This weekend we had some pretty heavy rains which revealed leaks in places we didn’t know we had them. And I am not using literary license when I say that. Two years ago we had 6 weeks of rain and there weren’t leaks anywhere near where it was cascading down the walls yesterday.

As a result, I spent the day repositioning fans to blow the carpet dry. However, before I left this evening I had to unplug many of them and return them backstage because they were being used for our production of the Odyssey opening this weekend. Not a few people remarked how fortuitous it was that the production design required us to buy fans to replicate the winds in the story.

One of the things I like about working in a creative setting is that one has requisite tools for said creation at one’s disposal for other purposes. You are able to respond better to problems when they tend to crop up. For example, we don’t need to put in work orders to replace light bulbs because we have ladders and genie lifts. We can rewire broken lighting fixtures, solder wires back together and test for circuit continuity. We can tighten what is loose and patch what is leaking.

Well, up to a point anyway. This weekend, all my staff could do was mop up what was leaking. Our theory is that a cast iron drain pipe has cracked in a place we can’t get to.

Of course, some times self sufficiency can be a curse as well. Since our facilities are used after normal work hours, we have the janitorial department provide us with extra stock for the restrooms in case we run out in the middle of a performance. Since the cast and crew often use the building directly behind us, we often end up restocking the restrooms there as well. Heck, about 8-10 years ago, I learned how to stop a urinals and toilets from constantly flushing and return them to service. I have been fixing the problem ever since saving lots of water. Some member of the custodial staff is getting off easy during our show runs!

Given that I have had to master a wide variety of financial, desktop publishing, database, image manipulation and word processing software in the course of my job, I figure I have picked up a goodly amount of skills in my life.

Last week I suggested that being in the arts hadn’t really helped out my math scores as much as the arts education advocacy ads suggest. I can’t deny that being involved with the arts has provided me with self confidence, self-reliance and the ability manipulate the world and address the challenges I encounter both physically and virtually.

Has participation in the creative arts prepared me for life in ways that other academic subjects, television, movies and video games never can?

You betcha.

Will it do the same for your kids? Like everything else, it depends on how long they are involved and how thoroughly they embrace it. The current stage craft class at my theatre has involved themselves with a gusto and in numbers I have never seen and the professor has rarely seen. If I knew what it was that was motivating this group, I would bottle it.

I know they are growing in knowledge and skill from the experience because they are coming in when there is no class and using what they have learned to create projects for other class—far in advance of deadlines! (Honestly, I think they are pod people or something, they are so atypical of the usual students in this class.)

So yes, working in the arts might be a thankless job with long hours, little pay and low prestige. It may not make the most convincing ad copy for the arts in education people, but I have always prized my experience in the arts for the self-reliance having such a wide variety of tools at ones disposal affords you.