Monday, July 25, 2011

How it all started.

   When you enjoy and love what you do for a living its said that you will never work a day in your life. I never believed that saying until one day I took a chance, made a life changing decision, and quit my job to fully pursue a career in stage production. My name is Wade Boone McMahan, and I am 23 currently living in Las Cruces, New Mexico. When I told certain people that I was quiting my regular day job to go on and begin my new journey most of them supported me. A small percent of them said I was throwing away my life and that i was gonna hit rock bottom. Well i hit rock bottom financially and loved every moment of it. What those people didn't understand is that I am a certain individual who is ambitious and always ready to take on new challenges to step my way up the ladder. That's exactly what I did and I am still doing since June of 2008.
     
     Being a stage hand you start like everybody else does by pushing boxes on and off the semi trailers. From that point its up to you if you want to learn the whole aspect of stage production to work your way up. I started about 3 years ago up in Ruidoso, New Mexico and in those years I have expanded out to Las Cruces, El Paso, and Albuquerque. I have stepped my foot in live concerts, theatrical performances, live TV, and in movies. Since the years of seeing first hand and working in stage production i highly respect these individuals for all the devotion and hard work they put in to setting up these productions. From setting up the lighting, sound, rigging, staging, and back line, which are the musical instruments and amplifiers used during a performance, I realize how much goes into setting up these shows. There is more departments working with movies and theater such as carpentry, wardrobe, video, etc...and the crews begin to get larger in numbers. Crews will work around the clock putting together these concert, shows, or movies that we watch and enjoy almost everyday of our lives. I started to get more and more jobs with different production companies by networking and meeting new people every show I worked. Not only did I meet people from all over the nation, but I began to meet people from all over the world. I have worked my way up enough to be financially stable and now i am expanding even more not only as a employee in stage production, but as an artist myself.   

      About 5 months ago I decided to try to expand myself to another country. I sent an e-mail to a theater teacher in Edinburgh, UK asking about the stage production and theater programs over there. The reason I was interested is because the United Kingdom has some of the oldest theaters in the world today. It was a shot in the wind to see if i would get a reply back, but a month later he contacted me back asking me to send over my resume and recommendations. He was impressed and right away he started to give me names of production companies he works along side and from there we set up a skype interview over the computer. After that I was invited to go over to meet, stay, and work along side many of the companies and individuals there. The United Kingdom has some of the largest festivals, and i will be attending some of them such as the Fringe, The Royal Military Tattoo, and Edinburgh Art festivals. I not only want to share my story, but the stories of all these other individuals, companies, and artists as well. One thing i learned is to never give up and always push forward no matter how hard it is. 

        One of the festivals I will be attending is the Fringe festival that runs august 5th through the 29th. It is one of the biggest festivals in the world and was established in 1947.  

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