a huge selection of major appliances.

Today was a brutal day at work.

When I walked into the theatre this morning the first thing I noticed was that everything was all moved around.  

A little bit of checking around revealed what had happened.  P, an independent theatre technician who is often employed by the school board to help fix up theatres that have been designed and maintained by people who know nothing about them, had been in.  But without any consultation.

P and I had talked awhile ago, and he'd come to look at the theatre and offered me some suggestions as to what could improve it.  Armed with that information I approached my administrators who said they'd look in the budget for next year but that the money simply wasn't available immediately.  Fine.  I told P and made plans to talk to him more in the future.

Then yesterday evening, inspired by what-I-can't-guess, P came to the school, coerced the custodians to let him into the theatre, and went to work undoing all the work we'd done in preparation for my show which opens in a week.  I can't imagine what on earth he was thinking or what motivated this bizarre behaviour.  When I turned on my computer I found an email from him in which he told me all the things he'd done and seemed quite pleased with himself as though he'd done me an enormous favour.  

In truth, the work he did would have been great if we hadn't painstakingly just spent the last several weeks designing a light plot, rehanging and focusing all the lights, and rehearsing our play with the lighting cues.  The new light plot, functional though it may be, is completely wrong for what we have planned.

I responded to his email telling him the situation while also trying to keep a cool head and thanking him for his time, asking that he just take the time to consult with me before doing anything else.  And then he phoned me to apologize, which was fine.  He said he was coming to the theatre to help us fix it back to the way it was.  

I told him not to.  It's not that we needed his expertise at this point.  We just needed to climb the ladders and do the work.  I have students who know how to do these things, and besides, I wasn't in the mood to talk to P or see him after this nonsense.

We spent some time working on the lights again after school, and then, just as I was getting into my car to leave the school, P pulled up next to me, wanting to apologize again in person and wanting to come in to the theatre to see if he could do anything to help.  I told him no.  I was as pleasant as possible but by this point I was tempted to kick him in the teeth.

Tomorrow is a professional day, and I, ironically, have signed up to do a workshop on theatrical lighting.  It's not a strength of mine, but after all this nonsense I think I will have learned a lot.

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