Tuesday's Orientation

Oh yeah, aside from nickel beers, Tuesday's orientation involved a tour of our Scene Shop, the Costume Shop, a theatre they call the Lab Theatre (which is a converted church) and the theatre they call the Augusta Conradi Studio Theatre (a problematic space from a lot of standpoints, but a space in which the faculty do not want to direct... so a good space).

We also had hours of boring training. The fire extinguisher training was moderately exciting, but I had done it before. The rest of the training covered how to dispose of biohazardous waste (something I'm sure I'll use all the time) and "Safety while using art materials." All of this stuff is very important, of course, but none of it is interesting at all and all of us have heard these spiels about five hundred times.

The insurance situation at the university is pretty awful. NONE of the students are covered by liability insurance of any kind. Each student is responsible for himself. We got a whole lecture from some insurance chick about not admitting liability if someone falls in our theatre or a theatre patron slips and gets hurt. Crazy.

Some photos from Fire Extinguisher training. This is Jill (she's a costumer) and the one on the right is Jamie (he's a lighting designer):

This is the other MA Theatre Studies student, Amy: