Working Hard or Hardly Working

One day we got an email from our director. We were to show up as early as possible in order to help with building our set. I didn't know that was part of the deal. The prima donna in me was somewhat disturbed...manual labor? Ewww. The drama queen in me was exquisitely frightened...for my own safety and for that of anyone who might come within 10 feet of me and a power tool. The realist in me was anticipating great embarrassment.

Ever responsible and eager for approval, I arrived promptly at the requested time. Still unfamiliar with the lay of the theater, I wandered in and meandered to the room where we had met for our one previous rehearsal. There was an unfamiliar circle of faces in the room reading unfamiliar lines and I frantically scanned the perimeter of the room for someone recognizable. I found them huddled in a corner around what turned out to be a freight elevator and went to join them. There were about five of us, I think, and two were being productive. The other three hung back making various witty comments about how useless it was for us to be there at all...not because there wasn't plenty to do...but rather, because we were likely to do more harm than good. Okay, to be fair, I was the only one making witty comments to that effect. Someone from the circle of line readers approached us with a "shush, we're trying to run lines." I think that if she had heard my hilarious comments, she would have never dreamed of shushing us. At any rate, properly chastised, we buttoned our lips and trooped down into the prop room where the real "help" was to begin.

Witty banter can only take a person so far. Witty banter is how incompetent people deal with the insecurity surrounding their incompetency. Witty banter is where I am a Viking. I'm always amazed by people who can jump into any situation and make themselves incredibly useful. There was a guy there who gave us a rundown of what needed to be accomplished and immediately, everyone started moving as a cohesive set building unit, while I stood stupidly and made jokes. Two people grabbed some old props and started tearing them apart in order to make new props. One person (a GIRL, no less) grabbed some 2x4's or 8x12's or QxR's or something and started feeding them to a motorized death machine (I think the technical term for that is "circular saw"). I stood paralyzed in horror and awe wincing at every wooden scream and sawdust spray and then wandered around saying, "Someone needs to tell me what to do. Someone give me a job to do." How do people just know what to do? I don't know.

The guy in charge had a handful of something and said, "Here, these pencils need to be sharpened." Awesome. "I can sharpen pencils!" I said. And he handed them to me. Now, these were not regular roundy type number two pencils, and there was no pencil sharpener in the house. These were hard core rectangularish SHOP pencils and the only way to sharpen them was with a KNIFE. So I took a knife, and I took a pencil and I sharpened it to a gleaming graphite spear. And then I did it again. And then again. And you can only imagine the thrill that coursed through me when I heard someones desperate cry: "Hey! I need a pencil."