Ah, insomnia. We meet again.
Not entirely true. I got about four hours sleep earlier tonight, but was woken by a nightmare and haven't been able to drop back off. Probably not all that surprising. So I have a glass of whisky (sadly just a blend, still can't afford the good stuff) next to me and am hoping to get the DVD player to work well enough to play Across The Universe for me. Maybe it'll lull my brain to sleep.
Anyway. I think I'll turn this into the promised rant about uni, because today's effort just really took the cake, the plates, the forks and even the natty little paper doilies. You may remember that a little while ago I was in a small car accident. I'm not sure if I mentioned that a couple of days later (so it may be unrelated, may be not) I dislocated my left hip while standing in the kitchen cooking dinner. Ow. Anyway, as has become my usual practice, I put it back in myself, yelped for a little while, took even more painkillers and muscle relaxants and got on with it. The hip is still sore (it's the one I damaged quite badly in the fall in 07) so I've been using my walking stick and generally treating it nicely ever since. Today at rehearsals the director told me that if my hip wasn't better in two weeks somebody else would have to take my role. This is the man who cast me as a cat which, yes, involves being on all fours a lot of the time when I'm not lounging in my best approximation of some of the charming poses Mushroom strikes in his sleep. He did this after I explained to him that I have a joint condition that while making me super flexible (hoorah!) also means that I do tend to get injured in said joints and when such an injury happens it takes me a little longer than your average human to heal. And he's given me a two week ultimatum. On a hip that took two months to come good the last time I hurt it. On Monday I think I'll investigate my options vis dropping the subject on medical grounds and seeing if I can get away with it without academic penalty from the uni or financial penalty from HECS. Anyone out there have any experience with this sort of thing and can tell me maybe what I'll need to do to get such dispensations? I'm registered with the Disability Office at the uni, so they know about the EDS and its ramifications, I have a doctor who'll likely be happy to write me a letter saying "She's hurt and she ain't getting better in a hurry," not to mention a physio who'll probably fully support me and treat any damage I do to myself when I punch the director for being an enormous knobhead.
I can't say I'll miss the show should I be able to get away with not doing it. With the combined wisdom of theatre companies and universities everywhere, the executive decision was made early on that, as Monday's lecture/rehearsal is scheduled to start at 0800, everyone actually needs to be there at 0730 to warm up which means those of us on the crew are required at 0715 to set up the stage so that we too may warm up. Yeah. Feel my enthusiasm for that. Then everyone went into a panic because we only have a 12 week rehearsal period, so they wanted everyone's availabilities so they could schedule extra rehearsals - and added to this request the mandate that nobody should be unavailable for whole days unless they had work or family commitments, of which details would be expected to be provided. I emailed them back my availabilities, including the fact that I had intentionally kept one day a week lecture free so that I could make and attend medical appointments with my myriad of specialists (also that I sincerely hoped that not including medical reasons was an unintentional oversight on their part) and if they expected details of said medical appointments they could feel free to either pay for them or suck my dick. I know what's going on - the course convenor is a Grade-A bitch, and is bullying the production and stage managers for each play (students from the courses who have elected themselves to those roles) and they're passing on the bullying to us. The stage manager even told me that the course convenor told her that if she had any friends left at the end of the process she wasn't doing her job. Hmmmm. As a stage manager, I can see where she's coming from - being a hardass is a necessary part of the job. But sitting the cast down and having a screaming fit at them about how they need to fucking well respect you in your role is not the way to go about earning such respect. I know on at least one show I worked on the rumour was that I didn't have any teeth (nobody ever saw me smile), but I'm pretty sure I'm still friends with several cast members from that show, and in fact every show I've stage managed in the last seven years. Motivating your students: you're doin' it wrong.
Other than that my other two subjects rock. I think my Counterculture lecturer may have fried a few too many of his circuits during the time he's lecturing on - he goes off on massive tangents and gets that strange distant look in his eye when describing how psychedelic music and art was supposed to represent and reflect what it was like using drugs. I'm almost to the point of suggesting he bring in a bag of sugar cubes and let us all have a practical lesson in that theory ... He also emailed people 90 minutes before the last lecture before the holidays saying the lecture was cancelled. Useful for those of us who travel from Brisbane and were already in transit by that time. He also waited until the night before this week's lecture (which was supposed to be an exam) that he'd pushed the exam back to next week so we could still enjoy his lecture on Pink Floyd. Which he dedicated to the album Dark Side Of The Moon ... after having us read a very in-depth article dissecting Wish You Were Here. *headdesk*
Anyway, eternaldark seems to have got the DVD player working, so I'm gonna go watch a movie and try to fall asleep on the couch.
