First Day of Work

Today was my first day of work as an intern at the Battersea Arts Centre, and it was fabulous.  I went in at 11:00 (after having tea at the cafe across the street because I arrived in the neighborhood obnoxiously early) and met up with Luke, my supervisor, who gave me another, more detailed tour of the building.  Of course, I managed to get lost in the building several times over the course of the day, but since I mastered the Tube and bus systems by getting lost on them, I know that I will be fine.  I spent most of the morning in the Grand Hall, which is the largest traditional performance space, featuring a proscenium stage, huge open seating area (we set up risers and chairs for this show), and a balcony which serves mainly as a post for the board ops.  The show is called Trilogy, and ran tonight only.  Since they are in the middle of the Burst festival, the turnaround in most of the spaces is really quick, and there were different teams of people working in a variety of spaces throughout the day.  Most of the work in the Grand Hall was related to lighting, apart from loading in the platforms for the risers (ridiculously heavy!).  I learned how to change the lamp in a Par can...ah, resume builders.  :)

After my lunch break, I went to one of the upper level studio spaces to help with the tear-down of electrical equipment...basically, we stripped the entire studio.  (It was probably about half the size of Strother, with a much lower grid.)  I was originally working with one of the regular BAC employees, but he had to run and solve a crisis (one of the festival's shows was moved out of the rehearsal space, when it was supposed to remain there for another day, and all of their paperwork and props were missing), so I finished pulling everything from the grid space (yes, I climbed a ladder without Joe Bright's emotional support!), coiled a lot of cable, and made a pretty sizable ball of discarded electrical tape.  By the time I was ready to take everything back down to storage (except the ball of electrical tape, of course), the guy returned with another worker, so it only took a few trips to get all of the equipment downstairs.

Finally, at the end of the day, I had a quick meeting with Maddie, one of my other supervisors, who is the interim technical manager for the duration of the festival (until the end of next week, basically).  She was awesome (reminded me a lot of Maggie Ward), has a background in stage management, and was genuinely interested in hearing what I wanted to get out of this experience.  Apparently, a theatre group from the South Thames College is doing a workshop/performance series at BAC next week, and since Maddie assumes that they do not have their own stage manager, I may get to work with them.  It would certainly be nice to work with other college students, and if this works out like I'm hoping, I might also get to call their show.