Juggling! 1.5 Weeks 'til Festival!

I feel like this week in the office has been a little bit ephemeral. It’s not even halfway through the week and I can barely remember Monday. What I do remember from last week is that it was super busy until Wednesday and things started to cool down, but apparently it’s been busy enough to leave me with a lapse in my memory.

I don’t even know how to begin to summarize.

The War Wall as of April 21, 2010

Our wonderful producers, Byron and Matt have finally finished casting K7. It took longer than they’d have liked, but with over 30 actors, the whole event is monumental. The specs for the performance space are slowly being worked out, contracts are being signed and conference sponsors are being organized. Byron is constantly taking the time to teach me valuable lessons about the challenges one faces as a producer. This is a job that seems to require a lot of juggling.

Rehearsals for both K7 and the Potluck have started, meaning that the rehearsal space next door to the office is always busy. Pluses: good company, I finally get to meet all the people I’ve been e-mailing, there’s always extra food lying around. Minuses: the occasional loud yell that startles everyone in the office. I suppose that isn’t really a minus, I mean, at least it’s entertaining.

K7 Schedule- MADNESS!

Said rehearsals mean that we are seeing Andrew, Nina and David all around the office. Busy as ever, the three of them are managing to direct/dramaturg several readings. Their lives are all short on sleep, and their levels of health are questionable, but we love them dearly and it’s truly wonderful to see their faces.

Andrea’s getting all of our materials on the streets! She had a newsletter mailed out yesterday, we had a MASSIVE flyering event last week (thanks to our wonderful volunteers!). Look for our origami lotus flyers all over the city. If you fold it up and take a picture of it in a creative place, you can submit at www.fu-gen.org/secret to win a prize!

Carin has been in and out of the office. Despite the fact that Carin had a nasty case of the flu, she has been in constant communication with us. Making sure that things happen, that people are happy, and that artists and academics will arrive, Carin's life is never slow. She's refining budgets and ensuring our cash flow is steady. Scary job, eh?

As for me? I’ve been busy nagging people to do various tasks. I feel like a big part of my job right now is to hold on to all the loose ends and slowly figure out ways to tie them together without letting one slip away. I’m learning something every day and I feel really lucky to be writing e-mails to all of the incredible people across the continent that are coming to Toronto to be part of this explosive event.

We have one and a half weeks to go! Friday you can look forward to a post from our K7-ers and next week you will see our load in! Exciting times...

Hello out there to all of our readers!

Things in the fu-GEN office are really picking up. This past week has been insanely busy to a point where I can barely describe it anymore. That's a lie-- but a clever lie that also serves as an excuse for me not wanting to take the time to try to describe the business. If you've ever worked for a theatre company and you're three weeks before a major production and rehearsals have JUST gotten started and, oh wait-- you're actually producing 8 plays (even if they are readings), a whole bunch of excerpts, and a monumental conference where artists and academics are flying in from all across the continent, and there's usually no more than 4 people in the office-- you have a good idea of our level of busy.

This week, instead of providing you, dear readers, with a summary of all things fu-GEN and fabulous, I will be posting something from one of our incredible Kitchen Playwrights, Catherine Hernandez! She has graciously written a blog post for us and provided us with amazing pictures.

Enjoy!

I Can't Believe It's Already April

Lots of things happening at the office this week. I was fortunate enough to sneak away for the weekend and visit my family back in Edmonton for the holiday, but I could tell fu-GEN staffers were busy due to the frequent e-mails and the quick response rate to whatever e-mails I managed to send. I have decided that due to my absence from the office over the last few days, I have every right to let my imagination cut loose with regards to the goings-on of my fellow fu-GEN staffers. So this, dear readers, is a somewhat fictitious (though probably not entirely ridiculous) and probably not-entirely-accurate rendering of last week’s happenings.

THE WAR WALL (April 7, 2010)

Festival producers Matt and Byron continued to spend much of their time on the phone in an attempt to cast actors in all of the Potluck plays. Their next challenge will be to cast K7, the challenge being that they have to do it with all non-equity actors. Byron sits amidst an ever-growing stack of contracts as he waits for Nina and Carin to swing by and sign them out of his hands and into the actors.

Nina carries around her agenda in a briefcase—okay, it’s in her MacBook, but still, her schedule is insane. This woman is back and forth between here and Cahoots, doing interviews for college students, signing our paycheques, dramaturging like 50 plays and directing another 50 (I’m pretty sure my numbers are accurate), oh and raising a 3 year old to boot!

