All the Worlds A Stage
I know we left off in my younger wilder days of pre-double digits, but I want to jump ahead a bit now ( I can do that, its my blog).
When I went to university, I knew what I wanted to major in right away, theatre. I signed up for a couple of theatre classes and began to colunteer for the shows they were doing. In Winnipeg, the University of Winnipeg Theatre Department is known to be the best there is. Now I am biased in that opinion true, but in my days since then, I have worked with very few University of Manitoba Theatre students.
My first year, saw me taking intro to theatre with an absolutely brilliant man, Per Brask. I was and still am in awe of him and what he knows. Per was my teacher for two classes over my several years in the department and I always felt that if ever I was to become a theatre intellectual, I wanted to be like him. Per seemed to know everything about theatre theory and was very good at articulating his ideas. Perhaps it was his articulation that got me, I wasnt very good at articulating my thoughts back then.
(For amusement: Per was and still is a HUGE Bruce Springsteen fan. When Born in the USA came out, Per said raved about it. So, for his birthday, two of my other teachers Charles and Tim, got him the tape. Little did he know, the tape was a little shorter then he thought. He put the tape in a tape player shortly after recieving it. Per presses play and Bruce begins that famous song, and then repeats the opening chorus over and over and over again. In fact he never seemed to stop. The tape was infact a loop of "I was born in the usa. I was born, in the usa." For about sixty minutes. Per was soooo mad at Charles and Tim that to this day, asking him about it, will get you thrown out of his office.)
My first involvement in or with a show was as a props assistant for a production of The Three Sisters. The director was Reg Skene (ill talk more about him another time) and as Reg tended to do, he loand personal furniture for the show. One afternoon, I went with the props coordinator and a friend to pick up an amoir of Regs, an antique amoir. A VERY EXPENSIVE amoir. Which had to be carry down in one piece, a very steep set of stairs, past a VERY expensive stained glass window and out through a vintage 1920's english oak door. When I was carring the amoir down the stairs, past the window, I though "God, if it starts to slip, please let it take me out the window first and land on me." Well, it didnt and I made it out of the house with no scratches anywhere. The amoir was a perfect fit for the show and was a whole lot easier to move once it was on wheels for the show.
Well, I can see by the hairs on my wrist, that its ten past and that I should be on my way to bed. Come back later for more adventures of me.