I develop a neurosis

I previously wrote about the Eastern New Mexico University Theatre Department's Technical Director Mr. H. I started out my freshman year with a good rapport with him, but that slowly disintegrated over the course of my entire four years in college. This actually damaged me in one respect.

As I mentioned before, Mr. H started his position at ENMU the same year I was a freshman. He came on the heels of the previous Technical Director, who was very popular with the students. I'd often hear stories about how the students considered him one of them and reacted to him more as a friend than as a professor. If Dr. R was the department's father figure and Dr. W was the mother figure, the old technical director was like the cool older brother that everyone wanted to be friends with. Mr. H came across like the cranky uncle who didn't like spending much time at family gatherings.

The old tech director didn't have much of a life outside his job. He spent a lot of time working on the productions. Supposedly, minor details didn't get completed until right before the first performance. However, the older students claimed that everything got done when they needed to be done. Mr. H had a wife and two children. His objective was the get the set and props completed as soon as possible, so he would have more time to spend with his family.

The first thing Mr. H did was get rid of all the hardwood flats for the sets. To replace them, he built canvas flats. And this was where the complaints from the upperclassmen started. They claimed that the hardwood flats made for sturdy sets. If you pounded the wall, it would stay right in place. They also said that while the old tech director was a true artist, Mr. H was in such a hurry to get things done, nothing looked good on stage.

But the things that they didn't talk about was that while the old tech director strived for perfection, that meant that students in the Rehearsal and Production class were working two hours a day on sets leading up to the performances. With Mr. H in charge, it took three weeks to get everything done and students didn't have to come in any more after that. If there was work to be done, it was provided by those on work study.

I stood up for Mr. H on a number of occasions. Mainly, I did it because what he did was light years of what we did in high school. On the hardwood flat issue, I countered that we almost never needed to pound our fists up against the sets. It wasn't like we were ever going to do "Fool for Love." And if we did need to go to extremes like that, I'm certain Mr. H would have come up with a re-inforced section of the flat to knock around. However, no one ever listened to me.

Our teacher-student relationship flourished to the point that he cast me in the production of "Deathtrap" that he directed during my sophomore year. But the year after that, things started changing. Mr H became a lot more volatile. When I was the Assistant Director, Stage Manager and Sound Designer for "The Importance of Being Earnest" my junior year, we got into a couple of large public arguments. Once, he yelled at me for allowing a crew member to leave early during rehearsal. However, he later apologized when the student who left reminded him that she had asked his permission first. Another time, when the director was going through notes following rehearsal, we yelled at each other over the sound cues. We were basically arguing whether the person running the audio had the ability to do her job. I defended her, but Mr. H kept yelling at me that he wanted someone else in the sound booth. I didn't get an apology on that, but the crew member stayed.

But the worst came the night we were going to strike the set after the final performance. I had to work at the radio station at midnight. Since the performance would be over at 10pm, I asked if I could leave at 11pm so I could get about 30 minutes of sleep before I went on the air. Mr. H replied, "That's b***s***!" Since I had a grade riding on this, I had no choice but to stay until the very last moment in which I could make it to my job on time. For the next hour and a half, Mr. H kept calling for me every five minutes to make sure I hadn't left yet. He finally let me go at 11:30pm. I was exhausted.

To keep myself awake, I would walk around the radio station while songs were playing. I took my shoes and socks off so the cold floor on my bare feet would help keep me alert. However, at one point, I went into the Program Director's office and sat down on the couch. The next thing I knew, I heard the phone ring. It was a listener, who told me the song had ended. I had fallen asleep! I ran back into the control room. The record that was playing had the needle in the infinte groove at the end. I had my next song ready to go on cart, so I was able to get back on the air. If I had fallen asleep in the control room chair, I never would have heard the phone ring.

It wasn't a big deal. I was probably asleep for only a minute and a half. The Program Director never found out about it. I never got yelled at. However, that incident affected me in a pretty severe way. As the title of this article suggests, I had a full-blown neurosis. After that night, any time I slept on the couch at the station after a shift or between shifts, I would wake up every single time and think that I had fallen asleep on the air. I would always experience a moment of panic, thinking that would be the time the Program Director heard it and would fire me for it. It usually took about ten seconds for me to come to my senses. This even happened after we moved the station to a new location. Once, I woke up and ran out of the office to the control room. The weekday morning crew was there and they were on the air. One of them said, "Uh oh! Fayd's awake!" The other said, "Go back to bed, Fayd!" I was really shook up by that.

The neurosis stayed with me through the end of college. I never sought help for it. I couldn't afford it. All I could do was deal with the anxiety I experienced for a few seconds after waking up. I usually figured out what was going on pretty soon enough. Once I had my apartment and could sleep in my own bed, I never had that happen again.

As for Mr. H, he wasn't around for the summer of 1985. A Technical Director from another college came and worked for us during the summer. While he was not as good an artist as Mr. H (who was not as good as his predecessor), he was a lot easier to get along with and help to create a stress-free environment. I was able to use that summer to finish up my R&P requirements for my degree so I wouldn't have to do that any more during my senior year.

When Mr. H came back, things just got worse. He supposedly became a bit of an alcoholic by this time, which had probably been building up over the course of the previous year. While I never saw this myself, I guess the other students had seen him acting out and he was frequently being made fun of because of it. I was called upon by the Theatre fraternity to ask him a favor. They chose me because I was "closest" to him. (Chud was not a member of the fraternity at the time.) He said he would do the favor. I thanked him and turned around to leave. While I was walking away, he said, "Oh, yeah! Make sure you get a picture of me drinking alcohol so I'll get into trouble!" I stopped, but I did not turn around. That moment, I felt the last of my admiration for him flow away.

After that, I never took part in any more set strikes. I acted like a total diva my senior year and left as soon as I got out of my costume and make up. Even though I was required as a Theatre major to help out after the final performance, there wasn't a darn thing Mr. H, Dr. R or Dr. W could do about it. The funny thing is that I would see other actors rushing out the back door. That was the kind of atmosphere that Mr. H had created.

Mr. H did not come back to ENMU the next year. He still kept in contact with Chud. Once Chud told him I was coming over and Mr. H asked him to tell me hi. Chud says that sometimes, the phone calls can get a little intense, like one time when Mr. H said that Chud owed him. Chud didn't really feel like he owed him anything.

He and his wife live in Bloomington, IN. I guess he was working at the University of Indiana for awhile. I think he's retired now. There was something on the Internet about him working on a documentary about the military forces in Vietnam putting on theatrical productions featuring soldiers to entertain the troops, which he was a part.

When I turned 36, I reminded Chud and Elad that we were the same age that Mr H was when we first met him. However, so much time has passed since then that his children are now older than that. Time is something you completely lose track of if you're not thinking about it, but it can't heal all the wounds.