The Words

Maybe it is because of my new job that I found myself in the script aisle at Borders. I did not go there to buy scripts; with the potential impending move -- still not completely finalized because of a scholarship complicating matters that my homework-crazed ladyfriend is too busy to wade through -- buying scripts that will just add to the weight of boxes that not nine months ago made the walk from the moving truck to our apartment door unbearable...it seems counterintuitive. I went to buy Juno and the new Ludo CD. Which I bought. Along with August: Osage County (which I have since read; a wonderful amalgamation of Buried Child, King Lear, and some other flavor that I just can't define...a sprinkle of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf maybe?...or maybe it's just Letts himself...maybe great playwrights are like prime numbers) and Three Days of Rain (which I mayhaps will read after I cook some dinner).

But my new job is...well...a departure from what I know about theatre. In fact, in my first 4 days on the job, it has had very little to do with theatre other than it is on the fourth floor of a building that houses two theatres in a cubicle surrounded by people who are in someway responsible for the general functioning of those theatres. That is not to say it's a bad job: as Interim Education Coordinator -- filling a position on short notice and no training when it was left vacant by its former occupant -- I will be dealing with students and teachers (which I have done before and miss) and seeing to the theatre's interns (which also reminds me of my teaching days when fresh-eyed freshman would ask my advice on what to do with their lives as if I had lived any myself at the ripe old age of 25). But it is not what I signed up for; not in the long run.

But, I signed up for it for the next few weeks. Which is why I wake up in the middle of the night fretting over transforming revised Word documents into PDFs and sifting through the applications for the next Education Intern -- "I trust you" says the boss -- when I have only been in the Education department for 4 days and have little idea what makes for an exceptional Education Intern and am wondering if I, in good conscience, can sign someone up for multiple months of free labor in an environment that does not value their interns as students to the extent to which they like to pride themselves or to the extent, I think, they probably should considering the free labor aspect of the deal...

August: Osage County works because it is big, but not out of control. It has thirteen characters and requires a whole house of a set, but by dividing the set into a dollhouse of segmented rooms and by allowing storylines to fade out of focus for periods of time, Letts is able to build a larger story out of smaller components. It's like the backside of Big Ben -- which is actually the bell not the clock but oh well: the world sees a big time piece clicking through the days effortlessly; but inside the Clock Tower hide lesser cogs and gears working in perfect collaboration. I am not saying the play appears effortless, nor would I argue that it is perfect. But it is certainly worth celebrating...

I would rather be talking scripts that study guides.

But it has been only four days. By the end of next week I will know how to comfortably convert files into other files. I will learn how to use TypePad. I will know how to work Tessitura. I will have met the teachers. I will have interviewed applicants. I will have asked my boss for a $30 expense fee per intern to give them an opportunity to take someone in the business out for lunch so that they can understand a little better how the theatre world of Chicago works. This time next week I will understand my new job, and I will be comfortable with it.

And I will be back on the couch, reading another play, wishing I was dealing again with the words.