So.
Grote shows up at my office door one day. I recognize him immediately from the picture on my copy of his script '1001'. And of course, I am delighted to see him. He explains that he's been drafted into some sort of Arts for the Appalachias program for the summer, that he will be hosted at the University of Tennessee by their theater department, and that as part of his summer project, he will present one-day workshops at various small colleges and community colleges.
Then, suddenly, it's much later in the summer, and things have not gone well. For some reason he will not talk about, the major source of funding dried up, and at some point he was assigned to share an office with me throughout the summer. And he hates it, and he can't get out of it, and he hates me, because I have been like some fawning obsequious sycophant who never gave him any peace. His play's a disaster (the accents ruined every role he tried to smooth over) and the workshops all fell through.
I try so hard to be nice to him, but it's like the relationship between Gomer Pyle and Sgt Carter. I keep literally tripping over him, and spilling stuff on his papers, and he goes red with anger when he sees me. I am worried that he's going to blow out an aneurysm, and he keeps muttering that I should just kill myself.
Then, it's a couple of years later, and he's a guest on the Best Show, and he and Tom start talking about his time in Knoxville, and he is nothing but gracious about me OR the town. Tom asks him if he would do it again, and he says "fuck no."
I wake up.
Aw, Dave! I would never be that mean to you. The funny thing is, though, is that you are actually describing an amalgam of my recent real-life experiences:
University teaching gig in Appalachia, check;
Disastrous college production of 1001, check;
My getting pretty annoyed at the U. that did 1001 (not because of the disastrous production, which is par for the course, but because they way overscheduled me and I was tired the whole trip), check;
Casualty of budget cuts, check;
Aggravating office-mate (an otherwise very nice colleague who has only recently become comfortable with silence, after TWO AND A HALF YEARS), check;
My being on the air on WFMU and carelessly slagging off whole geographic reasons (which I didn't mean and immediately regretted), check;
My generally not wanting to return to most places where I've had residencies (worst one: Cedar Rapids, IA, in January), check;
My muttering under my breath that things should just die (though not at Dave, or any individual, just at theater generally), check.
But don't worry, Dave! Under an official rule that I just made up, your powercaller status is transferable to the Acousmatic Theater Hour.
