James Duke, production manager at Central Piedmont Community College interviewed me at SETC March 2008 . In April he hired me to work for their summer season. It was located in Charlotte, North Carolina, and that was one of the main reasons I choose CPCC. It was somewhere I had never been before and a type of summer stock that I had never worked on before. They hired me as the ASM and assistant prop mistress for their five show season - a new experimental position. Annie Get Your Gun was their first show of the season. When I got there in May I started working on props during the day and went to rehearsals at night. It sort of felt like my days at ACU, but no class and at 10pm I went home and didn’t have to worry about homework. I thought to myself, “Oh…this is what my life will be like for real…I can’t wait for this to be permanent.”
I’ve done fast shows, but never this fast, and at CPCC they put shows up so fast I thought there was no way. Of course theatres all over the country put shows up in two weeks, and sometimes more than just one show at a time. But it was a new area for me, so I had to learn quickly. Working in the day was no trouble, I’d pull, buy, and make props for the show, and then take them over to the rehearsal space and at night watch them be used during rehearsals where I took notes and learned how I would be running the show backstage. The cast had been there since April rehearsing with a rehearsal stage manager, and then the PSM for the summer came in at the same time as I did and we learned the show together. It was actually 11 days after our first rehearsal that the show went up and I was pretty proud of myself, (and my PSM, Caren Carson) that I learned it and then rocked it out like it had been a two month process.
While I was getting the tour of all the schools' facilities with my technical director, Don Ketcham, told me that the Props artisan that they hired wouldn’t arrive until the second week because of a conference she had to attend. Until she got there he told me to look through the spaces and work as much as I could and she would join me when she got back. The second week came and by Wednesday she still hadn’t shown up so I asked Don where she was. He said she was sick and she’d be there as soon as she could. Well it turned out she had mono. Sadly, she wasn’t coming for awhile. Meaning I was in charge of AnnieGYG and all the props for it. And if she didn’t get better in time, I'd be in charge of the next one too…I ended up being the person the production staff got to know and linked me with all prop needs even after AnnieGYG was over and she was working with us. I guess missing the first four weeks of the summer season doesn’t help you gain a good rapport with the staff. I didn’t mind though – it was a good challenge.
We needed a very specific kind of hamper for the show…and I had to build it because the carpenters were swamped. It had to roll, Dolly Tate had to fall into comfortably, the top lid had to secure close with her inside of it, and Frank Butler had to be able to stand on top of it while Dolly was inside… That was my big project. So I started building - ¼ inch plywood box, castered on the bottom, and 4 inch foam lining the inside. Then I had to paint it a natural wood grain; which I didn’t know how to do. So, scenic charge and extremely talented painter, Carly Todd, taught me how to paint a wood grain- the grain, all the washes, and then the glaze. I was really happy with it, and proud that I learned the new painting technique. Afterwards we aged it and plastered it with traveling stickers. Frank stood proudly with poor Dolly inside and I was happy it met with the approval of the director.