Eastman Theatre, Pizza and other random thoughts

After we ran Wait Until Dark I got a few weeks off before the start of my third year at Brockport and I traveled again to Long Island to visit my family, eat some good Pizza, Chinese Food and see a few movies and maybe a Broadway play.

My favorite Pizza back home on Long Island?

Well I used to enjoy regular slices from many different places but the biggest choice of specialty pies was from Satellite Pizza in Bayport, which is still there:

http://www.satelitepizza.com/Menu.html

Brockport is a nice town, but the Pizza is just NOT the same as I got back home on Long Island and it is one of the few things I miss from there; pizza yes, plus the beaches, family, friends, Broadway  . . . Ok I miss a few things from home.

We held over the production of Wait Until Dark and performed it again the first weekend of school in September.

I had gotten into a routine and felt comfortable with my job at Brockport but I was a bit apprehensive about what was going to happen that fall because the department Lighting Designer Michael had not gotten tenure that past spring and this would be his last year working at the college.

I know he was upset and bitter but fortunately he did not show it and never took it out on the students or his work on the plays; well as far as I could see.

Thinking he was going to get tenure Michael and his wife had planned a second child who was going to be born that fall and he asked me to assist him on an outside job that he had be hired to do.

I would also design the lighting for the first play of the school year to free up Michael to take care of the imminent birth of his second child.

He worked as the production manager for a local opera company that performed in the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, NY and he asked me to shadow him and take over in just case his wife was to give birth during the week of the production.

Eastman Theatre

I would assist him again on another Opera later in the year, learning a lot in how things got done working with the Union Stage Crew and how he managed the budget with the producer which would come in handy the next year when I took over the job.

The Eastman Theatre is one of the biggest Theatres that I have ever worked in and has a great history.

 Built by George (Kodak) Eastman in 1922 as a movie palace, it became a great musical hall instead.

One of my favorite stories is that when it was built some of the light fixture ordered from Italy did not arrive in time and two workers used galvanized metal washtubs tubs as a temporary fix that remains in the theatre to this day even after a recent multi-million dollar renovation.

The rest of the Theatre was first rate and even has an original Maxfield Parrish painting hanging in the lobby.

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