I’ve been here in LA a few months now and the adventures have begun in full earnest. Actually,the true adventures only began in the past few weeks. Before then, I merely wallowed in unemployment and abject poverty filling out job applications online by the dozen while watching X Files reruns. But recently (and by “recently” I mean a week ago) things started going places. First off, after a sudden uptick in interviews, I got a job working the register at a vegan/gluten free bakery in west Hollywood (which is perhaps the most Los Angelenian of statements ever made) as well as a freelance gig working lights at a conference on a resort in Palos Verdes.
Well, maybe “working lights” is too generous a term. My job was to control the house lights which meant basically flicking a household light switch whenever I heard the stage manager say “house lights up — go!” through my headset. Though however simplistic my job, the real perks of working the conference were getting to spend some time on a beautiful (and outrageously expensive) seaside resort and to listen to the speakers attending the conference. The majority of said speakers were tech company CEOs, but being someone who can only hear the term “market share” so many times before zoning out, I was more interested in a person seemingly added as an afterthought at the end of the first day: US Senator Elizabeth Warren.
After a grueling lighting rehearsal before the speakers began, the theater crew were given a quick bathroom break, which I hastily took and then promptly got lost in the sprawling, large, and utterly uniform hallways of the resort. After jogging down several vast deserted hallways, I came to a large black door that looked suspiciously like the door to backstage. As I was now late and due back to my post, I hurriedly pulled open the door to find myself in the greenroom. The room contained some soothing music, a pyramid of a Coke cans, and several people including Senator Warren and (as a later found out) the CEO of Snapchat all of whom were looking surprised and expectantly at me. “Sorry, wrong door!” I said nervously and quickly scurried out before anyone else could get a word off.
After a bit more wandering, I found where I needed to be and the rest of night went off without a hitch. Senator Warren’s interview was (in my opinion) the best of conference and I never missed a single cue on the house lights.