Obie Savage is the Technical Director of Siena’s Beaudoin Theater in Foy Hall. Before coming to Siena, he worked in New York City off-and on-Broadway, at Lincoln Center, and in television. Because of this illustrious career, he has some great stories and is known for talking your ear off and often waxing philosophical. Fun fact: his lovely wife, Christi Spain-Savage, is an English professor here at Siena, you can read her profile here.
Hometown: Bolton, Massachusetts
College: Clark University
Major: BA in Theater Production and English
Favorite food: Taramasalata
Her Campus Siena: If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?
Obie Savage: Speed peeler. Because I wouldn’t cut myself while I was doing it the wrong way. Cross my fingers.
HC: What was one of the most unusual jobs you worked before you came to Siena?
OS: Oh, let’s see, I think one of the wildest things I ever did was a Swedish talk show which was called Söndagsparty med Filip & Fredrik. We had great guests, like, our first guest was Marilyn Manson and then we had all these other random people. Joan Rivers, it’s the only time I’ve ever seen a Martin Sheen interview. And we were live to Sweden on Sunday ‘cause “Söndagsparty” is “Sunday’s party.” Here it was like 2:30 our time, but there it was like 9:30 or 10:30 or something. And the stuff we did was crazy. Like, one of the people they kind of met in one of their segments was one of the vice presidents to Mitsubishi, he was Mitsubishi America’s Vice President and he had a wife and stuff but he was trying to pick up men. And all sorts of weird stuff we did. We had, I guess they were siberian tigers, eat the furniture, just really crazy weird things happened. And they were always doing crazy stuff, but in that sort of like euro-trash-y crazy. So I would say that’s probably one of the weirder ones.
HC: For those who don’t know a lot about theater, what do you do as part of your job?
OS: Uh, you know, I build and hang scenery and focus lights, make sound work. I would say–I use this one a lot–we are the people who originally lit the fires around which we would dance for rain, or whatever. And over time that’s gone through all sorts of things from moving theatrical pieces and automation, which actually the Greeks did, even in outdoor theaters they had all sorts of movable scenery. They have gaslight, all sorts of things, and now of course it’s, you know, we’re putting technology to make creative vision happen. We are the actualizers of a creative vision that somebody has to make.
HC: What are some things that you do outside of the theater?
OS: Hopefully, I get to hang out with my kids. I coach at a middle school. I play Dungeons and Dragons sometimes. I do a lot of cooking, I’ve done a lot of cooking for my whole life, it’s kind of a release for me. I guess that takes up a lot of my time, those things. I like gardening a lot. I’m on my local gardening executive board. I’m a food gardener, not an ornamental gardener, though. So sometimes we don’t always have things in common, but we all like soil.
HC: What is your favorite thing to cook?
OS: Oh, you know, so many things. I really like pies, but I’m not a sweets guy. I think potatoes are always fun to cook. If I were trying to impress people who were coming over for dinner, I would cook a ginormous steak that we would all share. So it’d be like four inches thick, almost like a roast but it would be a steak and that way I could have it, like, bloody in the middle and more well-done on the outside. But it’s one big communal piece of meat and I think it’s good that we, you know, I like when we get together to share things. I think that, a couple of things, I think that we should be more allowed to eat with our hands, cause I think that’s more communal. And it would force us to wash our hands better. And I like the idea of like, passing the bread, or you know, collaboratively eating. I like collaboration, and group, collective experience.
(Please note that some of Obie’s responses were edited for clarity or length. Mostly, they were shortened).