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Anne Michelson
My life has been blessed with some fine Annes, and Anne Michelson, known as "Boris" to some, is no exception. Smart, sassy, Canadian, she was two years behind me at Reed and yet managed to become an essential part of my college experience, first manifesting at my 20th birthday party, where I was drunkenly informed that she was interested in being my friend. I ended up casting her in my directing project that semester, playing Asenath Waite in my staging of the HP Lovecraft prose-poem Nyarlathotep, and she played numerous parts in various Midnight Theater sketches I wrote and hobbled together, most memorably appearing as the "Ghost of Sexualities Past" in my sketch about how the world would have been different if I was a heterosexual. When we remounted Wild Blue Peaks she took on the part of Delores, no small shoes to fill since her predecessor, Amy Faucon had been kind of infamous for the role. Most significantly, she created the role of Celeste/Shamhat in the original production of Vincent of Gilgamesh, a part that I had written with her in mind. She was elegant, quirky and devoted to both the production and the role, even given me the back-ass-wards comment that, while the play was "really all about man-pain, in the end," the role of Celeste was, "still a great role, very complicated, and beyond the typical gay boy gal-pal part." Interestingly enough, she ended up dating Patrick Stockstill, who played Jack/Enkidu, for quite some time after they met in that show. Apparently what she didn't keep doing was acting and, despite a few more shows at Reed, eventually ended up going to Yale and obtaining a masters in the stage management program. We keep in touch, distantly, and I miss her. It seems my lot in life to work with amazing actors who move on to other professions. Anne, of course, would probably not say that she was amazing, but I thought she was great and she got excellent notices on her one foray outside of Reed, as the crack whore Rita in Quill Camp's The Pigs' Firebird. I think its safe to say that the boards miss being tread by her tiny, perfect feet.
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