Interview with Andrea Lundy

Interview with Hope McIntyre and Andrea Lundy 

Hope  The first question is simply how long you’ve worked in your current role.

Andrea  I started here in 2011, so this is now, I’m in my 11th year in this role at NTS (National Theatre School).

Hope And as an extension to that, how long have you worked in the industry? When did you begin your career as a lighting designer or production manager?

Andrea  I started working in theatre when I was 12. So, this is you know, this is lifelong. I got stuck with it, I’m stuck with it forever. And because my family’s been in running theatres for a while, my mother ran a theatre company, so I worked there. And then I graduated. Once I graduated from university when I was 20, 19 or 20, I went right to the Poor Alex Theatre. So, I’ve been doing this now for 36 years.

Hope Wow, amazing. Yeah. And, and that kind of segues into what your pathway was into, you know, where you are today. So, anything you want to talk about in terms of your training or the steps that you took?

Andrea  Yeah, totally. Because there are, because it’s different now. So in so, you know, 36 years ago what you could do is enter an industry and, and just learn by working. Right? So that’s what I did. So, I went to U of T and it was a drama program at the U of T, but wasn’t a practical program. It’s not a technical program, it’s more of an academic program. And I went there because my father worked there. And so historically, I did, I also got accepted at York, but I didn’t go to York because I didn’t want to take an acting class. I got really, I grew up with actors my whole life. I’m thinking, I don’t, that is not me. I don’t actually need to participate, to understand and to appreciate it anymore. I super appreciate it. So, and also, I had a, a great value of tuition, right? So I had a good level of support, financial support to go to U of T, but it’s very academic. I brushed up on my technical skills by becoming the assistant technical director of the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse at the time so that I could just kind of practically do work. And I did that for a few years and then I graduated and became, I worked right at the Poor Alex. I was the technical director and the Poor Alex, what a nice small theatre to learn. So you could step into the industry, really quite easily with a varying degrees of training and find work and learn by doing, learn by kind of executing the roles. And I think that was fairly common. And I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it was because there weren’t as many programs as there are now. There weren’t as many graduates as there are now. The work we were doing was maybe a little bit more grassroots. I don’t know. There’s probably, who knows how to even articulate why it would be different. But that was my, my path. So I learned from years at Poor Alex and I went to, trying not forget the order, Passe Muraille then Tarragon and then I was at the Necessary Angel and just trying to do as much work as possible with touring and stuff like that. And then came here.

Hope  Amazing. That’s great. And is there anything that, that you attribute to your success, your ability to continue to work in the field?

Andrea  Yeah, I would say a lot of it is what we try and teach here, and I feel that I could, I can embody it, which is why it’s easy for me to teach, which is really just openness and an empathy and just a real love of working with artists and learning my own craft as an artist. There’s just a deep respect for it and an understanding of the need of it. There are many, many people who work in theatre, I think the ones we all want to work with are the ones who respect what the place of arts is in the world though, the human approaches to arts, but also that think of themselves as a creative part of it, whether you’re a stage manager or a technical director or whatever. And that and I think that’s what has always been exciting to me in that every time you go into a situation, you’re learning something and it’s unlike any industry. And so not everybody can really work in this industry because it is very particular, but if it’s the right industry for you, you can get a lot out of it. And, you know, I think. I mean, I’ve never, I never been an actor. I think maybe it’s a totally different conversation for actors, but certainly for people in production, I would say right now it’s very different than it was three years ago and three years ago it was also very different than when I started out. I think the needs are different, but for me to learn on the job from other people was super exciting. I applied myself. I just have a lot of empathy and understanding and respect and I just kind of go about that as much as I can and try to get ego out of the way of, be generous within the conversation. And so, I think that’s followed me throughout my career, and I think that that’s meant that I continued to work where I wanted to work.

Hope  And that’s great because those are not hard skills, but very important aptitudes. Yeah. Is there anything that you wish you had known when you had started out?

