NCSA Pickles –Sweet and Sour Memories

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic; I hope you’ll forgive this random (non review) posting.

Tonight, I joined a new group on

Facebook. It’s called, NCSA Students for the Reinstatement of the Pickles Homecoming Game (2009). Contrary to its name, the group is open to both current students and alumni. If you are not familiar with the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA), you probably aren’t familiar with the school mascot, the Pickle.

As a proud Pickle, I feel obligated to bring you up to speed. Winston-Salem is known for several things, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Krispy Kreme, Old Salem, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. The North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) is an arts conservatory, in the conservative Winston-Salem, NC. There are six schools within the NCSA family, Drama, Music, Design and Production, Dance, Visual Arts, and Film. Each class is small and the competition is fierce. The competition is fueled by a keen dedication to each student’s chosen arts field. The school has a reputation for turning out fine talent including Mary Louise-Parker (Star of Weeds), Joe Mantello (Director of Wicked and Take Me Out), Peter Hedges (Writer of the film, Pieces of April), Tichina Vaughn (Recording Artist and Opera Star), Paul Tazewell (Tony Nominated Costume Designer, In the Heights), Tom Hulce (Oscar Nominee for Amadeus and Producer of Spring Awakening), and …. yes, you guessed it …. Me.

I graduated in 1987 and I have put many college memories behind me. But with Facebook, my memories are haunting me again, and I find myself glued to the steady stream of updates from “best friends” that I haven’t seen in 20+ years. Seeing the success of my contemporaries makes me proud, and makes me miss the good old days.

Today’s new group membership brought back a flood of memories from one of my favorite times on the college campus—the annual Homecoming game. Even though NCSA is an arts school, we had a football game. The NCSA Pickles were a group of folks who were cobbled together from every arts discipline, and played a fraternity from the neighboring college, Wake Forest University. The joke was always on Wake Forest. They had no idea what mockery was about to ensue.

It must have been about 1985. The Homecoming parade started at one of the student dorms and wound its way down to the field. Our campus was tiny, so the entire parade route took about 5 minutes. There were no floats. The single entry in the parade was the NCSA “marching band" which featured one set of bagpipes, and about 6 or 7 other assorted instruments. There was no fancy formation, just a casual saunter to the field.

Before the game began, the "Blue Angels" did a fly-over to honor NCSA (courtesy of the Design and Production sound designers and special effects artists). The crowd cheered as the NCSA Pickles took the field for warm-ups before the game. You should have seen the look of the Wake Forest jocks as our mismatched players carried portable dance bars onto the field and launched into a full dance warm up class.

The national anthem signaled the start of the game. It was sung in full falsetto by my friend G. Gary Winley. G. was a very large African American man who had the gift of a crystal clear falsetto. And at intermission, (what? at a performing arts school, you’d expect a half-time?) I had the privilege of crowning the Homecoming "queen.” Yes, the Homecoming queen was a proud gay male costume designer named Austin.

It was a beautiful day. And I will forever be a Pickle.

Pickles are not always sour. For me, my Pickle memories are very sweet.

Go Pickles!