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A short tribute to giant influence.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, it's Gina boss. And I just wanted to put this very short episode out here following the passing of David Avcollie, who was a professor at DePaul theater school and who I had as my first year acting teacher and who boss had as a director in a play that we did together called the yellow boat. And there have been times on the podcasts where guests, or, or we have talked about the difficulty of David and that's all very true, but it's also true that he brought an amazing amount of good to an enormous number of people, us included.
And you'll hear it in the short conversation we have that is going to follow here, but I probably didn't say enough on this podcast, the positive things that I felt about David. And so I didn't want to miss this opportunity to do it now. And pause. And I are really thinking of his wife, Kathy, who, everybody who knew David knows she was the most important thing in his life. And I think really his, his reason for being of course, his reason for being for the rest of us was to provide a challenging at times, really fun, always engaging work environment, where he really believed in us and our ability to go beyond what we probably at our ripe old ages of 17 and 18 and 19 thought we could do.
And at times it felt exacting, but I think it all came from a very good place. Anyway, just a short tribute to David.
No, I had so many. So for those listening, someone, we talk about a lot on the podcast. David Avcollie passed away. I have so many mixed emotions.
Me too. Tell me, tell me what you're mixing.
I feel I was like, oh, oh, oh, I thought, I, I don't know. It's like, he wasn't a real person to me until I saw that picture of him on bass book standing there. And he was like in my head and since I blocked out a lot of college, I don't, I, it was just weird. It was like, oh yeah, he's he's he was in a little man and now he's gone. We'll never get to it. We'll never get to have him on the podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. I it's. I F I have mixed emotions too. I mean, I really, one of the things that I realized is I feel I have maybe, maybe only, or mostly represented my issues with him. And I haven't really said some of the more positive things, which include that he, he, he was very dedicated to his job. You know, he, he took it very seriously and that's not true for everybody about any job. He had high expectations and he believed that people could meet them.
And frankly, I mean, he's the one, he's the reason I got into the theater school. I'm, I'm assuming that the way it works is the person who runs the audition. Cause you know, mine was in California. They're the person who says right. I mean, it's not like they had a videotape to show everybody else. It's like, here's who I recommend for the program. So he's the reason I got to go to the theater school, which means he's the reason I met you, which means I have a lot of gratitude that I don't think I've expressed to myself or, or, or on this podcast. But I had the same thought about just one of the things that we do good, bad or indifferent is we lie and eyes our teachers in this way.
And this is just human nature. People do it from the time that they're in kindergarten. You know, you'd have a way of thinking about your teachers, not as humans, but just as these, you know, entities that are there to serve you in your
Parents, like your parents, like I do my parents. Exactly.
And so, yeah. And actually, I believe he had been sick even when we were in school or just before. I think he had health problems, maybe a lot in his life and bladder cancer sounds horrible. I can't, I don't, I don't know anything about it, but it sounds horrible. So I imagine it was a horrible death and I just, yeah, I really feel for his wife and for people in his family and people who loved him. Yeah. Yeah.
I just feel, yeah. And, and you know, now that you say that, like he was someone like during the yellow boat that made me feel like I could actually act, you know, like he, when you did something well, or I felt, you know, for whatever the weirdness of trying to please your teacher, you know, when you, when I felt like I did something well that he liked there was that that's a great feeling.
Yes. And actually, I don't think I've ever said this either. He adored you, his, his love and appreciation of you was really, really evident all throughout yellow bow. And I think you delighted him and that was something delighting him
Was a special treat. And I, I really, I it's so complicated. Right. And death and in death is complicated too. So yeah, my heart, my heart and my, my, all my thoughts go to Kathy and, and his sons didn't have sons or I believe he said, yeah. And to his family and everyone who loved him and, oh man, I just said, it's like, I never think these people are going to actually die. Like, because, because I've made them into sort of characters in my head and those characters in my head can live on forever because they're not real, but he was a real man who died.
Yeah. So rest in peace, David
We went to theatre school. We survived it, but we didn't understand it. 20 years later, we're talking to our guests about their experience of going for this highly specialized type of college at the tender age of 18. Did it all go as planned? Are we still pursuing acting? Did we get cut from the program? Did we... become famous yet?