What I did for JAW

JAW, Just Add Water: A Playwrights Festival has long passed, but I find myself thinking about it today as we prepare for our artistic retreat. It is my favorite time of year and we are already brainstorming to make it better than ever again this year.

My job is organizing all the scripts that are submitted to the festival. I make sure the reading committee is on task and up to date on all the new scripts. This year we had 116 scripts submitted to the festival and from that we narrowed it down to 4 main stage and 3 for the studio. Once the festival starts, I am in charge of making sure everyone has a copy of the script and getting any re-writes to the appropriate people. Copying is what I’m all about. In fact, for our Commission! Commission! Fundraising event I was affectionately named “The Copy Queen”. For that speedy event, I stood at the copy machine all night and copied the scripts. I then had my helpers get them to the actors, directors and stage managers. Once that was complete, I had to copy the evening’s program. This year it was all drama drama drama because the copy machine decided to stop working just as I had received the program from the graphic designer. I was seriously sweating bullets. I had 25 people around the copy machine all staring at me as I scanned one page at a time of the single sided program trying to make it double sided and so it would fold correctly. I figured it out just in time and had the 25 on lookers fold the programs and pass them out to our audience, who was waiting for the show to start.

Among my other jobs for the week, I was the child wrangler for the young actor in Marie Antoinette, Troy. I was responsible for his whereabouts while he was at the theater and answering any questions he might have with the script and the process. Troy, is a fabulous young actor. I was so impressed that this was his first professional theater job. He was always on time, was actively listening during rehearsal and felt comfortable asking questions and offering suggestions to the group. He’s one of the most grown up 10 year old I know! In fact, we were so impressed with him; he is going to be in our upcoming production of A Christmas Carol.

This year we also had fabulous new t-shirts and I ordered them and coordinated selling them during our Theatre Fair. Dawn was also a big help with this. And when Dawn or Kelsey needed help I was there to lend a helping hand. JAW is my favorite time of the year, not only because of its artistic importance, but also because of how it brings the strengths of our artistic department together. We work hard and it is well worth the lack of sleep.