The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 16

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Better or the Worse

Day: In the Light of Day
Weather: Four seasons in one day

The new academic year didn’t really fare well for the academics. Shortly a month into the new semester, two prominent teachers at the drama school decided to quit. Danielle Lazarus, one of the voice teachers responsible for first year voice training decided that she had enough of the craziness from Succubus and submitted her high profile resignation – through a mass email. Succubus, well known for having no appreciation for voice work and reckons if audience can’t hear the actors on stage, she can simply mic them, gladly accepted her resignation. She then sent another mass email to all staff saying that Danielle has accepted an invitation to her farewell party to be announced at a later date for her contribution to the drama school in the last 15 years. Her high profile move was then backfired when Danielle, to Succubus’ surprise, replied with another mass email to all staff saying that she had never accepted the invitation and was amused that someone couldn’t understand the simple English word “No”. Publicly humiliated, Succubus sent another email to all saying that from now on anyone who wants to send all staff email has to get her prior approval or otherwise risk disciplining actions from her. On Danielle’s last day, Succubus sent a bunch of flowers to Danielle to show there were no ill feelings between them. However, later during the day, Danielle noticed that the vase holding the flowers was actually defective and water was leaking all over her stuff. In response to Succubus’ friendly move, Danielle sent one last all staff email thanking Succubus for the flowers and hoped that the leaking vase wouldn’t cost the drama school too much to replace the carpet in her office. Caught out again publicly, Succubus asked the IT guy to take the all staff distribution list offline completely. Danielle was snapped up by the second biggest theatre company in the city as their in house voice coach immediately after.

Shortly after Danielle’s resignation, Luke McPherson, one of acting teachers there, decided to go too. He was sick of the change of curriculum from actual production experience into street theatres that jeopardise students’ learning from actual work. Under Succubus new curriculum direction, students will not be involved in any real productions until the second half of the second semester in their second year. Luke, who was passionate about students learning on the job to identify their shortcoming, was vigorously against this change. As a result, Succubus took him offline from the curriculum board and just assigned regular teaching duties with minimum hours with students – to avoid a bad influence on students’ mentality. When some third year students knew that, they called for a student council meeting to support Luke. Succubus, as iron-fist as she was, sent a mass email to all saying that if any student was found to organising activities without her approval, they risked expulsion even if they were in their third year – something the drama school will never do. Angry by her move, Luke file a grievance report to the board and to the Employment Ombudsman citing unfair and groundless bullying activities at the drama school. His filing caught the attention of the media and with the Board questioning Succubus on the bad publicity and her recent splash of cash for her own use, Succubus backed down to seek a settlement. Finally Succubus was made to send an apology to all staff and students over the misjudgement she made and apologised to Luke. Although Luke had scored a victory on this matter, he decided to go after the city biggest Theatre Company noticed the saga and offered him a job as the acting coach for their resident company actors. When I ran into Rena, another voice teacher there the other day, she said there the drama school’s standard is on the blink of collapsing. Probably Succubus will seek to get rid of all voice teachers there in the next year or so.

Back to the Library front, things were quiet for quite a while until one day my boss told Claire and I that we are going to a local conference at the end of next month. The conference is about application of modern technology in information services. Claire and I were fairly surprised by the notification but we gladly accepted the offer. Eva, however, was not that happy. She immediately started a personal campaign hoping to undermine Sonia’s decision by going around telling people about favouritism in the organisation. She even went to the HR manager to whinge about it. Basically she was complaining about that it is not fair full time ongoing staff like her were not chosen for the conference but part-timers and contract staff like Claire and I were chosen instead. At first people were trying to be nice to her and empathised her but then after two weeks of a campaign with a size bigger than the Academy Awards rallying, people started to get sick of her. Finally today at the tearoom, when she was saying out loudly “I don’t know why people like him, who isn’t even committed to the profession, should be given that chance.” Another manager overheard her statement, went over to her and said, “Just ask yourself, when did you last finish a project without screwing up? That’s why”.

Eva was shocked by that manager’s public comment. She immediately sculled (and choked on) her tea and left the room.

