He had worked regularly at the Stratford Festival in Canada and brought along a young fight choreographer who was in some of the battle scenes.
We used a stock platform for all of the Shakespeare plays and the designers just added pieces to the unit for each play.
For Richard III the scenic designer just took the set for Richard II from the year before and basically smashed it.
All the nice detail and trim pieces that had been added to the original set were broken off to help show the decay of the kingdom.
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| Richard II set before it was smashed for Richard III |
During one of the fight scenes the fight choreographer was in a sword fight on the upper level, he was stabbed, spun and fell off the platform into the waiting arms off four soldiers who carried off his dead body.
Opening night all went well and the audience loved it.
On the second night the fight choreographer was in a sword fight on the upper level, he was stabbed, spun and fell off the platform into the waiting arms of two soldiers who dropped the fight choreographer who broke his arm and the two late soldiers helped the other two carry off the fight choreographer writhing in pain.
On the third night the fight choreographer was in a sword fight on the upper level, he was stabbed, and fell dead on the upper level and stayed there until the end of the scene.
It always seemed that I was working on one play or another, doing class work or working my thesis but somehow I managed time for a few dates while at Michigan, but no romance would come of it.
The second summer brought four more shows in rep and working to finish my thesis.
I would work only 100 hours on the set up of the lights and then work full time on my thesis, taking only short breaks for a weekly softball game and monthly poker game.
Two non-Michigan students who came to work on the summer rep were assigned to work with me on the electrical crew and they were both nice enough and I have a few odd memoirs of them.
One day while working in the lighting shop I had one of those moments when you feel like some mild electrical shock has gone through you body that causes you to shiver when it happens.
The girl working next to me, Martha, had the same experience and when we turned to ask the other guy if he had felt it too we found him on the floor having an epileptic seizure.
Another time I was working up in the catwalks of the Power Center with Martha when she begin talking about some major surgery that she had recently had done and I almost fell 30 feet from shock when she lifted up her shirt to show me the scar that ran from the middle of her chest to below her belly button.
I was not at all ready to be flashed while working up at that height.
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| Bio from Summer 1980 Program |
I often found reasons not to work on my thesis.
One of my favorite excuses was just waiting until it got dark before I would come in to work.
Because Michigan is in the western part of the Eastern Time zone it stays light much later than it did back home on Long Island.
From time to time I found myself playing Frisbee with guys in the street until well after dusk at 10:30 PM.
A week or so before my thesis was done my parents and younger brother, who was 17 at the time, stopped by at the end of a cross country camping trip that had taken them to the Grand Canyon.
This was the longest trip that they had ever taken.
They collected most of my belongings to bring back home and left with me with just the bare essentials.
My thesis review was near and my time at Michigan was almost done.
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