Rise of the Machines

Back in 1995 computers were becoming more common place in the day-to-day world and the college did not want to be left out.

With that in mind the college put out a call for applications for Technology Incentive Grants for the purchase of computers to be used as part of teaching or research.

 I received a $12,000 grant to purchase a state-of-art computer, an AutoCAD program and 36” wide pen plotter plus other accessories.

The purchasing office called me to double check my order.

First they wanted to know why I did not want the new Windows 95 operating system and I told them that AutoCAD was not ready to run on it yet.

They also wanted to know if I really wanted and needed 12 megabytes of RAM when most computers were coming with only 4 megabytes at that time.

I would soon add even more RAM before my next computer upgrade.

My current computer has 4 gigabytes of RAM, a thousand times more than the average computer of 1995.

Around the same time I signed up to take several AutoCAD classes at the local adult education program that helped me learn the program and I really enjoyed it.

I was nice to be back in a classroom on the student side again and even better to go someplace away from the college once a week and be with some “normal” people.

Because I had the computer and program I had an advantage over most of the other students who did not access to the equipment outside of class.

I have looked for another class to take but I have yet to find something that interested me or I wanted to take.

It took a while, but not too long, for me to do all my working drawings and light plots on the computer and put away my drafting tools.

I really enjoyed drafting by hand but enjoy more the time that the computer freed up for me.

Even after using AutoCAD for 20 plus years I am far from an expert and only use just a small portion of the programs capabilities.

The Pen Plotter was nice to have as it printed out full size working drawings, it was fun to watch but slow by today’s standards.

It could take an hour or more to print out a full lighting plot.

Architecture firms at the time would hire special staff to work overnight to stay and print out large and complex drawings that could take hours to print.

A few years later we would replace the Pen Plotter with a wide Desk Jet printer that printed out much faster and also allowed us to print out other items, not just draftings.

Soon we would use the printer to produce reproductions of paintings and other pictures to use on sets.

Each year there is another use for computers in our Theatre productions.

Back in the 1990’s we first used computers to burn CDs for our sound effects and music used in plays and soon people forgot how to use Reel-to-Reel tape decks or more importantly how to splice the tape.

The BBC sound effects library on vinyl records was soon replaced with sounds on CDs and then through internet sites like Find Sounds.Com.

With the birth of Napster in 1999 and then I-Tunes in 2001, finding music for plays became very easy, but questions for paying royalties still linger.

Soon after the turn of the new century I received another technology grant, this time for the sound playback program SFX and a dedicated computer and sound card to run it.

Since that time we use have used a computer to run our sound effects and music for our various productions.

At first it took some time to train students to run the computerized lighting and sound boards but it has gotten much easier in recent years as most student have grown up using computers and smart phones their whole lives.

Computers now can do many things in theatre from controlling the movement of scenery, production communications, box office sales and much more.

Several of our recent productions have used computer generated images projected on the stage.

We have a 3-D printer here at the college and although we have yet to use in it a production but I am sure we soon will.

It is amazing that the $175 tablet that I recently bought is hundreds of times more power than the computers we bought back in 1995 and can do everything they did plus even more.

Who knows what computers and other technology we will have available to us in the next five, ten and twenty years ahead and where they will take us both on and offstage.

Should be interesting.

* * *

Cinderella, 1994

The last play I worked on in 1994 was Cinderella.

I am sure it was a wonderful production but I have few clear memories of it.

I do not have a copy of the program and few photos of it but mostly my haziness of the show was caused by the death of my grandmother just before the show.

She was 102 and had lived quite an interesting life.

I wrote about her in an earlier blog post and will write more about her as I recently came into more photos and paperwork about her early life.

https://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2012/03/oh-boy-by-jerome-kern-and-p-g-woodhouse.html

So what can I tell you about our Cinderella.

First thing is that we rented, bought or stole the set from another local college who had recently done a production of the play.

Cinderella, 1994

I do not think that they were the same script, one of them might have been a musical version, but I am not sure.

It took at least three trips, 25 miles each way, to move the set to Brockport.

