Production Management
Production Management Assistant, Loyola University Chicago DFPA:
February 2020-May 2021
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Production Management Coordinator, Loyola University Chicago DFPA:
May 2021-August 2022
I was hired in Loyola University Chicago's Department of Fine and Performing Arts as a Production Management Assistant in February of 2020. This was my first experience working in production management, and I was so thrilled to start a new chapter of my life. I began training and then the COVID-19 pandemic began; my training transitioned to a virtual setting, but I still gained a thorough understanding of our system of operations and how our office functioned within our larger organization. I was trained on our organizing systems, including Asana, Airtable, Microsoft Outlook, and CalendarWiz. I was taught how we use these tools to schedule and organize our season for our office and broader faculty and staff within the theatre, dance, music, and fine arts programs. I was also trained on other important duties that our office was responsible for, including keeping production deadlines on track with our faculty and staff, scheduling our mainstage and second stage programming, onboarding and training new production staff and stage managers, and a myriad of other tasks. I appreciated the help of my fellow assistants. Gianni Carcagno, Ed Fogarty, and Rebecca Walker, and our Coordinator, Amelia Ablan, for all their assistance and guidance in preparing me for the work in this office.
20-21 Space Planning Document
During the next school year, I was feeling ready to work more independently and on some larger projects. I began working on bigger projects and tasks and really found my own working and communication style that was a blend of kindness and clarity. I worked on helping our department adjust to virtual programming due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and assisted with organizing specific in-person space requests. I facilitated communication between faculty and production team members about any updates or specific information related to any of our programming, and I held schedule and run production meetings, including note taking and distributing said notes to the team. I also helped manage various space requests across multiple venues on our varying space planning documents. As the year continued, I became the main liaison for all dance related events, including our Senior Showcase, Dance Informance, and Dance Composition. I helped coordinate filming times for these various projects in our dance studios, cleaning, safety, and testing protocols to all those involved with the filming, and also helped run the events as a video operator on Zoom. During the spring, I also helped train one of our new management assistants, Alex Umekubo. Overall, I learned a tremendous amount working as a production management assistant and am thankful for the opportunity to nurture my work ethic into something more mature, passionate, responsible, and trustworthy to get the job done smoothly.
21-22 Space Planning
After the 2020-2021 school year wrapped, our managing director asked me if I would step up and become our new Production Management Coordinator. While many of my tasks remained the same, I would now be in charge of delegating work to and supervising our management assistants and would have a substantially larger role in working with staff and faculty. I was ecstatic to accept and starting this position over the summer. I was able to return to our in-person office and slowly transition myself into our office's main coordinator. Over the summer, I also created an entirely new database in Airtable for our theatre department's library; I also helped spearhead and update our COVID-19 policies for returning to campus, and I prepared our department with personal protection equipment, equipment for symptom checks and live links to forms for testing consent for students. I also trained another one of our new production management assistants, Olivia Ash, and we created materials for new students arriving to our campus for the first time since the pandemic started. I worked hard to make sure that both Alex and Olivia had work to do and were feeling confident about what they were being asked to accomplish. We worked extremely hard as a trio, adjusting to never-ending changes to space requests due to the pandemic, consistently problem solving with students and faculty, and overall getting our theatre re-oriented to the physical and "real" world. We felt the stress that many in the theatre world were experiencing, but we were all also able to learn how to keep moving forward and how we can work together as humans first, then artists/theatre makers. I learned about my leadership style, my strengths and weaknesses as a production manager, and an overall appreciation for the astronomical effort it takes to keep an organization running.
22-23 Rehearsal Breakdown
Section of Loyola Theatre Policy
Spring 2022 Second Stage Planning Document
Over the course of the 2021-2022 year, we organized and produced over 50 events across theatre, dance, music, and fine arts. I still served as a liaison for the dance community and worked closely with the Director of Dance in various space requests for their student showcases and programming. I helped rewrite our DFPA production policies and guidelines to adapt to ongoing challenges such as social media usage and non-consensual recording in a class or rehearsal room. Over the year, I also assisted in organizing and planning a community-wide conference for the 25th annual in-person conference for the Pedagogy of the Theatre of the Oppressed. I helped mentor new stage managers in our mainstage and second stage programming and provided support for all different kinds of departmental collaborations with faculty members in different departments at Loyola such as communications, and outside artists and guests that we hired to work on our productions. We also had two more management assistants get hired in our office, Wency Hernández Rubio and Ava Niemi. I helped train these two individuals and felt confident in passing the buton off to Alex, Wency, and Ava as my time at Loyola came to a close. While at Loyola and serving in the Production Office, I harnessed and finessed skills in communication, organization, kindness, and teamwork that I believe will be extremely beneficial to any future endeavors I have in the performing arts world. I'm honored to have been trusted by so many students and faculty and to have been able to collaborate with so many incredible people while in this position. Cheers to what lies ahead!
