A few months ago my wife and I started to record episodes of “Jeopardy!”. We would watch it together and pause playback immediately after each answer was presented. It might take up to two minutes for us to come up with what we thought was the correct question, then we would restart playback. We amazed ourselves at what we could pull from the recesses of our minds. When our response was incorrect, we would just say ‘RATS!’ and moved on to the next answer. The other day one of the answers had to do with the famous play, “Man of La Mancha”. It is the story of Don Quixote and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. It brought back one of my best memories from my short college career at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls.
One of the classes I took was theater. Everyone in the class had to choose a role in the upcoming performance of “Man of La Mancha”. Some chose to perform; some chose to work on set design or publicity. I don’t know how I was assigned the role of ‘lighting and audio operator’, but there was only one position and I was it!
I started out by working with the director over a number of days to program in the lighting sequences. As he figured out what configuration he wanted at each step of the play, I would lock each one into the computer. During the two public performances, I would be in radio contact with the stage manager who would let me know when to go from one sequence to the next.
I had the entire control room to myself. I was responsible for turning up and down the house lights at the start and end of the performances. It was also my job to begin the play by running a reel-to-reel audio tape of the British national anthem.
During the first of the two performances, I took my place in the control room. Everything I did worked according to plan. I turned down the house lights, played the national anthem, changed lighting sequences on command. However, there was one student in the theater class who was put in charge of operating the one spotlight. Their only job was to turn it on and move it to its proper position. That’s it. There were just a couple of times it was needed. One was during a critical moment of a death of a character that ended one of the acts. As the actor crumpled to the ground and feigned death, the spotlight was nowhere to be found. A few seconds later the light from the spotlight found its way to the actor from the corner of the stage. But the dramatic effect was lost! The audience slowly began to clap now that they knew the act was over.
That night at the after-party, I got disapproving looks from the actors. One even scolded me for not doing my job with the spotlight. Even though I said, “It wasn’t me!”, they had already made up their mind that *I* was the one who ruined the moment. (The second and final performance went over without incident.)
All-in-all, it was a memorable experience being part of the performances. I was in my element. I was disappointed I didn’t get a better grade in the theater class. I wrote home to my mother about the experience. She kept the letters and I found them a few years ago in some old boxes. I published a few excerpts from them, below. (Apparently I was an angry young man!)
Thirty-seven years later, I still get excited preparing for and recording media at live events. I love being involved behind-the-scenes. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. My satisfaction is being part of a troupe working together to pull off ‘The Big Event’.
Resources
August 27,2018
I reached out to the University of Wisconsin – River Falls archive department via email. I had heard that the play performance was recorded. I also wanted to see if I could get a copy of the playbill. While I wait for a response, I decided to go ahead and publish this blog post.
Letters to Mother
…
