Santa Fe Opera

Hello everyone. This is my first post. I apologize for the delay. For a while I did not have internet at my apartment and was unable to get on the internet from anything but my phone.

I am a stage crew apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera House this summer. We are doing 5 shows in rep and each one is individually the biggest shows I have ever seen. I have posted a few pictures on facebook and will continue to do so throughout the summer. This place is incredible. Santa Fe is beautiful, the opera is amazing and the food is unbelievable.

On the Stage crew there are 18 apprentices. We have two assistant supervisors, two supervisors and our main boss is known as the stage carpenter, or deck boss. The hours are long, there are a lot of them, (I worked a twenty hour shift yesterday alone) and we do an unbelievable amount of stuff everyday. The stage crews responsibility is to do all of the scene changes during the shows, do the changeovers from one show to the next, and be available to do any miscelleanous job that gets thrown our way.

Mostly up to this point we have been learning the specifics of how the opera works and the ways they like things to be done. We have been doing a lot of "notes" which are basically any little odd job that needs to be done that the carpenters do not have time for. One of the first jobs that I had was demolishing the "La Boheme" set which was built five years ago and was performed in two different seasons. It took us a full week, and 10 people working at least 10 hour days to demolish is completely. Imagine if "Rent" were in CY Stephens. That is how big that show was.

Our primary duty at this point is to be at all tech rehearsals, light focus sessions, run throughs and shift rehearsals to get prepared for the opening night, which is in just under two weeks. It is a crazy place. I am having a great time and learning a lot about how the professional world works.