The large pumpkin seen in the photo above was stolen by some college boys who saw the show but we got it back and yes we still have it, now under lock and key.

Here is a photo of me carrying a big foam nose that was part of a giant face you can see on the fireplace.

Me carrying in the Nose.

I do remember that we had a carriage for Cinderella that was able to fly in from across the stage and land on the ground and roll off the other side.

As I recall, Colin, my ATD did most of the rigging to make all the magic work.

I think we used a trap door from which Cinderella’s ball gown would rise up.

That is about all I remember, I do not even know if I designed the lighting or even saw the finished show.

For all the many little things that I remember from shows from even longer ago it is surprising how little I remember about this one.

Well they did not close down the department or college so it could not have been all that bad.

On to 1995 and some new adventures.

* * *

The Glass Menagerie, 1994

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was  directed by guest James Steinmeyer whose daughter Joleen just happened to be the stage manager for the show.

Joleen was a talented student who would go on the design the set for a Mainstage production the following year.

The Glass Menagerie has only four characters and does not require a large or complex playing space.

A memory play, the action takes place in a small apartment in St. Louis in the 1935.

In our production two rooms were seen, the living room which was downstage center and the dining room which was mid-stage.

The rest of the apartment was indicated upstage through an arch and doorway.

The somewhat small set on the Tower Mainstage was surrounded by most of our stock of large flats and window units to represent the surrounding tenements.

Most of the window units were distressed with broken glass and boards over some of them.

To enter the set the actors walked on a raised sidewalk that started upstage left, came downstage to the lowered pit and back around to stage right ending outside the front door on a steel framed fire escape platform.

Of course we still have the fire escape in stock.

After the actors were in the set the lighting for the surrounding areas was lowered and the focus was just on the two rooms.

The set had several lighting practices but I wanted something more.

The biggest lighting moment of the show is when Laura shows The Gentleman Caller her menagerie of glass figurines lit with just a candle.

I wanted to be able to add just a little fill light to the scene but there was no good place to hide a lighting instrument.

Working with Drew the scene designer I told him what I needed and suggested making a box in the front of the pit to hide the light but thought it would be too low to the ground.

After some thought Drew designed two posts that would be added to the edge of the sidewalk in which I could hide a small light.

The posts looked that were always part of the set and light was just in the right place.

I was afraid of having the old horror movie effect that when people were walking in the dark with a lamp there would be in a spot on them and you would see the shadow of the lamp on the wall behind them.

That did not happen as I added just enough light to fill in the actors faces.

The combination of all of the elements, set, lights, costumes, acting and direction, made this a very successful production.

* * *

Transition

For me the 1990’s was a time of transition.

Teaching at a college there is always change as new students come while others graduate and the staff changes, maybe a bit slower, but still always seems in flux.

With my return from Connecticut in the fall of 1994 the world itself was changing a bit faster than it had in recent years big changes were about to happen but I could not see them at the time.

Computers had been around for a while and we were slowly using them more and more each year and with the coming of Windows 95 and the growth of the internet we would became more reliant on technology more and more in the years ahead.
I will comment more about computers as they were integrated a little more each year to productions and daily lives.

Maybe it was because I was getting older, all of thirty-eight in 1994, but I saw the world and what was happening through a different, perhaps a more mature, perspective.
x

In the summer of 1993 I went to my last Grateful Dead concert in Buffalo with tens of thousands of fans at the old Rich Stadium.

Just a side note, the three women I went to the concert with had all been to Woodstock as young teenagers, I did not go.

In the fall of 1994 I saw the Barenaked Ladies in the college ballroom with just a few hundred people.

I was just a few rows from the stage during the “If I had a $1,000,000” song and got to see the boxes of Mac and Cheese flying towards the stage along with clouds of cheese mix in the air.

They returned a year later and played to a sell-out crowd of several thousand in the gym.

Music, people, technology and the whole world around us is always changing but it is hard to see it as it is happening.
Time and distance, the magic of hindsight, gives of different, maybe clearer,  view of what we have lived through.

