Sophomore Year

The fall of 1971, sophomore year, brought an expanded role for me.
A large group of seniors had graduated in June and only a few experienced stage crew members were left.
This meant that I quickly moved up the techie ladder.
Our Fall show was “Done to Death”.
An over the top, very campy murder mystery with special effects.
I think there were “hi-tech” mouse traps used to fling objects off shelves and large clam shells used as flash pots.
Explosives always fun and I have few stories from college and grad school to share in future posts.
It was all very silly but a lot of fun to work on

The Spring musical was “Brigadoon” and lots of fun.
The show opens with a fog covered stage that quickly brings the audience to the highlands of Scotland.
One student was in change of the fog machine and carefully planed how much was to be used to give the right effect.
Of course fog machines are fun and everyone had to play and add a little more fog and a little more fog and . . . .
The curtain opened and a wall of fog slowly moved forward and into the pit.
This was old style mineral oil fog and very smelly.
Within just a short time the orchestra started to cough and a minute later the audience started to cough row by row by row until everyone in the theatre was coughing.
The next night nobody played with the fog, I think there was an armed guard next to it.

This is also the first play that I remember having a cast party.
It was at a local church hall; people signing each others programs, music, soda and cupcakes.
Not a wild time by most standards, but it still seemed like a lot of fun to me at the time.

The seniors who had graduated had left their homemade lighting board used to run lights for dances in the gym.
Taking a few lights and cables from the stage we would put them up on the basketball backboard frames and shine colored lights throughout the gym.
The teachers working as chaperons always wanted to make sure that there were lights shining into all fours corners, but as I recall they didn’t always stay on.
We only made a few dollars doing these wild “Light Shows”.
One year the class president decided halfway through the dance that he wasn’t going to pay me.
I had the janitor (or was he a custodian?) turn on the gym lights and started to take the stage lights down.
Quickly the class president changed his mind, I got paid, the lights went back on and the dance continued.

Unlike the urban legends of the time, Eric Clapton never ran in and played with the band at any of the dances I worked.
After the dances were over the staff was always surprised by the beer and liquor bottles under the bleachers as they were pushed back.
Oh those crazy High School kids.
Shocking!