Laylah Muran de Assereto shares her day...

Laylah Muran de Assereto joined Wily West in 2009 as Executive Producer.  Since then the company has presented dozens of shows - all written by writers from the Bay Area. Laylah is a playwright herself and lately has been getting her work on stage.  Like most artists in the independent theatre movement Laylah balances a full time day job with a robust theatre life.  She shares with us a glimpse of her day in the life...

I’m pretty active on Facebook and Twitter, so people see the fun days all the time, where I’m surrounded by theatre people or family and having a good time. So I thought I’d give a more typical day in the life; the work day. 

9:30 AM

I’m really lucky because work is super close to home, so my commute only takes about 15 minutes. And when I get to work there’s some great views. This is
me after I parked, with a little bit of the bay behind me and a lot of sun in my eyes. 

7:30 AM 

Some days my calendar is a little daunting. Monday was about average. It started with a 7:30am meeting and ended at about 12:30 am. 

Even business colleagues don’t
really know what I do, but my
family and non-work friends are
really baffled by it. I spend a
large part of my day talking to
people about what they do and
then turning that into flow diagrams, then analyzing those flows to help find areas where things aren’t making sense. 

If I’m doing my job right, I can get people past the “my head hurts” phase of looking at this stuff, and start to see the validation that this thing they are doing that feels like it isn’t working really is complex and convoluted. 

---

And then we find ways to fix the problems and make it simpler.

12:30 PM 

At lunch I took care of a few items as follow-up for the production meeting we had on Sunday for Un-Hinged and Drowning Kate, which is going to be so much fun. Every day there are dozens of text conversations and emails. On the best days there’s texts from my close friends about nothing theatre related at all, in with all the business of running a theatre company. 

5:00 PM 

After work it was time for the PCSF Membership meeting and reception and oh yeah, a reading of my play UNDERNEATH THE ABOVE AND BELOW. 6:00 PM I met Jennifer at the Marriott bar for a glass of wine and some post 24-Hour Fest gabbing before we headed to the Shelton. 

7:00 PM 

The Membership meeting began with a lovely tribute to member Inbal Kashtan who passed away earlier this month. Elisa Stebbins read one of Inbal’s monologues and it was very touching. The Board gave us all an update on what’s happening and I stepped out to talk with my cast for a bit about the play and answer their questions. 

8:00 PM 

Then it was time for my reading! Leontyne Mbele-Mbong and Natasha Cachon were so good. I was very anxious and worried that the audience wasn’t  engaged, but the feedback session quickly disabused me of that concern. I was pleasantly surprised to hear so many things that people heard and saw in the piece and so much they want to see. So now I just need to get to those re-writes!

9:00 PM 

There was a reception to celebrate the start of PCSF’s season and their 35th year. There was wine, cupcakes, cookies, humus, veggies, crackers, and cheese and a lot of laughter, silly and thoughtful conversation and generally a bunch of theatre folks appreciating each other’s brains for a little while. 

10:45 PM 

Once at home I joined mom in the living room for some t.v. and a little more business. 

12:00 AM

Finally it was time for bed and a little

light reading (Dracula) and some music (Art Tatum) to ease me out of the day and be ready for the next one.