u/nopleasenotthebees

I started doing stagehand work in 2022. I don't really have any specialty. I make most of my income by working arenas, conventions, and theaters in my metro area. I've never done stagehand work anywhere else.
A buddy of mine wants to go on a road trip. I'm thinking it would be a good opportunity to work elsewhere. We don't have any specific plans other than maybe visiting a cabin in Minnesota sometime in the middle of the summer. My friend is similar to me, work-wise. He's also done basic stagehand work only in his metro area.
I've never been one to go to festivals much. It seems like it ought to be not too hard to find work by contacting festival organizers, but I don't really know where to start.
With our plan being so open-ended, what are some events or companies I might try contacting for work in July or maybe August? Will I have better luck by reaching out to IATSE locals, or contacting festival organizers, or should I try applying for national companies? Maybe I should just do all of these things?
I don't use Facebook at all.

Kathy and Cindy took a table in the middle of the most crowded restaurant they could get into, in the middle of downtown. They both liked the bustle. They both ordered white wine immediately, which was customary for them.

Kathy started. “So, I really wanted to tell you about my day. A lot happened. And you’re one of my oldest friends.”

Cindy leaned in. “Is it gossip?” She smiled.

“Isn’t it always?” she said, and they both laughed. “Well… Okay, so a researcher contacted me. Doctor Anna Meadows is an archaeologist who specializes in music. She recreates ancient music. That’s her specialty. And she really, really wanted to come on my show, to talk about it. Did you hear about the recent discovery of the ruins of two walled cities on the edge of the Black Sea?”

“No, dear, I love that you love archaeology, but I can’t keep track.”

“Well, what Doctor Meadows did, was she got this clay tablet, from the ruins, and she translated it. From that tablet, and a bunch of other antiquities from the ruins, she found records of an important song, including the lyrics and information about how it was played. Shockingly old, like eight thousand years. Somehow, she managed to figure out the melody, and she came to the station and she sang the song live on air.”

“Wow,” Cindy said. She seemed to be losing interest quickly. “What was it like?”

“It was beautiful, haunting, strange. I mean, it’s in this ancient lost language, but I felt like I could understand it somehow. These two cities weren’t discovered until recently because they were completely razed, and the people who lived there just vanished. She said the song was a gift from their goddess of war.”

“Oh, a goddess of war. That’s different.” Cindy looked around for the waiter to come back.

“Yeah, and she has a theory about what happened to these two cities. She said that the song destroyed them.” Then Kathy gave a sort of pained, pinched smile. “You know what? I’m just going to…"

With that, Kathy stood up and began to sing loudly. People fell silent and stared as she sang a slow lilting melody in a strange language. The waiter started to approach with their hands raised, but then, they slowed to a pause, entranced.

When the song was over, she sat down. The entire restaurant had fallen completely quiet. They sat for a moment with the silence, and Kathy wiped tears from her eyes. “I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that song. I knew it, instantly.”

“Yes, yes,” Cindy said, and she started to breath heavily, and then, she stopped.

“And, so… it feels so strange just to go on talking, after singing that.”

“Yes. I know it, too. Oh, god”, Cindy said. “Oh god, that was beautiful. I never thought….” Cindy started, and then she stared at the ceiling, and looked around. The waiter sat down on the floor near their table.

“But, I must go on. So, after she sang the Song of Discord, she told me that she saw Tom—“

“Your new boyfriend who works at the station with you.”

“Yes. She saw Tom and I kissing before the interview. Then Doctor Meadows told me that right before the interview, she followed Tom into the men’s room, and she beat him to death with a toilet lid. You see, she explained to me, that the song was a weapon used by one city on the other, but it works on whoever hears it, and it spreads. It killed them all, I guess.” She paused thoughtfully. “So, then, I killed Doctor Meadows, and I left, quickly.”

“On air?”

“Yep, live, in the booth. I mean, she killed Tom. Then I went to your house. I called David—“

“My husband?” Cindy interjected.

“Yes. David and I have secretly been seeing each other. We’ve been having a lot of sex. I told David I wanted to meet right away, for sex, and then, I went there, and we started having sex, and then I stabbed him to death with one of your kitchen knives. And then I strangled your daughter, Heather."

The restaurant, which had fallen quiet, was again filled with people’s voices, laughter, shouts, yelling, and some screams.

Then, Kathy smiled, and shrugged. “Then, I came here to meet you.”

“Well, that is quite a day,” Cindy said. She looked around. All of the people at nearby tables were staring at them. Cindy drained her wine flute, leaned back, and smiled at Kathy. Then, with a quick snap of her arm, she broke off the rim of the glass on the edge of the table. Kathy picked up her table knife.

They both paused. Kathy and Cindy regarded each other.

An elderly couple seated next to them stood up, smiling, and began to chant, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” A few other people around them joined in, banging on their tables with their fists.

Kathy and Cindy both burst out laughing.

