I’d like to speak to the manager!!!
Thirty years ago, I taught lighting D]design at the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts. I started there in the fall of 1995 and left at the end of the 1998 school year.
I learned more from my students and co-workers than I ever dreamed about teaching. That being said, it was a great experience and I value the friendships of the people I met during that three-year period of my life.
It was an interesting time to be there, as the school was going through a transition. The founders of the school had just left, for an array of different reasons, and a new principal, artistic director and slew of teachers were being brought in.
Myself, and the scenery design teacher both started at the same time. We were tossed into the fire together, and both worked to make the program the best it could be. He is still doing a great job there, by the way.
I can’t speak to things now, but in 1995, I spent the morning teaching 7th and 8th graders intro to lighting. And I spent the afternoon teaching 9th – 12th graders lighting design. Everything from how to change a lamp in a lighting instrument and how to hang a light, then to how to create a design and implement it.
As I said, we taught each other a lot.
The thing I found most interesting was that while we were a performing arts high school, not everyone embraced this fact. I remember going to the 12th grade English teacher to propose a combined unit on Macbeth, where we taught in tandem her focusing on the literary importance and me on the design components. I was emphatically told no.
Our principal at the time was also a piece of work. I don’t remember the year, but myself and the scenery design teacher came to work one morning to find that the principal had ordered the custodians to empty the prop room. To her it was a disorganized mess, and she felt it looked badly on her. When we got there that morning all the props from storage were in the dumpster.
I kid you not.
With out asking we salvaged what we thought was important.
I discovered a set of mid-century dishes in the trash. Franciscan Starburst Stoneware. With the help of my students, we pulled it out of the trash and I took it home with me. It was the start of a life time of collecting Franciscan stoneware.
Fun fact about the Starburst pattern, 30 years later it would be worth hundreds of dollars. It’s a serious collector’s item as we moved in the 21st century. I still have those dishes, and have supplemented them when I have found them in various antique stores along the way.
Adam and I use our Franciscan dishware all the time. For all the major holidays. Our cat’s food bowls are starburst and Ferndel dishes. His mother gave us her wedding dishware which was the Desert Rose Franciscan pattern . And we bought Indian Summer dishes 13 years ago.
I have a friend whose mother gave him a complete 10 piece place setting array of Starburst dishware. On eBay it would easily be worth several thousand dollars. He jokes that it’s his retirement plan.
For us, it’s our daily lives. It goes in the dishwasher. It’s durable. And we love it.
The best part of the principal cleaning out the prop room, was that I claimed it as my office for a year. It had a loft and tons of book shelves. For my students it was a kind of clubhouse for a year. Complete with a sofa, a lava lamp that a student eventually broke. (It’s hard to clean up the liquid from a lava lamp) and hours of bonding with kids who needed a grown up to pay attention to them.
My students have followed different paths. It’s crazy to think they are in the late 40’s now. And I’m proud to say, several went on to be successful theater professionals.
I will never know how I affected their lives, but for those reading this, you changed my life for good, to quote Wicked.
I'd Like to Speak to the Manager!!! 