You can feel the presence of stress in a room like some kind of heavy fog.
My place at the very bottom rung of the ladder in terms of authority at my current job means I have no reason to be stressed 99% of the time. I'm a tech assistant, stage hand, front of house assistant, answerer of voicemails, runner of errands. In a lot of ways I'm essentially a glorified lackey - anything anyone needs done, they can delegate it to me and I'll do it. This affords me a strange vantage point from which to look at the goings-on of a professional company. I'm not stressed because I have no real responsibility. Everyone else on the other hand, well...
Sitting backstage watching actors run back and forth freaking out about lines missed or cues skipped; the stress of things going wrong with tech — all normal and reasonable things to be expected at any point in a run, but basically inevitable on opening night when we've only had one preview (there's usually at least a week of previews before opening). It's strange to see it happening outside of me, especially seeing as I'm someone who very easily gets stressed or anxious for basically no reason.
Anyway, my break is almost over now so I've gotta get back to that but I figured this was something to write about for today.
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