Greg Hardison – Playwright and Director of Museum Theatre (Part 2 of 2)
By Admin | August 7, 2010 at 2:49 am
Greg Hardison is the Director of Museum Theatre at the Kentucky Historical Society. We visited with him recently in Frankfurt, Kentucky and continues with his interview
When did you decide to become a playwright and what influenced your decision? I began writing plays when I owned my own company.
Do you develop your own ideas for your plays or do your directors suggest topics?
I develop my own ideas for the most part, but they are influenced by institutional goals and initiatives, new exhibitions, teachers needs, current trends and audience interests.
I have total confidence from my directors and supervisors. There is never a lack of ideas really, but I get to shape and mold it. We use a lot of market research, scholarly guidance, and gut feelings to make our final decisions.
Who is your favorite playwright?
Shakespeare wins hands down as the best of all time. His works stand the test of time. Always new interpretations, but the text remains as important as ever. There are many others that I like too, but usually on a play-by-play basis.
Which current playwright today is the most overrated?
None. I realize that is a calculated response, but everyone is entitled to their own voice. Some are just more appreciated, understood, and popular than others.
But art isn’t about being popular, it’s about saying what you think and feel. Just ask the guy who cut his ear off, or the fact that most artists die poor, and don’t become famous until after they die.
Other than your own works, how often do you attend the theatre?
Sad to say, I don’t attend as much as I would like to. My job and my family keep me terribly busy. I try to see about five to six pieces a year, mostly local productions with friends, and the occasional traveling piece. There is some great local theatre, if you know where to look. I love Balagula Theatre in Lexington, and Woodford County Theatre Association.
Are you working on any plays that are not for the Historical Society?
I have no interest in writing beyond my job. I get to experiment with all of my ideas there, and don’t have the time to develop beyond that.
Do you have any desire to try a screenplay?
I have ideas, but no immediate desire to do so. Maybe some day. We have the potential of grant money to develop a video series around the Civil War, that is as close as I will come for a while.
I write and produce so much in conjunction with my job, that I really don’t have much of a need to express myself beyond that. I have other hobbies. Playwrighting and production is my job, when I get home I want to do other things.
What overall mission have you been given by your directors?
Well, I helped to define the mission of the Kentucky Historical Society, of the Education Department, and wrote the mission of the Museum Theatre program.
In short, our goal is to connect with the past, provide perspective on the present, and inspire thought for the future. There are tons of objectives, strategies and outcomes that branch out from there.
We are in the process of institutional strategic planning now for the next three years. It’s all interconnected from there.
What is one little known fact about Kentucky that you would like to have readers know?
It probably doesn’t mean “Dark and Bloody Ground,” it is the home to the cheeseburger, two guys name Cassius Clay (not related, and 100 years apart), Hopkinsville may have been visited by aliens, and may have had a great swiss silver mine.
Oh, and middle eastern explorers may have written grafitti on a rock in Clay Co. hundreds of years before Dr. Walker. Ain’t the study of history great? Well, if you believe all of that, then I’ll tell you about the blue people from Troublesome creek. True story!!! Really.
Topics: Circus Performers, Museum Directors, Playwrights, Producers | Comments Off
Greg Hardison – Playwright and Director of Museum Theatre (Part 1 of 2)
By Admin | August 5, 2010 at 1:04 am
Greg Hardison is a playwright and the Director of Museum Theatre at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfurt, Kentucky. We visited with him recently.
Where are you from?
I was born in Alabama, lived from 6 months to 16 years in rural eastern North Carolina, and then moved to Charlottesville, Virginia for last two years of high school.
I guess I consider myself from North Carolina and Virginia, as they both hit me at particular developmental times.
Where did you go to school and what was your academic major?
I attended Old Dominion University, first as an engineering student, but hated math.
I changed to Elementary Education in my third year, but life offered opportunities that seemed more compelling and I left less than a year from completing my degree.
I will forever regret that decision, and have intentions of going back when time permits. Alas, isn’t that always so, we never seem to have time to do the things we know we should.
What has been your career path from college to your current position?
While in college, I paid for my own expenses by working for a family entertainment company. I learned to walk on stilts, juggle, perform magic, and I honed my performance and storytelling skills before a huge number of audience sizes and types.
Towards the end of my time at college, I was offered the opportunity to buy the business. It seemed like a good idea, and I did. I ran the business for about 5 years, learned alot about business, and that it wasn’t my favorite thing.
I sold the business and took a management position for a large indoor amusement park in northern Delaware. Worked there for several years, got married, and moved to Kentucky to be near my wife’s extended family, because we wanted kids.
