# The introduction thread - Finally



## Terrence MacArthur (Apr 3, 2015)

I should have done this back in February, but somehow never got around to it. First, I'm 64 and an undergrad at Weber State University, a (to me) small, out of the way, school that has an amazing number of theatre grads working on Broadway, in the movies, and on TV. Like that bald (or part bald, I forget) guy in the insurance ad where the teenager drives the car onto the yard, the "what you don't know about insurance" series of ads? Who's also on some cop show, I forget which, and bunches or other stuff? WSU grad. Or the guy I was talking to a few months ago, who's been in Cats and a lot of other NY shows. And I don't know how many people (lots of them, that I do know) that are stage managers, tech directors or ass't tech directors, lighting designers, etc. all over the country. I was amazed when I started here and saw what they were doing, how they were doing it, and how successful quite a lot of the alumni have been. NOT what I expected at a relatively small state university in the midddle of nowhere.

So. Short (as I can make it) my life story: I started as the understudy for Mr. Van Damm in Diary of Anne frank in High School, about 1964. With not much to really do, I also ran the lights. Which consisted of colored floodlights, some on the edge of the apron as footlights, some, in the same bank arrangements as the footlights, hung overhead. Controlled by a rheostat dimmer system.

Then for my last 2 summers in HS (after Sophomore and Junior years) I was able to do some work at a local college, with a bit more in the way of modern (then) equipment. In September of '67, instead of starting my Senior year, I joined the Army. Three years later, when I came back from Vietnam, up in Seattle I ran into Andy Hepburn, a theatre teacher I knew from those two summers at that college, who thought I should enroll at the U. of Washington, where he was then teaching, but I didn't. (I'd taken the GED in the Army in '68, damn, I could have passed that thing when I was in the 8th grade) So I went back to New York, sort of hung around doing this job or that until I went up to Albany 'cause my HS girlfriend was in school there, and in 1973 I enrolled as a Theatre major at State University of New York at Albany (now called,for some reason, the University at Albany). I did tech, except once when a girl who was one of the acting students made a remark about techies being people who wanted to do theatre but couldn't act. Auditions for Arms And The Man were the next day, and to make a point I auditioned. I got Bluntchli, the male lead. And that conceited (I thought she was, anyway) girl got Raina, the female lead - talk about irony. By the end of the Freshman year I'd been "approved" as one of 3 students who could supervise tech for visiting performances (can't let those nasty outsiders have free reign with all our expensive equipment, after all). Wow! $2 an hour for, essentially, just hanging around while whoever it was set up (a lot of money for a student in the early '70s). And when City Center Acting Company (nowadays called The Acting Company) came by during their 1st year of existence, doing a tour of the NY State university system, I "supervised" them, ran a follow spot for them, and got to go meet them at a couple other NY State schools they then went to and work on lighting . Lots of fun. But school came to an end during my Sophomore year, the GI bill then was about $200 a month for a full time student, just the check in the mail each month, NOTHING else. Nothing like the full free ride, tuition, fees, books, and about $1400 a month in cash, the GI bill was for WWII and Korea and is again today. For 2 summers I worked out at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, first as security, then as that and an assistant SM (read mostly a gofer for the SM) and a dresser fir the NYC Ballet. And anything else that came along that would get me more hours and more money. But I finally couldn't afford to both go to school and survive.

So I just worked at whatever until about '76, when I was working for a small school in Connecticut, and started taking courses there part time. No drama department, or even a theatre, but there was a teacher, who had his own little cabaret sort of a company, and there was some show at the school every once in a while. So I helped design and build the set for JC Superstar (actually built the stage itself too, it was done in the gymnasium, we built a raked stage). And I got drafted into a bit part when an actor got injured 2 days before opening.

After a few years as a city cop in CT I went back in the Army, got out in '87, stayed in Germany working for the Army until '89, and came back to the US. Spent a year in Charleston, SC, being homeless, went to San Francisco in '90 and did the homeless thing there until about '96, when I managed to get one small step above homelessness, and went to Utah in August '99.

All the years between leaving SUNY Albany and ending up in Utah I did whatever theatre stuff I could when I could. Anything from lights and sound at a biker festival to lights and sound at Rice Eccles Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies for the '02 Olympics. Usually for free, just to be doing it. Once in a great while for actual money. Like this "Rock and Soul Revival" concert in Charleston, where after the show the guy running the production company crew handed me a couple 20s and when I said I thought I was doing this for free he said yeah, but we didn't expect you to know what you were doing and actually be helpful. After which he told me some stories about the local union people, who were apparently almost all firemen whose schedules let them work on shows, but who also apparently didn't know much of anything about things theatrical. But after about '76 I never got to do a whole lot of stuff, just little bits, here and there.

