but I've been preoccupied, lazy, taking qualifying exams for my Phd, and worrying that all this work won't result in an academic job eventually (rumors of lack of teaching positions in the field, or jobs being cancelled due to budget problems infest our department, but that's a different story).
I should be restudying for my oral exams on Thursday now, but I'm bored and feeling that instinctual hesitation that, I'm growing to believe, comes with realizing that I've studied enough and don't really need to do more.
Recent news: our experimental theatre company here in Lubbock now has a permanent home. We call it the Limelight Theatre:
It's located at 1104 Avenue J in the Depot District of Lubbock. For those of you unacquainted with Lubbock, this used to be the hurly-burly downtown area. After a tornado ripped it to pieces about 30-40 years ago, it became something of a ghost town and the hurly-burly relocated elsewhere. It may be hard to believe, but the inside walls are of a brighter, more neon green than the outside. And, yes, we're keeping it. We want it to be a black box (actually it's a rectangle) theatre, but without the "black"ness. (The color black actually inhibits audiences from responding or laughing, yet black box theatres continue to be black.)
I called the local gas company and spoke with a very sweet woman who helped us set up an account for the space. She asked all sorts of questions about the space, what we were planning to do, even offering the suggestion of putting in a snack bar to augment our income (people in Texas are that friendly and talkative). Then she said something like, Y'all are so brave opening a business in this economy!
Yes, I suppose we are. But when you have an army of desperate, passionate theatre people willing to work on something like this and donate not just time but money to making it happen, well, it's sort of like being on the Titanic: if it's going to go down, at least we won't have to be in the rowboats alone, and the possibility of cannibalism will keep some of us alive until the Navy comes to our rescue.
We have two one-acts coming up in April: "Hell in Keller" and "Frank Lee Anne." HIK is a loose interpretation of Helen Keller's time as a vaudeville performer (seriously, she toured vaudeville for 4 years). FLA is about a drag queen hiding in his walk in closet and worshipping Anne Frank as his hero. We're also planning to have a Gay Prom at the beginning of May, an event hopefully done in conjunction with the Gay/Lesbian center on Tech campus. We figure something once a month will help keep it afloat, and there are so many people here who want a space to do something, it shouldn't be too difficult.
