Once upon a time, I would walk into the rehearsal hall, thinking a day
would be a certain way, only to find that a simple, finish-on-time kind
of day had been up-ended by an actor hating the script, or that a
carefully constructed, make-a-masterpiece day had been chopped in half
because some key component was no longer available for the day. Quite
simply, things were not always what you planned for them to be.
I am a long way from a rehearsal hall these days, but the concept of
days changing without warning is just as close. Work may be determined
by who is sick or what is happening in the world. My hours on a non-work
day may fall together completely differently than I imagined, because
of a mood, or a late-breaking email, or simply the need for a nap. While
we like to believe we can control our days, the truth is, in soaps and
in life, there are countless factors beyond our control. The day we
finish may look nothing like the day we started. The results of our
efforts may look nothing like the goals we set before we began our endeavor.
My soap days were often as unpredictable as could possibly be imagined,
given how carefully they were planned and pre-produced, and yet, at the
end of the day, we always managed to generate many, many minutes of
content. So, if now, days aren't always what I imagined, they can still
be worthwhile, whether measured in time spent, or salary earned, or
simply discoveries made or moments enjoyed. Because you never really
know what you're facing when you walk into that rehearsal hall. So you
might as well be ready to rewrite the schedule.
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