Artist Advocate
Art has been central in my life since the days I finger painted in elementary. The interest grew into a passion as I can to understand just how important art is to the world and a society. As an artist myself, I saw the power of color, of lines, of sound, and of story. It is what will remain after we are gone and it will influence everything between now and that future. This is why I want to support artists, big and small, on their journeys and their communities.
Audio Engineer at the Language Archive:
During my sophomore year here at UW, I decided that I wanted to join the tech crew for a small play at UW. This decision was made for multiple reasons but the main one was that I wanted to dip my toe into the world of editing outside of the virtual sphere that I usually inhabit. I ended up being the audio engineer for the play The Language Archive. The experience was a fun one that required me to do a lot of things that I normally wouldn’t do such as recording people out in the street, staying late on campus, and trying to match another person’s artistic vision. While this isn't technically advocating, it is an example of me growing as an artist myself and engaging with the community.
Promotion graphic for the play
Collaboration: Through this experience I learned a little more about collaborating in a creative project. What was interesting about this situation was the fact that there was a play director who interpreted the play and had us act out what he saw. Usually I work in groups where there is less of a director and more of a project manager who nudges everyone to work in a timely fashion. The actual artistic interpretations are left to each person and the group itself. It’s all about collaboration, negotiating, and bouncing ideas off each other. Here, we had one distinct vision and while we could chime in and offer different perspectives, the final call was the director’s. While this system isn’t as free as the kind I am accustomed to, it has its merits as a single, unified, and concrete goal. It’s another system that can get things done.
Organization: Unsurprisingly, plays require an incredible amount of coordination between the actors, the director, the stage manager, and the backstage staff. There were so many moving parts from props to lights to sound to the actual action that our stage manager had to be extremely efficient in her time management and organization. I learned a lot from watching her work. I then applied some of her tactics for my own workflow. A daily planner, organized checklists, excel sheets, and intuitive naming conventions are things that I picked up from her. I still use these organization strategies today (though I have developed them further to best fit my needs).
Responding to Ambiguity: This play required me to respond to ambiguity, especially with the visions of the director. Early in the play, the fine details of the sounds, the sights, and the actions were still blurry. As the team worked to refine them, we had to interpret the director’s vision, which had varying levels of clarity depending on the subject matter. For my role specifically, I found ambiguity in the director’s request for the opening and closing of the play. He wasn’t sure how he wanted to open or close the play. After some brainstorming, we had a vague idea of what we wanted, and it was up to me to make it work. It was a little difficult between ambitious ideas, limited capacity, and time, but in the end we made a product that we all could be proud of.
Power Dynamics: It was interesting to see how the power dynamics of putting on the play worked out. There was a director, a stage manager, and then there was everyone else who had a specialized job. Mine was audio engineer. It was interesting to see how questions and duties were sorted between all the jobs and who got to have the final say in what. The structure was very simple, only having two real points of influence, the director and the stage manager I also observed the director’s methods for showing respect, care, and influence to his team. This was interesting to see him balance trying to friendly but also authoritative with the team. From this experience I learned that it's the little things that matter most to people. A well placed compliment and active listening are priceless.
Initiative: It turns out that audio work for this play was minimal and a lot of the work didn’t start until we were midway through the production process or more. This is due to the director needing more time to fully form what kind of vision he wanted the play to project. While mine did have some ideas of what he wanted, it wasn’t clear until tech week (the week before the curtains open). This made my job uneventful for the first few weeks of production. Seeing everyone else working hard inspired me to do the same, I created mock up tests, idea examples, and gathered sound effects for the director to jump start his though process for the audio in the play.