OSU - theatre

Tonight I attended an event at OSU that, to my surprise, Star Trek teleported me back to the fall of 1990. My first week on campus, as I recall, had much the same weather as we are experiencing in the valley currently. Soft warm evenings that hold the energy of new students, a fresh start, a new life safely within the brim of campus.

The thrill of visiting the education building, once the home of our theatre department's black box theatre, even in its newly renovated glory, instantly made me feel as though, if I stepped out the back entrance, I'd find Beth, John, Courtney, Charis, Stephen, Charles, Joel, Scott, David, Justin, Harriet, Sheila, Rhonda, Juliana, Laura, Kimberly, Rocco, Alice and Bill running lines, laughing, smoking cigarettes, and reveling in what and who and where we were then. Wouldn't Gray be in his office? Wouldn't Charlotte's auditions be starting any minute? Didn't Marie ask you to stop by the costume shop for a fitting? Don't we need to work on that scene? Could you read my script for the One Acts?

All I could see from those steps now is this new sign. But, I swear a part of me, a part of all of us, is still there.

My sophomore year during Dad's weekend, Mitchell Playhouse closed for renovation. Theatre majors the campus over grieved for the memories locked inside. The ghosts of characters past! The rapt attention, gasps, and tears of audiences sealed into the walls, the curtains, the floorboards of that auditorium! The hours logged there in class, in rehearsal, building sets. And us. Parts of us forever held there by our own experiences and our shared recollections. Re-collections.

We were so young! We played characters twice our ages with experiences we hadn't even tasted! And we believed one another. More awesomely, our teachers believed in us. Despite our naïveté, our age-limited views of the world, they coaxed and cajoled us to find and be and press our best. Even on Thirsty Thursday. Even as egos clouded our perceptions. Even as we distracted one another with who was flirting with/sleeping with/living with whom. Even during Dead Week and February and summertime. They believed in us the whole time...and then set us free to graduate, live our lives, be. Like mandalas.

I was knocked over tonight by how tangible place makes memories. I was coldcocked by how years make all the difference and no difference at all.

The bones are the same, of Ed Hall, of Corvallis, of me, but everything is changed. Just like us all. How good to be a part of that shared fabric, though. How confusingly bittersweet to be able to see the fresh beauty of one another, held forever 19 or 20 or 21 in one another's memories. How excellent to see who we've grown into - our own rich characters with shared road among us.

My dad put his face to the downstairs window of Mitchell and was silent a long time. Then, turning, awed eyes wide, whispered, "Oh, yeah. There are ghosts in ther, all right." It was as though he could feel them. I grinned.

That's how I felt tonight. Awed and wide-eyed at the montag of memories simply standing there conjured. So grateful.