The first play of the 1994-5 season was The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams with an outside guest director.

I did not know it at the time but this was going to be the last production with the full design and production team that had created some outstanding productions over the past five years.

There were still many more wonderful plays to work on and some very talented students to mentor, but I felt obliged to mark this time as special.

More adventures ahead.

* * *

Bob Feller

Once the last show was up and running I had over a week of free time to relax before the final set strike and clean up at the end of the season.

I took a few days and went to my family cabin near Hancock, NY and spent time with the chipmunks sitting in an Adirondack chair by the outside fireplace and just enjoying it all.

I also stopped by a used book store (and let’s hear for used book stores) and looked for something a bit different than my usual mystery or detective novels I read .

I picked up the autobiography of Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller.

A few days after I returned home from Connecticut I heard on the radio that Bob Feller would be signing autographs at the local minor league ball park and so I decided to go.

I went through my card collection and found one of his cards and went off to the game.

At 76 Bob was still flying his own plane around to ball parks and would sign for hours.

I got my turn and he signed my card with a blunted Sharpie.

I tried to talk with him about his book I had just read but because he was hard of hearing he did not really hold conversations.

He was supposed to sign for an hour before the game but was still there well past the sixth inning.

I still had a few weeks before the new school year would begin again and a new set of adventures were about to begin.

Each year some students graduate or leave and new ones arrive but although I still had some very good students the total number of technical/design majors was falling off.

In the early 1990’s we were able to build large and complex sets because of the staff and large number of skilled students we had.

The start of the 1994-5 school year was the beginning of several years of transition as there would be several staff changes, fewer tech students and building renovations that all effected our productions.

There will still be many well done productions ahead but I still think of the previous few years and a special period and I am proud of what we, the faculty and students, had accomplished.

Up first in the fall of 1994 was The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

* * *

One Big Thorn

I had a great time in Connecticut in the summer of 1994.

I was proud of the work that my staff and I did and enjoyed meeting an interesting mix of people.

Because the actors and tech staff lived together in the dorm we talked and joked in our free time and told a few “War Stories” about our experiences working in Theatre.

From the director of the first play I learned a few things about how Soap Operas are filmed.

She told me that each day of the week had its own director who filmed only the scenes to be shown on that day, so a party scene that goes on for three or four shows is filmed each day by a different director and not all at once.

One of the actresses in Don’t Dress for Dinner, Melissa Hurst, had a recent baby and her husband, Richard Council, was staying at the school to care for the baby and his was seen walking all over the campus with the baby in a stroller.

On occasion the two would stop by the shop for a visit and see what we were doing.

A few months later while watching The Cosby Mysteries I realized that one of the actors on the show was indeed Richard Council.

The company producer had a Fourth of July pool party at his house and from time-to-time there would be special dinners served outside on the Veranda hosted by the company chef.

It was an almost perfect summer except for one thing or should I say one person.

There was one woman working at the Festival that I did not get along with or should I say she did not get along with me.

I will not mention her name or the job she did but will call her Jane as in Jane Doe.

I will note that from what I saw Jane did her job very well.

Our work schedules only overlapped a little bit but from the first day she made it clear that she felt that my crew and I were in her way.

My guys were working with the Genie lift and Jane walks in and said that she needed it now; I told her she could have it as soon as they were finished with the job.

When I left to work in Connecticut I told myself that I was going to have a good time and not let little things bother me so as Jane continued with her curt and rude remarks I just let them go.

I remember my crew telling me; “hey she was just really rude to you” and I just smiled and said yes she was.

Jane would often come into work just as we were finishing up our workday in the shop and I would always ask she needed us to help her with anything before we left.

She would always bark back: “No I don’t need any help!” and I would smile and say goodnight.

One day when Jane was working earlier than normal and as we all went to lunch I asked her if she was coming too and she just barked something I did not understand and walked away.

A few days later she did show up for lunch and I said without really thinking: “Hey just because I invited you to lunch didn’t mean you could come”.

