Vanguard Memories

I just got an email from a teacher, Doug Cook, at my alma mater, UT Martin, regarding the theatre department. They're trying to locate all alums to let them know about a theatre reunion and final blowout because they're closing the old Vanguard Theatre on campus and building a new one.

I went through an old photo album of theatre pictures and ran across these. The quality is not great--my scanner is broken so I had to take digital photos of the old pictures--but they're still funny.

In this one with Doug I'm demonstrating the incredible maturity I possessed all through college. Remember, this was one of my teachers at the time...

I was dressed as "Mariane," the daughter of the **title character in Moliere's Tartuffe. I always played the daughters or little sisters or sassy sidekicks or sympathetic best friends. Or, once, a penguin.

Here's my favorite picture from that play when Dorine, the maid, was trying to talk me into reconciling with my lover, Valere. It was so hard to keep a straight face in that scene.


Doug was the guy who designed all the sets, costumes, everything--you name it. He was so talented! But it used to drive me crazy when he'd draw the costume sketches for the characters because he wouldn't give them a face. I kept bugging him and bugging him about Mariane and how she looked weird and I wished he'd draw her a face. So after a while he got tired of me nagging him about it and he gave in and drew her a face. Did I mention that Doug was a major smart alec?

I wish I could show you all the pictures in the photo album because some of them are priceless. I played a desperate housewife (before ABC made it popular), a cheeky schoolgirl, a pregnant homeless girl, a bored socialite, a penguin (as mentioned before), and many others.




This was my first play at Vanguard when I played "Biddy" in Dickens' Great Expectations early in my freshman year. That was the start of a long and unbelievably fun college acting career.

I can't wait for the reunion!

**Update to add: After I posted this earlier I remembered that Mariane was NOT Tartuffe's daughter, but Orgon's daughter. Tartuffe is the swindler who tricks Orgon.

Then, when I tried to get online to fix this post, I couldn't get online. When I turned the computer off during a thunderstorm it automatically updated Windows. The new update was a security thing and it thought Zone Alarm was a security risk so it wouldn't let me on. Dan, my hero, called the help desk and fixed everything for me so that I could edit this post.

God forbid any experts on 15th century French plays read this blog and think I'm a moron. Wow, really dodged a bullet there, huh?