Personal Narrative: Misha's Thesis Production

Since beginning my time at Columbia, I was well aware of the plan. Each of us – my four classmates and myself – would stage manage a third-year director’s thesis production during our second and final year. This was a point of excitement and intrigue during my entire first year. I speculated about whom I would be paired with, what theater the two of us would be working at, and what our awesome show would be about. During that first year, many of my classmates started connecting with the second-year directors, those that we would be working with the following year. This was an incredibly smart move, one that I am certainly envious of, in retrospect. My classmates bonded with directors and those directors decided to work with them on their thesis. Before long, most of the pairs were chosen, leaving me unpaired and with two potential partners. Since only one of those productions would be occurring in the school year, I was assigned to work on Misha Chowdhury’s thesis production.

This is always my preference – to get the most challenging part of school finished as early as possible. In my opinion, I was already in the best possible situation. The directors in his year spoke positively of him and our brief conversations had been extremely pleasant. I had heard rumors that Misha had wanted to hire a different stage manager, so part of me worried that Misha might not be completely satisfied with my assignment to his production. Yet, I was in an overall good place, excited to begin a new stage in my education: the thesis