Monday, November 16, 2009

Small World

It is often said that Theatre is a small world and everyone working in Theatre knows everyone else working in Theatre.
Although it is not true there are time when it does seems that way.
Just the other day I was returning two mic stands that I had borrowed for a concert.
When I was talking with the worker in the Classroom Technology Office he asked me if I have ever done any work on movies.
When I said that I had he revealed to me that he had been my assistant on a PBS documentary about the poet Emily Dickinson that we worked on over twenty years ago.
Details about the film will be in a future post.
George had been a student at RIT and worked a few weeks on the film shoot.

This began me thinking about other times that I had run into people I had worked with in the past years later.
As mentioned in an earlier post , I recently ran into Lighting Designer Alan Adelman
after 34 years at the USITT conference in Cincinnati.
It is nice to run into someone I have not scene in a while, but most of the time it may be only five to ten years rather then 30 plus years.
On the last night of the conference I had dinner one night with one of my students from my first year teaching who has been working at Ohio State University for 19 years.
After dinner we ran into one of my classmates from Michigan, who I had not seen in about twenty years, who had just had dinner with one of his first students.
I have known my friend’s first student for about fifteen years, he also teaches and just had one of my more recent students in his Theatre program at the University of Georgia.
The two “first” students did not know each other but as they talked they found out that they knew many people in common and shared some good laughs.

These kind of meetings happen all the time at the USITT conferences.
I have also had these kind of meetings at the American College Theatre Festivals.
Just this past January I ran into some old friends and classmates at the Festival in Philadelphia.

While I was in Grad School I worked several dance tours to the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan.
Ten years later, now working at my present job, I served on a search committee for the Dance Department and it turns out that one of the final applicants we interviewed had been the Technical Director Interlochen when I worked there.

After Grad School I worked for a year in NYC and it seemed that every two weeks or so I would run into someone I knew.
One day I went to see the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.
After checking out the tree I was cutting through a building when I ran into someone from UB.
We talked briefly about what we were doing and then went on our separate ways.
As I came out of the other side of the building minutes later I ran into someone from Grad school.
Again I had another brief chat about what we were both doing.

The photo studio that I worked in was just a few blocks North of Union Square and while walking to work one day I ran into another classmate from Michigan who was working in a costume studio several blocks away.

Sometime later in about the same spot on the street that I literally ran into Andy Warhol.
Warhol was not a classmate.

One day while walking to Penn Station I cut through Madison Square Park near the Flatiron Building and ran into a guy I knew, but could not remember his name.
I knew that we had recently worked together in some theatre, but I could not remember where or when.
What I did remember was the fact that I really did not like him, but I still smiled and made small talk before going on my way.
It was only later while riding the LIRR train home that I remembered his name and where we had worked together.

Last year while trying to research some information on Theatre stage equipment I called a major supply company.
Forwarded to someone who could help me with my questions and it turns out to be another of my former students from twenty-five year ago.
I had seen him a few times over the years but had not spoken recently.
We ran into each other at the USITT conference in Cincinnati.

Several times I have had former students call me to ask about another student, that they do not know, who are applying for a job with their company.
These are just a few examples of Theatre being a small world, there are many more.
If I remember any other fun or interesting examples I will post them.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Buffalo to off-Broadway

As with each year while I was in college, my sophomore year at SUNY Buffalo, UB, was very busy.
I designed the lighting for my first play and worked on many other productions in a variety of capacities.
After my first year in college several faculty members left UB to go work at Brooklyn College.
During my sophomore year they returned with an updated version of a play that they had done at UB the year before.

The play was Old Timer’s Sexual Symphony (and other notes).
The play was an intense look at aging, ageism and sexuality, and like the other plays we were doing at UB at the time it had naked people in it.
The original poster for the play was a take off of the John Lennon album Two Virgins.
The septuagenarian looking couple acting in the play posed naked for the poster.


