In 1985 I went to my first USITT conference in New
York City.
While there I saw four Broadway plays in three days,
toured two theatres under construction and spent a lot of time on the expo
floor but went to only a few of the formal conference sessions.
I flew down to New York City with the lighting
designer, shared a hotel room with him and did most things together.
In 1990 the department chair found money to help pay
for me to go in to the USITT conference in Milwaukee.
It was five years later and I went alone and felt a
bit different as I went.
I was then 34, both the department Technical Director
and Lighting Designer and had been tenured the year before.
I wanted to get the most out of the conference as I
could.
Many years the conference runs during our spring
break at the college but that year it was only a week before our spring musical
production.
As you will see in the photos for Purlie,
which I will write about in my next post, that set was large and had many
platforms and both rolling and flying wall units.
Planning ahead and getting much of the work done
before I left I was able to go off to Milwaukee the week before the play was to
open.
We had great student workers and our scene designer
Drew Francis worked with them to finish the set while I was away.
I signed up to take a pre-conference workshop on
lighting plays for videotaping and so I arrived in Milwaukee a few days before
the start of the regular conference.
I have enjoyed every one of the conferences that I
have been able to attend but this one was very memorable and made me want to go
every year.
Theatre people, especially techies, have a way of finding each other in a crowd.
While waiting for my luggage at the airport I struck
up a conversation with a guy who was a
vendor coming in to set up his booth at the trade expo at the conference.
We got our luggage about the same time and moved to
the rental car and taxi area.
As I was looking for a taxi or town car to take me to
my hotel the guy offered to take me in his rental car and save me a few bucks.
He dropped me at my hotel and then went on to his
own hotel.
I took this as a sign that I might have a good time
at the conference.
Theatre
tech people are great.
After checking into my room I went back down to the
bar for a nightcap.
Sitting at the bar I ran into another vendor or
salesman who was working at the conference and he paid for my drinks.
He said that his boss would not think he was doing
his job if he did not have a big enough bar bill.
Theatre
tech people are great.
The next day I walked down to Marquette University for the video workshop.
I learned a good deal and took lots of notes of
things that I would never really use.
The video information is now long outdated but it did
help me in some ways I am sure and I met some good people there.
During the lunch break I did have time to walk
through the University Art Museum and enjoyed it very much.
After the workshop was over I ended back at my hotel
for diner and then back to the bar for a few more drinks.
That night in the bar I ran into the man whose job I
took over when I came to Brockport
eight years before.
He was now working for some theatre supply company
that had a booth at the stage expo.
We talked about what he was now doing, what was
happening back at Brockport and because he was a vendor with a entertainment
budget he paid for the drinks.
Theatre
tech people are great.
The formal conference began the next day and because
the trade show would not open until the day after so the whole first day was
spent in conference sessions.
There was a great many things to see and do at the
conference and I tried to do them all.
I had signed up to take part in a round table discussion
for lighting design teachers to talk about the state of education and what
changed were ahead.
At another session I saw a demonstration of one of
the earliest 3D CAD programs.
The images were was just wireframe images of the
sets but they were able to move them so you could see the set from different
angles.
What took them lots of time and powerful computers to
do can now easily be done with Google
SketchUp.
Another session I attended was given by a former
student Jim Knapp who was just finishing up getting his MFA in technical
direction from the University of Wisconsin.
The session was a review of his work with the
engineering department to study the strength of stress skin platforms.
Like too many other things I still have the handout
from the session someplace in my office.
Jim was one on many local students who was born in Brockport that we
have had at the college over the years.
Finding out that he had no immediate plans after
graduation except for moving home, I offered him a job to be my assistant
technical director for the upcoming summer musical.
It was a good decision as I will talk about in upcoming
posts.
There was a luncheon on the first day of the
conference and I ended up sitting with a Ruth A. Brown, a costume designer with
whom I attended graduate school with and was teaching a Cal State Northridge.
While in Grad school I drove back from New York City
back to Ann Arbor after Christmas break with Ruth.
I forget all the details but over Christmas she was going
to visit a friend in the city and had asked around the department if anyone available
after the break to help with the long
drive back to school.
It sounded like fun so I got a one-way plane ticket
home at Christmas and after the break I took a train into NYC from Long Island
and met up with her at her friend's apartment to begin a rather uneventful trip
back to school.
There was one fun moment on the drive during a dinner break at a
truck stop in Ohio.
Hanging on the walls of the restaurant were very large black velvet paintings of 18
wheel trucks, with added motion lines painted on, but the best part that all of
the many lights on the trucks all lit up.
Beautiful! ! ! ! !
I do not how I stopped myself from buying one.
Also at the luncheon table with Ruth and I was her
colleague Willard F. Bellman the author a several theatre design text books,
one of which I know I used for a while.
The USITT conferences are always great place to run
into old friends, make new ones and meet some of the big names in technical
theatre.
In addition to conference sessions and stage expo I took a walking tour of the 4
or 5 theatres near the convention center.
My favorite was the Papst Theatre
which was built in 1895 and is one of the oldest working Theatres in America.
I did not have time to tour any of the large Milwaukee
breweries but found a nice microbrewery in which to enjoy a beer or two.
Making it back to my hotel after another long day I
ended up in the bar again and in addition to the vendors and salesmen I found
many of my classmates and a few teachers from Michigan there.
While having a drink or two and catching up with my
classmates, I noticed a couple in nearby dark corner having a good time “making
out”.
When they finally came up for air it turned out that
they were another former student and teacher from Michigan.
Theatre
tech people are great.
Having drinks with old and new friends at the end of
the day is an important part of the experience of the conferences.
Now it may sound that we did a lot of drinking but
at the end of long days it is usually just a drink or two and then off the bed.
When I was working with the Light Lab Committee at
several future conferences we would used the late night trips to the bar as
time for quick meetings about what was going to be done and who was going to do
what the next day.
At one of the Toronto conference I do remember that
the smoking of Cuban cigars was added by some to the late night drinks.
Theatre
tech people are great.
The stage expo is always a popular part of the
conference as everyone wants to see the newest lights, dimmers and other tech equipment
that is for sale.
This was the first time I remember seeing color scrollars;
they were a bit larger and noisier than the ones we use today.
There was also a great display of some 100 year old scenic
pieces from someone's collection.
Away from the conference and bars I did find a great big used bookstore and spent some time there.
I have enjoyed all of the USITT conferences that I
have attended but this one really stood out.
In Milwaukee I ran into old friends, made new ones,
went to great sessions and felt pumped up and ready to get back to Brockport
and work on the next play.
I do not remember why but I did not leave my car at
the airport but Drew the scene designer came in and picked me up when I
returned.
On the ride home I asked him how things were going
on the show.
He said that everyone had worked hard and that the
set was done but the show was canceled.
Canceled?!?!?!?!
What
the Fuck!
I asked what had happened and what was up.
Measles.
A measles outbreak had occurred at the college and
everything was shut down.
Before the school would reopen everyone born after
1957 had to get immunized.
Lucky for me I was born in 1956 and already had the
measles as a kid.
It ended up that we would lose the first week of the
show and when things had cleared up and school reopened we added an extra performance
to what should have been the normal second weekend of the play and did four
shows instead of six.
More about Purlie next time.
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