One thing I did learn at the '02 Olympics, an obviously well funded operation, was just how much new equipment had come around over the years, and how much some of equipment that I already knew had changed, and I started wondering how I could learn about all the new stuff.

In 2011, after having miraculously gotten married to a girl 24 years younger than me, and worrying about what she'd do in the years after I was gone, which obviously will happen sooner or later, I helped her get enrolled at Weber State. In the process I found out that just because I had one of those too-dumb-to-duck medals (commonly referred to as a Purple Heart) from my all expenses paid tropical vacation in '69-'70, I had an automatic full tuition scholarship to any state school in Utah. And Weber State had a Performing Arts Department. Within which was a theatre department. Aha!

So since the Fall of 2012 I've been a theatre student (part time, not full) at Weber State. I started out as a transfer student, a 91 credit Senior, and I'm now a Senior with 146 credits. The department has 4 "tracks", one of which has to be completed to satisfy the major. Theatre Education, Design/Technical, Acting/Directing, and Musical Theatre (another actor's track, just specializing in musicals). I finished the Design/Tech track last year, and theoretically could have just taken a couple more required theatre courses, like Theatre History II, Script Analysis, and a Shakespeare course that's officially an English Dept. course, a couple more required GenEd courses like computer literacy (in the late '90s I was actually on Microsoft's list of independent applications developers, yeah I REALLY need a computer literacy course, just like I REALLY needed an 8th grade English course - ENG 2010 - that's nowadays a Sophomore level GenEd requirement), and graduated. But I honestly have next to no interest in graduating. I DO have an interest in learning things. I'm now working on doing the Acting/Directing track , and still taking whatever Design/Tech courses that aren't required now that I've finished the track but which teach something I want to learn. Like the Stage Painting course I'm doing now 'cause I'm just not good enough doing that. Or the Vectorworks Spotlight course I did last year (which I'm sure will be a specific requirement for that track in the near future anyway). Or the Sound Design course I'll do next year and the ProTools course I'll take if it's ever offered at a time I have open AND enough people sign up for it - I've already missed it twice, once a schedule conflict, the other time 2 too few students registered for it.

So now I'm taking everything I think I really need,and hoping that when I'm done I'll be enough short of the 186 credits limit to be able to fill in whatever GenEd and Theatre (like Th. Hist. II) courses I still need for the Bachelor's. Because at 186 credits the financial aid stops. While I don't have to pay tuition, fees aren't the typically less than $100 a semester that they were in the '70s. Where it used to be flat "Student Fees" that everyone had to pay, now every course has some kind of a fee attached. About the only course specific fees seen back when were lab fees. And besides the fees there are books, materials, and so on. And while the government thinks I have too much income to qualify for any real "aid", all I can get are loans, there is no way I could stay in school if I couldn't get student loans anymore.

So I'm faced with a choice right about now. I can start taking only courses that plug some hole in the graduation requirements, and completely stop taking "unnecessary" courses, ones that teach things I really need, and want, to learn but which I do not officially need to graduate, in which case I certainly would graduate before hitting the 186 credits. Or I can keep taking the courses that teach stuff I need to learn, and just hope there are enough credits left at the end to be able to plug the holes and get the degree. Unless something strange and no doubt drastic happens, I'm going wiith the latter. Given a choice between the knowledge and a piece of paper that certifies that I went to school for 4 years and had a high enough grade point average to graduate, I'll take the knowledge, than you very much.

So for anyone who actually read this whole thing, there is, essentially, my life story, explaining how I got to where I am now.

One last note, for anyone who did actually get this far. People who hear that I have that many credits and still need a bunch of courses to graduate often assume that I just screwed around, taking basket weaving or some other useless courses. Not so. The excess of credits has resulted from a combination of going to 3 different schools and the changes in typical bachelor's degree requirements since the 1970s. For example, current GenEd requirements include things which are, really, stuff that used to be taught in HIgh Schools and weren't required at any school in the '70s. As a specific example, when I took the American Institutions (government) CLEP to fill a GenEd requirement, that stuck a useless 3 credits on my transcript. Not only did I obviously know the stuff, having passed the CLEP, but so did ANY High School graduate back in the '70s, at least the early '70s. And a Theatre major at Weber requires a minor. Having been a Psych major at my second school, the one without a Theatre Dept., I declared a Psych minor. I already had 33 Psych credits, and you only need 18 for the minor. But there's a residency requirement. At least 6 have to have been taken at Weber. So only 12 of my Psych credits are any good for the minor, leaving me with 21 now useless credits. Plus I have to take 6 more. Which means a total of 27 wasted credits, as far as getting the degree is concerned. I've even tried things like asking them to just give me a waiver for that GenEd requirement I took the CLEP for, and not give me the 3 credits. They CAN give waivers, they gave me one for the Foreign Language requirement because I'd been a certified Linguist in the Army. But they wouldn't do it. THAT kind of stuff is why I have too many credits, not because I wasted my time taking useless courses.