Andrea  I wish that it was, that when I started, maybe there was a little bit more of what I think the expectation is now of actual more formal training. Not that I think I suffered from that, but I think I would have benefited from it more just to come into it with a little bit more hard skill, more understanding of how the different parts of the industry work or can work. I do think that it’s very, very hard to go on the path that I did now and that’s not even just the benefit of formal education, but I think it’s actually a requirement now. I don’t know how you would step into theatre without any kind of formal education, and that can come in many different forms. It’s not always a conservatory school like this. It can come from other, it can come from a CEGEP like a theatre program in a CEGEP here that where you just kind of identify a willingness to kind of keep working. But I don’t know how you would do what I did now. I think you would be lost really fast.

Hope  Oh, that’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And as you’re working with kind of emerging theatre workers and folks, is there any particular gap that you’re noticing right now?

Andrea  You mean in 2022 or just in general?

Hope  Well, either or. You know, what are the areas where people, you know, where it’s clear that there is a gap of knowledge or training or experience.

Andrea   As they’re going out?

Hope  Yeah.

Andrea  That’s a great question. Okay. So I’m gonna answer from 2019 first, so I would say the gap is really in confidence and in really deeply understanding that if they have passion for the work, they can make a career out of it, but that it’s really hard for them to land in that area of confidence, that they are constantly worried about all the things that they’re, I think, bombarded with, which is kind of everything has to be perfect at the outset. I, you know, I have this conversation with my students when they come in about having patience, continue to discover who you are in the work. And I think that that’s crucial. And I don’t think there’s very much patience. So I, and I think that’s partly because they’re bombarded with these things that are kind of the end result. The thing that “this is what I’m really good at, I’m going to show you. Look how great it is.” And they’re constantly bombarded with those images, those thoughts. And what they don’t get on a regular basis is a celebration of the hard work that goes into learning the skills that make you good at the thing, to produce this final… We don’t celebrate our skills. So when we, when the students arrive here, much of what they have to kind of contend with is their lack of patience for a learning path, or that even in three years they’re just barely scratching the surface of what they need to know to kind of really be good at their craft. Right? And that it takes years of practice after that to continue to develop those skill sets. There’s very little understanding of that. I think that gap will always be there, I don’t know how really to get rid of that gap. I think it’s kind of natural what’s happening with this generation and we kind of have to embrace it. But then you add on more complex conversations around mental health and what they believe they can do. Like when I started, you know, you just work like you just do the work and you kind of… if you love it, you work, you work, whatever you miss some holidays and all of that. And within the last ten years, that’s just less and less desirable and there’s constantly conversations around what’s the work life balance. And so it’s my generation trying to help people understand that you can have work life balance, but the amount of hard work you have to put into getting to the point where you can balance more, you have to have that in the conversation as well. And it’s really hard for them to kind of get that notion. And I think the, you know, within five years after graduating, they’re just starting to understand their place. And that’s, I think, going to change in a very particular way right now. And then to the 2022 version of that answer is it’s really their mental health. It’s mental health of students leaving and entering an industry which is in crisis. There’s no question that right now it’s really hard to work in this industry. At the same time, there’s a lot of work to be had. So, you could step into a role where you would have to work for five years to be in that role, you know, even three years. Right now, you can step into and fill, and get a job that is above where you’re ready to go and because there are so few managers left in the industry. So, they will step into roles, they have to kind of continue to find their own ways of training to be ready for the roles that they’re currently doing. So it’s a very different conversation now, I believe.

Andrea  So, we have conversations about, you know, how to manage, how people are and, you know, people can be challenging sometimes and then other times they can be really welcoming, and they exist everywhere, right? So when a student is trying to work with a more challenging personality, you know, their question is, why do we have to deal with these people? Is this, there should be more generosity and you’re kind of trying to balance the, okay, but these people exist. So what are your tools to manage? How do you protect yourself? What do you take home? What do you don’t take home? Anyway, there’s just the conversations that come in multi levels. And most of it is right now. There’s a lot of hard skill conversation going on that’s also super important. But then there’s just so much about soft skills, management of your time, what do you take home? How can you manage your anxiety? What does that mean in a workplace? What are the tools that you that you need in order to do this work? If you really need to do it and coming back to is this industry right for you? Because I find that those who come in with real worry about how to survive in the industry, I’m thinking, well, you just survive because you love the work. You’re just in it. Often, the more they apply themselves and the more they just do the work and gain experience. They just have more confidence in it so there’s less conversation around – I can’t balance my life with this. Now you do things and it takes you 5 hours. In two years, when you do the same task, it’ll take you 2 hours. So there is balance. You’re just not there yet. And you have to have the patience to get there.