The museum I now work for advertised in the paper the next week. I applied for a job as an actor/docent and got the job.
From there, I helped to define the concept of Museum Theatre for the Kentucky Historical Society and eventually even defined the goals and duties of my position here at KHS, as the Director of Museum Theatre.
When did you decide to become a playwright and what influenced your decision?
I began writing plays when I owned my own company. They were horrible, but it was the only way. I couldn’t afford to pay a playwright, and we needed material.
When I started here at KHS 10 years ago, the concept of Museum Theatre was still new. My director at the time didn’t really know what it was either, but he knew good theatre, and together we kept trying things, and we defined it for our institution.
I learned alot about what it took to both entertain and educate museum audiences. I am still learning how to develop and work within clear educational goals.
I still don’t think I am a great playwright, but I do understand Museum Theatre and how it is different from other types of plays. I think I am now producing programs that are defining new thought in the field.
We are challenging our audiences, actors, our institution and the field. Evaluations and audience feedback tell me that what we are doing is working, but I will never settle.
I will always work to better define what I do, and how I do it. I have found the career of a lifetime. I love what I do!
How many plays are you required to write a year for the Historical Society?
I am not required to write any number of plays really.
In the beginning we wrote about five a year, but we have learned alot, and what we do now is far more complex than what we used to do.
Now, we really try to develop pieces that work really hard to achieve our educational and institutional goals. We produce plays that require more research, and that seek to provide new insight on our topics.
It takes longer to produce the pieces now. I am in no rush these days. We have created over sixty pieces, and we just seek to add to our repetoire now. I pick these new pieces carefully to fill holes in our timeline, or missing themes, or upcoming inititives.
I now create about three plays a year, but I also develop video conference programs, assist with the creation of other education programs, and am working on a proposal for a new literary series, with actors doing dramatic readings of deceased Kentucky authors, and other proposals for summer art camps, evening programming, and day care programs.
We present several hundred school shows both in house and as outreach each year, and keep a steady schedule of weekly performances on our campus. I stay pretty busy.
Topics: Circus Performers, Directors, Museum Directors, Playwrights | Comments Off
Terry Wilder – Park Ranger, White Sands National Monument
By Admin | October 24, 2009 at 2:55 am
Where are you from?
Originally, I am from Covington Kentucky up until age 17. Then
over 20 years in the United States Air Force, which led me to Alamogordo area (adjacent to the White Sands Monument)
Where did you go to college and what was your academic major?
New Mexico State University and it was Occupational Business.
What has been your career path from college to your current position at White Sands?
Well, since I did not start college till I retired from the Air Force I was finishing up my degree when I was offered a position at
White Sands as a seasonal employee.
What are your typical duties day-to-day at the White Sands?
Along with being a visitor use assistant – fee collector – I am in charge of the Special Use Program. Permits for weddings, group use area applications, and special events that includes our Annual Hot Air Balloon Festival, Early Easter Sunrise Service, etc.
If you weren’t a national park ranger, what would you be doing?
I would probably be working on the Air Force Base for the government as an aircraft inspector overseeing a civilian contractor working on Air Force airplanes.
How does having an Air Force base right next door to the monument impact it?
Pretty good for us actually, whenever they have some type of event such as Airshow, Octoberfest, Base Open House we get over flow to the Park and our visitation goes up a bit. Although, we have had aircraft crash on our property and it makes for quite a red tape mess.
What is one little known fact about the park that you want visitors and readers to know?
That 3 to 4 inches down in the sand the temperature stays at a pretty constant 57 degrees, no matter how hot or cold it is. You get lost in the cold of the winter at night, then just bury yourself in the sand and you will stay warm till morning. In the summer if it is
115 degrees just bury yourself and you will stay cool till the sun goes down.
Here is a bonus. Eighteen inches down from anywhere on the hardpacked sand or at the bottom of a dune you will reach water. Very salty water but water none the less.
How did the white sands actually form? Are they still forming?
The real short version is that the gypsum is in the mountains and the wind and rain carry it to Lake Lucero twnty miles down the road. When when the lake bed dries up the gypsum chunks break apart and are carried by the wind and replenish the dunes.There is a seventeen minute film on the whole process in our Visitors Centers.
What is your favorite part of the monument?
Two or three miles out from the heart of the dunes on top of a big dune with a cool summer breeze blowing across you as the sun goes down in the fiery sky of southwestern New Mexico.
What are the two biggest challenges that the White Sands monument faces?
