Theatre in the age of Corvid-19

For everyone the past few months has not been anything like what we had hoped for 2020 to be. 

As a Theatre Educator I had been busy as usual working on music concerts, theatrical productions,

teaching classes and supervising student projects when the world changed.

Our production of Stupid Fucking Bird was selected to go to the American College Theatre Festival
in Maryland

and our students came back a few weeks early in January to rehearse and make necessary
changes for the tour.

The Festival theatre was different than ours so a few set changes were needed and blocking modified.

After just a few short days of rehearsal the set was packed into a truck and the cast and crew were off.

The performance went well and all our students did a great job.

The truck with the set and costumes returned just a few days before classes began.

The experience was very positive to all the students involved and this gave a general  energy boost
to the department as the new semester was underway.

Even back at the start of the semester stories of this new Virus was popping up in the news.

Our first sign that things ahead were going to be different is that our first music event had
to be postponed because of bad weather.

It put a little bump in our plans but we moved on.

Our first play of the semester was Crimes of the Heart, it would be the third time we have done
it on the Mainstage and the students have also produced the play twice in the Black Box. 

It had been twenty years since our last production so it was not too fresh in most people's memory.

The production went well, the cast worked hard and seemed to enjoy working with each other.

My Stagecraft class, only 5 in number, worked hard to get the set done.

The set was a little late getting finished but all the students came together and pushed hard to get
it painted

and the last details done.

In the end it looked good and the performances went well.

As the weeks of the production went on the Virus was more prominent in the news and various
plans started to be discussed.

By the end of the production we were a week from spring break and it was clear something
was going to happen.

Each day the reports got more dire and plans changed, sometimes several times a day.

We had one last concert before the school and state shut down.

The last thing we did before the shutdown was the rescheduled cello/piano concert from February.

It was very good, almost bittersweet, as we all knew that the world was about to change for us all and we would not be back for a while.

.So here we are two months later.

We finished the semester with a hastily put together distance learning program and our plans
for moving forward are ever changing.

Our future production plans have changed several times and I bet that they will change
again before school resumes.

In the words of the old Chinese curse:

May you live in interesting times.

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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.

* * *

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.
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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.

* * *

Centennial Theatre Festival, 1994

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.

* * *

35 years at Brockport

Well I just finished my 35^th year teaching at Brockport and it is already time already to plan for next year.

Went to the college recognition diner last week and got another desk clock and certificate.

This one was a bit nicer than the one I got for 30 years.

This year was hard as I returned from my medical leave and then had another operation over Christmas break, but I glad I am done with that and moving forward.

My time off did give me a new perspective on several things how things were going at work and with my teaching and running crews.

I clearly saw how some things were not working well and I will make some changes will before the fall and classes resume.

I have to work my hip rehab this summer and that will make things easier working on the stage.

So what is in store for next year, well here is the schedule:

2017-18 Theatre Season

DEATHTRAP by Ira Levin

October 6-8 and 19-21, 2017

SHE KILLS MONSTERS by Qui Nguyen

December 1-3 and 7-9, 2017

LOBBY HERO by Kenneth Lonergan

February 23-25 and March 1-4, 2018

URINETOWN

Music by Mark Hollmann, Lyrics by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis

April 20-22 and 26-28, 2018

I am Back to Work! ! ! ! !

After nine months off because of several medical issues I came back to work in the fall semester.

I worked on three theatre productions and several music concerts.

It was nice to be back in the Theatre again but it was still hard for me to do any real work.

My new hip was fine but my other hip was getting worse each day and holding up my rehabilitation.

I had planned to have the second hip done in June, a year after the first, but I could not wait any longer.

Act I

In December, as soon as classes were done, I had my second hip replaced.

It was a great decision as I recovered in half the time as the first and with very little pain.

It has been much easier for me to work with my students this semester and although still limited to how much I can do, I can do much more than I had before.

Each day it gets a bit easier to move, bend and walk.

I can walk a little bit without my crutches but it will be a while before I am stable and safe enough not to need them at work.

We just completed our tenth Festival of Ten and I was able to do some real work and not just point and yell.

Act II

I still yell sometimes just for fun and to keep the students on their toes..

After spring break, a concert or two, a student show and some other assorted events it will be time to work on the spring show, Wonder of the World.

Wonder of The World

Things Change

Over the past five years I have enjoyed writing my Blog and have tried to write on a regular schedule but work on current productions would often get in the way of my retelling of shows of the past.

My resent gap in writing has been caused by several health issues.

Two and a half years ago I found out that I had prostate cancer.

After talking with several doctors and a visit to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo I decided to opt for surgery.

Although I had lost fifty pounds in years the doctors wanted me to lose more weight before they would operate.

I had hit a plateau and could only lose a few more pounds.

My PSA numbers continued to raise and my regular doctor suggested that something needed to be done sooner then latter and this past summer I decided to try radiation therapy.

Not wanting to have to drive to Buffalo every day I saw a doctor at the Wilmot Cancer Center at Strong hospital on Rochester only twenty minutes away.

After new rounds of blood tests, cat scans and bone scans it was offered to me that radiation therapy plus hormone therapy would be a good option for me.

In July I received the first of six monthly shots that would help shrink back the cancer.

The drug has several side effects but not too bad on its own.

On September 8th I began my radiation therapy and finished my last treatment today as I write this post.