Hope   Absolutely. And do you feel that there’s anything that we,  as training institutes could be doing to better prepare theatre workers for that reality?

Andrea   I think just keep talking to them and be super honest with them and bring in people from the industry who are working now to talk to them. I think that’s part of what works for us is that in the third year they all have mentorship mentors from working professionals and all their teachers are all working professionals. So they constantly can have a conversation with people who are in the industry and working now. I think that’s crucial. I think they should be encouraged to ask questions. The things that they’re worried about with people who are in the middle of the same kind of conversations, but also making a living off of their art form and they’re working in theatre. Right? So that I think we need to continue. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with the faculty having those conversations, because I believe for the most part, there’s a lot of really, really great teachers out there, but there is nothing to replace them talking with a working professional. Because I think the students don’t have context for what faculty does or where they’ve come from and what they know. They know them as teachers. They won’t always know them as working professionals. Right? And they, if they don’t hear from working professionals, I think they get a skewed, slightly skewed version of the real world, even if they get a good version of it. They don’t see it that way. They don’t have the same context. And the more we can bring that to them, I think the better. I would say, making expectations of them to see more theatre. Especially now when they haven’t really watched theatre for two years. I think that’s crucial and I don’t think we ask that enough of our students, that we, some weird thing about them constantly working in the theatre so they’re too busy so they never go watch the work that they say that they are invested in. Right? And they learn so much by absorbing, watching work of others. And now that we can, we should be sending them to as much theatre as possible.

Hope  That’s great. I love that. A lot of questions that I get in the course I teach are really about preparing them to go out and work. And their number one question is how to secure work. Do you have any advice or thoughts of the areas that that you’ve experienced about the best way to, get that work?

Andrea   It’s meeting people. There’s no… you don’t really go, and we all know this, right? You don’t go and have an interview for work. It just doesn’t work that way. It could work for a TD. But that’s, or a PM,but maybe that’s the only time you’d ever really go into a job interview. So they should be practicing I think job applications. They should know how to make a good resume. They should know what information to put on that resume. And they have to know how to talk about it. They should know how to write a good cover letter. They, all of that stuff… they should absolutely be taught because those are just good life skills. Right? And then beyond that, they should just meet people because the reality is they’re going to get work based on the people that they continue to work with or that they attach to. But the number one thing I think that they need to hear is that the first choice they have to make is where they’re going to live. And that first choice is the trickiest one, but it actually drives the work. And I think on occasion the work will drive where you live. I think that’s if you get a job out of university, then obviously you’re going to go there. But I think that’s a rare occasion. I think for the most part it’s where you are going to live and then apply for the jobs that come up there. Although graduates now, I think like anybody graduating in 2023, I think it is actually the other way around. Apply for all the jobs. There’s going to be tons of them. And then decide where you want to live. That’s an anomaly, this anomaly of last year and probably for one more year. And then I think it should rebalance a little bit after that.

Hope   Absolutely. And does that connect for you in terms of the meeting of people where you want to live and work, then you focus on networking and getting to know that community.

Andrea   Yeah. And it’s also the extra advantage of having professionals coming in to talk to the students while they’re students, because then when they graduate and if they decide, not everybody should move to Toronto, but let’s say I decide to move to Toronto, which is, you know, just would be my personal choice. Then the five coaches that I’ve met or teachers that I’ve met, I will just say to them, call them and have coffee with them and just talk and ask them about their lives. Not how can you give me work, but ask, but continue to ask people about how, what their journey is. And that network of people will remember you right there. It’s going like, oh, I can’t do this work. I need an assistant. I’m going to, how about this person? And it just starts to kind of snowball after that. There’s no real, there is no particular path. You don’t pass a test and then you can go do this work, right? You have to make connections. You have to understand how your work speaks for itself and that you tend to get attached to like a director or a PM or something and that’s the work that you continue to get if you show yourself well within each particular job, right? And also, business ethics, right? The idea of don’t burn bridges. Especially when you initially graduate. Like if you make a decision, if you sign a contract then honour that contract. If something comes up and you have to cancel that contract, you know, you’re going to bet that that particular job will be gone for you for a while because that person is not going to hire you. Right? You also have to remember and teach them about that real important ethics skill set. Super important.

