While cleaning the apartment and prepping for tonight’s Colby Awards (an annual awards ceremony at Wheaton Drama aka WDI that honors parties that work backstage) I started thinking about my time with WDI in general.

Ever since I had the privilege to be cast in WDI’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels back in May of 2012… I haven’t been able to leave the group since.

A self-proclaimed “floater” wherein I join a theatre group, partake in a couple of shows then disappear to the next group, Wheaton Drama was the first that provided an opportunity that I never had in the past: to work in stage management backstage.

After Dirty Rotten Scoundrels it was agreed that for the next musical (in this case The Sound of Music later that year) I would help as ASM and learn the ropes as it were. The original intent being that I learn as much as possible and I could rotate with the other SMs for the musicals so I could still audition for shows around the Chicagoland area and suburbs. I wanted to have the flexibility of not only being onstage but backstage as well as my work schedule dictates.

Before Dirty Rotten Scoundrels I was lucky enough to be in productions and to have had opportunities to interact with various parties to build confidence and joy in being onstage… and although I loved it (for it was a kind of escape from everything else) I knew a balance between the two parts of me was completed me.

However, as the story goes, an ex-bf was cast in The Sound of Music that forced me to beg out of the production for my own sanity and I had to wait until the next production came along before I could be ASM (in this case WDI’s Into the Woods.
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