2022 went by like lightning! Also, the holiday card.
What a year! Theatre is fully back at HCC, and we brought it back with a bang. I directed a melodrama (The Spoilers), directed half of Gi60 Houston 2022, Costume/Prop/Makeup designed for Dance Nation, and worked Prop/Set/Paint crew (and crew supervision) for The Frogs. Of course, I also music directed Santa’s Christmas Magic the Musical, but that one was at SanJac like usual, rather than at HCC. Really, I’m just saying it was a great year for theatre.
It was also an interesting year for other reasons. One of those reasons is that a dog dug her way into my yard over Spring Break, and she’s still here. The other dog who lives in my house was not pleased for the first few months, but they get along pretty well, now. As you can see, she was slated to be the subject of one of my more stylistically typical cards, but it turns out she is fantastically difficult to draw, and I balked at the idea of trying to color the line art in the usual way. It’s hard to capture her in photography as well (she does not stay still), but I think this shot is just about good enough.
Happy holidays, everyone! I hope 2023 treats us all well- E.G.D.
Gi60 Houston 2022 at HCC!
Friends, it is good to be back in the theatre in front of real, live audiences. We could not advertise widely because we had limited seating and needed to reserve spaces for students and family/friends of participants, but we have had two fantastic live play productions at Houston Community College so far this year! I’m a little biased, of course, because I directed one of them (a melodrama called The Spoilers, which we mounted at HCC Stafford). Moving into the summer, I am delighted to announce that we are once again hosting Gi60 Houston! Here are the details, if you are a playwright and would like to contribute:
Gi60 (Gone in 60 Seconds) Houston! One Minute Theatre Festival 2022 – Deadline: May 23, 2022
Submission Guidelines:
Gi60 is open to everybody; all you need is an idea and an internet connection. Since its inception in 2003, Gi60 has premiered thousands of new works written by people of all ages and backgrounds from around the world. Please email all 1-minute play submissions to hccGi60@gmail.com.
Gi60 Houston will perform LIVE at Houston Community College Stafford Campus on July 7 & 8.
The Guidelines:
· Submissions must not last longer than 60 seconds.
· IMPORTANT: Submissions should be sent in the body of your email**(see below), as well as in an attachment in RTF or Word format only: NO PDF DOCUMENTS.
· Scripts in PDF format will not be considered
· The Title of your play should be in the subject line of your email
· You may submit as many one minute plays as you wish, but only one submission per email.
· All work must be totally original and the author’s own work.
· Include your name and address/geographic location before the title of your work.
· Plays should not have been previously produced.
· Please do not submit plays that have been submitted to Gi60 prior to 2022 for consideration.
· Entries from schools should include a teacher’s contact and the School name, as well as that of the author.
Email all submissions to: hccGi60@gmail.com prior to the submission deadline of May 23, 2022.
Terms and conditions:
· There is no submission fee, prize or payment for Gi60 participation.
· Copyright remains with the author.
· Plays lasting longer than 60 seconds may not be considered.
· The organizers may use individual plays to promote the Gi60 festival.
· Final play selection will be announced on the Gi60 Website and Gi60 Facebook Groups.
· Gi60 is staffed and created by professionals who are volunteers, and give their time free of charge.
· The organizers reserve the right to cut scripts without notification where necessary. E.g. if a play is running significantly longer than 60 seconds, we may delete some small lines if their intention is communicated elsewhere in the script.
· Gi60 festivals are recorded and made available for viewing on the Gi60 YouTube Channel. To view past plays: Gi60 Channel YouTube
PLEASE NOTE: due to the high volume of plays we receive each year we are unable to write to individual playwrights to notify them if their play has not been selected.
**We annually receive between 700-900 submissions; by including the text of the play in the body of the email, it saves play readers time to not have to open attachments. If your play is selected, the attachments in Word/RTF make it easier for us to then share those scripts with the creative teams.
If you are at all curious about Gi60 Houston from 2021, all you need to do is scroll down to the earlier post! Thanks, all, and I do hope you consider contributing- E.G.D.
E-Card 2021
It’s that time of the year again… the time when I make a silly doodle holiday card! This year, the card started out with paper, a pencil, a sharpie, and a digital photo of my sun room decked out for the holidays. Please note the very green grass and bright sun out the windows, because this December has been extremely warm! I edited it all together and colored the doodle using Gimp software, but anyone who has popped in to view previous years’ cards probably already jumped to that conclusion.
Cheers to a fantastic holiday season and the march toward that predicted new normal in 2022- E.G.D.
Santa’s Christmas Magic 2021
Because the students, faculty and staff of San Jacinto College and the community of Pasadena, TX have been very good this year, Santa has granted their Christmas wish, and Santa’s Christmas Magic is back after only one year of COVID hiatus. The show had a great first week, and there are still three performances left in this, the second week of the show.
Once again, I was the music director for the show, and it has been great to see both old familiar faces and new smiling in song.
For more information, you can visit this article from the Houston Chronicle or this article from the SanJac website.
Happy end-of-finals, everyone! Cheers- E.G.D.
HCC Central’s Production of Anon(ymous) streams between now and midnight! HCC Stafford’s production of Everyman starts on Monday.