Hope   Yeah, that’s great. And you mentioned cover letter, resume. Is there anything else? In terms of portfolio, anything else that they should have ready to share or show?

Andrea  Yeah, well, not everybody who graduates here is a designer, right? So I think that they always for us, they always have access to photos from the work, but it doesn’t, I think it’s good to certainly have a portfolio but it doesn’t work for sound designer necessarily. Right? And I don’t think they should be building their own websites and stuff unless that’s really part of their skill set and they really like doing that. I don’t, I personally as a lighting designer, I very rarely use my portfolio of photos. It can be good for them to continue to build that. And if they want to market themselves that way, you know what? And marketing now is way different than when I started as well. Like, they’re going to put all of that, all that stuff on, on whatever social media platforms they feel will get them work. They should absolutely be encouraged to do that. But it’s only lighting designers and video designers who really have that portfolio right now.

Hope   Well, that’s true. And if you were looking for an apprentice or hiring or looking for a collaborator, what are the qualities you would look for?

Andrea   Assistantship I think is about common interest. And I think that assistantships should be really reserved for people who are interested in that discipline and really want to build skill in that discipline. I think it’s not a good way for, like if I want to be a stage manager, it’s not good for me to try and become a, like to work as an assistant lighting designer because it first of all, it takes away from somebody else’s experience to become a lighting designer. And I would hope that in my training as a stage manager, I already have done some work with the lighting designer. I already know and that I would kind of stick to the things that I know. And if you are multi-skilled, which is a great, truly great to be multi-skilled now when you graduate. Then, being an assistant is a really great way to continue to develop those skills and to meet people. I think we should be hiring more assistants, but I say that and then you know what? If there wasn’t an assistant program now, for the next two years, like I said, I think would just be actual work in that field. I think it’s going to be very hard to find assistant stage managers because we need so many stage managers. They’re just going to be put into those roles right away. Same for ATDs and the like. But generally, I think we should be offering more paid internships upon graduation and diversifying those needs. I also think it’s a, slightly skewed, slightly different tangent, but that we should be doing everything possible to encourage, to find and to support Indigenous production students. We’ve been incredibly, incredibly lax as institutes across the country in actually doing anything about this, and we’re really paying the price now because we don’t have any. It’s marginal, we have such a small number of people. It’s hard to find them. Where do we go? What programs do we offer that take away the barriers for them to apply? If we all think the future of Canadian theatre is Indigenous, we better step up to this very fast. And now I’m on a tangent.

Hope  No, no, it’s okay. It’s good.

Andrea   So encouraging more of that. That comes from offering paid internships where people can actually get some further hard skills in order to help prepare them for the work that they can, that they will be offered just shortly after graduating. We don’t do enough of those internships, although I think there are more and more coming. Stratford has a bunch more now and NAC wants to do a bunch more. But we really should be valuing those more and more. And also, because we’re expecting them to take on bigger roles, the theatre companies themselves have to do more of the training because they’re not going to have all the skill sets required. So they better step up to more training when they hire these people for these jobs.

Hope   That’s a really good point. Yeah. And are there any resources that you would recommend to emerging theatre workers or those folks just starting work.

Andrea  Go to the bigger regional theatres. Again if you want to move to Ottawa, contact NAC and talk to them about what smaller opportunities just to see how to start to be part of it and just find the person in that institute who, who loves training. There’s always one, if not more, right? Every regional should be offering programs or conversations, at the very least to meet young people. And many are. But you take like MTC for instance, right? They really want to offer more support for people coming in the industry. But who wants to work? Really? It’s hard for them to get people to move to Winnipeg, right? So, I think the more that anybody graduating… again if I’m going to move there what’s the regional theatre there. So I’m going to go talk to them right away. It doesn’t have to lead to work. But I think the more we do that, just the more aware we are of each other’s situation as well. How the regionals can or cannot hire the number of people to support more training. But also, again, just that coming back to networking and meeting people is a really crucial part of growing the industry, I think.

Hope   Yeah. And any other advice that you would have for those leaving, training and entering the profession?

