BWW Blog: Ben Helzner - Clean-up and Dealing With Too Much Time

There was a sense of finality (and sawdust) in the air when the whole theatre department cleaned up our scene shop last week. Everyone was ready for our year to end. We had done our shows, and the props being put away were doing nothing except sitting there collecting dust. Sweeping the floor, organizing tools, and unscrewing wooden boards, it was strange walking through and dismembering things we had worked with for so long. No scene was left untouched from our final strike of the year, from our Yellow Brick Road from our rendition of Wizard of Oz, to the barnacles that appeared in The Little Mermaid.

This may be my confirmation bias speaking, but during a show, it seems like I always want just a little more time. Whether it's more time working on the show, more time at home, or just more time to sleep, no matter where I am in the process I'm thinking about what I can do or not do in order to get the most out of the hours the day. When a show ends, suddenly you can find time for this. But, just as quickly as the show's over, so are all of these activities vying for your time. I'm sure that's not true and it just seems that way because I remember the times it does happen more than the times it doesn't, but the sense of always doing something being suddenly taken away leaves me feeling like I have a couple extra hours in a day, and this final strike was something kind of like closure for the year.

Instead of thinking what I'd be doing right now if I had a practice to go to, I'm finding something to do, like, for instance, this blog. This isn't to say I've completely forgotten about my school's theatre program in preparation for the summer, as rampant speculation about next year's shows is already underway, but finding a time to say goodbye to show practices for a little while means that now I can do something else with my newfound time, like looking up broadway news. You know, non-theatre related stuff.

So how are the rest of you theatre kids dealing with the end of the year? With summer threatening an extremely relaxing few months, I need something to be anxious about.