TRYING TO STAGE A COMEBACK
Laid-off theater lighting manager is driving for UPS amid job search in which 52 applications have yielded no second interviews
HARTFORD — When Aaron Hochheiser was laid off from the Hartford Stage Co. in August after a four-month furlough, he hit the streets with his resume applying for manager jobs.
But no matter how he reworked his resume as project manager of the theater’s lighting department, he couldn’t compete with those with experience in insurance and financial services.
To date, Hochheiser has applied for 52 jobs, some of them entry-level managers, including a management trainee at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, all tracked on a computer spreadsheet. He’s gotten six first interviews and no second interviews.
“I’ve never claimed unemployment in my life so that was new, and it was sort of a devastating reality of how bad things really were,” Hochheiser said.
The pandemic’s economic toll has been stunning, costing hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents their jobs in just the past nine months. Some work has returned, but for many there is little certainty about when — or even if — their jobs will come back.
The sheer numbers are staggering, but behind those numbers are real people who are struggling not only financially
but, in some cases, psychologically, as they wonder what a return to normal will look like.
After nearly nine months, more than 5,300 Connecticut residents have died, and there have been more than 140,000 cases of COVID19. And for a broad swath of Connecticut, life is very different right now. Many people are still working remotely, live performance theater remains dark and restaurants are limping into what’s expected to be a tough winter.
At Hartford Stage, the end of the last season was curtailed and finally, the decision was made to cancel the entire 2020-2021 show schedule.
In mid-November, Hochheiser picked up a temporary job delivering for UPS, just as his unemployment benefits were about to run out. He worries about the wear-and-tear on the family minivan, which he must use for the hourly job, and worse, what will come when the job ends in January
Hochheiser, 39, has avoided applying for jobs at big-box home improvement centers because he knows that will involve working at night and weekends, taking
precious time away from seeing his wife and two young kids, 7 and 4.
“After this UPS thing, if I don’t find something, that
will be next,” Hochheiser said.
Hochheiser built a successful career in theatrical lighting, the last 13 years at Hartford Stage. As project manager for lighting, Hochheiser was responsible for taking the lighting designer’s vision and turning it into reality on stage.
He also took on special projects like designing a system for releasing the “fog” during the entrance of Marley’s Ghost in “A Christmas Carol.” The fog appeared as a curtain around the character and didn’t just puff out of the stage’s trap door.
Hochheiser also had gigs at Playhouse on Park in West Hartford and teaching lighting at Trinity College, both of which also are on hiatus because of the pandemic.
Hochheiser is reluctant to upend his family from their Newington home to move to another state, particularly because his wife Emily is a tenured art teacher in Hartford. Hochheiser believes she would have a difficult time finding a similar position somewhere else. And, it is through her job the family has health benefits, Hochheiser said.
Some of the jobs he has considered applying for have required long stretches of training elsewhere in the country.
“I’m not going to do that to my family, be away for weeks or months for a job that I really don’t want anyway,” Hochheiser said. “It’s not just about finding another job. This is something I’ve spent most of my life being good at. I’m not an overly confident or bragging person, but I am pretty good at my job.”
The family has been able to save a bit, with the lump sum federal stimulus payment early in the pandemic and the $600 boost to unemployment checks that ended in July. But a major electrical repair at Hochheiser’s house ate up about three-quarters of the lump sum check.
The worst part of it all is the uncertainty, he said.
“In the beginning, it was: Are we coming back in one month? Are we coming back in three months? Are we coming back in six months?” Hochheiser said. “Hartford Stage is doing fundraising and online events. What if it doesn’t reopen, what do I do? Right now, I’ve been trying to find temporary stuff in hopes that I get back there.”