I am I, Don Quixote

Its amazing what some confidence can achieve. The past few days have been some of the stressful of my very young career. Trying to get Man of La Mancha up and running at the Hangar Theater has proven to be quite difficult. There have been more late nights and early calls for this one show, then I think there might have been all last year. This is partially due to the fact that in many ways we have been still rebuilding and installing the theater after its massive renovation. I have played with more conduit then I ever want to. But I also think one of the big reasons it has been so stressful is that my boss and I were simply freaking out because of the quality of the designer. To put it simply, the man knows his shit. He has been the original sound mixer on a few Broadway shows, including The Lion King for its entire New Amsterdam run, and designs frequently for the Lincoln Center and other prominent NYC venues. And here we are in upstate New York, with rented equipment that is at least 15-20 years old. Impressive? I think not. With all this, I have been terrified to mix this show. Terrified. Not an emotion I am very common with, especially when it comes to theatre, especially audio for theatre. But I was worrying myself to death. Not sleeping in the precious few hours I had the opportunity, and just over thinking everything. Because of this, tech was a very long process. Until the end of it tonight. We finally finished teching the show and had about an hour left, so we decided to just run from the top until we ran out of time. It was at this moment, I realized that I had everything completely under control the entire time. I know my craft, pretty well I like to think. And it is this confidence (or cockiness as some people see it) that help me to succeed. After all I had been programming qLab all day for the designer, and even though its a program I has operated before and have a basic version of, I really had no training or practice programming it. Yet, I quickly learned it on the fly and he was none the wiser. And even I didn't have the show perfect yet, there wasn't any point worrying about it. A) it was the first run, and b) mistakes happen and c) I'm still learning. I'm a fucking intern for god's sake. So I took the breath and just did it. It was the quickest hour of the entire 24 hour process, and at the end, the designer had nothing but good things to say. This goes in the win column for sure. What I'm saying here is never doubt yourself, as easy as it might be. Until next time...