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September 07, 2005
Comments from Aaron Milgrom
A memory of the move from Scott Hall to Rarig
My freshman year at the U of MN was the last year the theater department used Scott Hall. A strong memory from those days is from the next year, when we were inaugurating Rarig but still had offices on the East Bank. Although I was interested in the acting courses, technical theater was a prerequisite to any classes beyond beginning acting. I was ‘serving’ my 40 hours of tech theater at the field house – where sets were built and then, previously, hauled over to Scott Hall. This was to be the last set built there and was going to be hauled over to Rarig for a show in the proscenium.
I was definitely NOT handy in the set shop – a talent I’ve maintained all these years. I couldn’t nail a board straight if my life depended on it. The head techie carefully drew me up a diagram of a mail box for me to build. He encouraged me to use all my creativity and seek as little help from him as possible. While I struggled, using a good 8 hours to build this simple box, I wondered where in the play it would be used. When I finally sanded and painted this primitive thing I brought it over to my mentor who looked it over and then instructed me to go over to Nicholson Hall and nail it up outside his office. (It turned out to be the perfect entre to what I would be doing the following summer – be an intern at the Stagecoach where I would primarily clean paintbrushes and wash out buckets.)
Toward the end of my career as a sophomore actor/techie we spent our time loading all the things at the dusty field house on to trucks, vans and everyone’s cars and hauling them over to Rarig, the new state of the art theater building.
Aaron Milgrom
B.A. in Theater Arts
1972-1976
Posted by utheatre at September 7, 2005 10:19 PM | Memories of former students