taxing. How would we spin that? Character building? For all the industry articles on personnel management and TD burnout, and salary baselining, it would seem clear that those people that benefited from school took some hits in other ways.

So, what of the safety net? Is the idea that there is a more forgiving environment for failing within a school a good assumption? With respect to overall career development, maybe not. Yes, if you go out and learn on the job there will be bumps along the way. But in many ways those bumps seem less painful than some of the social and emotional dominos introduced by the warm embrace of a scholastic situation. Which way is right for which person? That would have to be evaluated case by case, but it does seem clear that one way is not inherently safer than the other.

There are many reasons to decide that college is the way to go. Colleges provide a very different developmental experience. College programs will likely provide a somewhat broader foundation skills wise. School will invariably include some theatre literature and history which will lead to being a more complete artisan. Hopefully college will include some classes outside of the theatre experience entirely to help add breadth and develop perspective. The social scene at college is very different than the workplace. There is a diversity of experience in an educational environment that won't be present in most regular workplaces: diversity of personnel, of artform, or work experiences. School provides opportunities for networking that are unparalleled, and in most cases will position graduates to move up very quickly once they do enter the field professionally. All of these things are distinct issues on which to base a decision to attend or not attend school, and in the end probably all outweigh the concept of a learning in a place where it is "ok to fail."

Ellipses...

I have been a lousy blogger lately... You would think by installing the new video card that text would get clearer. You'd be wrong... I don't know about the experts, but from where I am standing the economy is pretty lousy... Cats really do like it under the couch... I'm not sure why I go to the doctor for prescriptions... I should really fix the scratch on my truck... All the people you just can't please all of the time... I am almost down to an empty inbox, school ended more than a week ago... The tux rental service from Men's Warehouse really is the shit... I am declaring an end to the word "liberal"... I'm not sure when it happened, but basketball is exciting again... What is an 11x17 printer worth in one's life??? There's nothing quite as satisfying as a clean desk... This time I picked the movie... Its hard not to buy more kittens... My PLAXO is 47% up to date and rising... Someday soon I really ought to organize my IRA... I wonder if Lord of the Rings would be worth the trip... When did memory become so cheap??? That was too bad about the pool cue... Now that school is over, the parking garage isn't so bad... I already have meetings scheduled for next May. That's just wrong... Looks like the middle teens for prekie enrollment. We could build a whole show with that... The NewsPage is on summer rotation, only scanning like 15 sources for the next couple of months... Is saving one hour of driving worth $600? What if it is between Boston and Cape Cod? On a Friday night? In the summer? The weekend of the 4th of July??? It's official, I'm 250#... Nice to see that robbing from shareholders is still at least technically illegal... I'm not sure searching a Congressperson's office, with a warrant, signed by a judge is a separation of powers violation - otherwise, man that would be the gig, you could p2p all the mp3s you wanted... I guess we have to pick a shoe winner. It'll be Emily or Kate, no sure which...

Glad I Found This

Nothing beats Stewart's reaction toward the end...



Sometimes this stuff just writes itself for them I think.

You know, when Clinton beat Bush years ago I remember people asking Rush Limbaugh if his job was going to get harder because it was no longer going to be a Republican administration. I guess what we witnessed was a transformation from cheerleading to mudslinging there. Something tells me that Stewart & Colbert would handle a change in government administrations more gracefully.

But for the time being, I bet they go home every night and thank God for George W. Bush.

How long is that you ask? I'm glad you did:

Parent Post

A little bit for the mom of the missus and a little bit for my dad...

It was my grandfather-in-law's 80th birthday this weekend (is that a relation people specify?). The family was doing a surprise party for him, so we saw them a lot. First we went to a sort of fake out party:

(The photo is not how nature intended. Sometimes photostitch makes me feel like Doctor Frankenstein.)

We all had dinner at the fish market, then said goodbye as if the occasion had been celebrated and duly dealt with.

The next day, the wife went to breakfast with everyone and said goodbye yet again - as if the out of town company were about to take off for home.

That evening, the guest of honor was taken to the country club for what he was told was a Republican Party fund raiser. When he got there he was surprised to find his family and friends in the midst of celebrating his birthday.

Why then is this post also for my Dad? Well, I snagged him some souvenirs from the country club:

Commencement 2006

If I could change things about CMU, one of the things on the list would be the expected weather on the day of commencement. Somehow it never fails to be cold and rainy at the top of the day for the outdoor ceremony and then clear up just in time for the indoor ceremony. This was once again the experience this year.

I robed this year and gave out a diploma, first time for me. The robe was goofy and my hat wouldn't stay straight. I guess if I am going to stick in this job for the long haul I will want to invest in some of my own personal regalia. I had a moment during the ceremony where for a second I thought nobody liked me, but then Kevin had the same kind of moment and I know everyone loves him so I am chalking it up to somewhat less boisterous graduates in our discipline than in others.

My boss did a great job with pronunciations this year, and for the first time in memory we were on writing, verbally, and on the projections the "Production Technology & Management" option, a fact not lost on many year to year observers. Who says good things don't come to those who wait?

And so another year comes to a close. Truthfully this year it is not a moment too soon for me as I have been running on fumes for a while now. Overall I think it was a good year with a lot of good work done all around. As to the nature of the day, my dad said I got it pretty much right last year, so maybe I will just say that again...

Commencement 2005

From Ruthanna

Pretty cool.

Critiques Footwear Roundup

So the semester reviews are over and we now have an opportunity to go back and review the various footwear choices that were displayed. Although in general a fairly week semester, really only having one standout per session normally, I think there still were quite a few nice choices.

Take a look...

#1, Some nice strappy sandals:



#2, Colorful open-toed slingback:



#3, patterned pointy pump:



#4, nice simple baby-blue slide:



#5, an open toe metallic D'Orsay:



#6, another clean slide with a nice accent:



#7, very slick understated white pointy pumps:



So, comments are welcome - voting is OK but it isn't a democratic process. Winner gets a TANBI t-shirt.

It is possible I may actually be gay.

Day Five - Morning Session

Day Five? Since when is there a day 5?

JOB SEEKING THIRD YEAR GRAD - OFFERS ACCEPTED HERE AND RELAYED NO CHARGE.

Our PTM 3rd Year, Shannon...



... Shannon completed her project on time and on scope, although I'm not certain it is what we thought it would be. Still, lots of good drawings, many good paperwork examples, some decent writing, and a couple of mechanicals. Better than par for the course.

No shoes today, thesis is serious business afterall.