Working in the scene shop, you get to exercise your imagination. Creative problem solving is the name of the game when you’re building sets. Depending on your set designer and technical director, you might be given anything from an extremely detailed plan of what is to be built (complete with instructions on how) or you might get just a rough sketch with sort of a vague idea of how big it is and what the finished product is going to look like. Imagination is useful in either case, but there’s a big difference between imagination and letting your mind wander. The former can help you dream up novel and efficient solutions to technical problems. The latter can cost you anything from time and money, to a couple fingers, or even your life.
A few years back at my summer stock theatre, legend has it, that a girl in our scene shop was operating a table saw, lost focus, and in the blink of an eye lost two fingers. OSHA and the insurance company, I’m told, came down hard. And rightfully so, but all the insurance in the world isn’t going to protect you as much as simply being prepared, holding your concentration and staying present in the moment.
Sometimes even that’s not enough though. You can be doing everything right – or so you think – and something still goes wrong. It’s never something you can predict. Speaking of table saws and injuries, about four or five months after I’d started working in my scene shop in Baltimore, I was – I thought carefully – cutting down a piece of plywood to use as backing on a shelf. Everything was going smoothly until, WHAM! With no warning and in a single instant, the board had caught on the blade, which spun it in a nice tight arc, hitting me squarely in the crotch, dangerously close to my “special area” to quote Ralph Wiggum (though I can’t remember which episode that’s in). I must have made some kind of sound, a quick exhale or muffled cry of pain – I’m not sure. But my TD and fellow carps came in quickly in response, asked me what happened and waited to make sure I was okay. I had to go to the bathroom to make sure I wasn’t bleeding out of anything. I wasn’t, but I was more humiliated than anything else. My TD explained that you’re not really a carpenter until something like this happens to you. It’s like an initiation ritual. We inspected the underside of the board, which had a nice toothy curve cut into it. I asked what he thought had happened, and found out that I’d apparently let the board torque too far towards the fence (the board runs across the table parallel to the fence to ensure a straight cut) which pushed up against the blade, causing it to react as violently as it had. Lesson learned. Now I respect the table saw in a way I never did before. I stay absolutely present with it. And when using it, I turn slightly to the side with one leg forward protectively. No need to make a mistake like that twice.
So how do you stay present? On one level, you pay absolute attention to everything you do, to every detail and every step of the procedure at hand. It seems to me like a meditative act – which explains why working in the shop, and building in general can be so relaxing and pleasurable. The whole world is reduced to what’s in front of you. At the highest level – when you’re totally and utterly “in the zone” - you can experience a kind of union with the materials, with the task, with the machinery and tools. You become like an acrobat, spinning through space, finding points of balance, intuiting connections and weight distributions, stewarding raw materials through some sort of alchemical transmutation into things, objects, furniture, set pieces – whatever the situation requires.
Staying present isn’t something you achieve all at once. It comes in waves, little islands. You’ll have moments where you attain the feeling described above: and your work will show it. Something will just work. You’ll pull off something you’ve never done before. You’ll figure out a solution without anyone telling you what to do. Over time as you gain experience, these little moments start getting strung together, end to end. Until all of a sudden, you can not only enter this state, but maintain it throughout an entire work shift, an entire day, or the life of a whole project. This is how I managed to pull off painting a thirty-one by six foot backdrop in a day and a half. I just came with it, the steps all laid themselves out before me and all I had to do was sort of dance my way through as the next one lit up. It was effortless, without struggle.
As of this writing, the time I’ve spent on stage is a lot less than the time I’ve spent working in the shop. From what I’ve experienced though, the same basic principles apply across both domains. The best actors to work with are the people who are extremely present within the moment. Not only do they maintain the course of how the show is supposed to go (staying on script, remembering their blocking, music and choreography), but they are able to adapt to changing circumstances. If something goes wrong – something breaks for example – or somebody skips a line or misses a cue, they roll with the punches and can ad lib as necessary. They intelligently and gracefully react to what’s happening, rather than just rushing forward to complete the scene. Have you ever been in a conversation where someone is clear just waiting for their chance to talk? They’re not even listening to you. They might be present – after a fashion – but they’re unaware of anyone else’s presence. Acting, just like life, demands an awareness of and respect towards other perceiving centers: other actors, stage manager and technicians, director notes, conductor tempo, the audience. This requires being able to see yourself and your actions from the outside with a certain objectivity and artfulness, to take cues from other people’s reactions, to make sure you’re reaching them and having the desired effect. Easier said than done, of course. But this is why people practice. These are some of the benefits of the many disciplines of performance – which I think, if approached correctly, can lead to experiences of personal growth equivalent to something like a yogic or spiritual discipline. Learning to act on stage can help you learn how to act off stage. Learning to sing out can open your heart up to the world. Learning to make a straight cut on a table saw without getting your fingers - or other body parts – lopped off can teach you how to control your body and your mind and master any situation with grace, beauty and efficiency.
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