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September 07, 2005
Comments from Claudia Hankin
U of M Theater Department musings – Claudia Hankin
I played Mina in Dracula on the Showboat in 1991 – and this was the old Showboat – the old listing, cramped, stiflingly hot, creaky-scary-wonderful Showboat. We each got a different cleaning job every day, and the worst was cleaning spiders off the decks. You’d sweep them away one day and they’d come back in full force the next, only bigger and more tenacious. Since they’d roost in the rafters (and I say “roost,” as each was approximately the size and heft of a small pigeon) you would have to brush them with a broom, but kind of lean forward and jab at them so they wouldn’t fall on your head. I remember trying to convince our Captain, Greg Smucker, that since we were performing Dracula, the spiders were entirely appropriate and should be left where they were for atmosphere! (He wasn’t fooled.)
It was a very hot summer, most of us were costumed in wool, and only half the air conditioners worked at any given time. By the end of the show our makeup would have melted, and our clothes would be sopping wet. (It was difficult to maintain the illusion we were in chilly autumnal Europe.) Creighton Larson, who was playing Dr. Van Helsing, would actually swim in the Mississippi between Sunday shows, even though we warned him he might sprout another eye or something as a result.
Once during the show I was standing on a riverside deck and saw a rubber ducky floating down the Mississippi.
When I first started at Rarig, in 1988, the “pit” was filled with those hideous red, yellow and orange cushion chairs that looked like giant Starburst fruit chews. Hideous to look at, yes – ripped and tacky as hell, but great for taking naps between classes or before a rehearsal. Plus smoking was still allowed, so when you’d descend the staircase you’d look down on this hazy tableau of students sprawled all over the naugahyde furniture—sleeping, rehearsing, smoking, flirting, relaxing, stressing…
Smoking was banned in the building before I was a Senior, and the ill-favored couches were eventually removed – one could argue that both were victories on the side of good taste, but now it seems kind of sterile: a place for a theater patron to spend intermission, not a place for a student to live and lounge.
Posted by utheatre at September 7, 2005 10:20 PM | Memories of former students