I have enjoyed working at The College at Brockport
but my position is a twelve month appointment and I do not have the summers off
like those teachers on nine month contracts.
In the early days I was very busy with our Summer Arts Festival with both a musical
and straight play production and occasional dance concert as well.
The second play which ran only one weekend was held
over and performed again the first weekend of school in September.
After my third summer the second play production was
dropped and we would just musicals until the festival ended.
I enjoyed doing the second plays because I got to
design the sets for them which included Bus Stop, Wait Until Dark and The Good
Doctor.
We often did not start building the sets for the
second plays until after the musicals opened and we had only about a week to
knock the sets together.
Because of the summer shows and my other duties I have
had little time to work outside of Brockport
over the years and I found this frustrating at times.
In the summer of 1994 there was to be no summer
musical because of planned construction work in the theatre so I wanted to do
something else outside of Brockport.
Once I cleared that I could be away I looked for an
interesting summer theatre job.
I landed a job as the Technical Director for the
summer season of the Centennial Theatre
Festival in Simsbury, Connecticut.
The festival was housed in a very nice theatre at a
private boarding school, The Westminster School, and the season
consisted of three plays, two music concerts and a dance performance.
It was a great summer for me as I got to work in a
new space with some talented people and was lucky that I was able to bring one
of my recent students as my assistant.
It was one of the best decisions I made, he worked
hard and he made me look good.
There was one pesky thorn in the mix, but I went
with it, had some fun with it and went on to have a great experience that made
me better in the long run.
Every production I have worked on is unique but I
have found many stories in my recent posts may have gotten a bit repetitive, but I had many new and fun experiences that summer in Connecticut.
I have an outline of things I may write about with
over twenty topics so I am sure I will have several posts about the summer of
1994.
To begin with I had to make plans to be away for the
whole summer, having my mail forwarded and other such things.
I loaded up my car with everything I thought I would
need for the summer and headed out for my new adventure.
I was impressed by the look of the school buildings
when I arrived.
Most of the classroom and dorm buildings had a
classic Tudor style architecture look on a sprawling wooded campus.
There were no students there in the summer so it had
an odd feeling with most buildings closed for the summer.
The actors and technical staff were housed in one of
the dorms.
As I moved in I had the choice of any of the rooms
but was advised I might want to try one of the rooms on the lower level (almost
basement level) as there was no air conditioning.
The rooms were indeed cooler but they were prone to
mildew.
Being summer theatre there is always little time to
rehearse and build the shows so after moving in and meeting everyone it was
time to get to work.
After two simple music events it was time to get to
work on the first show of the season: Pump Boys and Dinettes.
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