A line cook in a busy restaurant runs something like three hundred services a year. Three hundred times, the tickets come in, the pressure builds, something goes wrong, and they find out within minutes whether their fix worked. By the end of year one, they've had more reps than most festival producers get in a decade. Because here's the thing nobody tells you when you start in…
Read MoreIt's August. If you are a spring producer, the show has been struck for months and you know exactly what this stretch of the calendar feels like, even if nobody has ever handed you a word for it. I call it load-out syndrome. Still lit, nothing running. The power is on, the lights are up, and there is no show. You are technically working. You are answering things. But the engine that ran you from January through the gates is idling, and some part of you has not fully…
Read MoreIt was a Sunday. Main stage. Ninety minutes to showtime. And the headliner's representative just told us the beloved closing artist that fans had been waiting for all day wasn't coming. Details were a bit sketchy…
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