Education of a new generation to the enjoyment of all for the National Parks and to the protection of this precious resource we have been entrusted with. Such programs as the Junior Ranger Program and on-site visits to the schools to talk to the kids who will soon enough be responsible for taking care of the Park System.
Is the White Sands featured at all in the new Ken Burns” documentary?
Honestly, I do not know if we are and I have not been following the Ken Burn’s specials.
How many people visit the monument every year?
We get anywhere from 450,000 to 600,000 a year give or take the economy
Has anyone ever got lost and stranded in the monument or died from exposure?
We have numerous people get lost and found every year and we have had one fatality since this place
became a National Monument.
Copyright 2009 DailyInterview.com
Topics: Park Rangers | Comments Off
Jon Hammond – Olympian and West Virginia University Rifle Coach (Part 2 of 3)
By Admin | May 30, 2009 at 1:16 pm
In the specialty of rifle shooting there are different categories. Which type of rifle did you shoot in the Olympics?
I actually did all three of the rifle events.
Which are what?
The air rifle match and then there are two matches in small bore. One is the prone match and then the other is the three position match.
Is it typical for competitors to shoot in all three?
Somewhat. Some of the very top hands specialize in either just air rifle or just small bore and then there are some that only shoot the prone events. But there were quite a few there that shot all three.
Which is your best?
The prone match is probably my best one and it’s actually the one I qualified in to get to get to the Olympics. I qualified in prone but because I was there I was able to shoot the other two matches as well.
Do you actually shoot bullets?
Yeah, it is a 22 caliber small bore rifle and it is a 60 shot match at 50 meters. International matchs are all at 50 meters. Add up the scores and that’s it.
How big is the bull’s eye you are shooting at?
At 50 meters, the bull’s eye, the “10” ring, is probably about the size of a dime.
How many times do you hit that out of 60 shots?
You are looking at least 55 or 56 times to make the finals. There is always someone who hits it 60 out of 60. Using open sights, no telescopic sights.
When you shoot in the Olympics do you take your own rifle or do they issue equipment?
No, no, you have all your own equipment.
How do they know you are not going to gin up your rifle some way to game the competition?
They check it. We go through a fairly strict equipment control at every competition, so we’ll have our jacket checked, our pants, our boots, our rifles and everything is checked and there are obviously specifications.
Do you have to break in a rifle like you have to break in a baseball mitt?
If you get a new a new barrel, you may have to break it in. It may take three or four thousand rounds until it is really getting some accuracy. It terms of the actual stock, that is something you can use straight away.
So, when you were getting ready to try for the Olympics, how did you practice?
You practice, you just shoot. Same as something like golf. Golfers just hit the driving range and hit ball after ball after ball all day long. It is similar for us. We come into the range and just shoot. Obviously there are a lot of different drills you can do.
Like what?
I may be shooting but working on different exercises. I may do dry firing where I am pulling the trigger but the rifle doesn’t have any bullets in it. I may be doing some stuff with my eyes closed. I may be working on balance.
An former athlete of yours has told me that you do aerobic activity so that you slow your heart rate down.
It’s not so much… yes it is to slow the heart rate down but it’s just for your stamina and health. We do cardio just to be in shape. The best way to describe it is we aren’t weighlifters or football players but if we are going to an international competition and I have been to plenty where it is 80 or 90 degrees and you are shooting a three position match, a three position match will last three, three and a half hours. Prone, standing, and kneeling. In the standing position our rifles weigh up to fourteen, fifteen pounds. In the standing position you are in the free standing position. A normal person will pick up one of our rifles and be pretty tired in five or ten minutes. We are not just only standing there with the rifle. We are standing there trying to hold it exactly still. And then we are doing that for maybe an hour. And you are not only doing that but your brain is working on overtime. Your focus and concentration has to be tops.
Do you run, do you lift weights, do you do yoga?
Pretty much everything. General cardio, you can do anything. There is nothing you have to do. For me personally, I probably do more running than anything
How far would you run in a day?
At the moment, I try to do three days a week, I try to do anywhere from three to five miles. I probably need to start doing longer runs and be running for an hour at a time to build my stamina.
Do you do stretching like yoga?
I actually have never tried yoga but flexibility and balance and core strength is very important. So, I think something like yoga would be an incredibly good thing to do. I have never gotten into it and tried it. We do a lot of core stuff.
Core like sit-ups and squat thrusts?
All the exercises we do combines flexibility and balance, so all your squats. A lot of the exercises we use the balance ball for. Instead of bench press you would do dumbbell press on the balance ball. The team works with the strength and conditioning coaches.
Topics: Athletes, Olympians | Comments Off
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