When I was helping produce a live dinner show.exe

This is a cautionary tale.

I basically lived in a truck going to and from a hotel for a month doing just about everything that was asked of me with no pay.

The dinner show was more or less a disaster from the beginning, for a number of reasons but namely since the hotel our actors would be performing in was less than thrilled to let us do this, on top of last time a show of ours was done there they didn’t help with marketing and were altogether nigh on displeased by the presence of actors and theater people, which I can’t blame them for. Although credit where credit is due, our actors came through and made it to regular rehearsals and put the work in hard and committed for a month, some even driving an hour out of their way for it several times a week. But all the previous problems were apparent in this new show, too.

I was at the beck and call of the “team leader” for the project, which was an exhausting ordeal and in no small way because she would call at all hours of the day and night demanding I address her whims or else I’d “lose my job”, or that I’d “be easy to replace.”

I’m pretty sure I was the only one who treated that laughing man’s payless nightmare as a job, since I had no other. All those hard working actors had other responsibilities anchoring them to reality.

I was also heavily looked down on by her because I was 17-18 years old at the time, regardless of the fact that I showed up early and stayed late for everything that was asked of me and always put in the work with a smile on my face.

Rant aside, I say all of this to say that when the dinner show was finally over and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore I came home that night and had this cathartic release that was me sitting on the toilet in the back of the house, eating pizza half naked, laughing maniacally and shitting hard my woes into the toilet bowl of safety, behind a locked door with my phone turned off like some kind of depraved and damaged soul, after which, promptly dyeing my hair blue.

And that’s why you never do work for free for people who don’t respect you.