I had a delicious, satisfying lunch with the architect who designed the new (very small) addition to our house in West Orange. We had spent an hour and a half talking about flooring, backsplashes, and electrical receptacles. We repaired to a restaurant, Pita on Essex, where we dined on falafel and shawarma sandwiches.
Adam didn’t know that I was a theatre major. It’s not the sort of thing that comes up when you’re talking about building setbacks, zoning variances, and height restrictions. But I brought up MuchAdoDotCom, knowing that his wife is a professional working in theatre/media. And talking about the play led to talking about what I did that led to writing a play, and that led to set design. I have one of the first (if not the very first) MFA degrees granted by the University of California system from U.C. Davis circa 1971.
So yeah, once upon a time, I designed sets, lights, and occasionally costumes, for university theatre productions.
Within the last year or so, I found a collection of 35 mm slides that constituted my design portfolio—a lasting record of the ten years I spent designing sets, working in the scene shop to build them, tearing them down, and starting all over again. Good times, good friends, and even if it’s only me saying it, some pretty good work.
I had the slides converted to digital images. They are up on the ridgekennedy.com website. Here’s a link. You can see what they look like. Multimedia. Lots of scaffolding. The first (maybe) completely unauthorized production of the rock opera Tommy. There’s some interesting stuff.
At some point, after the theatre talk had gone on a while, Adam said “A theatre person always remains a theatre person.” (Well—something like that.) I thought about being a dance caller and writing a play and obsessing about details, especially the lighting, in our building project.
Yeah, I think. He’s right.
Anon.
Ridge
(blush)
This is how I knew you first, and what I remember with fondness and respect. We had some good times, those years.