Andrea  Try not to silo yourself in one part of the industry, especially coming out of a program like this where you have probably multiple skill sets. Not everybody will be, I want to do all six things right. There are going to be some people who discover video design while here and I think they just should be encouraged in finding work in whatever interests them, because I don’t know that you’ll know exactly what your career will be. Sometimes you do, but I would say even half the students who come out, it’s a small class of eight, right? So even half of them aren’t exactly sure what it is they want to pursue for the rest of their lives. And I think that’s totally fine. And I just really encourage them to seek variety, like a variety of work across a bunch of disciplines.

Hope   So before we talk about the future, just a few more questions that are specific to kind of discipline and self-employment. And I mean, obviously you’ve been working now as an employee versus being self-employed, but do you have any thoughts on the challenges for the freelance kind of gig economy?

Andrea   I’m thinking that actually starts to become about life sustaining work and a conversation around the value of the work and I think it’s very hard for self-employed people to stick to it as a self-employed person and everybody thinks they need a salary and the pension. And because this generation has been taught that that’s what they think, that’s what they need to get, to kind of – and they’re not necessarily wrong. It’s hard to buy a house like how do you buy a house in Toronto, right. Ever. As a freelance artist? I don’t know anymore. Again, it sort of depends on where you live. If you want to work and be freelance in Winnipeg, you’re in a different situation. You want to go to Newfoundland and work, again, different situation again. I think people should be encouraged to move across the country and not to imagine that all the work sits in one little pocket in southern Ontario. But that across the country we need workers and that freelance or not, just to value, to totally value the work and to put the time into it. I mean, I’m a good example of how you can have a really solid enough self-employment income that you can live no problem. Right? But again, I think maybe that’s a little bit different now and that you have to mix. You maybe have to mix things a little bit. So, you know, as a stage manager, you’re an employee. But then also do you want to do some design. As a PM, most of the time you’re going to be employed because being, right now, being a self-employed production manager is super hard. But you can also attach yourself to these groups of young professionals who are now putting together a culmination of professionals, like-minded professionals. So, Means of Production in Ontario, they’re trying to bring PMs and TDs together to support each other. More like a community-based group of self-employed managers. And that’s an interesting model. And if we could do more of that, actually I feel like the self-employment model might actually be more sustainable because you can stay self-employed but be attached to a group of other self-employed people who can help you when you’re overwhelmed or can’t take on this day’s work. If you’ve got two jobs going on, that actually starts to become a really interesting, more modern model of how to work in freelance, I think. As designers, we don’t…that’s like taking the ADC version of union or not, but the ADC version of an association where there’s just more support. And really in the last five years they’ve really been building that in a really interesting way and then bringing it to managers. Stage managers have Equity, which sometimes works, sometimes does not for them. And the management version, the PM/TD management version of a kind of association of groups really only exists right now in southern Ontario. So I think that if that idea could grow further across the country, I think now we’re into something that’s more sustainable for self-employed managers, which we need more of because there are a lot of small companies out there who I’m sure I don’t even know how many of them are missing TDs, but I bet you a lot are.

Hope   Amazing. And any advice on when someone should say no to a gig? Are there any things that you would advise to be aware of?

Andrea  Well, I guess now if you have a question, there are lots of forums in which you can ask questions of people who have maybe worked with companies before. You have a, if you’re not quite sure about the company or the director, there are lots of ways you can find information from people you don’t know. And I think that these parts of those forums is helpful. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t replace just instincts, right? If you don’t have good instincts about people, then you just kind of have to grow those instincts. I think you have to maybe try a few things and see how you can kind of build on that, build in that perspective. It’s an industry full of human connection, right? So, if you know somebody who knows somebody, like ask them about that director or about that company. And if you don’t, just try. Right? And the thing that I did, don’t take a contract if you can’t fulfill it. I would go back to that burning bridges. Right? And not every contract is going to be great and not every experience is going to be great. But you learn by experience, I guess.

Hope  Anything in regard to self-producing that you would want to add. Is it valuable? I mean, probably on your end of the scale, it would mostly be folks who work in a cooperative or collaborative kind of way.

