Media 70 at the University of Texas: 1968-1971

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Blog posting from the Green Hills of Earth:

OK, here's some ancient history, to mix in with the future history. In the late 60's a group of UT Student Orientation Advisers put together a 'multi-media' show for new students arriving in the summer before their entry into life on the Austin campus. The show was designed to be entertainment after dinner in the dormitory, at the new Academic Center Auditorium (AC 21). AC 21 was a wonderful gallery type lecture hall with 4 giant rear projection screens, a center stage level film screen, and clear walls above the stage for more front projection from the booth. People filed into the darkened room tentatively, wondering what was going on, here?

With the room still dark, a rock and roll sound track started off with the raucous voices of the Stones (She's a Rainbow) and ended with the sweet tones of Judy Collins (Who Knows Where the Time Goes), and for 30-40 minutes the kiddies were pounded with multiple screen images (35mm slides, film, TV) of campus life, anti-war protests, football (Go, 'Horns), parties, and oh yeah, classrooms. The sons and daughters of Texas and the world got a dazzling taste of life in the new world of 1968-70 in Austin. ... Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto. The times were definitely changing, and for the group calling itself Media 70, it was like a prehistoric version of Second Life, with mind expanding 'stuff', music, images, issues, people. The group went on to do other shows for different venues, on and off campus.

The most ambitious was a theatrical show that brought live actors on stage (and on film) into the AC 21 for a psychedelic Moog version of the Wizard of Oz, called The Wozard of Iz (written by Jacques Wilson with music composed and performed by Mort Garson). Students being what they are, very little survived of the images, sound track or script for this and other shows, but here is replicated the flier produced to handout all over campus to fill the house for the 8 night, 24 performances of The Wozard. Wow.

I'm the SCARED CROW. I'm afraid that if I don't have, people won't think I am. Thingaling, thingaling hear that old cash register ring. Thingaling, thingaling, see the nice goodies that I bring. I have substituted thing for think, thingaling, thingaling. What shall I do? I have to stop thinging and start thinking. I'm the IN-MAN and I squeak. It's all numbers when I speak. Facts and figures, figures and facts. One adds or one subtracts. I've a mind like a machine. Charts and figures, figures and charts, I will total all your parts. I'm the IN-MAN and I'm all head. But everywhere else I'm kind of dead. Gains and losses, losses and gains. I'm lust loaded down with brains. A book that someone gave me said that time is all time. That the now time, and the last time, and the future time all must be shared. Where they meet is where it's at, and they meet in me. And I have a witch, and my witch is nonbelief in anytime. And . . . the witch must be killed. The LYING COWARD. You stand before the man with the word. Where there's a crowd, I will be heard. Tittle, tittle, that's the way I raise the rabble. Pain on every word I utter. Beloved, you stand before the man behind the tongue. There's a hothead of expression in each lung. Glory to my splendid oratory. But, with all my talking and distraction, you won't find me near the action. Though no talk was ever truer. I'm a talker, not a doer. Brothers & Sisters, Citizenry of Campus, Canvas and Kansas City! We issue praise for your timely arrival, and beg the blessing of your goodwill and stable spirit in our journey from Was to lz. The nature of our intention & therefore our plot is simple and contained. Our hero Dorothy, a fair and kindly maid, eagerly seeks cure to a bewitched brain, and thus journeys with resounding discovery to the magical land of lz. She offers passage to 3 misplaced modifiers, by specification, the Scared Crow, In Man & Lying Coward. These shadows of her mind are the best of their kind, as they afford lengthy amendment to imagination. Again, people, let you be fully forewarned that you shall know, as Dorothy and as self, all that you are to know. To develop a recognition, to achieve a point, to straddle the essence of this. To travel the yellow-green road.

7:00 & 8:15 & 9:30 for sure in the AC Auditorium March 16, 17, 19, 20 23, 24, 26, 27 in 1971 (whew) Sponsored by the Texas Union Entertainment Committee University of Texas at Austin ~ Media 70 More about this topic

Who Knows Where the Time Goes...?

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