Creating Culture: Monica Mercer

Time is flying by and, unbelievably, we are in the last week of November! It has been wonderful sharing these stories with you, and seeing how all for One has an impact on the lives of those we work with as we create culture in our community.

As we wind up the series this week, we’d like to introduce Monica. Monica is originally from Alaska where her love for performing and theater technologies was born. She moved to California to work with a college and traveling performing arts group. She also went on tour as a lighting designer and operator with The Young Americans.

She happened to be in town when we were looking for a Stage Manager for The Dreadful Journal of Phoebe Weems. A mutual friend introduced us to Monica, and we were thrilled to have someone of her experience as our Stage Manager for a challenging show. As you’re probably aware, Phoebe Weems went entirely virtual. There was a lot of problem solving to do and quite a learning curve as we did something we’d never done before. Monica was happy to share a little bit about her experience with afO.

Monica Mercer

It was an incredible experience and an honor to watch this passionate group of people come together to bring a production to life in less than two months. Even in the midst of uncertainty from Covid-19, this family took their passion and their faith and together figured out how to best navigate around new obstacles to share their love of theater with the world. Every week seemed to bring about new information and along with that new challenges. But throughout it all, the cast and crew would talk and work together to find creative ways to make sure the show would go on. Seeing such passion, care, and trust grow in this group showed me how wonderful all for One is at fostering creative spirits and loving hearts.