Conferences

Conferences are strange things to be involved with from  many  viewpoints , and are very similar to those meetings like wide-ranging business seminars, re-unions , festivals and so on. My major interest was drama, so in my time of employment I attended quite a few drama conferences, festivals and the like.

Naturally enough, those attending conferences are very much of like mind and attitude to life. Drama people are quite free and liberal minded -- or at least those that I knew were.

My first experience of a festival was when I travelled to another city to take part in an Inter- University Drama Festival, one of the first that was held. I was a mere first year student , the youngest of the cast, made up of lecturers (one of whom was the dashing producer),some senior students, and me, chosen to play William, a page-boy, probably because of my fresh-faced innocence and rounded youthful plumpness.

So there I was newly out of school, still wet round the ears, participating for the first time in a gathering that appeared to be the epitome of a liberal society, combining free thinking intellectuals with the heady environment of what was to me a new city and a totally new experience in performance .

Eager, I turned up early at the dressing rooms, and sat quietly while a senior member of the cast, a willowy blonde who was a relative of a famous acting family, ironed a dress. She gushingly informed me that it was to be worn at the post-performance party, that it was pure silk (and very slinky it looked too!) and to my fervid adolescent imagination, very fetching indeed.  Archly, she then confided that she could not wear underwear with it, as it would spoil the line of fall.   My imagination became even more fervid.

The post-performance party was also a brilliant new experience for me, but it had a disastrous aftermath for the student with whom I was billetted in a rather posh home. He had performed in an inebriated fashion on the way back from the party to the billet, and alas, during the night was extremely ill all the way down the polished wooden hallway.

Being of a charitable nature, I never reminded him of it over the next three years .


Go forward a few years. During my teaching career I got a bit of a reputation for working with cutting edge productions, both with schoolchildren and later with college students. As well, I worked with adult drama groups, in small rural communities and in semi-professional theatre. I also achieved the cachet of being banned by the religious Principal for several years from producing college plays because a rural lady objected to the content of one of them.It gave me the golden opportunity to join the local amateur group, and that was a lot of fun. But I did  back to producing for the college before I transferred  to Sydney.

As the teaching of drama developed in schools, and Drama Teacher's Associations were formed, there came a time when it was mandatory for the teachers to get together and swap ideas, methods and so on. One such conference, a seminal one as it turned out, was held up in the Central Coast area. I wanted to attend and a fellow lecturer asked me to give him a lift to the venue, quite a few kilometers from Sydney.

That was no problem as we both were travelling light for the few days, but then I was asked could I transport a visiting  lady from interstate as well. The Datsun 120Y was just big enough, as she had a fair amount of luggage that she had travelled with. We made it, and my mate and she chatted happily all the way in the intimacy of the small car while I drove.

They were much taken with each other, and with a couple of minor exceptions, that was the last that I or anyone else saw of them during the conference days.

They moved in together in Sydney after the conference.

Some years later, at another conference, she arrived but without my fellow lecturer . She took it upon herself, apparently feeling that I might put my foot in it in a future discussion, to take me aside and tell me that with her now husband's knowledge, she was sharing a room with another old flame, an English drama lecturer she had known intimately for years.

That was no problem for me, but a kind of problem did develop for me on the second night of that conference. I was happily tucked up in bed, just about asleep, when there came a tentative scratching at my door. As a long time fan of Lord of the Rings I quoted Gandalf at the Gate of Moria -- Speak Friend , and Enter.

He, another acquaintance of mine. entered, but when saw  it  was me sitting up in the bed he coughed, stumbled and apologised . Then he sat on the end of my bed and explained in detail that he had made a tryst with a lady lecturer, but had mistaken the room number. We nattered on politely about the circumstances for a few moments, and then he left, still somewhat embarrassed .

I hope he had more fun for the rest of the night .