Posted by Peter Oberlink on June 24, 1998 at 23:07:37:
I've been checking in on the webpage and enjoying the messages from old friends--Sue S. and Tom S. (Hey, Asa QT!) and some I don't think I met (Warren). Thank you for beginning. Ever since Shepherd started this I've had sessions in my mind that have turned into uncontrolled flashfloods of memory. I tip my hat to you first comers at how well you've managed to capture the memories and format them for a medium I find intoxicating but elusive. I started writing, rambling really, about CT, and found myself caught up in a detailed description of building a flat: choosing the right 1X3s, cutting corner blocks from quarter ply, placing the toggle bars, pounding clout nails (which has a satisfying resonance not unlike connecting with a baseball), then stretching the muslin, sizing it, and getting down to mixing the paint, the funky smell of the glue, like feet that have been in the same socks for days.
Then I opened up an architectural software package I have and starting laying out the theatre: the loading dock with its giant doors, the flat bin, the sound booth, the cyc, the paint room, green room, dressing rooms, the dance porch, cabins, pavillion. I'm still putting seats in the house. But I'm getting some of the important details like the Coke machine outside the box office.
Actually, the memory started welling up in me a year ago when my wife nominated me to build scenery for the second grade class play--Homer Price and the Donut Machine. Anny was a donut. No budget, of course, so I roamed Soho at night with my dog and collected industrial grade cardboard and tubes and brought it all to a Chelsea loft where after work I turned up the radio and with screw gun and staple gun I began fabricating a set all of you would have approved of. But it wasn't until I began painting, the spackling actually, that it really hit me. I remembered it all. I was back there. Or it was there with me. Still is. And I'm still remembering and hope to throw more of it into this widening, glorious ring that Nora and Tyler and Grace and Betty and a host of unforgettable people created around us all.
Be talking to you.