a poor player

Dunkirk NY – I’ve meant to get in an update post so many times, and I have so many things on my mind, but time and circumstances being what they are, I had to let this lag for a time. I’ll be working to get back to it soon?

What’s been keeping me busy? Mostly family stuff. I spent a week on Long Island with the folks getting them ready for the BIG MOVE out of their house (which some in the family call “The Castle”) and off to a condo in Amherst MA. My brother Kevin is buying The Castle and getting ready to sell his own house, so I became a moving man for a weekend. Tying up loose ends, and preparing Powerpoint slides for the Intro class I am teaching for the first time in 12 years also took up a great deal of time. Lastly, setting up the new and improved department blog – complete with Facebook and Twitter links – has consumed more time. Under all that, bloggin takes the back seat.

Classes did start yesterday, but moving from summer vacation to classes this year seemed seamless. One day I was not going to classes, today I am. This year I am directing the Hillman Opera production of La Bohème, so I don’t have any auditions to run and I’m feeling no production pressure this year. it feels like a year off in that regard. It’s nice to see the kids again, and their enthusiasm for being back is wonderful, but I think I have less pressure on me so I am nowhere near as anxious as I usually get.

I hope this year will be a big year for curricular changes. I’d like to get that BA curriculum approved so we can begin to have a theatre program which can be an alternative to BFA training, a legitimate alternative. I think that would be some achievement. I want to see what kinds of alternative theatre I might be able to produce. Maybe with my Shakespeare class I can do something different.

I also hope this year will get me to make that big change from performing to advocating. I do enjoy acting, but I think if any year is it, this is the year to try to leave performing behind and move more strongly into writing and advocating for change in theatre training. It’s a subject that gets so little play, and yet is so important. Being a teacher has always meant to me that I am trying to affect the future by training the present, and so if I can get across the idea over and over that the current system is corrupt and unworkable, perhaps in 15-20 years from now we can have an altogether different national theatrical landscape.

Anyway, the questions I talked about in late July-early August are still with me, and I need to buckle down and get them out of the brain and onto the blog. But not tonight. More preparation for the semester is in store. Time to buckle down with that.  -twl