PianoFighter Gabi Patacsil discusses Scrabble and the double-duty lifestyle.
I run down the steps to the 16th Street BART train after a(nother) late night of rehearsal, hoping I can catch my train which is just arriving. As I hit the bottom step, the doors close in front of me, and I look forward to an additional twenty minutes of banal iPhone fumbling added to my already lengthy commute. I resume my games of Scrabble but soon get annoyed by the computer (set to “hard” of course) that has reached its third bingo of the game (bullshit). I go through the latest slew of emails knowing I’ve no energy left to craft the simplest reply. I text my brother (slash new roommate) that I’ll be arriving at the the N. Berkeley BART at 11:40-ish (yeah that’s PM). He’s going to meet me so I don’t have to walk those dark, empty streets all by my lonesome. I look forward to that 10 minute walk which serves as our only qt and the only time I’m not going to be judged by how well I play my part, at work or on stage. Hopefully, the feeling is somewhat mutual. I get to bed a bit past midnight and set my alarm for 6am, set to repeat my typical 18 hour day.
The amount of caffeine I ingest would make most people bounce off the walls, but it keeps me juuussst relatively alert. I overdo the makeup to *try* and hide the dark circles and pale complexion. The whites of my eyes remain a permanent pinkish hue. I use vacation days to do laundry and hopefully add to my average 5-6 hour/night sleep schedule. I’ve stopped buying fresh groceries after I realized I was just buying that bread and those vegetables time before they made friendly with some mold and a trash bag. All of this is a direct result of a double (doubly full?) life I lead. One that is all too familiar to many of my other theater peers. By day, I am a strategic consultant which, in the simplest form, means conducting user research to inform design. On the evenings and weekends, I throw myself into this production or that, acting, directing and/or producing another show to be seen by my faithful fans. And by fans I mean my coworkers and friends (well, some of them).
And, well, I guess I love it all.
Theater has long been a part of my self description and has done more for my personal development than any other presence in my life. My job as a consultant can be incredibly demanding, and I would sometimes dream of a way to make theater actually pay. But then I would get that super cool project with the best client ever, or be blown away at a roundtable with various experts talking about some obscure or forward thinking topic – and I get as excited as I do for opening night.
I’m not sure what this means for me thinking 2, 5, 10 years down the road; I don’t think this life will be a permanent grind, but for now I don’t see it any other way. I’ve only recently seen the thread in it all. I love taking the people in the different client organizations or the characters in the different plays and piecing together their various nuances, where they came from, what they want, what they need. I love using these profiles to tell a story through space or through performance. I love making connections with my clients and with my audiences. I love to be a storyteller.
-Gabi
Posted December 6, 2011 at 12:26 pm
[...] that maybe someday we won’t have to, I present PianoFight.com’s Day Job blog series, truly started last month by Gabi Patacsil. Hey, we’re real people and PianoFight hasn’t made us filthy stinking rich yet so [...]