Wow, has it already been 7 years since I was an intern at MBT?!!!
Josh Lau, here, and I was the Stage Management Intern at MBT for the 2013–2014 season (The Game’s Afoot, Harris Cashes Out!, Lysistrata Jones, Falling, The Andrew Brothers, Cole Porter’s You Never Know, and of course A Christmas Carol). Since then I returned to Rochester…New York and have been the Production Stage Manager for Eastman Opera Theatre at the Eastman School of Music. I’ve also been able to freelance here and there with the some companies: Ohio Light Opera, Rochester Fringe Festival, and Finger Lakes Opera to name a few. I was also fortunate to be a backstage crew member for another adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Geva Theatre – but MBT’s is still near and dear to my heart, and I’d even go so far as to call it the quintessential adaptation! Every Christmas season I get to think of MBT for that very reason.
Some “career” highlights since 2014 (I can’t believe I’m still calling this a career): Production Manager for the Rochester Fringe Festival, Adjunct Instructor for a Stage Management class for the University of Rochester, a production of La Bohéme (it’s a hard one!), two Philip Glass operas: Hydrogen Jukebox and Les Enfants Terribles (because I love his music), and working with Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel for our production of The Light in the Piazza (with new orchestration), Anthony Davis, Missy Mazzoli, Jake Heggie, and Kevin Puts. Yeah, I’m name dropping.
2020–2021 news:
My aunt and grandmother both passed away from cancer and not COVID-19, and I attended their funerary services online, which is a weird experience. My partner and I adopted another pet, so we now have a dog and two cats, and we’re one big cozy family! We even managed to buy a house together in this crazy Rochester (NY) housing market! In theatre/work-related news, we had to postpone-then-cancel Sweeney Todd, which we had almost staged the entire show by the time Spring Break and the NY-state shutdown happened. Then during the school year of COVID-guidance, masking, and “air out” breaks, we managed to provide opportunities and unique experiences for our opera students. We filmed-to-stream a series of 6 one-acts curated by 6 contemporary composers, on a stage and with a green screen backdrop. We used 3 cameras. It felt like we were filming a 6-episode miniseries. Then we actually did a green screen opera that we filmed in our scene shop. And because we had the un-masked singers actually phonate to their pre-recorded selves with an orchestra, we had to film them run through the entire opera individually. Oh yeah, and it was double-cast. So that was…time consuming. And then we learned from that experience and filmed our last opera onstage with the singers wearing specially designed masks (from the costume designer) so we didn’t necessarily have to worry about their lip-syncing. But the most important thing – besides learning from each production experience – is we never stopped production and the students were so happy to be singing on a set, in costume, with an orchestra, and their performance was being recorded so their friends and families could watch them.
In Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) and Stage Intimacy news, our program (and myself personally) have been more conscientious about how all these intersect with the centuries-old operas we produce, rehearse, stage, and present. Being one of the two People of Color in the opera department (our conductor is Native American, and yeah you bet we’re going to be doing Land Acknowledgements before our shows!), I thought it vitally important to continue to bring these topics to discussion. But everything’s so new and we can’t change the world overnight, so I have to remind myself that it’s not about us, the living, it’s about the students and future generations. And I’m fortunate to work in an educational context that is accepting and supportive of that goal.
One of the online workshops I took last year was “Stage Managing Intimacy,” a course by Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC) specifically geared toward stage managers when an Intimacy Director is present within the company or not. The workshop was taught by Tina Newhauser and Alexis Black, and I wanted to mention their names because they are doing this work at Michigan State University, where a lot of MBT alums may have connections to.
Sadly, I have not been back to Michigan since I left through the Canadian border on my drive back to Western New York. I still have fond memories of my experiences at MBT, both inside the theatre and outside with my intern-mates: Erin Brandt, Thea Peterson, Izzy Bristow, Dave Roy, Joel “Flashpot!” Behrman, Lizzie Rainville, and Corey “Can-do” Boughton. I’ve tried to keep in touch with them over the years, but my Facebooking sort of fell off a cliff in 2016… But I still follow the “MBT Alumni News” group and I’m still in awe of how vast and connected the alumni are. And it’s all thanks to Terry Carpenter, whom I have always admired, especially for reasons like this (blog)—keeping in touch with everyone who has been at MBT. Get that man to another Billy Joel concert!
p.s. I had reconstructive jaw surgery in 2018, so I no longer have an underbite!
IG: @_schlau2.0
