4th of July in San Francisco

I spent the 4th of July in lovely San Francisco on a boat! We knew some folks who had chartered a fishing boat to spend the evening on the bay and watch the fireworks, and the more the merrier (and the less everyone had to spend to cover the charter). It was a blast, and I actually used my camera and took pictures for the first time in years (outside of a theater). Here's the view from the boat earlier in the evening:

And here we are during the fireworks:

The night was very clear (clearest in 15 years according to our captain) and the fireworks were awesome. Also, at at some great restaurants (Absinthe Bar and Brasserie was very good and awesome atmosphere) and had cocktails at some excellent bars (Rickhouse was a fave).

And then I got home, and bought a new bed (retiring the futon I spent the last almost 20 years sleeping on):

Next week I'm off to Minnesota.

Hello from San Francisco

I'm in a coffeeshop in San Francisco taking a short break from working on one of my fall classes. It's been a while, to say the least, since I've updated this, but I thought I'd just go ahead with a short post anyway.

I'm between busy school years at the moment. Last year I went through my mid-tenure review (basically I put together a tenure application file at the halfway point to actually going up for tenure and a few people read it and let me know if it seems like I'm on the path to tenure, or if I should be doing things I'm not doing). The response was positive, which was great to hear. Putting together the file is a big undertaking (you try documenting and describing in detail everything that you've done on your job over the past 4 years...it adds up). I'm glad it's done, and I'm glad they make us do this at this point as it makes it easier to finish off the file when I actually apply for tenure. But it did take up a lot of focus.

And next year won't be a return to business as usual. We are hiring two new faculty members, and I'm leading one of the searches. It's very exciting to go through the process, and at the end of it we will have one more full time faculty member than we've had before. And while organizing, reviewing, all those files in the fall, in addition to the interviewing and deciding in the winter, is going to keep all of us busy.

But right now I'm happily in between. Trying to get as much done this summer to prepare for next year as I can to take a little pressure off. But I'm also having some fun. I'm in San Fran visiting Lindsay while she's in a summer acting program. So far we've wandered the city a bit, and spent the 4th on a boat in the bay with a bunch of bartenders watching the fireworks (an unusually clear night, it was awesome), and hitting some great dinner places. Next weekend, more wandering, some museums, and then I head back to Portland. Lindsay comes back to Portland in August for a bit before she moves to New York City.

Otherwise I've spent my summer producing a new play workshop, which went well, and working on stuff for next fall in coffeeshops. I'm typing this on my newest toy/tool, my iPad2, which is a lot easier to lug around than my laptop, although there are a lot of things I still need to haul the laptop out for.

Anyway, hope you all are well, and I'll try to write more again soon.

Fall Semester

So Fall semester is coming to a close (eventually). It's been a pretty good semester though, as usual, busy.

Classes are going fine, it's the other stuff that's been occupying most of my time this semester. Both of my third year grad students did their thesis shows on the mainstage this fall. So I kept track of those projects, and my second year grad student's second season project, as well as directed a smaller project of my own.

For years (ten or more according to my colleagues who've been working here longer than I have) we've been promised a second performance space in an old auditorium in the basement of a dorm on campus. Two years ago we started to make plans to at least use the space for classes, but those were thwarted when the engineering department got a big gift to upgrade their facilities, and they took over the space to use it for temporary office space while their building was being worked on. The bad news is we lost the space for 2 more years, the good news is that the University had to make some changes to the space (including "separating" it from the rest of the dorm with a secured door) that we would have needed to do anyway. So the engineers moved out this last spring, and we started to move into the space this fall.

Since I wasn't directing a mainstage show this fall we decided I'd direct a smaller show in the new space. We knew going in things were going to be unpredictable, and we were right. When we were finally "given" the space, we didn't get the entire space, so first they had to build walls inside the auditorium to create a 40'x40' room for the theater space. This took some time, and kept us from rehearsing in there early on. The show I chose to do had a minimal set requirements, so that was ok, and the lighting requirements were pretty much lights up/lights down.

When we finally did get to move into the space (a couple of days before our opening) we started at noon on a Monday with an empty room. By 6 the set was in, the lights (included rented equipment) were up, the sound equipment (borrowed from University Media Services) was up and we were ready to go. We used the light board from the mainstage space to run the lights and my laptop to run the sound.

