Hug Me, I’m a Parent Artist

Wanna know the most stressful thing I go through when doing a show? Nope, it’s not the casting process. Nope, it’s not learning all those lines. Nope, it’s not building my character, memorizing the blocking, building relationships with new people, staying up late, getting up early, working through dinner, running the same show over and over, shifting work schedules or even performance anxiety…

The biggest stress I experience when doing a show is…childcare. It’s so stressful that I’m starting to have anxiety just writing out what I go through. See that picture above? That’s one half of the schedule I had to draw up so that I could visually map out what I would do with my kids for five weeks of rehearsals and five weekends of performances. 

I was VERY fortunate with this current show (A Dark Sky Full of Stars at Theatre Vertigo) because this was a team of incredible women lead by a director with a teenage son, so early on in the process they let me bring my kids to rehearsals when needed. I’ve had other amazing production teams who also allowed me to bring my kids to rehearsals and my co-parent has been lucky to work with a theater company that allows him to do the same. 

While this incredible understanding from the production company does help my childcare dilemma, it isn’t ideal. When my kids are there, I cannot be a full artist. My brain is forced to be half artist, half parent. In this show, for instance, I am on stage the entire time. Which means I’m tied up for a majority of the rehearsal with only a few breaks for me to go over and check on my kids. This also means that while I’m on stage rehearsing, my mom brain is in overdrive listening for the slightest sounds of misbehavior; or peeking over every chance I can get to see if the kids are ok. It means I sometimes have to run off to stop a fight, quiet them down, or take someone to the bathroom. When that happens, I feel like an absolute burden on the rest of the team and like I’m not pulling my weight. And keep in mind, my kids are WONDERFUL. Not only have they been going to rehearsals with us for over 3 years now, but they are 8 and 9 years old, which are really independent ages, and their dad and I have always been really strict with them about behavior when at the theatre so they are really well “trained” at what is acceptable and what is not. All of that does nothing to soothe the hyperactivity of my mom brain and I feel like my artist brain gets shafted in the process. 

So, what is my option if I don’t want to bring them to rehearsal? Well, first I coordinate with my co-parent, which means trading childcare days so that we each still get them 50% of the time just in different chunks. Then I call in any family or friends who have a close relationship with the kids to see if they can take a rehearsal or two for me, keeping in mind that my rehearsals are typically late into the evening and that this irregular schedule may be taxing for anyone watching them, and, during the week, anyone watching them would need to be at my house so the kids are in bed at a decent time on a school night. And, I live all the way down in Tigard which makes me feel even crappier about asking people to come watch them. 

So, what happens when those options are exhausted? That’s when I move to babysitters. Wanna know the average rate of a babysitter for 2 kids for late hours? $20/hour. So, for a three hour rehearsal, with an hour of drive time (from my house, everything is 30 minutes), I’m out $80. Sometimes I can book a young pre-teen babysitter or one we’ve had for a long time for a slight discount, but the lowest would be $45-50 for that time. Now, it’s common knowledge that theatre doesn’t pay well. Until this show, I had never been paid. So, obviously, it can feel quite painful to be forking out $50-80 a night with the knowledge that that is money you will never get back. 

NOW, take everything you read in the last two paragraphs and apply it 100% to performances. There is no option to bring them to performances so I have to go right into planning mode. Last week, I started getting all my childcare ducks in a row and I could feel myself starting to panic. I could feel a tightness in my chest. I could feel the weight of guilt that comes from asking people to watch your kids for free start to crush me. I could feel the pain of knowing my wallet was going to take a significant hit start growing in my stomach. Even as I’ve been writing this, that horrible feeling of anxiety has started to course through my veins again. It got so bad when I was looking at that schedule that I blurted out involuntarily, “I CAN’T DO SHOWS ANYMORE!” 

Don’t worry. That thought passed. I went 14 years without doing shows and that nearly killed me. I hadn’t done a show in the last year before I booked this one and that nearly killed me. I need theatre in my life. It fills up a hole inside me that nothing else can and it is truly what I feel like I’m on the earth to do. So, I will keep doing shows, and each year my kids age, the scheduling will hopefully get easier. 

But in the meantime, if you see me, or if you see another parent artist out there, give us a big, warm hug. We need it. Because we have gone through some shit to be here.