The Children's Hour

This project was my first design and doubled as my first experiential learning activity.  This experience was so satisfying and fulfilling. For a lot of us, this was the first creative venture we’ve done in person since the pandemic started. For that reason I think it meant a lot more than it would’ve otherwise. I’d designed last year but it was virtual, so coming back to a physical space and doing work with my hands was just so wonderful. I was able to work with so many talented other designers in what ended up being an incredibly collaborative process. I worked especially closely with Anna Shih, our lighting designer. We spent the entirety of tech week bouncing ideas off each other and helping each other solve problems. We were both able to be very open to criticisms and suggestions and it was so refreshing. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her. Our aspects of the design worked together so well and I am so proud of what we were able to create together.

I felt as though I took much more of a leadership role than I thought. I think I came in with such a strong design concept that my design ended up being the central design point that the other designers worked out from. I felt as though I was leading the design process in that way, especially early on in the process. I didn’t anticipate working with the actors very much but I also found myself taking charge of actors during transitions as well. This included teaching them how to handle the set pieces and holding them accountable when they weren’t doing things correctly. As I wrote in the proposal, I worked with multiple assistants over the course of two distinct projects—woodworking and painting. I’ll talk about that experience more later, but it was really great and I think I was able to very effectively handle working with so many different people on so many different projects. 

I did, however, find that there were a number of unexpected challenges. In my original proposal I wrote that we didn’t have much support from the adults in the School of Drama and that the existing support was hard to access. Though it was, I guess, an expected challenge, I didn’t anticipate how much of a challenge it would be. The most frustrating aspect of this process was the lack of response from administrators. I reached out to School of Drama staff about the possibility of borrowing furniture multiple times and have yet to receive a response even now. It took a few weeks for another administrator to respond to multiple emails asking permission to move chairs in the theatre. They were understandably busy, however it made us feel neglected.

Being students, there were also certain things we were unable to do on our own—not for lack of ability but because of academic red tape. On the one occasion the school did help with those things, there was a big miscommunication that resulted out of them rushing to do it without consulting me first or informing me of issues ahead of time. It ended up being especially detrimental to my designs. In my original proposal, I mentioned that this would help me learn how to advocate for myself, however it more so just made me feel incredibly unsupported and frustrated. We were making so much effort to get the production done and it felt as though the admin weren’t recognizing that effort or giving us any effort back. Though, I will say that Alex Danilchik from the scene shop was so helpful (and equally as frustrated about the red tape as I was). He was the closest thing I had to a mentor during this process and was able to get me past the point where my own knowledge had fallen short.

I was also able to work on knowing when to step down and let others take the lead. For example, I asked my roommate Noel to help me with the construction of the window frames. Given that we didn’t have access to the scene shop, it was just me and them building them together, relying only on ourselves. Noel is so much more knowledgeable about woodworking than I am, so I deferred to them while we worked. I was still in charge of the design and the overall plan, but the methods were in their hands and the end product is all the better for it. The same was true with the paintings. I took the lead on the designs and kept the timeline on track, but Zara and Ruby (who are both much more talented artists than I) were the real drivers of the process. I would’ve been so lost without them. In both those cases, I let go of my ego and did the grunt work—the sanding, the measuring, the drilling, or painting the under layers and flat washes—so that their expertise was able to be put to use where it mattered. I learned so much from letting them take control and give input instead of forcing them to only listen to me. Techniques I’d never seen before or strategies I never would’ve thought to use.

I think more so than anything else, this process taught me how important it is to allow yourself to ask for help. When I think of leadership, asking for help doesn’t always fit into my idea of it. I feel like so often we see leadership through such an individualistic lens. But without the help of Noel, Zara, Ruby, or our costume designer who sewed a couch cover by hand for me, our stage manager who wrote in cursive for me, and many of the actors and crew helped me paint furniture, this process would’ve been so much more time consuming and I can say confidently that the end product would not be nearly as good as it turned out to be. The best leader is the one who knows when to take a step back and I think I was able to take that to heart.