When the play came back to Buffalo I volunteered to be the House Manager.
During the time of the production I heard that they were planning to do Old Timer’s and three other plays that coming summer as part of a month long four play repertory off-Broadway in NYC.
I volunteered again to be on the crew and ended up running the lighting board for Old Timer’s and also worked on the other three plays.
During Spring Break before the summer season was to begin I traveled down to Brooklyn to see one of the productions at Brooklyn College because I wanted to feel like I part of the company.
Of course there was a late season snow storm and I was traveling by subway going to a place I had never been before.
Well I got there, saw the show and got back alive.

So in May of 1976 the plays were presented at the Theatre at St Clements’s Church on 46th Street, not far from the heart of the Broadway Theatre district.
St Clements’s Church is a well known off-Broadway venue that has hosted many productions of note and was and still is an active church and is an important resource for its neighborhood.
During one rehearsal I looked done from the top of the seating risers where the lighting control board was to see that they were having a wedding in a small chapel in the back of the Theatre/Church.
Another time we had to cancel a rehearsal because a popular prostitute from the area had died and they needed the Church for her funeral.
Each day going to and from the theatre I would pass several groups of Working Girls who always asked me if I wanted a Date.

When I was working in NYC I stayed with my brother’s in his dorm at Pratt Institute out in Brooklyn.
It fun riding the subway from Times Square out to Brooklyn late at night after the play was over.
The whole experience of doing theatre in NYC for the first time was great.

Old Timer’s Sexual Symphony (and other notes) got one of the worst reviews ever from the NY Daily News: “New Company Stillborn”, but went on the win two special Obie Awards.
That month long four play repertory was only the beginning of one of my best summers working in Theatre.

A week after I was finished working in NYC I went out to Gateway Playhouse and spent the rest of the summer doing Summer Stock.
Stories from Gateway to follow.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Naked People Everywhere. Part 1 of 57

Several of the first shows that I worked on in college had an element that was a bit different from the plays I worked on in High School or Community Theatre.
Naked People.
Some were on stage, some were off stage and even a few just wandering about here and there.
Times were a bit different, it was the middle 1970’s and the people producing the plays were not all that far removed from the 60’s Theatre scene.
For an eighteen year old this was very different, interesting and of course fun.
But just a few years later I remember that the attitudes had changed and nobody wanted to be naked onstage anymore.

One memorable play at UB was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven”, a compilation several different Shakespeare plays cut and pasted together to make new scenes.
They had done “Shakespeare Heaven” and “Son of Shakespeare Heaven” in the years just before I got to college.
One section of the play was a take off of a game show, another was a spoof of the movie The Godfather, plus there were several other skits and monologues all mixed together.
In one scene an actor walks in dressed as a monk speaking lines from “Timon of Athens” as I remember.

As the scene progressed the actor completely undresses, sits down at a small table, puts on make-up, then puts on a bra and other women’s undergarments and puts on finally a wedding dress.
The play being “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” everyone had a wedding dress on at the end.
One actress was a Hawaiian Bride wearing just a grass hula skirt and a lea of flowers, with just a bit of tape to keep the lea in place.
The funniest naked person in the show was the actor who played the various statues.
All he wore was white make-up head-to-toe.
If the statue he was doing had a fig leaf then he had one, a helmet and small wings on his ankles when he was Mercury, but other then that he wore just the make-up and a smile.
The play was so popular that it was held over for an extended run.
For the extra run of the play an actress joined the naked guy and did famous paired statues.
I remember when they were taking the cast photo there at the end of the front row were they two naked people.
I wonder if Kodak printed the photos or are they in some lost back room with lots of other fun pictures?
A few other plays my first year had an occasional naked person or two, but it was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” that had the most and was enjoyable even without all the naked people, although I did not mind.


Not all the naked people were on stage, but back then it seemed at times that everyone backstage was running around naked, actors, crew and few other oddballs.

More fun with naked people to come in Part 2.