However, the damaged was done. Some of the staff members who have lower IQ bought Eva’s view and she had now successfully recruited a group of minions. Claire and I knew that the year ahead would not be easy with Eva.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 15

--------------------------------------------------------------

Ashes to Ashes

Day: Brand Old Day
Weather: Cats and Dogs

Shortly after the holiday the drama school was back in full swing. And Succubus hadn’t waited a second to perform her New Year slaughter. The first victim was my beloved Acting Head Timothy Hayes. Tim has been at the drama school for over 10 years and under him, lots of outstanding actors were trained. He had put in a lot of efforts to keep the acting course up-to-date without compromising the main element – acting training. However since Succubus came, she was trying to up root the acting course into a way that she thought useful for students. Instead of real theatre training, she decided to put in street performance and motion capturing etc., which means new students won’t be able to get on to the stage for real production training until halfway through semester two in Year 2. The Acting Department of course is not happy, as the basic purpose of the acting course was acting and theatre training. Meeting this resistance, Succubus was trying to reduce the influence of the teaching staff as much as possible.

First of all, she invited her friends to come to direct productions and kicked the acting staff out of rehearsal rooms. Then she unraveled a series of white terror in the meeting room belittling the knowledge of acting staff and sometimes even publicly humiliated them. When such news reached the students, a few year-3 students organized a student walk out to protest against the change. News reached Succubus through the minions, so she immediately sent warning letters to these students telling them that if they walk out they will be pulled from all final year productions and they will not be able to showcase their work for agents. When Tim heard he that was furious so he went to reason with her. Succubus was waiting for this opportunity to put him under the guillotine for a long time. After the meeting, she suddenly announced that she reverted Tim’s employment terms with the school because of “inappropriate and distressful behaviours” against her. To give her sufficient time to get someone in to kick Tim out, she put Tim on a temporary 6 months contract after 15 years of service with the school. Completely angered by this move, Tim complained to the Board directly which forced Succubus to extend the employment to one year pending to revision.

When Michelle Conroy, another much loved voice teacher of the school heard that. She was so upset that she decided to take 6 months’ long service leave before deciding whether she will continue to stay at the school. Meanwhile, Succubus is gearing up herself to kick board members who are against her out of the Board. Her partner in crime Molotov Lamia was busily ringing in votes from idle members presenting their own “facts” so that they could secure their non-sitting votes. The last Director Jarrod Campell and a few other concerned members were racing against time and Molotov to secure vote before the AGM in May. At this point it looks like the school is going to fall apart under Succubus, as she did with the so call art management company in UK before she returned to Australia.

While the drama school in the heat of another political storm, I was trying to figure out my way in my own career storm. Jobs were slow since the New Year. Apart from some isolated auditions that are scarcer than isolated showers at the Red Centre, there was virtually nothing. The current situation with the media is that people are inbreeding to secure their own jobs as the economy is still recovering. As a result that means a lot of actors were not called in for anything as most main and supporting roles were decided even before pre-productions started. There was once a call from a casting director asking Hugo to send me to a free gig for a limited budget feature. Hugo didn’t like the idea of free gigs but then would look at whether it would help my careers. It turned out it was another gig asking me to be a funny Chinese restaurant owner for a comedic scene. Hugo, who really hated the idea of me being stereotyped, turned the casting agent down point blank. In fact, lately Hugo had been discussing with me about going over to LA to try my luck. The main purpose is to secure an agent or a manager there to start up myself. He said Australian media is quite hopeless for non-Anglo actors, no matter they can act or not. He said for me who was well trained and can do the job well should break away from the chains of stereotype casting in this country. His words kept resonating in my head making me to seriously re-consider my acting future in Australia.

On the Library front, things were back to normal. Normal means dealing with all the extra-terrestrial behaviours of various personnel there. Recently Eva had been publicly disputing my commitment to the job and was telling people that it was a waste of money for the Library to keep me around. When she talked about that in one of the meetings with my boss again, I confronted her on her statement. She said she was commenting in a good will manner so I shouldn’t be upset about that. I told her to piss off and told her that if she was able to finish the job in time both Claire and I will not be here in the first place. Also I told her maybe the workplace thinks that it is better to keep someone with has other commitments but can do the job instead of relying on someone who claimed to have full commitments but could never get a single project finish on time. Also I told her to wake up from the illusion that she was a good worker and did everything fantastically because she sucked at everything she did and every time people needed to pick up her shit. Claire and my boss’ jaws dropped as I said that and the meeting room sank to a dead silence. Eventually my boss wrapped the meeting beautifully and professionally and everyone left. She had a word with me afterward but at that point although I understood her good intentions, I was very through and done with Eva’s stupidity. The good thing that came out of this was Eva left Claire and I alone and completely disappeared from our office. The only communications with her now were through email (which I preferred so I could have records) and she also stopped bitching about me to anyone anymore.

I thought the New Year would be a good one, but it looks like another rough journey is about to start.