This entry doesn't really count because it will be fairly short and because I want Episode VI: Return of the TD to be something a little more . . . monumental. Suffice to say, though, that I had to add a little something this week and though I can't promise to top the image of me racing around my Victorian house in my underwear ala Risky Business; I can add a little something to your day, I hope. For now, this little slice of the Bounty Hunter We Met at Ord Mandel will have to do.
This blog is tapped, so I must be brief. Load in started this week. Actors take stage in less than three days and tech starts nine days after that. Yes, if you're keeping track, that's in less than two weeks. What have I gotten finished? Not a thing. . . . "It's not my fault." . . . "No scenery?" "It's not my fault! . . . Told me they fixed it! . . . I trusted them!!!"
Responsibility aside, this is the second show in a row that I have worked here at BRT where my designer isn't pulling their own weight and it's frustrating me. Whereas Nels (I can only IMAGINE that is short for Nelson, but I honestly have no idea . . .) had busy – but relatively complete – plates from which I could muscle out drafts and thereby actually build a show, Greg Mitchell delivered some (but not all) designer plates almost a month (yeah, a month) late and what did finally arrive were incomplete; some to the extent that I couldn't even begin to build them. What this amounts to is that I have a little over a week until tech with little to nothing actually built, much less painted. And now everyone's looking at me and my crew and thinking (if not outright asking), "When can we expect that?"
Seriously? Folks, we have GOT to begin cutting loose the dead weight. Theatre as an art-form is fragile enough these days with having schmucks, losers and lazy sons-of-bitches filling in the blanks. Look, I'm not saying that we all have to live up to what I'm realizing is my very own gestalt work-ethic. What I'm saying is that it's high-fucking time we – as employees, as artists, as people, dammit – start taking some fucking responsibility for ourselves. You sign on to do something, anything, you fucking do it. Finish it. Even if it turns out to be more than you bargained for; finish what you start, you soulless rat-fuck-bastard.
That kind of irresponsibility is not only disrespectful, it's unprofessional. And a designer with a masters from NY-fucking-U (even one as weird and date-rape-creepy as you are) should fucking know better. You just should. And if you do, and you still do nothing; you're worse than all that, you're an asshole, too. People like you don't deserve life as an artist. If you don't appreciate it, you should have it taken away. I know half a dozen people who would LOVE to have a show of theirs produced at a semi-professional theatre company. And they could get plates to me on time in their sleep. It's not hard. At least, not for the pros.
Learn to shape up. You don't and we're gonna start cutting the cords on you worthless piles of theatrical deadwood. Even if I have to start culling the herd myself. I bought a four-pound sledge hammer today. Don't think for a SECOND I won't use it. Next time, come to the table prepared. Or don't come at all. "Man up. Or go home."
No comments:
Post a Comment