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## BillConnerFASTC (Apr 3, 2015)

Wow - good stuff.


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## robartsd (Apr 3, 2015)

Terrence MacArthur said:


> I've even tried things like asking them to just give me a waiver for that GenEd requirement I took the CLEP for, and not give me the 3 credits. They CAN give waivers, they gave me one for the Foreign Language requirement because I'd been a certified Linguist in the Army. But they wouldn't do it. THAT kind of stuff is why I have too many credits, not because I wasted my time taking useless courses.


Yeah, they like you to take a test and "earn" the credits - and bill for the tuition that go with the credits. Sometimes it seems that colleges sell college credits via tuition and (hopefully) give you an opportunity to earn an education if you want it.


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## bdkdesigns (Apr 3, 2015)

Terrence MacArthur said:


> I should have done this back in February, but somehow never got around to it. First, I'm 64 and an undergrad at Weber State University, a (to me) small, out of the way, school that has an amazing number of theatre grads working on Broadway, in the movies, and on TV. Like that bald (or part bald, I forget) guy in the insurance ad where the teenager drives the car onto the yard, the "what you don't know about insurance" series of ads? Who's also on some cop show, I forget which, and bunches or other stuff? WSU grad.


JK Simmons? I didn't know he went there. I know he got a degree at the University of Montana.


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## derekleffew (Apr 3, 2015)

I thought the same, @bdkdesigns. Composed the following, but abandoned the post without sending.

Terrence MacArthur said:


> Like that bald (or part bald, I forget) guy in the insurance ad where the teenager drives the car onto the yard, the "what you don't know about insurance" series of ads? Who's also on some cop show, I forget which, and bunches or other stuff?





J.K. Simmons. Although he just won an Oscar for _Whiplash_, he will always be Vern Schillinger from HBO's _Oz_ for me.

But could also have been referring to Ryan O'Reily (Dean Winters). I guess I watched too much _Oz_ in the nineties. "Sister Perter Marie, sister Peter Marie."

I can't find where either actor ever attended Weber State Univ.

@Terrence MacArthur, welcome (officially) to ControlBooth. Just cool it with discussions of trying to fly a platform.


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## BillConnerFASTC (Apr 3, 2015)

I should have said first: Thank you for your service to the country, and very glad you came home. And welcome here.


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## Terrence MacArthur (Apr 7, 2015)

robartsd said:


> Yeah, they like you to take a test and "earn" the credits - and bill for the tuition that go with the credits. Sometimes it seems that colleges sell college credits via tuition and (hopefully) give you an opportunity to earn an education if you want it.



I didn'ti mnd taking, and even paying for, the CLEP. Helll, I like tests - they give me a chance to show off and boost my ego. I just didn't want the 3 credits going on my transcript. I mean, I took the test, I passed, so I obviously know the stuff. So give a waiver for that GenEd requirement, but don't give me the credits. To me, that's the same s waiving the foreign language requirement because I was a government certified German linguist. I obviously didn't need to have my "horizons broadened" by learning a foreign language. To me, they're the same thing, but not to them.


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## Terrence MacArthur (Apr 7, 2015)

bdkdesigns said:


> JK Simmons? I didn't know he went there. I know he got a degree at the University of Montana.




Yup, him. Did a gig as the shrink on Law & Order too, I think. I think U of Minn was a Masters. Or he started at Weber and finished in Minn? The guy who runs the Musical Theatre program knows him, told me he went to Weber. I didn't think to ask about details or anything. I do know they have a Freshman Seminar every Fall, and one of the things they do is get some really successful WSU grad to talk to the students about theatre in the real world. I's have thought that such a small school would have a hard time finding even one really successful Theatre alum, but every year it's someone different, mostly people making a living in NYC. And about twice a semester somebody who's making good money on the tech side will srtop by the shop to shoot the bull. And not that SLC is what you'd call a big time theatre market, but the just retired tech director is an IATSE big shot. Not what you'd expect to find at a Utah public university.


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