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.