Like many others I would read through the "Trade Papers", Back Stage and Show Business, looking at the want ads.
Although both magazines deal mostly with acting jobs, there were a few tech and design jobs mixed in.
Today most Theatre tech jobs are listed in Artsearch published by the Theatre Communications Group.
http://www.tcg.org/artsearch/index.cfm
TCG also publishes plays and American Theatre magazine and also supports theatre productions all over America.
I sent out many resumes and dropped others off at theatres all over the New York City area.
There are theatres in all kinds of spaces, some good and some bad, and one long and narrow theatre that I interviewed was planning a double bill of staged versions of Frankenstein and Dracula.
They said that I could design the lights if I also built and painted the sets, ran the light board, sold tickets and gave them $50 a week.
I did not take the job.
At another theatre I was given a script to read; came back a few days later talked with the director but in the end I did not get the job.
Many old hotel ballrooms have found a second life being used by various theatre groups because rehearsal and performance spaces are very costly and hard to find in NYC.
I remember showing up for an open interview for jobs on a cruise ship and saw a line coming out the door and going down the street.
No one would ever mistake me as a Broadway dancer and as I got near the line I was told that those there for “techie” interviews could go right up so I squeezed my way up the stairs.
When I got to the top of the stairs I saw a large room full of hopeful dancers trying their hardest to make a good impression and get a job.
I remember thinking at the time that there were so many in the room that those in the back row could be naked or on fire and the director would never see them.
My interview was actually in a large storage closet and like many others I never heard back from them.
It does not seem to matter what work you have done in other places or where you have studied, when looking for work in NYC all they care about is what you have already done in the city no matter how small or bad it was.
I interviewed for a job at an out-of-town Theatre and was offered a three production contract to design the sets and lights for The Merrimack Valley Theatre Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.
The plays were to be A Christmas Carol, Oklahoma! and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
So right after Thanksgiving I packed up my special hammer and got ready to move North for three months.
After a long bus ride to New Hampshire I checked in at the theatre office and soon found out that things were not going to be as planned.
First of all the rooming house where they normally put up most of the cast and crew had just burned down and they had to scramble to finds rooms for everyone.
As I noted in a recent post my room was in an awful “Welfare Hotel” that was a long walk from the shop and theatre.
The scene shop had no staff, just my “Assistant” who had been cast in the show and a friend of the lead actor helped out once and a while.
To add to the fun it was a record cold December and it was 20 below zero several times.
I did not think that I was going to enjoy my time there.
One big positive was that The Palace Theatre was very nice, opened in 1915, it had a long and interesting history of productions and had been renovated a few years before I got there.
http://www.palacetheatre.org/about-us/
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| Old postcard of Palace Theatre |
I have already written about the death of John Lennon but there were many other special moments that made my time in New Hampshire memorable and I will detail them in the next posts.
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