The Library of Our Lives

Some 40 years ago, when I was a grad student working on my MFA in Playwriting at the Univ of Oregon, a theater dept grad student approached me about a project he had in mind that would involve half a dozen university departments, plus the superior television facilities at the nearby community college, and be a credited course out of the university's recent "experimental college": a soap opera satire, done start to finish by students, which would run on the university's cable channel. Would I be interested in heading/teaching the writing department of the project? Indeed I would!

So began an incredible year working with the talented, eccentric Peter Jamison (later of Hollywood, before moving to live in Venice, Italy, and then ...?). Yes, we actually pulled this off, although I ended up writing about 80% of the script myself because the students couldn't perform under the pressure of deadlines. Indeed, this was all much harder than we thought, and often I would be pounding out a scene at the studio while the prior scene was being taped! Actors didn't have time to memorize their lines, really, but they got the gist and improvised.

One writer later credited us with the first soap opera satire, before Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. We were written up in a magazine story, which you can find here in my literary scrapbook, scrolling down to the Library of Our Lives section. Man, I wish the tapes of these shows still existed! It was an incredible feat that Jamison pulled off.

A few memories:

Jamison drove an old VW with no windshield wipers -- in Oregon! I remember many a rainy night riding with him as he held his left hand out the open window to wipe the windshield with a sponge or rag.

There were some ex-cons from a  halfway house taking university courses -- and Jamison cast many of them as narcs in our story of university life! In the grand finale, a pregnant student gives birth to ... cats! I remember this clearly. I have no idea what dramatic journey, if any, got us there.

Our schmaltzy opening included the narration, "In the library of our lives are the books of a world's wisdom. To read them, we come to college."