USITTTT: Day One

Success!

This day actually began a long time ago for me. Tuesday was a pretty normal day off, sleeping late but punctuated with extra tidiness and packing. Nine-thirty in the P.M. I leave my apartment for the airport. The usual L.A. drive -- dense traffic, construction in inconvenient places, and a little misdirection from Google at the end of my directions -- and to the airport in plenty of time for my minutes-before-midnight flight where the plane would take off then I would sleep. Right? No. I read for a while, tried to sleep, read some more, tried again, read another chapter, laid my head down on the tray table, almost drifted off then a super trumpety song came to my headphones and it was all over. (Note to self: remove ALL songs with trumpets from phone.) I read until we landed then it was just enough to transfer to the new terminal, grab a small bite to eat, and board again. The second flight gave me a row to myself to stretch out, but two minutes after the captain made his "we have reached cruising altitude" speech, the plane started to descend. All right. It is now 10:00 am in North Carolina (7:00am back home), I have not slept, and I have a full day of conference events to attend.

Got myself to the hotel and met up with my former cohort and conference roommate, Lisa. Both of us half-starved we went on the prowl for food. Came upon a Jason's Deli (there is only one in the entire state of California and while it is within driving distance, I have yet to go), the perfect fix and just as we were settled met up with another Baylor alum who graduated two years before ourselves. Lunch with an unexpected old friend=best way to start a day. We made our way to the conference center for a painless registration and had plenty of time to chill and meet new people before session one.

Session One: Paperwork. Something I do very well. Still, despite my previous successes this was perhaps one of the best sessions I'll attend here. The lecture was concise and thorough, informative and helpful; coincidentally just how you want your paperwork to be.

Session Two: Tech riders. Sounds incredibly boring, but something I have absolutely no prior experience with. Fortunately, the presenters were well-informed and personable. They came from different positions which together formed a very holistic picture of the topic. Altogether, a very good session.

Session Three: Dance Management. Particularly interesting because I just finished a show in which I did all the choreography notation (my first attempt). This session was a great deal more involved than just notation, and as such very informative. Both of the presenters were given the session rather last minute so they didn't have any fancy slide shows or anything, but I think it was better that way. From what I could tell, they covered all the bases which I scribbled down furiously so that next time I do a dance show I have a starting point at least. Another useful and enjoyable session.

Session Four: Food Props. Somewhat less interesting than expected given that it was props-oriented and less stage management-oriented. A lot of SMs were there and we were able to glean some useful information so it wasn't a complete dud, but it wasn't the most insightful session for me.

This was the end of the USITT day for us. We ran through the rain to a pizza place across the street that was out of basically everything, but we were able to get a simple pizza before returning to the hotel. Both of us were exhausted so we hit the sack pretty early (although I did write the first half of this last night -- can you tell?) and after 30 hours of waking, I slept good.