Andrea  Yeah, I think that that’s really particular to a personality. Some people really want to work that way. And they’re more kind of a grassroots, like a co-op kind of a show. I don’t. Or a Fringe show or something like that. I think that that actually can come out of cohorts of actors and directors and fresh people graduating together, that can be where work could be self-produced. We have a program at the school called it’s called TEC(Theatre Engaging Communities) which is, if you’re a graduate of the school you can apply for some money if your project is related to community. So that often is a way that our students or other students, group of students together can get some funding to produce work that is community related. It’s very different what they come up with, it’s super interesting but it’s a personality, some personalities really want to produce their own work and then the rest are not interested at all. So, I don’t really want to push it as a thing that everybody should do. I have never, ever wanted to produce my own work. I could build a skill set, but it’s not interesting to me and I don’t know right now what the climate is for that. I think I’ve lost track of that in particular because established companies are struggling so much, I can’t even imagine what small companies, how what they’re doing or how they’re managing to kind of get work on its feet. I think it’s probably extremely hard.

Hope   Absolutely. Yeah. And then specifically to design. Just wondering if there’s anything else you wanted to add in regards to how you got your first design gig or how to get your work seen in terms of that area?

Andrea   Yeah, I guess it goes back to networking. Invite people. If you have a show like invite whoever you can imagine inviting -the artists you’re interested in working with. They may not come, but just the invite alone I think can be helpful. I think you also have to know what artists you’re interested in. So it comes back to doing the work. I find that work now, what we have a hard time with at the beginning of the time here (at NTS) is context and understanding of Canadian theatre across the country. Who’s who? Who’s built what? What’s the history of these theatres? Who are the people who are running them now? Where did they come from? Who are the playwrights that exist? And I think you actually have to build that knowledge in order to understand whose work you’re interested in. How are you going to talk to them about that work? How are you going to invite them? So, if I’m doing a lighting design and yet there’s a playwright that I really like, I mean, maybe invite them, right? You can never prescribe how you get work, but you can certainly articulate the work that speaks to you. You can articulate thoughts about that. I think you should be able to and you could identify the artists across the country whose work speaks to you. That goes back to seeing more theatre, seeing the theatre of the people who you like, see every Hannah Moscovitch play that’s produced wherever it is, if you can. Right? If you like that playwright and making sure that if somebody is producing something and you really like their work, that you find a way to go see it. I think that connection is important. I just don’t think you can kind of say, everybody come to my show. I think you have to connect to artists, right? To the ones whose work you do or are inspired by in the hope of just working more and more with those kinds of people.

Hope   Absolutely. And in terms of ADC our students will ask us, when should we join? Is it something you should join right away? Is there a right time?

Andrea  I don’t think you should join right away. I think you should do it. I’ve lost track of whether they have still have the apprenticeship program. I think they still do. That’s an important thing to do because in a way, it keeps the strength, I think, of the association as needed, so that it’s not just anybody can join, but that there is – and it’s not about seeding people out. It’s not about that at all, but it’s about understanding the worth of commitment to the craft. And so if you really committed to it, then apprenticing in that role actually is part of again, we come back to paid internships. Right? It’s part of continuing to grow towards a career in that again, it’s just not to imagine that I graduate. I join ADC. I work as a designer. It’s never that simple and it shouldn’t actually be that simple. There should be continuing education and I think apprenticeships are part of that.

Hope  Excellent, yeah. Good. And then just finally, any thoughts about the future of theatre. What we should be working towards and student readiness or trends? Changes?