Anyway. I think I'll turn this into the promised rant about uni, because today's effort just really took the cake, the plates, the forks and even the natty little paper doilies. You may remember that a little while ago I was in a small car accident. I'm not sure if I mentioned that a couple of days later (so it may be unrelated, may be not) I dislocated my left hip while standing in the kitchen cooking dinner. Ow. Anyway, as has become my usual practice, I put it back in myself, yelped for a little while, took even more painkillers and muscle relaxants and got on with it. The hip is still sore (it's the one I damaged quite badly in the fall in 07) so I've been using my walking stick and generally treating it nicely ever since. Today at rehearsals the director told me that if my hip wasn't better in two weeks somebody else would have to take my role. This is the man who cast me as a cat which, yes, involves being on all fours a lot of the time when I'm not lounging in my best approximation of some of the charming poses Mushroom strikes in his sleep. He did this after I explained to him that I have a joint condition that while making me super flexible (hoorah!) also means that I do tend to get injured in said joints and when such an injury happens it takes me a little longer than your average human to heal. And he's given me a two week ultimatum. On a hip that took two months to come good the last time I hurt it. On Monday I think I'll investigate my options vis dropping the subject on medical grounds and seeing if I can get away with it without academic penalty from the uni or financial penalty from HECS. Anyone out there have any experience with this sort of thing and can tell me maybe what I'll need to do to get such dispensations? I'm registered with the Disability Office at the uni, so they know about the EDS and its ramifications, I have a doctor who'll likely be happy to write me a letter saying "She's hurt and she ain't getting better in a hurry," not to mention a physio who'll probably fully support me and treat any damage I do to myself when I punch the director for being an enormous knobhead.
I can't say I'll miss the show should I be able to get away with not doing it. With the combined wisdom of theatre companies and universities everywhere, the executive decision was made early on that, as Monday's lecture/rehearsal is scheduled to start at 0800, everyone actually needs to be there at 0730 to warm up which means those of us on the crew are required at 0715 to set up the stage so that we too may warm up. Yeah. Feel my enthusiasm for that. Then everyone went into a panic because we only have a 12 week rehearsal period, so they wanted everyone's availabilities so they could schedule extra rehearsals - and added to this request the mandate that nobody should be unavailable for whole days unless they had work or family commitments, of which details would be expected to be provided. I emailed them back my availabilities, including the fact that I had intentionally kept one day a week lecture free so that I could make and attend medical appointments with my myriad of specialists (also that I sincerely hoped that not including medical reasons was an unintentional oversight on their part) and if they expected details of said medical appointments they could feel free to either pay for them or suck my dick. I know what's going on - the course convenor is a Grade-A bitch, and is bullying the production and stage managers for each play (students from the courses who have elected themselves to those roles) and they're passing on the bullying to us. The stage manager even told me that the course convenor told her that if she had any friends left at the end of the process she wasn't doing her job. Hmmmm. As a stage manager, I can see where she's coming from - being a hardass is a necessary part of the job. But sitting the cast down and having a screaming fit at them about how they need to fucking well respect you in your role is not the way to go about earning such respect. I know on at least one show I worked on the rumour was that I didn't have any teeth (nobody ever saw me smile), but I'm pretty sure I'm still friends with several cast members from that show, and in fact every show I've stage managed in the last seven years. Motivating your students: you're doin' it wrong.
Other than that my other two subjects rock. I think my Counterculture lecturer may have fried a few too many of his circuits during the time he's lecturing on - he goes off on massive tangents and gets that strange distant look in his eye when describing how psychedelic music and art was supposed to represent and reflect what it was like using drugs. I'm almost to the point of suggesting he bring in a bag of sugar cubes and let us all have a practical lesson in that theory ... He also emailed people 90 minutes before the last lecture before the holidays saying the lecture was cancelled. Useful for those of us who travel from Brisbane and were already in transit by that time. He also waited until the night before this week's lecture (which was supposed to be an exam) that he'd pushed the exam back to next week so we could still enjoy his lecture on Pink Floyd. Which he dedicated to the album Dark Side Of The Moon ... after having us read a very in-depth article dissecting Wish You Were Here. *headdesk*
Anyway, eternaldark seems to have got the DVD player working, so I'm gonna go watch a movie and try to fall asleep on the couch.