The Many Faces of Chepe

What's with the "Chepe"?    * *    Personal miscellanea    * *    Amazon wishlists, etc.

Working

Playing

• That's "playing" as in "plays" -- I'm a great fan of live theatre, whether acting, directing, or sitting in the audience.

• My theatrical resumé (use Acrobat Reader to view: username "interview" and password "lockett", all lower-case.)

• Favorite playwright? No contest: William Shakespeare. Close runners-up, however, are Alan Ayckbourn and Tom Stoppard. No, really, I'm not British.

• Rice Players gave me my real start in acting (and directing!), and still do great shows; including letting me direct (as an undergraduate) Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind (Fall 1990) in Farnsworth Pavilion and (as a professional) David Auburn's Proof (Fall 2007) and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (Fall 2009) in Hamman Hall.
• Baker Shakespeare Theatre is Houston's oldest Shakespeare festival (five years senior to that other one). I've worked with "BakerShake", as undergraduate, alumnus, and college associate, sometimes acting and sometimes directing, each season since 1988: over half my life! I'm particularly proud of my six directing stints: 1997's The Winter's Tale, 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2003's King Lear, 2005's The Taming of the Shrew, 2006's Cymbeline, and 2009's The Tempest. Now let me tell you about my idea for Macbeth....
• I also used to direct musicals for the adolescent program at St. Catherine's Montessori: Little Shop of Horrors, Into the Woods, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Wizard of Oz, and Godspell. Fun, but a lot of work.

Frolicing

• Reading: I read voraciously, when I have time -- fantasy and science fiction, mysteries, history, biography, science and technology, news, commentary on current issues and events, etc. My Amazon wishlists are huge!

• Role-playing Games: Not the computerized variety, but the original pencil-and-paper kind. Okay, they're a bit geeky, but wonderful exercise for imagination and improvisation. My favorite system is still GURPS, which I used to play with a small group (now, alas, dispersed). However, it's definitely much easier to find players for Dungeons & Dragons, which I've played on-and-off-again since elementary school, and now referee (fourth edition) for a group composed entirely of Jenn's relatives. I also remain an unmitigated Traveller fanboy, feel fond of Shadowrun's background if not its mechanics, and have become intrigued by Savage Worlds.

• Board Games: Jenn and I love what are sometimes called "German-style" board games: casual games designed for adults, with simple rules but deep strategy. We have quite a collection, and are always looking for more. Right now we're fond of Carcassonne, Taluva, Blokus, Seismic, Quiddler, Civilization, Shadows Over Camelot — but we're up for anything. We may even, someday, dare to try a game of American Megafauna....
• Cat Ownership: "Pirate" found us on Pirate's Beach in Galveston (thus her name) in 2005. We think she's Burmese; we know she's adorable. She can be a bit shy with strangers, but if you visit she might show you her trick wheelbarrow-walking up the banister.
• Recumbent Bicycling: The picture shows me on my Linear "Mach III" CLWB recumbent bicycle "Carol" (short for "Carolus Linearus"; yes, it's a bad biology-history pun.), during the 2000 MS 150 charity bike ride from Houston to Austin. I've participated five times since.
• Music: I sing (high baritone), play the Renaissance recorder (C fingering only), and am an indifferent player on the highland bagpipe. In the fall of 2008 we attended the Texas Toot and had lots of fun with early music. For Christmas (2008), my wife bought me an acoustic guitar: we'll see where that goes. Before I die, I'd love to add the Renaissance crumhorn and the Australian didgeridoo, and the electronic theremin. Oh, and it would be cool to do central Asian throat singing too....

• Woodturning: My wife and I bought a Jet 1236 lathe a while back. We're stil relative beginners, but have had fun exploring by making palm gavels for Post Oak, gladius hilts for Cymbeline, bowls for ourselves, etc.

<www.prismnet.com/~jlockett/index.shtml> Last Modified: Mon 26 July 2010