Off to Brockport

August 1982, my life was about to change and I was not sure where the new road ahead was going to take me.
I was going through many emotions from great excitement to even fear as I pondered what was about to happen to me.
Oh course I was egger to get back to working in Theatre but not sure about teaching and moving into a new town.

I packed my few belonging; clothes, tools and drafting supplies and drove my folks van off to my new life in Brockport.
How long was it going to be?
Three years, five, ten or would I even last the first year?

By the time the college had gotten all the paperwork done I was hired after the start of the school year and I would take over my class after it had already met for a few days.
Because it was Labor Day weekend I could not move into the dorm they had arrange for me to live so I spent a night or two at the Chairman’s house.

I would spend a month living in the Stage XVI dorm complex while I looked for a place to live.
Stage XVI was a unique dorm complex that housed about 1000 students.




Stage XVI Dorm


The cluster of buildings was not like normal dorms of the day but more like apartments with two bedrooms, and a living room and kitchen.
There was also a central common building with washing machines, vending machines and a recreation area.
The idea was nice but the structure was poor.

Somehow the State Dormitory Authority bought the idea that that a building with metal siding, designed to rust, would be good for a building in Western New York.
Evidently the building designs worked well in climates like Arizona, but so good in Brockport’s wet and snowy winters.
The buildings were only nine years old when I moved in, but already they had holes rusted through the siding and the drainage around the building were poor and the ground floor apartment were subject to frequent flooding.

During the winters the exterior stairwells were often covered with ice and the students had to make a dangerous trek trying to get in and out of their rooms.
The dorms only lasted until 1990 when they were closed and torn down.

The first days of my time at Brockport are all a blur as I had many things to deal with.
I had to meet all of the staff, tour the building, move in my office, get keys and find out about my students and classes and begin work on the department’s productions.

At the time I came to Brockport they still had a summer theatre program of two productions.
There was a musical in July and another play in the beginning of August.
The August play was held over and performed again the first weekend of the new school year.

The year I came the hold over play was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The brush-up rehearsal for the play was the night of my first day at work.
The Student crew knew what to do, I did not try to run the crew but just helped out where I could and had to jump in and help move the big turntable when its motor burnt out.

They had built a large turntable that had been used both the musical and Sherlock Holmes.
It was not built they way I would have done and after the set strike the big pieces of it sat against the wall of the Theatre for several years before I finally threw it out.
For the turntable platform they had used a honeycomb paper glued between ply and Mansonite, but unfortunately the glue that they used did not hold very well and parts of the turntable failed.
I did save the 100 castors used and still have most of them today.

Needless to say it was a very long first day and stressful day for me.


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Things Change

Working in Manhattan made it hard to hang out with friends from work because I lived on Long Island and my co-workers lived all around the NYC area: my brother lived in New Jersey, others lived up in Westchester and Connecticut and a few lived in the various boroughs of the city.
One of my co-workers lived over one hundred miles from me because I lived 40 plus miles from work and he lived almost 60 miles in the opposite direction out in New Jersey.
Needless to say we did not hang out at each other’s houses on the weekend.
As noted in an earlier post we would occasional gather at one of the local bars after work for a few drinks and then head off in our separate directions to home.

There was one Saturday when we all came back into the city to get together for a softball game in one of the ball fields in Central Park.
There is a high demand for the fields and you have to see up well in advance.
It was the 15th floor (my normal hangout) with the younger photographers and tech staff against the 18th floor and the older photographers and account reps.
My floor lost both the game and face as the older guys beat us, but it was very cool to play in Central Park.

During my year at the Photo Studio I had not given up on the idea of working in Theatre but first I needed to finish the re-writes on my master’s thesis.
I had done a quick fix to the paper and sent it in but the teachers wanted a few more changes so I decided that I would take some time off from work and get it done right.

I had only worked just over 11 months at the Photo Studio and was not yet entitled to vacation time but I went into see my boss and told that I was going to take two weeks off anyway and that if he wanted me back after I was done I would like to come back, but if he did not want to hold my job that was fine with me.
It told me that it would be fine and I went home to work on my thesis.

I made several trips to SUNY Stony Brook to use their library and re-read some of the books that I had used back in Michigan.
I rented an electric and re-wrote the 60 page paper and sent it in.
While I was off from work I saw that the American Theatre Association was having their conference in the city and I went the job placement service that was part of it.

I interviewed with several schools including SUNY College at Brockport.
I thought the interview went well, but you never know.
As it turned out Seton Hall University had the table right next to Brockport’s and they talked to the Seton Hall people about me.

At first they said: “Oh you don’t want him, we had to let him go, he didn’t work out”.

Thankfully the man who had just interviewed me seemed puzzled and asked if they were talking about the same person.
It turns out they were talking about the guy who they brought in instead of me.

When they realized they had made a mistake the Seton Hall people said: “Gary was great, we liked him and were sorry we hired the other guy”.

So a few days later I got a call from Brockport telling me that they wanted me but had to work out some money issues.
I did not know it at the time but Brockport was going through major cuts and had retrenched (cut) four departments.

Currently things are a bit scary here with new budget cuts, but (knock on wood) no departments have been cut at Brockport as with some other SUNY schools.
SUNY Albany plans to cut their Theatre program, not good.

A few days later I got another call offering me the job.
I had been to Brockport twice while at Buffalo.
I came out with some friends to see a play, Our Town, and a jazz concert with the Sam Rivers Trio featuring Dave Holland on bass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Q1c60JoaM

Sam River’s music is based in Bebop but in 1977 he was too much into the Free Jazz style for me, but Dave Holland is a great Bass player and I am glad I saw the concert.

Brockport’s Theatre Department had a good reputation and I thought that it would be a good starter job.
What the heck, I would give it a try, maybe three years or so and I would move on before I was 30.

If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans.

Well things changed, this is the end on my 29th year at Brockport and I now am 55.
There are many more interesting stories to come.

I never did go back to the Photo Studio after working on my thesis.
I called my supervisor and told him I had taken another job.
He was cool about it and even got me a week of vacation pay in my last paycheck.

A big change was ahead for me and I had to make plans to move on very short notice.




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