Plugging Along

So nothing terribly exciting going on here, nothing noteworthy, but that will ALL CHANGE SOON!

Not really, but it made for like half a second of exciting typing anyway. This weekend was the 5th Annual Metrolina Theatre Awards, and I was nominated for Best Lighting Design in a Drama for my work on The Diary of Anne Frank. The whole show was nominated, but another show called The Pillowman swept the drama category. I saw both shows, and The Pillowman was a great show, but some of the awards that it received were trickle-down awards based on the strength of the lead actors and the directing. Yup - I'll put it out here in the interwebs - I think I got fucked. I have seen shows that I've gone "Yup, that was better than mine." This wasn't one of them. The lighting was okay, but my work for Anne Frank was better. But a group of my peers who voted on the awards disagreed, and that's that.

I had a couple of bigger issues with the awards, and since I'm venting, here they are.

1) Backstage, at least for the first presentation, was a clusterfuck. The kids who were supposed to bring us the awards were always slow getting stuff to us, and sometimes brought us the wrong awards - which is a bit of an issue when they were bringing us the envelope with the winner's name as well! One time there was a tie in one award, and they didn't bring us both awards at the same time. So I went backstage to ask the accountant folks if there was a tie, and was told, unequivocally and repeatedly "No." So then ten minutes later the emcee got to go out by himself and present the second award, because the folks backstage didn't have their shit together.

2) Where's the fucking food?!? Every year up to now, there has been a buffet at the after-party.This year, because we missed dinner, Suzy and I actually bolted out of the awards a hair early to get to the after-party early and grab some food. I usually end up working the event and never get to eat, but this year I was off the hook. We got there - no buffet. I corralled a waiter and asked what the deal was, and there was no provision for a buffet - so no free food. I was more than a little grumpy, but we ordered food and got something to eat, then had to wait a year while the overwhelmed wait staff tried to deal with 300 people descending on them to eat.

The whole vibe this year felt a little "off" for me, which was disheartening, as I helped create the event with an idea of bringing the theatre community together, and I'm not sure it does that. Of course, part of this might be my views on the organizations as a whole spilling over, because I'm afraid I've turned into that guy who sits around and says "in my day, it wasn't like this." I also feel as though my long-time contributions to the organization have been ignored or forgotten, as have those of a lot of other people, so it's led to a general disgruntlement with the organization and a limiting of my involvement.

But on a more interesting front, last night's interview of the winner of WCOOP Event #11 turned into a phone conversation with the guy, who turned out to be Brent Carter, #7 on the list of all-time WSOP cashes and a 2-time bracelet winner. Very nice guy, and you can check out the profile here.