Just Who Do I Think I Am, Anyway?

In a lot of ways, it doesn't really matter. I am speaking for no one but myself here. Not TAG. Not any of the theatres I've worked with. Not any newspapers, magazines, television stations or other media outlet. Well, except for this one blog of course. I guess I speak for it. If you really want to call a blog a "media outlet". Weirdo.

On the other hand, while it doesn't matter, I also don't plan on personally hiding behind a veil of anonymity. Even if I didn't put my real name here, anyone who's played trivia against me at Buffalo Wild Wings knows who Pooga is. If you met me first online, I've pretty much always been Pooga. Why Pooga? Googling for my name recently I found a post where I explained it this way back in 2000:

As to why I always use Pooga (as opposed to some other unique and better sounding name)... I dunno. It's an extension of myself. Pooga is my Kermit the Frog.

As to where it came from... The exact roots are a bit painful, but it's a mutation of a nickname given in cruelty during high school. My sophomore year, the senior class was reading a certain novel by William Golding. They also saw the movie adaptation, and noted a strong resemblance between myself and one of the main characters (hint: it wasn't Ralph or Jack).

Eventually, once it failed to provoke the desired indignant and flustered response from me, the seniors laid off chanting it whenever I'd walk by. Unfortunately by this time my own classmates had picked up on it. After that somewhere, it mutated to Pooga. Pooga came in handy in computer classes, where it gave birth to "Pooglian logic" (where the possible states are "true", "false", and "maybe").

In college, I temporarily lost track of Pooga. I didn't dislike the nickname anymore, but there really seemed to be no point in using it. Then a high school classmate transferred to UNL (the standard fallback school for anyone in my high school who couldn't hack it at a real college) and joined the campus Roleplaying group of which I was already a member. Suddenly I was Pooga to all my friends again. This time it stuck with me until I joined Prodigy.

While I'm rarely Pooga in real life anymore, online I've rarely been anything else. If you see a Pooga elsewhere, odds are good that it's me.

You know, no matter how many times I tell that story, it never gets interesting...

To those who know me in real life, I'm much more likely to be Dan Baye. I've been passively involved in theatre for probably about ten years or so. Mostly helping backstage on the occasional production at the Grand Olde Players Theatre. More often than not, it was a show in which my brother, the much more well known Edd Baye, was performing, and they desperately needed someone to help out at the last minute. I'd get involved for a show or maybe two and then go a year or more before getting involved in the next one, usually with Edd pushing me into it.

It's not that I didn't enjoy it. I did. It's just that theatre had always been his thing. I'm a computer geek and bookworm; he's the actor. Plus, working mainly at the GOP, I came to the conclusion I could only take theatre work in small doses, spread out over time. It seemed two shows in a row was about all the theatre I could handle.

Then, just about this time last year, something changed. Edd had failed to convince me to act in the now defunct Dundee Dinner Theatre's production of Annie, but at the very last minute (Wednesday of tech week) he got me to run the lights and sound. At the end of it's eight week run, Edd was acting in Talk Radio at the Baby D. They needed someone for a tiny on-stage role and to voice several of the callers (I got in at the start of tech week this time). Next it was a spotlight runner needed at the Millennium, where Edd was starring in the Stages of Omaha production of The Fix. When Edd was cast again at the Baby D, in Baby D Gets a Woody (don't ask), I actually volunteered to stage manage. At the Baby D, the role was less that of an actual stage manager than that of light/sound operator, box office manager and concessions runner. I stayed on there voluntarily as stage manager for the rest of Baby D's season. Since Baby D's season ended I've run lights for Chanticleer's production of Big River and True West at the Creighton University Studio Theatre (produced by B-Rated Theatre and the Shelterbelt). And it looks like I'll be working on Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at the Millennium into September, and then Clockwork Orange at Baby D after that.

My talents as an actor are... nominal at best. Aside from the aforementioned Talk Radio, I figure I've had a total of three and a half stage roles in my lifetime. The first, playing a leprechaun in a 2nd grade class production at Howard Kennedy Elementary was so long ago that I remember almost nothing about it. It was many years before I was offered another role. Or really more like half a role. If that. Technically I was listed as part of the cast in Little Shop of Horrors at the Chanticleer, but my "role" was to control the small hand puppet version of the plant from under the counter. The rest of the show I was essentially backstage crew. Next came my biggest role to date. I was Schroeder in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown at the GOP. Due to a combination of promotional snags and a lack of any reviews whatsoever, I believe it might have been their least attended musical production ever. A few years after that they got me to come back again and play a dual role of office boy and news reporter in The Solid Gold Cadillac. The roles were so forgettable that I can't even recall their names, and I played them. I think maybe the reporter was Kent something. Or is that the reporter from the Simpsons?

Well, lucky for you, this is a bit shorter than it was originally! I had another paragraph summarizing my social life (minimal to none) and day job (uninteresting and not something I'm allowed to talk about in detail anyway). Either I messed up, or Blogger did, but I lost everything after "Schroeder" up above. It's probably a good thing. This post is boring enough as it is.

So, next up: I'll try to come up with some ground rules for the site, and maybe a mission statement. Then on to something actually dealing with theatre. Hopefully.