What I Do. Not So Normal.

I complain.  A lot.  Full stop.

I would like to take this moment not to complain, but to explain why I love what I do.

I fell for theater when I was little and started a long-term serious love affair with the art when I was 14.  I never looked back. I turned to the technical side when I was 17 and have done it ever since.

My first "big girl" job took me halfway around the world to China.  Some people would hate that.  Trust me, at times, I hated it too.  It's actually pretty cool and I've gotten to experience an entire world that most of my peers will never know.

My life is NEVER boring.  There is always some sort of drama going on.  Someone's always got a problem, someone always has it worse than me, et al.  There is always someone doing something or having a party or a get-together or a field trip.  How can you not love that?

We "play" for a living.  It is serious and you have to know when to be serious and when to let loose, but once those important distinctions have been made, the world is your oyster.  We work so very hard, but when it comes down to it, we really make up for how serious we have to be with jokes and games and alcohol.  Fun is just as much of an art-form as the acrobatic theater we do every night.  And boy do we take our fun seriously.

I don't have to wear a suit to work.  In fact, I can wear whatever I want to work, as long as I can work in it.  I have a homeless day once a week where I wear my ripped to shreds jeans, patched tennis shoes, a tank top, and my ripped sweatshirt.  And no one looks two ways at me because they don't care. On that note, I don't have to pretend to be someone I am not because if you're not different, you don't belong in the business.  We have such a mesh of personalities and ideals and goals and lifestyles and we work because we love our differences instead of fighting over them.  Who cares what someone else believes or thinks as long as they embrace your version of the story instead of hating you for it.  To continue this vein: I don't have to sit in an office or cubicle all day.  If that doesn't constitute a win, then I'm not sure what does.

Our business is not to fool people.  Or take them for a ride.  Our only aim in what we do is to entertain people, to make them laugh, to make them forget about their lives for an hour or two.  Nothing permanent, nothing fleeting.  But how could you dislike making people feel good?  It's hard to remember, but what we do is universal and because there is no dialogue, we rely on what people feel to   make a connection.  That is something you will never get from a regular 9-5 job.