I wanted things to be normal and choose to keep working at the college and work on the first show of the semester.

Things went well but as time went on I started to feel the effects of the drug and radiation and it got harder to work on the production.

After struggling to get the show done I decided that I would use some of my sick days and take a leave from the college.

If it was just the radiation therapy I might not needed to take off buy I also have a very bad arthritic hip that needs to be replace.

The hormone drug plus the ongoing effects of radiation sapped my strength and made it harder to do my job.

So I plan to take three to six months off and take care of my health.

I already miss working but know that I have to get better before I can effectively get back to work.

I expect now that I will have more free time I can get back to Blog, but we will have to see.

The staff at both hospitals were both great.

What was unexpected to me was meeting some incredible brave and strong fellow patients.

I met people who were much sicker than I ever was but these people were always upbeat, full of life and fighting their cancer as hard as they could.

These people helped me never to feel sorry for myself.

I have one more hormone shot in a month and will have blood test in February to see how it has all worked out.

I will let you all know what happens.

Geoffrey E. Guja

As we come to the fourteenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 I think it is important to take a moment to remember all of the heroes that we lost that day. 

I am concerned the my freshmen college students are too young to truly remember that day. 

I recently asked my college freshmen if they remembered 9/11 and some they said that they did, but they were only about 4 years old at the time. 

Soon we will have a generation who does not remember the world before that day and it is important for those of us who do remember the pre-9/11 world to tell them what really happened that day.  

I found out a few years ago that I had once met one of those heroes almost forty years ago while I was still in college.

He was the twin brother of one of my friends and I enjoyed a few beers and some laughs with him during a visit to Buffalo.

* * *

Please take a minute to remember him and all of those who we lost on 9/11.

Geoffrey E. Guja

Age: 47

Hometown: Lindenhurst, N.Y., USA

Occupation: Firefighter, New York Fire Department

Location: Ground, World Trade Center

LINKS

http://www.911memorial.org/

http://www.firehero.org/fallen-firefighter/geoffrey-e-guja/

http://longisland.newsday.com/911-anniversary/victims/Geoffrey-Guja

http://www.legacy.com/sept11/stltoday/Story.aspx?PersonID=94805&location=2

http://kapgar.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/did_you_ever_kn.html

Original 9/11 memorial in Brockport, NY

* * *

Summer Theatre

I miss doing summer theatre.

This summer the only things going on in the theatre have been the weightlifting event of the Special Olympics and five sessions of the freshmen orientation for next fall.

I enjoyed the Special Olympics and was impressed by all the athletes, but I really did not have much to do for that event.

We used to do shows every summer but have not done one in over fifteen years.

As I look back at summer of my summer theatre memories I have included links to posts in which I have written about them in more detail.

I did my first summer production in 1975 after my first year in college.

I returned home and lit the local community theatre production of No, No, Nanette.

This was the production when I got the best insight and design concept from the director when he told me to just “Make it Pretty”.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/10/make-it-pretty.html

The summer of 1976, the bi-centennial, was my favorite and busiest summer of theatre.

Right after the end of school I went to NYC and for a month worked off-Broadway on four plays in rep.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/11/as-with-each-year-while-i-was-in.html

After just a few days off I went out to Gateway Playhouse for a true summer stock experience of which I wrote several blog entries.

It was a crazy and wild summer working hard, learning a lot and having a good time all the time we were bitching about everything.

Stories from that summer start with this post:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/12/gateway-playhouse-1976.html

The summer of 1977 was my first as a “Professional Designer”

I was hired to be the lighting designer for two productions at a small Long Island theatre.

The shows were Rogers and Hart, A Musical Celebration and The Sound of Music.

Details about the shows are in the following post:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-for-apple.html

The next summer was right after I graduated from college and I did not work on any play, well not directly.

This was the summer that I worked for Lycian Stage Lighting.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/04/summer-of-1978.html

I was soon off to Graduate school were we had four shows in rep each summer.

The first summer I designed two of the plays and the second summer I worked on my master’s thesis and did time as the master electrician for the summer rep.

Details about my first summer at Michigan can be found at the following link as well as mixed in 20 other post I wrote about my time at Michigan:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/08/summer-1979.html

After Graduate school I returned home to Long Island and did what work I could find in the area.

In the summer of 1981 I was hired to be the Scenic and Lighting Designer as well as the Technical Director at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

The productions were the musical Candide, Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey and Da by Hugh Leonard.

The first of two posts about that summer is:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2011/01/summer-theatre-in-new-jersey.html

I was out of Theatre for a year while I was working in a photo studio in NYC,  but in the Fall of 1982 I started working at the College at Brockport.

For the next seventeen years I worked on most of the summer production the college produced but I was giving a break the summer they did The Wizard of Oz.

I was glad to be off that year as they set off the fire alarms during every performance because they used too much flash powder and fog.

In the summers of 1994 and 1998 I got a chance to work outside  of Brockport again and do true summer stock.

I have not yet written details of those summers but they are coming up soon.

I the last few years that we had summer shows there a few that there was no show because of renovations to the building.

Cutbacks in funding and higher costs finally killed the summer productions at Brockport.

As I have gotten older I do not know if I could do a full summer of theatre as I did back in 1976 when I was 20 but I am glad I had the chance to do it when I did.

* * *