The show went well. We had about 30-40 people for the Thursday and Saturday night performances. On Friday we filled the place to capacity (the way it was set up) with 94.

A couple of more weeks this semester, and then it's on to spring.

Promoted

As some of you know I've been waiting for a couple of months to find out if I was going to get promoted to a regular Assistant Professor at UP. The handshake deal when I was hired as a Visiting Assistant (for budget reasons) was that I'd be promoted in 2-3 years. Well I just finished year 2, so we were at that time. Although, as many of you are no doubt aware, the economy isn't so great at the moment, so with budgets being held tight I wasn't sure it was going to happen. And if it didn't happen this year, I wasn't sure how long I'd eventually have to wait.

But it happened. As of June 1 I'll be a regular Assistant Professor, which means, among other things, I'm on the tenure track now. And, they gave me 2 years credit towards tenure (so as far as the tenure clock is concerned it's as if they hired me in a tenure-track position in the first place). So that puts me 2 years closer to tenure and my next promotion than I could have been. I'm very happy, and somewhat relieved, to be on more solid footing at UP.

That's the big news. Otherwise we're done with our regular school year (and I'm not teaching in the summer) so I'm on summer break. On deck for the summer: Ultimate Spring League (which is going well, my team is a good group of folks); Ultimate Summer League; Dad, Nate, and Mike coming out here in a few weeks; a trip to MN somewhere; a workshop project through Portland Theatre Works; preparing my tenure file (oy); prepping for my classes for next year; prepping for my directing projects for next year; etc. So I won't be bored, certainly.

Oh, in Portland Theatre Works news, we had an article about us in the Oregonian fairly recently. You can see it here (http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/04/portland_theatre_works_looks_t.html). Although in the picture I look a little like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, Bob Hicks did make me sound both intelligent and clever, which is nice.

Spring has sprung!

Finally it actually looks and feels like spring on Oregon today. Mid 70's, sunny. So I'm sitting outside, alternately grading papers and avoiding grading papers (like right now for instance). Ahhhhh...

Reached the point in the semester where the amount of work I have to do does not seem to be decreasing at as fast a rate as the time within which I have to do it. But such is every semester. It all gets done. Eventually.

Final week of rehearsal pre-tech for Marat/Sade this week, so I'll be there a bit. And then this weekend and next week I'll be at the tech and dress rehearsals. The show's going well (it is a *big* show) and the grad student directing is doing a nice job. Now we just have to see if it all comes together. Following that, end of the year reviews, projects, finalizing the season for next year, and so on. A 3 week sprint, then finals week, then it's summer break.

Also making offers to prospective grad students for next year. Writing recommendation letters, gearing up for the end of year stuff, and waiting to hear on my possible promotion (which I now know I won't hear about until mid-May...everyone's holding their breath to see how many incoming frosh may deposits on May 1 for next year, which is what the projected budget is based on).

I also got into Portland Ultimate Spring League this year (last year I didn't get in, there's a lottery for the spots for men), which starts in a couple of weeks. So now I also need to worry about getting in shape (although I feel pretty good with the regular commuting by bike I've been doing). Plus I'm old, so...

Anyway, back to work. These things won't grade themselves.

Now Spring is half over

Seriously: I will get better at this and post a little more often.

So now I'm halfway through spring and almost at the end of my second year of teaching. I have a theory: the second year of anything is usually a hard year. Mostly because the "newness" is gone, but one still doesn't have things figured out yet. That and I think year one the expectations are lower, by year two one tends to think things will get easier faster than they do (or at least I do).

The fall ended pretty well. One of my graduate students directed Much Ado about Nothing for his thesis project and did a really nice job. The production was chosen as an alternate for the regional Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival, which is an honor.

This spring I've had my usual complement of classes: Intro to Fine Arts, undergraduate directing, and graduate directing. Added to that this semester has been advising the writing of the MFA thesis (I have 2 grads finishing this year). That takes up a fair amount of time I've found. I'm working through the Much Ado thesis right now.

I'm not directing this spring, which is kinda nice since it gives me time to do some grad program stuff (as well as getting the thesis writing advising somewhat figured out).

I got to go to Idaho for this year's Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival. We go every February for a week and take most of our students, many of whom compete in various things. The exciting news this year was that one of our students won the regional acting competition and is going to D.C. at the end of April for the national conference. It's a very exciting thing, and great for our program.

