the ever-changing nature of "what we do"

 i have a complicated relationship with yellowcards- the massive, multi-day touring broadway shows and shows of a similar caliber that pass through the theater where i work. they mean a few days of little sleep, sore muscles, and staying awake through little more than caffeine and adrenaline. they stay longer than other acts and ask more of the people who work on them. the load-ins start at obscenely early hours -even by my standards- and the load-outs end obscenely late. and yet, they might be my favorite part of my job.

i get a chance to connect with the road crew and, if i'm tapped to work as a wardrobe hand during the shows, with the actors, that i don't get with shows that are in and out on the same day. it's just enough time to become friendly with the crew, find similarities, and build the beginnings of a friendship. and then they're gone, and i settle into accepting that i'm unlikely to ever see them again. 

nothing in theatre is permanent. and that's one of the best and worst things about it. it's the very nature of live performance art that it will never happen exactly the same twice, and every instance of it exists for only a second before it's part of the past. it leaves reality and begins to exist only as a memory even as it's still unfolding. and the connections we local hands- those who are called in to work on the show at a specific venue but do not travel with it- forge with the road crew who've seen their show through every iteration and every stop are similarly fleeting.

i spend maybe three days with the road crew if i'm lucky. just enough time for us to bond as we navigate the inevitable chaos of the load-in, face whatever the shows bring side by side, and approach the load-out with a bond that wasn't there when they first walked in the door for roll call by the flyrail. 

under most circumstances, it takes months if not years for me to feel anything i could classify as love for anyone. but there's a special kind of love i develop for road crew members i bond with that i don't usually feel anywhere else- it comes with the recognition that our time together is no longer than mere hours, but that we have no choice but to learn to work with each other, support each other, and trust one another in a way i can't do with some people i've known my entire life.

i'm usually a carpenter for the load-ins and load-outs, and the trust that department demands is a special kind, because we're usually working with the largest, heaviest, and most dangerous things that come off the truck, with the possible exception of the riggers, who are almost all local crew members and have likely worked together for decades. our challenge is different from theirs in that we have to build a level of trust with the road carp (or carps if their production team decides to splurge) that other departments don't ask of their people, at least not at the same level. lives depend on us working together. 

certainly, you're just as dead if you're struck by a falling light as you would be if a set piece falls from the grid, but the things we work with are HUGE. the failure of even one piece we're responsible for risks the lives of everybody on the stage.

no pressure there.

so we have to build a kind of trust with our road crew counterpart(s) that i've only found in this department. and as a result, we connect with the road carps differently than other departments do. even if they seem to be more at ease and comfortably chatting together at the end of the load-in, there's a certain unspoken bond that persists between carpenters, even if we hardly speak after the in ends.

and something about that bond seems to stick with me longer after they leave than the connections i form in other departments do. i can still name most of the road carps i've worked with on yellowcards, their shows, their personalities. i can tell you how they organized their stuff, what tech theatre pet peeves they had. the head carp for hadestown was at odds with the head rigger who kept reorganizing the stuff in his work box. the head carp for come from away treated all of us with a grim, somber sympathy as they announced that we had to carry the hated trees by hand. the head carp for mean girls had been horribly burnt out and was looking forward to leaving the tour shortly.

handling those massive set pieces forms a bond like any between people who've banded together in a stressful, high-stakes, demanding situation. half the time we may not even say a proper goodbye once the loading bay doors close and the last personal effects are gathered, but the memory of those people persists, much like the memory of the show stays with the audience well after the curtain closes.

i think about this even more as i think about the crew members i worked with on this latest yellowcard. i gravitated towards the crew swing- a road crew member who's able to cover for any other crew member in any department, and in this case was the de facto head carp- and the wardrobe assistant who i worked closely with during the show call. unsurprisingly, both turned out to be queer, and we became fast friends. tristen, the wardrobe assistant and i talked about our shared transness and queer culture, especially in theatre. i delivered the shock of the night when i told them about the greater burlington polycule. we worked in tandem on many of the costume changes in the show, and yet i didn't get to say a proper goodbye to them or chase, the crew swing. i couldn't find them in time to say goodbye, and that was simply something i had to accept and let go of.

and this cycle repeats itself with every yellowcard. it's never an identical sequence of events, but the same pattern follows. for a matter of hours, days at most, we rely on each other and work side by side in a unique form of collaboration. and then the people i've just started to forge a connection with are gone, usually in the early morning hours, off to the next stop where they'll repeat this cycle with a new city's local crew while i await the next iteration of this endless loop beginning when a new fleet of trucks back up to the dock weeks from now. 

in this regard, what we do mimics the impermanence of the action unfolding onstage. our time together is short-lived, occupying just moments in the grand scheme of things, and yet the memory, the impression left behind, far outlasts our time together itself.