“Well….” Kathy said, and Cindy kicked over the table and lunged at Kathy with the broken wine glass.

The village of Kainapal in the Chhattisgarh district of India, was completely leveled by a stampede of Elephants on April 27th, 1846. Dozens of people were killed in this incident, mostly local villagers, but notably, two British colonists, army Captain James Simmons and his wife Magdalena, both died in their home. James was gored and thrown a great distance from the wreckage, and Magdalena was crushed in the wreckage. Curiously, their young son Aston had gone missing some four days prior, and their servant Savitri Karnachi had also lost her daughter, whereabouts unknown, and was visiting her home village several miles away on the day of the elephant attack, to mourn her loss with her family.

APRIL 23RD

James chastised Aston for leaving his window open at night. The boy, thirteen years old, said that monkeys and other animals visited him, and he wished to see them. James, a severe military officer, had been witnessed striking his face on an accasion when he fed monkeys on the veranda, by Corporal Edward Tanner, when he was approaching their house for a visit.

APRIL 15TH

Savitri went to warn Magdalena, that she had found the hairs of a large animal among Aston's bedsheets. Magdalena told her not to worry about it.

APRIL 20TH

Savitri was bringing in an array of lanterns set out for an evening engagement, when she spied Magdalena with a leopard, out in the brush behind their home. The woman was crouched down, and the animal licked something dark from her hand.

NOTE FROM MAGDALENA'S JOURNAL

"April 3 -

If the theories of Charles Darwin bear out true, one of the primary implications, for my work at least, lays in the implications of his theory for the cognition of animals. If each species reproduced itself exactly since the time of the Garden of Eden, then we would have no reason to think that there would necessarily be any link between, say, a cat, and a human, or really, any animal, and a human, in cognition. But if humans are in fact descended from the Great Apes, then it stands to reason that our mental faculties arise from similar, presumably simpler machinations amongst these lower creatures. Laying awake last night, I pondered this association. Does this mean that some animals might have notions of cause and effect, of logic, of justice...?

...And this excites me, because it means also that humans are not immutable, and can learn wholly new ways of thinking, perhaps...."

INTERVIEW WITH CORP. EDWARD TANNER, FOLLOWING THE DESTRUCTION OF KAINAPAL, BY SOLICITOR'S ASSISTANT ADAM APPLETHORPE

Tanner: There was always a sort of, cloud of tension, around Captain Simmons.

Applethorpe: He was a very serious man.

Tanner: Mean, mean and sometimes cruel. His mmaner at home was civil and courteous, but in the field, he could get almost... rash, I would say, sometimes. Sometimes, off duties, he'd get drunk and go shoot at the monkeys out in the forests near Kainapal. On one occasion, his gunfire spooked some elephants we didn't see, and beasts nearly trampled us. It was a fright, which scared me more than anything save battle. His wife would have hated all that.

Applethorpe: What about his wife? Say more.

Tanner: He clearly loved her, but I wondererd how he hid this stuff from her. I mean, she loved animals. She was a scientist, you know, corresponded with great minds back home at their academy. I think James thought Magdalena was lovely and intelligent, but I don't think he respected her for it. And their son, Aston, he had a peculiarly strong connection to animals, from Magdalena I suppose. My daughter was friends with Aston, and she said that he talked to a leopard, and to the monkeys. I'm not putting stock in that, of course, but only to say, Aston would have been furious if he knew his father got drunk and killed monkeys. And they're sacred here.

Applethorpe: The monkeys?

Tanner: Yes, definitely. And the elephants too. So we kept quiet about James' behavior, as well. I wonder if this was to their detriment.

Applethorpe: I'm sorry, meaning what?

Tanner: I don't know. Sorry. I don't know what I was meaning just there. [pause] I had the thought, that maybe, Magdalena Simmons came to India, more to study the behavior of the great wildlife of the jungle, than for her love of James.

It was the conclusion of Major Solicitor Phillip Patterson, after reviewing his assistant Corp. Edward Tanner's interview, that James Simmons likely killed his son Aston, just prior to the elephant stampede of April 27th, due to his abusive hatred of his son's behavior. He also noted that Simmons may have also been responsible for the disappearance of his servant Savitri Karnachi's young daughter, but in that case, for reasons unknown.

In 1876, on her deathbed, Savitri Karnachi told her sister that Magdalena Simmons gave Savitri's daughter to a leopard as an offering, and that this leopard was a sort of familiar to Magdalena's son Aston. She said that Aston knew the leopard's true name, and that Aston lived in the jungle with this animal and knew many of the other animals of the jungle, and that he was a great sorceror.

In 1880, a man from Savitri Karnachi's village spoke to this journalist of the destruction of Kainapal. He claimed that he witnessed the stampede. He said that at the head of the stampede, he saw a boy with golden hair riding a great bull elephant, and atop his shoulder sat a monkey, and behind the boy, sat a leopard.