So school is fine. It looks like I will be promoted for next year, but we're still waiting for final budget numbers before anything actually happens. All reports are that it will happen. It certainly will be great if it does.

I'll try to keep this a little more updated from here out. We'll see.

Fall is half over

Hey all,

As the headline says, fall semester is half over. But being half over, I'm currently in my week long fall break (UP does a week break mid-semester both semesters, which is nice). September is a bit of a blur, but I'll try to remember what happened and catch you all up.

First week of school and classes start as well as auditions. We did auditions for all the fall plays Wed, Thu, and Fri; met on Saturday morning to cast all 4 plays; and I started rehearsals on Sunday night. Bang and we're off. Blithe Spirit went well. Things were looking tough about as we were getting towards the end of rehearsals and we couldn't get through the show in 3 and a half hours, but we got past that (show ran two hours, plus intermissions, once we opened). The play is about a man and wife who host a seance (so he can collect material for his new book) and the ghost of his first wife appears (only to him, but she's there and can move stuff). Hilarity ensues. It's a 1940 comedy, British, very much clever wit and fast thinking. Once the actors caught on to the style they did really well.

The show was also written to end scenes with the curtain dropping with characters on stage, and we don't have a curtain. So I decided to give myself the extra challenge of avoiding having actors and props come and go in view of the audience without it being part of the action. Mostly this just involved adding bits of business to the beginning and ends of scenes (including a fun minute long bit where the ghost messes with the maid...while one of the other actors is off stage making a quick costume change). But the third act scene break was a problem: the same 4 actors on stage at the end of scene one and beginning of scene two, with props coming on and a few hours of time elapsed. So for that I created a fast-forward montage sequence that I worried would seem really out of place in the show, but the audience, and the gentlemen who came to respond/critique the show for ACTF (American College Theater Festival), enjoyed it, so no worries. The ACTF respondents also liked the fact that I made the medium, Madame Arcati (40s-60s in the script), a 30ish year old woman (all the actors were 18-22). I'm glad they appreciated that decision, she's the most genuine character in the play even if she is a bit crazy.

After Blithe Spirit closed one of my second year grad students had his 2nd year show (and I mean right after, we struck the Blithe Spirit set Sunday and I was back in the theater Monday for his tech rehearsal...he opened Wednesday). That show also went well.

Then my theater company had a fundraiser this past weekend (basically this is all happening over the last 2 weeks). On Friday we presented 6 short plays/scenes by local playwrights, rehearsed by local directors and actors--including me, to the audience. At intermission we brought on about 10 props and asked the audience to choose 3. After the 6 plays we brought each playwright to the stage one at a time to be auctioned off. The winning bidders instantly "commissioned" the playwrights to write a new play/scene using the 3 props the audience chose (an oversized ladle, a stuffed/fake black bird, and a gas mask). The winning bidder also gave their playwright the first and last lines of dialog for the scene. Then we met with the 6 playwrights and gave them the number of actors they needed to use and they had until 6:30 a.m. to write. The directors met at 9 a.m. and were handed the scripts the playwrights had written, we cast actors at 9:30 and started rehearsing. At 6:30 we met back at the theater and the 6 plays went up at 7:30. Pretty much all of our Friday night audience came back (and brought folks) anxious to see how things worked out. The plays were funny and serious, with some biting satire. All in all everyone had a blast, though many of us lost some sleep, and we raised over $1000 for the company.

That's pretty much been the fall. Classes are going well, I feel like everything's well in hand. It's still a pretty busy job, but this year there are much fewer surprises (so far no "wait...that's my job?" moments, unlike last year). I also got a tentative promotion. I was hired as a visiting assistant professor (due to budgetary constraints) with the promise of promotion after 2 or 3 years. They've approved my promotion to regular assistant professor for next year, if they can fund the position which they won't know until the budget is approved late winter/early spring. So I may be promoted. We'll see. Even so, it's a nice gesture on their part to show that they want to keep me around.

Looking ahead, I've got a thesis student doing Much Ado about Nothing (set in Hawaii a little before the bombing of Pearl Harbor) and a 2nd year grad doing Eleemosynary, so I'll still be sitting in rehearsals, just not mine and not so often. This week I basically took Sunday and yesterday off (watched television!) and now I'm working through my to do list, grading, and catch-up projects.

Tonight I'm off to Portland Center Stage to see R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE. So it's not all work and no play.