Of course she exploded and went on and on about not needing my permission to eat and all of us just laughed at her.

I did make an effort to figure out what was going on tried to stop it.

I went to two women in the company who knew what was going on to ask them what I was doing wrong and what I could do about it but both said I was doing nothing wrong and that she was just a bitch.

I think it pissed her off that I just responded to her rudeness with “Have a nice day” and smiles.

Near the end of the summer I did lose my cool and yelled back at her.

We were working with a guest dance company and trying to set up the theatre when Jane starting yelling at me from across the theatre about who knows what.

I told her to stop talking and that I had taken enough of her shit and it was unacceptable for her to talk that way in front of our guests and she needed to apologize to them.

I wish the producer had done something to stop her rude conduct but that never happened.

In the months of returning to Brockport one of my former students, and I have them working everywhere, told a story of working at Jane’s home theatre and how she was rude to people there too.

Another former student working at a theatre that was doing a joint production with Jane’s home theatre told of receiving an overly packed package of what most would consider as consumable items marked with the message: “These items are the property of so-in-so Theatre and are expected to be returned in good condition blah, blah, blah”.

As I said earlier, I thought she was good at her job but had some problem that I could not solve.

If I had found the big thorn in her paw I would have gladly pulled it out.

* * *

Statues and a few Odd Bitz

The sets for three plays that summer each offered their own interesting challenges that made the hard work enjoyable.

The last play required a few unique elements, three life-size statues.

With the Greek Theatre theme to the play the statues would be white but in contemporary poses.

It was decided to use plaster bandage wraps used for broken bone casts and cast whole people.

Even back in 1994 plaster casts were becoming less common place but we found a supplier in Hartford.

I let my assistant Rich take the lead on the casting process in which he did a great job.

Who to cast?

Well it is time for a side story.  

The Westminster School where the Theatre Festival was held was a boarding school for rich kids from all over the world.

Some teenage boy was traveling across America that summer and was looking for interesting places to go.

Somebody who knew somebody suggested he make a stop in Simsbury.

The only thing going on at the school in the summer was soccer camps and the Theatre Festival so he came to hang out with us for week or so.

So this boy who nobody knew hung out with us in the scene shop just as we were about to do the body casting so he became our first victim, I mean model.

So on a hot summer day dressed in shorts; wearing a black garbage bag and covered with Vaseline we began to cover him in plaster.

Ken, British Teen and Rich

We learned a few things on the first attempt.

First we tried to cast too much of the body at once and also plaster gives off a lot of heat as it sets.

Look up exothermic reaction online for hours of fun scientific facts to read and enjoy.

For the next two bodies we did only parts of each body and then joined them together after they were set.

We cast Ken, the other shop assistant, and even Ellen, the scene designer, let us cast her.

You can see two of the body casts in the photos I have posted but Ellen’s body double was sitting just out of the camera’s range.

We did not work all the time that summer and did have some time for fun.

I brought my bicycle and we all rode it around the campus and to town from time to time, plus we played some tennis, badly, and used to school pool a few times.

The company had a good chef on staff and fed us three meals a day.

The chef was cool guy who let us know where the key to the freezer was so we had a few midnight ice cream raids.

Early on I remember going into town to check out one of the bars.

It was a typical bar with several T.V.s on each one with something different.

There were baseball games on a few T.Vs but one had a news channel on that was showing an aerial shot of a slow moving SUV.

Of course that was the infamous O.J. slow chase in the white Ford Bronco.

Someone recommended we check out the view from Heublein Tower on Talcott Mountain.

We stopped by and took the very steep path mile or so up to near the tower.

Cliff by Heublein Tower

I was amazed that people were riding mountain bikes on the path and even more shocked that several people were carrying what looked like large beach umbrellas.

When we got to the top the view was great and the umbrellas turned out to be hang gliders.

It is a very steep cliff edge and those who jump have no room for error.

You can see a video of people flying from that spot at the following link:

http://www.ct-hanggliding.org/

I had a great time that summer and only had one problem that I tried not let bother me.

More next time . . . . .

* * *