Carin (and our aforementioned producer Matt) is busy with a toddler of her own, the lively Miss Berkeley, yet somehow Carin still manages to make it in the office to sign away some of Byron’s ever-growing contract pile (pictured below), while simultaneously asserting her presence over the ladies at the bank to finally get us our company credit card(!!!). Lately, she’s been spending her time spending our money—almost finished with flight bookings, she’s now moved on to paying our actors!

And what of incoming Artistic Director David? I haven’t seen him in weeks, making me think that his schedule is comparable to Nina’s. However, a picture of him as a child has appeared on our War Wall (filling me with the desire to caption it “Our Fearless Leader”). I can only imagine David stumbling in tired one night, grumbling, plastering his photo on the wall and taking a swig of vodka before heading home for the evening.

Our Fearless Leader

I can’t take full credit for the “Fearless Leader” slogan, Andrea, our lovely Director of Marketing and Development came up with that one. She sits quietly in her corner, typing furiously away and fortuitously putting together our program (a seemingly never-ending process). She’s been working on a listserv, taking photos, sending out e-blasts to our followers and designing all of the materials that will eventually be handed out at the conference. No big deal, right?

As for me, I spent my weekend eating waaaay too much food. While running back and forth between my laptop and the table I managed to catch up with friends and family, never really being fully able to answer the question, “what exactly are you doing out in Toronto, anyway?”. Since when does the response “interning for a theatre company” not satisfy all of a curious parent’s questions?

To look forward to in the upcoming weeks: Mind-map from K7 Playwrights and blog entries from each of the Potluck Playwrights including: David Yee, Catherine Hernandez, Donald Woo, Camellia Koo, Romeo Candido, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and our office’s very own Byron Abalos.

Five Furiously Fast-paced Weeks to Go!

The war wall hasn’t changed much this week, but that’s no reflection of how busy we’ve been this week. I would post a picture, but we don't have a functioning camera in our office today. I guess you'll just have to hold your suspense until next week... Without Nina in the office as frequently, we don’t have as many quotes on the wall, but here’s a good one from last week:
Speaking of GM’s, Carin’s been busy as ever, spending much of her time this week booking flights for visiting academics and artists, fanangling and printing off new budgets, going over our company GST report, and trying not to pull her hair out over the company credit card which has yet to arrive. She’s also probably busy doing lots of other things that I don’t even know about... every once and a while we hear her muttering, “kill, kill, kill...”

Andrea’s been spending late nights in the office, messaging me to go for dinner at 10pm when I’m almost ready for bed. Her report to the Trillium Foundation (which funds her position) is due tomorrow, which is causing an appropriate amount of stress she is currently balancing with her responsibilities in Marketing and Development. She’s revamped our website countless times, re-coloured our lotus logo, dealt with a new shipment of flyers, and worn heels to work almost every day. BAM. Did I mention that she was also performing in CBT’s Flipside Festival last weekend? No big deal.

Byron was also working with the Flipside Festival, directing a piece about a mother and son. So while a considerable amount of time was dedicated towards that in the last week, Byron has also been laying the foundation for the welcome packages that will be handed out to academic and artistic visitors upon their arrival, while simultaneously attempting to file his taxes. He’s also worked out several awesome deals with food sponsors for our festival such as Epicure (providing us with free food for opening)!! He’s also be working like a madman to make sure all the shows are cast... where are all the Asian actors?

Matt, our Potluck Festival co-producer, has been leaving a LOT of messages (e-mail and phone) that he fears are going nowhere in his attempt to cast plays. Good thing he has a blackberry, enabling him to frequently check his e-mail in fits of casting paranoia. He’s also helped me out a tonne by sending a mailout to his contacts in an attempt to get high school volunteers.

Nina is whirlwinding in and out of the office in a flurry of meetings, loose sheets of paper and venti cups of coffee. She pops in for a meeting, interview, and lunch and is gone before we can quote her for the War Wall. Incredibly busy as always, she is doing mysterious work and making important decisions that keep the company running.

Our incoming Artistic Director, David, is almost done with Monster (directed by Nina) at LKTYP and will again be a presence in the office (mainly there to harass us while we work) after the holiday weekend. In the meantime, he will continue to be BCC’d on all my e-mails and honor me with answers to my questions accompanied by an occasional sarcastic response. We miss you, David!

My week has been yet again by liaising with academics and artists. We’ve invited a few new people this week, and only have a few more people to confirm travel arrangements with and then I get to put a giant checkmark on my to do list. I worked with Matt to put out the aforementioned volunteer call, went to a Maple Leafs NAAAP mixer with Byron and practiced slinging business cards like ninjastars and worked on building a signup sheet for board members to pick up festival/conference guests from the airport. As a conference presenter myself, I’m only starting to realize how screwed I’m going to be if I don’t get my academic act together soon—whatever happened to living life contently as a simple intern?

