Just had a very disturbing call from the Chair of the Theater Academy at LACC. In essence, he's been ousted by three other members of the faculty - since this was to be his sixth term as Chair, he needed seventy-five percent of the vote from the faculty IF someone was running against him - the head tech guy, the set designer who runs the tech program, has, I'm sure, had this in his head for some time, and he did this power play and got the woman who runs the costume department and one of the acting teachers to vote for him and effectively that was the end of that. Needless to say, the MAJORITY of the faculty wanted the current Chair to stay Chair, and they have lodged formal complaints with the Dean and the teacher's union. How this will all shake out is anyone's guess, but I won't be planning any more LACCTAA events until I know. This set guy, a real creepball of negative energy, has never been supportive of anything I've tried to do for the Academy - he's never attended ONE of our LACCTAA events - I doubt he even knows what they were or how helpful they were to the, you know, STUDENTS. Plus, I'm sorry, but a tech guy running a theater academy? Someone who has no idea what an actor does or how that stuff works? I hasten to add that the majority of the students in the Academy (like 99%) are ACTORS, not set-builders and costumers. My response was that it's the beginning of the end for the Academy because this guy will take it right into the toilet very fast - and it was just starting to get OUT of the toilet, thanks to the current Chair, and somewhat thanks to me and LACCTAA.