Andrea  I, I firmly have, really in the last five years, I’m believing more and more in the strength of this generation, the younger generation to make changes, but that will take time. So that’s, pre-COVID, I was really seeing them because they just are able to articulate something about themselves that I don’t think my generation could. So, it’s about the things they go through. Like if they’re particularly challenged in a certain way in their mental health, they’re way more honest about it than ten years ago. It’s really interesting what’s happening. It’s just part of a conversation that they’re more used to having. Not all, but most, actually now. Some still really hide it away. So they’re more articulate, but they also put up with less. Right? So if a teacher says something kind of stupid, before would be like just don’t say a thing like that. Like, that’s just. Can you imagine somebody saying that to you? Don’t bring that into your class. But now, you know, five students will speak up about it, and you really have to have a much more in-depth conversation. That’s our responsibility to have to make sure that the respect for the students is given and in return, that the respect for the teachers is also given. Right? So, they just speak up more. They don’t take as much and they don’t take it home. And they don’t still put up with it, which I think, it bodes well. So, what that means is that once they’re in roles where they are deciding and make decisions, they’re going to be folding this whole other way of looking at things, which is how the industry is going to change I think. Now we’ve spent two years talking about all of the things that should be better. This part of the conversation is really complex because we’ve talked to every institution across the country in the last few years. We need work life balance, like how do we work that out? There are no longer 12 hour days. We can’t do those things. We get to five, you know, can’t work a seventy-hour week anymore. All of those things have been part of this, let’s change the industry. And let’s take care of each other and let’s figure out how to do a different model of tech week, so we’ve been talking about that for two years. And the other part of it has been, how do we, you know, want to work again, want to produce theatre again. So, what’s happening now is that we’re just producing theatre again. We’ve forgotten the other part of the conversation, and I fear we’re going to, these last two years, the opportunity to actually do something will just kind of be forgotten because people are just so desperate for people to work. So, you think about any small, any theatre company really, from producing nothing to all of a sudden producing not just a full season, but potentially full plus one, one plus season, right? With fewer staff so that fewer staff have to do double the work. If they survive and stay, we’re going to be lucky. And the roles are being filled by younger and younger people. So, we haven’t sort of rolled into this idea of how do we have, what work can we do to lessen the burden on a tech week? What does it mean to do that? How do we afford it? And that’s why we need more and more models of if we do it this way, we get the same amount of work done. We just need like an extra two days in the theatre. So what does that cost? Let’s talk about that cost as opposed to the cost of trying to do it all within five days instead of seven. So that will be changed. It will eventually change, but it’s not happening yet because, it’s still this generation are still not in charge of those conversations. So, until they are the general managers and the artistic directors and the production managers, we’re still in this weird place where this is how long it takes us to do something. And those of us who have watched, like here (NTS) over the course of the pandemic, we did probably over 20 different technical week schedules, and part of it was because we had curfews, so we would have an 8 p.m. curfew and then we’d have a 9:30 p.m. curfew. And we’re trying to tech shows. And I kept to the curfew. We didn’t have to, students could actually work past the curfew if it was part of their curriculum. But for me, it was safer to send the students home at the curfew time. So, we would do this version where we all finished at seven and the version where we finished at 8:30, and then the version where we did the full, full technique that we’d always done before. And what I did at the end of that was I said, this is full Tech Week, this number of hours. 8:00 o’ clock tech week, this number of hours, and then 9:30, this number of hours. And I would look and analyze it and I thought, we always work to this this number of hours, and we do well. When we stopped at seven, we had way fewer hours, but we didn’t do so well. It was the work, it just was just below where it needed to be for things to start to click in. But then the 9:30 version, just an extra hour and a half a day actually, that we were okay with. We did the work well. And so now we apply that to our tech week and in our load in week we have two evenings off and in the Tech Week with actors we have three evenings off. And we’re fine. It’s a bit crunchy, but we’re fine. So it’s kind of like, well, you just have to kind of rethink and analyze what you have and what you can do. And these are students, so it takes them way longer to do anything than professionals do, right? So, I think it’s all possible. I just think somebody has to spend the time. And groups like Means of Production are doing that. They’re building models and this is how much more it would cost if we just worked 8 hours a day. This is how much more it would cost if we did mostly 8 hours a day and we had two long days. So, it’s happening. But those people have to be the ones to be making the decisions before it gets whittled in.

Hope Absolutely.

Andrea And it’s coming. It’s coming. But I think we’ve been stalled for two years. I was, two years ago and I said it’s coming within five years. But now I think it’s going to be longer.

Hope  Yes. Well and there’s the extra, I know here at least, the extra complication of also adding rehearsals for understudies and stand ins.

Andrea  Yeah.

Hope  It’s just actually put an extra burden on some of the time here. So yeah. But that’s, that’s incredible. I look forward to that down the pipe.

Andrea  I mean, the ones who stay are invested and interested and have energy, and they don’t pull up with crap. So I think that is a good, we’ll see change. We’ll just see how…we’ll all watch how it plays out. We just, I just really hope that they stay in the industry. That, for me is the biggest worry that they’re not going to stay long enough for it to really matter.