Orbs 'r' Us

LOST IN MEMORY LANE...? Happy times and not so happy times...

It's been a few days since blog land has seen me and it's due to being lost down the memory lane of Dinner Theater!

All it took was having to go look for some lost photos in my theater scrapbooks...


Dodge's Community Dinner Theater's first production was in 1990 and I was in it from the first conception...I designed and helped build the first stage set [& decorated it].

Deciding from the beginning, that I would keep a personal record for my family, on what I did for this group was kind of a vain thing but if I had a mother she would have kept one for me [I know I did because PoD is included...:)]!


BUT it seems I quit "scrap booking" in 2000!


I kept all of the next year's mementos but never got them compiled?


Why?


Looking back, I think mental/physical exhaustion took place after hosting the "One Act Festival" in 2000!

Was it: designing of the program for the festival, drawing layout of hall for competitors, having to be the festival's Stage Manager and Stage Manager/Set Designer for our own entry...too much?

Plus all of that happening, not long after our production in the spring, which was a very large one! Again I was Set Designer/Co-Builder/Posters/Program/Table Centerpieces/Prop Builder/Stage Manager/Prompter/Special FX...

?

So over the years this pretty well became the norm with all of the productions...


NO wonder I was too tired to record it all in my scrapbooks later!

BUT AHHH...ALL OF THOSE WONDERFUL MEMORIES...


Getting to meet all of the different people/places that would have not normally been in my life was the BEST thing about doing Theater! Seeing their many faces and antics kept a smile going constantly! There was LOTS of HARD work but LOTS & LOTS of REWARDS after!!!


I can shake my head now and smile at all of the happy memories from the past, but along with the happy memories, also came some of the sad...;(

-Remembering the "fights" with my Ex over how much time/money I was "wasting" with "these nutty" people when I should be "devoting my every waking hour" to the business! He always thought I was NUTS so as far as I'm concerned I guess I fit right in! I did have an ulterior motive when starting up with theater and that was to showcase my talents to the town. How else were people going to find out where your talents lie? So as far as I'm concerned it should have all been classified as business advertising! He could never see it that way? Besides, what I did with my spare time, should have been my own! A lot of his anger also came from how exhausted I became over the years from the spring productions and then the fall ones...he said that it took away from the business? I never completely realized just how much it did do to me...until it was too late...


-Noticing an unusual tiredness after a challenging production in 1994 and the continuing fatigue, by late summer I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes! Thankfully we weren't into Festivals yet! Doing things got harder...took longer...


-Coming across the years that hold bad memories from personal losses during productions: My step-mother [old age -2003] and my younger sister [accident -2004] and not long after that a nephew [accident -2004]! Sadly the "show must go on"!

-Then the unpleasent reminder of a dislocated elbow while on an Easter break during a production in 1997...wished I'd had taken a picture!

-Realizing NOW that I knew a young man who was in one of our productions [2000] had died in a car accident recently...:(



So now I have to try and get all of that "compiled" material together before this year's production THIS weekend....?




I DON"T THINK SO!


Don't need the stress....


They can take what I've got for now......



:)


PS: Thanks PoD for correcting me...