Earlier this summer I went to the Last Frontier Theater Conference in Valdez, Alaska.
It was pretty alright. And by pretty alright, I mean that it was probably nothing short of stunning for anyone new to the state. As an Alaskan kid, I’m sort of spoiled. I’m used to quaint towns nestled beneath breathtaking mountain vistas. I was born and raised under the towering majesty of nature in all directions. I sort of don’t see it anymore. Sort of like how you can’t smell your own deodorant after you’ve been wearing it for a while.
The conference has been going on in Alaska for decades. I was vaguely aware of it through some of my friends who do theater, but otherwise I had never been. This year, however, my girlfriend’s play was accepted to the conference to have a reading. She asked if I would be her armcandy while she attended. Being that I enjoy theater, and more generally, getting out and doing stuff in Alaska during the summer, I graciously accepted.
We had planned out how to get to Valdez (a short, 6+ hour drive). We had (mostly) planned on where we would stay (the conference-goers could take advantage of the vacant campus housing for dirt-cheap, dorm-style accomodations). But otherwise, I didn’t do any research on the nature of the conference before arriving.
I don’t know what I assumed would be going on. I’ve been to the Penny Arcade Expo, which is so massive and has so many things going on that there’s simply no way to see it all (or really even see a portion of what you really want). I’ve also been to work conferences where they are highly regimented and scheduled down to the nearest 15 minutes, and your itinerary is submitted and approved six months in advance.
I didn’t expect it would be a writer’s conference. I mean, had I bothered to read anything on their website I might have been a little more enlightened. They proudly list out all of the famous playwrights that have attended in past years. On top of that, their schedule had a number of writing-related workshops (in addition to those for acting, directing, and a new word I learned: ‘dramaturgy’). But maybe the most damning is that my girlfriend is a writer, and they asked her to the conference for a thing she wrote.