Thursday, June 7, 2007

Moving and Theater

More busy moving times! Wednesday afternoon, evening, and night was spent moving DC and Beth out of their condemned apartment. Scott, Will, and I wandered over around 4:30 and joined the party of shoving large furniture and piddly boxes into vehicles, soon joined by more friends and family, caravaning the stuff out to Beth's parents' workplace, wherein a warehouse existed to hold their belongings. It was a very efficient and successful move.

If my work in the theater has given me one thing, it is the appreciation of how tame the average move is. After working numerous strikes and road shows at the Norton Center, moving and storing the entirety of DC and Beth's belongings in a single day was a mild ordeal (I mean, we had the whole day! It was practically leisurely!)

In the theater, no person, even the smallest, escapes the frantic, precarious, and downright hard physical labor of tearing down and packing up shows. Even after many ninjutsu-like escapes, I took my turn carrying the damned sound board up the stairs of the Norton Center. Common household furniture is nothing! After detaching and loading an intelligent stage light with the sickening knowledge that it was probably worth more than my life, I can move fragile and sentimental belongings with utmost confidence. Scraping myself on a bookshelf is nothing compared to being bitten by an alligator clamp.

Though my work in the theater was often grueling, it has made me strong and confident in the face of common moves. I am very appreciative of all that the theater has taught me. So, future moves, I fear you not! For no matter how big the couch, no matter how many boxes, it will never be as painful as striking a show. And so I close with the words of Bill the Props Carp, spoken as he and I attempted to get a precarious chaise lounge off a very tall shelf: "You know, once mankind finishes filling in that periodic table, we'll find something heavier to build this out of."

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