About Me: Why I Do This Work

When I was a teenager, I saw a film that changed my life. It was a low-budget rock n’ roll comedy from 1983 called Get Crazy. (Available on DVD and on VHS from your funkier purveyors.) It featured Lou Reed, Malcolm McDowell, Lee Ving (from LA punk pioneers Fear) and even aging teen idols Fabian and Bobby Sherman as corporate thugs. It died in the theaters and dribbled out on video.

Among all the rock n’ roll craziness, the only sane people in the entire film are the stage managers played by Daniel Stern and Gail Edwards. They’re making things run on time, keeping the talent happy, and saving the day when disasters happen. Being a music-crazed teenager, I watched the mayhem over and over, until one day it dawned on me that I wanted to be a stage manager. I like making order out of chaos and presenting a professional-looking show.  So for a time, I was a stage and road manager for rock bands in clubs.

After a few years, the rock and roll lifestyle held little appeal and paid less money, so I got real jobs in newspaper production and prepress. A few years into this path, I realized I was doing the same thing, although on a different scale. Frantically changing guitar strings between songs and troubleshooting and re-outputting spot color jobs on a rush order are not that different in my mind.

But these are essentially solo or small-team operations. You don’t hear much applause for making something like that happen. (I do know that the applause at rock shows is generally directed toward the performers, but the crowd’s support is also appreciated behind the scenes, albeit it to a lesser degree, since the roadies know the hangers-on backstage aren’t there to see them.) So satisfaction has to come from within.

But imagined applause is empty compensation. Sometimes you need a fix. For several years, I volunteered as a Theater Manager with Film and Comedy festivals. This essentially involved getting butts in seats and keeping the films and comics running on time. It’s a thankless job sometimes, but it continues the thread of order out of chaos that has seems to be my life’s work.

But don’t expect a clean desk. I just can’t seem to make that work.