Oooh boy, this has been a long freaking update. I’ll leave you with this: Kapisanan is launching a new website this weekend. We’ll be there to review it, and you should definitely go check it out!

The Weekly Update- 24/3/3010: T Minus 6 Weeks!

"Six weeks away people! Only six weeks away!"

The havoc that is wreaked when I shout this aloud in the office is insane. Heads are clasped in despair, forehead veins pop, knuckles turn white, and keyboards click away with the fury of 100 pecking chickens? I don’t know... maybe I took it a little far, but this phrase certainly brings some distress into the office.

The Wall!

The last week we have kept ourselves busy by welcoming the lovely Nina Lee Aquino into the office almost every day. Here she sits, head to head with Byron churning out schedule after schedule. The reason the wall looks so tidy is because Byron and Nina have put up so many schedules they practically had to tear the whole thing down and re-post everything so it looked pretty again. Now the two of them are on to casting, and the feeling is that once the actors are in the schedule it becomes concrete. Exciting!


Andrea has been designing fabulous advertisements for our 7th Annual Potluck Festival featuring: GENesis Asian-Canadian Theatre Conference, submitting them for publication in Canadian Theatre Review, as well as creating ads and inserts for Native Earth and Carlos Bulosan Theatre respectively. She’s making sure flyers get distributed and managing the behemoth task of putting the (delayed) program together. With deadlines set towards the end of this week, Andrea’s life is only getting busier.

Carin is dedicating her life to masterminding our budget and drilling it in to us that we must protect her bottom line. Somehow, between her many jobs, Carin has got us a company credit card, which we will use to buy flights as soon as it arrives at the office. Sometimes Carin senses that we are desperate for coffee.


When we run out of coffee filters, we use Bounty!

Sunday saw the core team sitting together in one room (finally!) to make sure that we are all on the same page moving forward. Coffee was drank, snacks were had, and details were mulled over. We sorted out some ticketing snafus, talked about the budget, and in the end I know that I felt really satisfied that we had all met. There’s something nice about having everyone in the same room... it brings the whole picture together. While you can see the long road we still have in front of us, we know that we will travel it quickly, with the support of each other, and hopefully with great success. I definitely left the meeting feeling that I am so lucky—I am a young professional working in my field, in the arts! Woo hoo!

Oh yeah, now that everything is sorted, the Festival and Conference passes are now on sale through Factory Theatre. See all that info here, and we’ll see you there!

Updates!

If last week was all about our massive flyer and online content launch, this week has only gotten more hectic. Last week, thanks to Byron, Andrea, Andrew Cheng (our Intern Company Dramaturg) and Donald Woo (our volunteer coordinator) we have managed to continue our flyering spree, covering the neighbourhoods of Kensington, the Annex, Little Italy, Queen West, Queen West West, Koreatown, Chinatown (new and old), and many, many more...

We went from George Brown, to York, to Ryerson, to U of T and back again, spreading our origami lotus flyers and the good fortune (2 for 1 tickets!) they bring. We stuffed Future Folk programs at Theatre Passe Muraille and only pausing to eat delicious spicy chicken teriyaki and answer e-mails.

Aside from flyering, last week we also faced some major grant application deadlines, meaning that most people in the office were functioning despite an enormous lack of sleep (compounded by the fact that David and Nina, our artistic visionaries) are currently working towards the launch of Monster Under the Bed with Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, which has only just opened.

This week, Byron and Andrea have continued flyering in all of their spare time (ha!), but have also found the time to start work on preparing conference welcome packages , and update our website (schedule is posted!!). Mostly, the office space has completely transformed due to Nina being a constant force in the office this week who is miraculously helping us work out the details of our schedule. As Andrea posted on our twitter, the office bumpin’ and our fu-GEN heart is happy!!! (Or slightly stressed...judging by the look on Nina's face)



Carin continues to super organize our office, while completing our OAC grant applications for the 15th, meaning that she has become an expert at trying to run fu-GEN covertly from the bathroom stalls in her other place of employment, and spending her evenings typing up the grant with one hand while nursing her daughter in the other.

As for me? Nothing too interesting in the life of the intern, just answering the questions from artists and academics from across the continent as they roll in, spending my days wondering how the heck I got this job working with all of the people that I spent the duration of my MA writing about. That's all for now!