My friends, I am always running late with these things, so I hope you were looking for this link elsewhere! HCC Central’s fabulous production of Anon(ymous), a modern adaptation of Homer’s Oddesy, is streaming on Broadway on Demand:
https://www.broadwayondemand.com/series/8d3bYZ3oi7vO-anonymous–houston-community-college
It started streaming on 11/17, and ends at midnight tonight 11/20. If you get the chance to watch it, I hope you enjoy it! If not, you can find HCC Stafford’s production of Everyman here starting on Monday:
https://hcc.events.idloom.com/everyman-sw-drama-fall21
I was the costume designer and fight choreographer for Anon(ymous), and my Stagecraft I class worked a little on props for Everyman. All of the students in both productions did a fantastic job!
Cheers to having live audiences next semester- E.G.D.
One very good thing to come out of 2021: Gi60 Houston
My friends, I shall let the video speak for itself:
I am so happy for my Practicum and Stagecraft students! I hope they are as happy with the results of their work as I am. If you would like a program, here it is:
Enjoy! Also, GO TEAM Gi60 Houston at HCC! -E.G.D.
Gi60 Houston at HCC
If you happen to be a theatre person/writer (perhaps an old friend or associate) wandering by and you happen to want to be involved in a new works event, have I got a call for submissions for you! Alternately, if you have a one minute play sitting around on your hard drive, we are accepting previously produced works, as well.
The drama department at HCC (Houston Community College), for which I serve as faculty, is excited to host the first Gi60 Houston one minute play festival, and we’re looking for great one-minute plays. Here’s the link to the call for submissions: http://gi60.blogspot.com/
If you’re interested, there are two weeks left to submit! Even if you don’t submit, you will definitely have the opportunity to see the show on Gi60’s YouTube channel once we’ve gotten the show on its feet. Our student performers are awesome, and it’s going to be fantastic.
I’ll keep you posted! -E.G.D.
Best Wishes for a Safe and Healthy Holiday!
Well, strange as it may seem, it’s that time of year again. It has been a rough year for everyone, but I hope you all manage to find some warmth and joy in the season. This year, I free-handed 6 different images, painted them with GIMP software, and assembled them into, well, what you see below. Sending love to everyone through this crazy internet void. I want to e-hug the world (nice, germ-free e-hugs!).
2020 is bad… but it’s not all bad.
Hello, everyone! Long time, no post. Since last I posted, I joined the faculty of Houston Community College, leaving the staff of Lee College in the process, and for what it’s worth, I feel uncommonly fortunate to have finally moved into a full-time-in-one-place faculty position. You have all probably noticed over the years that I really enjoyed teaching and working on productions at all three of the other schools, but the situation is all around better now that I’m teaching and making theatre happen in one place. It has been an adventure, though, because it’s 2020 and nothing is easy in 2020. On that note, I am more than a little pleased to share Houston Community College’s digital production, Love in 2020:
The students worked remarkably hard on this production, and they had such a great attitude about soldiering on with a production even though we are not allowed on any of our institution’s actual stages. I am very proud and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them this semester. I hope you get the chance to watch the video and enjoy the fruits of their labors! I believe that this is something good, and it is important to focus on the good things in a year like 2020.
I really hope they let us back into the stage spaces in 2021. Here’s keeping my fingers crossed- E.G.D.
Hey, remember when? Good times will come again! In the meantime, I actually have time to post about The Bear.
Ladies and gentlemen, the PAC at Lee College has (with exceptionally good reason) gone dark for the remainder of the regular season. In that I’m the venue’s production specialist/technical director, the spring half of any given performing season is usually an enormously busy time for me, and that was certainly true until spring break came along and the entire world abruptly changed.
The somewhat tragic thing about this is that when I’m in the thick of the busy times, I often neglect to post about things before they actually happen. In both the middle and end of February, the Lee College Players presented Anton Chekov’s The Bear in both it’s original English translation and in a fun, modern adaptation.
Here’s a youtube trailer that was released before they opened the show on Valentine’s Day weekend.
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The show did very well at the 2020 TCCSTA Play Festival at Lone Star College Kingwood at the tail end of the month, and it was fun to take the show from one school where I happen to be an employee to another school where I happen to be an employee. It’s always strange when my work-worlds overlap! I went as Lee College’s play’s technical director this time around, but I usually go to LSC-Kingwood for faculty development days as a lecturing adjunct professor (LSC Atascocita-Center is affiliated with LSC-Kingwood) or to see LSC-Kingwood plays I require my students to see for their coursework.
Interestingly, the 2020 TCCSTA festival was my first ever experience driving a large U-Haul moving truck! The cast went to the festival in a Lee College van, and I followed them up with the set in the truck. I am happy to report that I made it there and back safely without bringing any harm to the set pieces.
I find this recent memory a little surreal, because the show played to a packed house at the festival. A rowdy, convivial packed house full of people who genuinely love to create and attend live theatrical events. If we tried that today, April 7th of the same year, we would be subject to a fine and “up to 180 days in jail.” How quickly things change!
This too shall pass, of course, and there will be more plays and more play festivals. Next spring, the Lee College PAC will probably be back to the normal routine of back-to-back music, dance, and theatre events to keep everyone’s calendars and hands full.
In the meantime, I’m glad the Lee College PAC managed to fit a dance competition, a Baytown Symphony concert, a play, and a Core Ensemble event (Of Ebony Embers) for Black History Month into the front-end of the semester before everything had to shut down. We should definitely count ourselves lucky.
Please stay safe and well, everyone, in as much as is possible given the circumstances. -E.G.D.
Worlds of Words 