Today they tore down BoarsHead. The theatre I got my professional start at, where I earned my equity points, where I learned how to hang a light, use power tools, build staircases, and run a show. The theatre where I performed in my first professional show, where I enjoyed my first champagne opening after glow party, where I wrote and got funded my first theatre education grant, where I got the amazing opportunity to work with two living playwrights during rehearsals of their plays, where I learned valuable lessons from professional actors, administrators and designers, and where I learned about acting, directing, and playwriting from an artistic director I admire above all others. Where I learned how to shovel snow, drove that stupid old beat up maroon van to Home Depot and back three times a week, and got so sick during tech for the show I was in that Ted had to take me to the ER.
The theatre where I met Ted.
It was the place where I first laid eyes on my husband, the first place we went after we got engaged, and the place that solidified what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
You don’t forget those memories, and you cannot replace them.
It was a tough year but I threw myself, heart and soul, into that place, into that internship, into learning and growing and being and feeling and enjoying and becoming. I left the only home I’d ever known in Texas to go there, alone, and I was determined to succeed, determined to learn everything I could, and determined to make it the best year of my life. And I had a lot of rough times and I had even more happy times than rough times there. But even during the rough times I LOVED BoarsHead. And by the time our green-robed and tie-dyed shirt graduation ceremony rolled around 9 months later, it was my home. The people, no matter how amazing or aggravating, were my family.
In early September of 2008, when we’d only been there for four weeks, we left a small block of wood about 3/4 of the way back in the “rat cave” under all the seats, where you could still see the yellow parking lot lines on the concrete from when the theatre was an auto repair shop. The block contained our signatures (including the signature of Boaris the Boar, our mascot whose head we had hanging in the intern house), the season’s show titles, and “2008-2009” scrawled on it in blue pen. We left it there for future second company members to find. I’m horrified that it’s sitting, forgotten, in a pile of mangled rubble along with the remains of the stage, pieces of the grid, and those brown double doors I walked through every single day to get to the tech office, auditorium, and shop where we built sets and ran shows and rehearsed our own shows and did laundry and cleaned dressing rooms and painted the stage 4 billion times and had pizza and beer after strike.
I’m mad.
I’m mad that the theatre I loved failed. Mad that the people who controlled the business side of the operation were so greedy and incompetent that they let this happen when the artistic side was still so alive. Mad that they tore down the home where I spent 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 9 months. Mad that I can never step foot ever again into the place that literally changed my life.
But there’s nothing I can do about it now, or was there ever. We knew it was coming. We knew it would be torn down because what city doesn’t need another dumb concrete parking structure and less art to give it vibrancy and vitality and meaning?
I guess I just didn’t expect to be so mad about it.
Or to see a video of it in action, here, if you want to see it. That bus station across the street was where I donned a preggo belly one chilly November day to take promo pictures for Hymn & Carol. Seeing that street again, that bus station again, that parking lot again, and that view of the city again, all without the building there makes my stomach churn.
I can still, even with all that rubble, tell exactly what was torn down, exactly what still remains, and exactly what room was what. It makes me sick.
So instead of being mad, I’m going to let my anger fuel my passion, the same kind of passion I had while at BoarsHead. I’m going to let this serve as a reminder to light a fire under my rear so I can get back to doing what really matters to me. I’ll carry on the legacy. I will, instead, remember all the million and one happy memories that place gave us. Surprisingly, I have so few pictures of it. I do have some from Hymn & Carol but since they’re from an equity production, I cannot post them. But for these few, I am thankful. And for BoarsHead, I am extremely thankful.
