Off to Brockport

August 1982, my life was about to change and I was not sure where the new road ahead was going to take me.
I was going through many emotions from great excitement to even fear as I pondered what was about to happen to me.
Oh course I was egger to get back to working in Theatre but not sure about teaching and moving into a new town.

I packed my few belonging; clothes, tools and drafting supplies and drove my folks van off to my new life in Brockport.
How long was it going to be?
Three years, five, ten or would I even last the first year?

By the time the college had gotten all the paperwork done I was hired after the start of the school year and I would take over my class after it had already met for a few days.
Because it was Labor Day weekend I could not move into the dorm they had arrange for me to live so I spent a night or two at the Chairman’s house.

I would spend a month living in the Stage XVI dorm complex while I looked for a place to live.
Stage XVI was a unique dorm complex that housed about 1000 students.




Stage XVI Dorm


The cluster of buildings was not like normal dorms of the day but more like apartments with two bedrooms, and a living room and kitchen.
There was also a central common building with washing machines, vending machines and a recreation area.
The idea was nice but the structure was poor.

Somehow the State Dormitory Authority bought the idea that that a building with metal siding, designed to rust, would be good for a building in Western New York.
Evidently the building designs worked well in climates like Arizona, but so good in Brockport’s wet and snowy winters.
The buildings were only nine years old when I moved in, but already they had holes rusted through the siding and the drainage around the building were poor and the ground floor apartment were subject to frequent flooding.

During the winters the exterior stairwells were often covered with ice and the students had to make a dangerous trek trying to get in and out of their rooms.
The dorms only lasted until 1990 when they were closed and torn down.

The first days of my time at Brockport are all a blur as I had many things to deal with.
I had to meet all of the staff, tour the building, move in my office, get keys and find out about my students and classes and begin work on the department’s productions.

At the time I came to Brockport they still had a summer theatre program of two productions.
There was a musical in July and another play in the beginning of August.
The August play was held over and performed again the first weekend of the new school year.

The year I came the hold over play was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The brush-up rehearsal for the play was the night of my first day at work.
The Student crew knew what to do, I did not try to run the crew but just helped out where I could and had to jump in and help move the big turntable when its motor burnt out.

They had built a large turntable that had been used both the musical and Sherlock Holmes.
It was not built they way I would have done and after the set strike the big pieces of it sat against the wall of the Theatre for several years before I finally threw it out.
For the turntable platform they had used a honeycomb paper glued between ply and Mansonite, but unfortunately the glue that they used did not hold very well and parts of the turntable failed.
I did save the 100 castors used and still have most of them today.

Needless to say it was a very long first day and stressful day for me.


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