Okay, I don’t mean that in a Senator Craig kind of way. Let me start at the beginning. I was visiting Purdue with a couple of Indianapolis friends to see a production of “Marat/Sade” by the Purdue Theatre department. And oh, what a show it was. Set in a bathhouse in the Charenton Asylum in 1808, “Marat/Sade” is a subversive, incisive play about how most revolutions end up serving the ruling class – if not the prior ruling class, then the new one! Ya know: absolute power has its way of corrupting absolutely. Oh, and here's the real title of the play: “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.”
The show was fantastic. I had heard from West Lafayette friends that this was a risky, ambitious production and I was not disappointed. I was also anxious to meet the director, Gordon McCall, lured from the professional theater world of Montreal. For more on Purdue Theatre: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/vpa/theatre/
After the show, I met McCall and Rick Thomas, Head of Theatre Design and Technology. The two gentlemen took us on an extensive tour of the Yue-Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts – wow. There are three performance spaces, with state of the art technology for set and sound design – plus a really amazing production studio. We watched a tech rehearsal for 'Hair' – I wondered what forces conspired to create a scenario where 'Marat/Sade' would be immediately followed up the next week by 'Hair.'
Clearly, time for a beer. And a bite. And where I wanted to have both beer and bite was the Lafayette Brewing Company (http://www.lafayettebrewingco.com/). At a craft beer roundtable in March at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, I’d listened to the proprietor of LBC, Greg Emig, and I could tell it was going to be my kind of place.
Coincidentally – or perhaps not – it was also where the cast was going for its party. So we joined them, and met the actors. Exchanged contact info w/ Gordon – and invited him to Indy.
When it came time for a restroom break, I found myself alone. Soon, two urinals down, someone arrived. All of a sudden, he said “Doesn’t it smell like a swimming pool in here?”
Something about the smell HAD in fact been bugging me, on some subliminal level. I replied, yes, it’s got that chlorine-y smell.
We both finished up, chatting. Washed our hands together, then in a completely unselfconscious way (we’re two strangers in a bathroom!), discussed the band playing upstairs. Groovatron (http://www.groovatron.com/). What kind of music? Schizophrenic rock. You can buy hard liquor up there but not in the pub.
We left the bathroom together. I returned to my table – there were the two friends I’d come with talking with the cast, and there were my news friends, Gordon and his cast and crew. My new friend, the one made in the bathroom, was back to his party upstairs.
I go to Bloomington many times a year – for its concerts, its theater, the community. I now add West Lafayette – great theater, craft beer, creative people – and friendly bathrooms.
