Sunday, March 28, 2010

Transition, Hobby to Career

After a little lull at work allowing me to write several entries to my blog, I will be busy again as I work on our next production and expect to take a little break in writing from my Blog, but I enjoy it and may surprise myself.
Having reached 50 entries in my blog I went back and put in topic labels so readers can sort through the blog easily and I found one repeated story, there might be more, and probably will be in the future as I continue to write.
When I have a little more time I plan to go back edit all of my blog, clean up the writing and add new bits here and there as they come to me.

I hope the reader can tell that even though I was often very busy and constantly working hard, I was always having a great time and enjoyed doing it all.
The long hard hours, getting filthy and yes, even getting electrocuted, was all part of the experience and a hell of a lot of fun, I was learning a lot and always wanted more.

At first doing Theatre in High School was just for fun, but then in College I got more serious about it and wanted to learn more about it and wanted to see where a Life in Theatre might lead.
I was just 22, about to graduate from College, go onto Grad School there was more to learn and many more adventures still ahead for me.
I was not sure what the future would bring, but now I really felt that I was on the right path and could not wait to see what was around the next corner.

While driving a rented truck with the set for our current production at Brockport back from the shop in Buffalo, I was reminded of working on my last play at UB in the spring of 1978.
I was the Technical Director for a production of Lanford Wilson’s Serenading Louie and the Scene Designer had arranged for us to borrow some nice, very white, modern furniture from a local store and I had to go pick it up.
When I got the rental truck I found out it was a standard transmission and I had only driven a car with a standard transmission once before.
In addition I had never driven a truck as large as this one before and I knew I was in for either a fun new adventure or crazy big disaster.
Somehow I got the truck to run, did not destroy the transmission, survived the highways around Buffalo to deliver the furniture safely to the Theatre.

We also had to build some additional modern looking furniture for the production; a low cube-like table with two matching seats.
After one of the boxes was done I could not find my hammer and by shaking the box I found out that we had built it inside.
Instead of just cutting a round hole in the bottom, I traced another hammer, cut out its rough shape, and reached inside to retrieve my "Magic" hammer.
As I recall the furniture ended up in the Assistant Chair’s office after the play was over.

It was after this production was over that several of the graduating seniors and I signed our names with a Sharpie on the wall of the main Theatre office.
I was nice to visit some years later and find the wall full of many more names and being able to find my name, a bit faded, still on the wall.
The Theatre office at UB has now moved to a new building and the old building has gone through several renovations, so I am sure that those names are long gone and are just a memory now.

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