House Hunting in Michigan

In the middle of the summer I took a week or so off to drive to Ann Arbor to find a place to live in the fall.
On the way to and from Michigan I stopped in Buffalo and got to see some of my friends.
I drove through Canada to Detroit and then on to Ann Arbor.
I had never driven so far alone before and had a scare when one of the tires on the car started to come apart sending bits of rubber slamming into to wheel well.
It was “Fun” changing a tire on the side of the road in Canada with little shoulder space and cars zipping by at 80 miles an hour.

I stayed with a friend from Buffalo that had gone to Michigan and was getting ready to graduate.
While I was there I got to see all four shows in their summer repertory plus a dance concert.
Madonna was still a dance student at Michigan at the time but I have no way of knowing if she was in the concert or was at home packing and getting ready to take the bus to NYC and on to fame and fortune, but I like to think that I saw her last dance concert in college.

There was a party one night when I got to meet some of the students who would be back in the fall as well as those who were getting ready to graduate.
I am always telling my students my Theatre “War” stories, many of which make up this blog, and bits of sage-like advice.
I tell them about the old adage of Theatre being a small world and that you will never know who knows who and that you will always keep running into people that you already know.
I also tell them to look around the room as they may be working with some of their classmates when they graduate and go out into the “Real” world and I have talked about this in some of my earlier blogs.

One of those who I meet that summer and who was getting graduate was C. T. Oakes and although we did not take classes at the same time at Michigan, I would run into him many times over the years.
C. T. was teaching at SUNY Geneseo when I started at SUNY Brockport in 1982 and I worked with him several times when he came to Brockport to design the lighting for Garth Fagan Dance.
http://garthfagandance.org/

C. T. left Educational Theatre and entered the business end of lighting but I would run into him many times at the USITT conferences and other trade shows.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/c-t-oakes/14/40b/8aa
(I just found out that C. T. now lives here in Brockport, just a few blocks away, again a small world)

After a few days of looking I found a place to live but I was taking a chance as it was old house that was still under major renovations.
I saw an ad on campus and met several guys who had found the house and needed a few more roommates.
We met in a local bar and found that we were a mixed bag of students; both graduate and undergraduate students, majors from English to Theatre to History and even Chinese.
A couple of us were from Long Island, a farm boy from Illinois, a pot head, a book worm and the son of a Venezuelan Diplomat.
I returned in the fall and moved in with the six other guys to the upper two floors of a nice old house just a few blocks from campus, we all got along well and had a good time that year.

Before I left Ann Arbor I met with the Lighting Design Teacher and was told that they were short a designer and he asked me if I would design lights for a play that fall.
Normally they would not have new students design their first semester but I jumped at the chance, not really thinking too clearly as it was the first show I the year and my design skills would be given a big test.
So before I even took one class at Michigan I had seen 5 department plays, a dance concert, a rehearsal for an Opera, attended several parties and attended my first production meeting for a play I was about to design.

I was excited and could not wait for the summer to be over and to start on my newest adventure.