I was working on Olso at Los Altos Stage Company. It was a fantastic production. I felt that I could actually be quite proud of it, and as we started teching the show I got an email from Hillbarn Theatre. They were looking to cast one final part in their production of Laughter on the 23rd floor.
I took a couple of days thinking what I wanted to do. I wait tables when I'm not acting, and it's unfortunately where I make the majority of my income. and unfortunately I will make 2x the amount of tips on a dinner shifts than the average lunch shift. It's just a matter of how many people come in and what they purchase (and this is assuming that we don't get shut down or severely downsize due to COVID-19). So the question was "can I survive the lack of money that doing another show will give me?"
I said yes...
Within 2 days I was asked to audition for San Jose Stage's August: Osage County (sorry for all the show/theatre names). An AEA company that pays weekly; they actually make the change in schedule worth it! The only issue is that Osage starts rehearsals next week. two days after Laughter opens. Some day I'll go into THAT headache! But suffice it to say that I had multiple call backs, was asked multiple times if I could drop laughter, and after a month was cast in both shows... about 2 weeks before rehearsals started for Osage.
And now! ............... Who knows what shows are happening? With the banning of big public events and social distancing that were recently put into place because of COVID-19 we're unsure if any of our shows will continue. All I DO know is that we're going to go forward as long as we can. At this point the CDC/WHO/CA Gov hasn't said anything about an event of our size except "social distancing". So we'll stop the second they say that's not enough, but for now...