Professor

I made it through my rookie year as a professor, and I enjoyed it. It was everything that it was supposed to be. There was of course a learning curve but you should expect that in anything. My course load was pretty good I taught 3 classes during the fall and 2 during the spring, as well as supervising the shop, and work calls, designing lights for 3 out of 4 productions and sets for one. Here’s a semester by semester break down of my rookie year. Fall The week before classes started I spent in meeting after meeting, college meetings, department meeting, division meetings, and production meetings and on and on. I was so disoriented after all these meetings I was sure my head was going to explode, and honestly I don’t recall what any of them were about, I just remember that they were long. Which is great because in a few short weeks I get to do it all over again for the new school year. Go team!! I taught and will again this fall semester Stagecraft, Set Design, and Sound Design. The stagecraft class I have been teaching as a grad student for a few years now and I enjoy teaching that class. While I have done set and sound design it was a whole different ballgame to teach those classes. I didn’t have a clue where to start so I tried to tailor the class to model some of the classes I took. I took some of Dennis, and some of Shawn and some ideas from Amy Critchfield and made a set design class. It seemed to work out well enough to use the same model again with just a few adjustments for this year. The sound class I shamelessly just stole from Bruce’s sound class. We spent a great deal of time of the engineering of sound, and touched on elements of design. The highlight of the class was of course the tempest mix at the end of the semester; we had some really creative projects come out of that, including the interior sounds of a porno if you know what I mean. It was really funny and very well done. We did I Hate Hamlet and Sweeney Todd this semester and both shows were great I design lights for both, I Hate Hamlet was first and it was a simple 1 location set that changed from night to day a few times. Sweeney was awesome, the concept was inspired by the old black and white horror movies, and every element was in tones of black and white, the set, the costumes and even the make up. My lights are what made the set and characters come alive. It was an amazing experience and even more amazing show. We were all disappointed to hear that we were not taking it to KCACTF but my student makeup designer rode it all the way to DC and after inning the national honors ended up in NYC for a week as a guest at Ming Cho Lee’s Clambake. So here we are little Dixie State College in the middle of nowhere making waves at the national level all in my rookie year. I don’t know how I am going to top that or even match that this year but we sure are going to have fun trying. Spring Semester This semester I taught light design and stage management. I was sure that the stage management class was going to get me fired. That class got so out of control at times it really was funny but it was almost dispruptive everything around us during most classes. The lighting class was much more subdued and easier to handle. From each of these classes I now have a pool of students I can throw in to Stage Manage a show or assign as a light designer. This is the goal to create working opportunities for students so that can get enough practical experience to be able to get a job in the field. Our first show of the semester was “As you Like it” in the black box. We set it in the forest and made a canopy of leaves over the black box so as you entered in the theatre you felt like you were going into a forest, complete with trees and the fall leaves overhead. Not long after the first show closed we loaded up the vans and took 18 actors and 2 tech/designer to LA for the regional KCACTF where none of the actors made it past semi finals but Guy rocked the makeup design world with Sweeney. Our trip to LA was stressful but we all had a great time we even hit Disneyland and had the amazing Bryan Richards tour of insider information. Just a few days after returning from a sleepless but victorious LA trip I was on a plane headed out to the land of Aloha to help Bruce with Aida on the army base. I spent a week in Hawaii working for the most part but of course there was some play. You just can’t go to Hawaii and not play some come on now lets keep it in proper perspective here. Our final show of the semester was “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum” this was my set design. That was a challenge mostly because my brain wasn’t into as much as it should have been. But we pulled it together and made a good show out of it. Morgan actually came to 2 of the dress rehearsals with me and loved the show; she sang “pretty little picture” for weeks after that. It was during the run of this show that Bauer showed to join the gang. We were all so sure that he was going to be a little girl. We purposely didn’t find out that he was to be a he. Morgan wanted a little sister so bad she almost cried when she found out but like everyone else her disappointment didn’t last long and she quickly became attached to her new baby brother. And there it is the nutshell recap of my rookie year as a professor