DeMizio's Journal

Experiments in Wi-Fi

I'm back online.

For me, that's a hefty statement. I've been wrestling with Verizon to get this far in getting connected. The house is great, but it's EMPTY - the girls get here this weekend (beginning Friday, actually...) and there's been no cable, only broadcast TV to get along with. Couple that with remarkably medicore cell phone reception over the last week, and it's been pretty boring here.

There was a reception for the department the other night, which was better than expected. Beautiful lounge, decent food, free alcohol, and a chance to meet the people in the department. I'm pleased with the people I've met. There seems to be a general Villanova stereotype of which I've heard - snobby, rich, etc. The people I've met so far haven't measured to that at all. They're all people who love theater: making it, acting in it, developing it...the professors have the same feeling about them too. I'm excited.

Classes began yesterday for Villanova, today for me. My schedule is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday beginning at 4:30 and lasting until either 7 or 7:30 depending on the day. Today was "Dramaturgy in the Classic Tradition," taught by Father Peter Donohue. Fr. Peter reminds me a lot of my friend Nick at La Salle...with almost the same accent, and almost the same smoker's voice too.

I got to campus today at 3:50, wanting to be early to check out the building and such. I get a water, and sit in this wonderful little cafe on the first floor. I was amazed at this place - there's a whole market (the size of the La Salle Union Market) with hot food, tables, and televisions. It's wonderful. I'm thinking to myself, "This is gonna be great to hang out in before class every week!"

Flash forward a half hour, when we realize (being that there are 3 of us in the assigned classroom at the time the class was supposed to begin, out of a class of 15) that the class has been moved. Not to another classroom, but to another building, on the exact opposite side of campus. Without the nice amenities. And we were twenty minutes late.

Yes. I was twenty minutes late for my first graduate class ever. Sigh...

But it's a good class. It's going to be a heck of a lot of work...it feels like an Honors seminar at La Salle - same number of people, relatively same workload, same circled-desks configuration, same attendance policy.

It was going through the syllabus today that I realized what "full-time graduate" student means. I'm gonna be doing this full-time - even though I'm only in class 9 hours a week. The workload for the one class is gonna be intense - reading up to three plays a week, plus weekly discussions and emails to Fr. Peter. I'm optimistic though - as one of the other people in the class said as we were walking to our cars after tonight's class, "This is stuff we like to do." (She was referring to a discussion from Euripidies' "Bacchae" about what effect the main male character's putting on a dress would have on the audience - whether it would carry the humor that modern audiences associate with cross-dressing, or whether it would carry the necessary humiliation inherent in the text.)

It's going to be a lot of that. Tedious academic stuff related to theater that I LIKE to do. Obscure plays, late nights getting ready for performances, dramaturging anything and everything.

I'm leaving with a qoute from the Bacchae:

"If you take wine away, love will die, and every source of human joy will follow."