At Least I Have a Desk (I'm Just Not Using It)

When you go to college and earn your degree, you expect certain things. Like when you get your first job. One of things you expect is that you'll get a desk. Especially if you've majored in business, for example, and you're hired to do business-like things.

This was not the case a little over 11 years ago when I was hired to be General Manager of Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, Maine. I didn't have a desk at all my first week. A piece of plywood supported by two filing cabinets appeared sometime during my second week. I think I managed to wrangle a chair about a week later.

Fast-forward seven years.

I'm sitting in a corner of the basement of a run-down synagogue on West 47th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in New York City. I now have a Master's degree in Business Administration. I've been hired as General Manager of a start-up Jewish theater company called Storahtelling (either in spite of or because of my complete lack of Jewishness...I'm still not sure). And I'm clearly moving up in the world because a desk is in place on the day I'm hired. Granted, it's of the plywood-and-filing-cabinet variety, and I have to share it with two other people, but it's there.

I know I'm starting off this blog with a lot of obsessing over desks, but there is a point to be made. Making theater is not easy or pretty. And it's often done at the expense of everyday items working people take for granted - like office furniture. It's a lot like making sausage, really. The end product is usually tasty, but if you witnessed the entire process from start to finish you'd probably never partake of it again.

But we merry makers of sausage and theater carry on, either in spite of or because of the fact that the end product is often so very tasty. I'm still not sure.

In any event, I've been hired to do just that.

The Wyoming Territorial Park Historic Association (WTPHA) - an organization devoted to supporting the Wyoming Territorial Park in West Laramie and overseers of programming in the Park's Horse Barn Theatre - have brought me in to devise (and hopefully execute) a plan for consistent theatrical production at the Horse Barn. And I'm finding that the Horse Barn is a lot like politics - everyone has an opinion about it.

With that out of the way, I'm happy to say that three of the four productions we'll be presenting at the Horse Barn are family-friendly. And one of those three is specifically geared towards children. And in a nutshell, that is the new vision for the Horse Barn. And I, for one, am very excited about it because:

1) It's one of the most unique theater spaces I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of theaters);

and

2) I have a desk. But I'm not using it. The WTPHA was kind enough to provide me with one ( a real one, no less) but my wife has given birth to two children since my last theater job, and by working at home I'll get to see them a little more.

Check back here for periodic updates about how plans for the Horse Barn are going.