Thursday
PULSE EDITOR: REBECCA WILSON rrw11180@gladstone.uoregon.edu
Tom Patterson Emerald
Designated Driver Shuttle worker, Tiffany Sparks, a junior at the University, receives directions to a rider’s whereabouts from the DDS dispatcher on a busy Saturday night.
A Saturday night ride-along leads to the conclusion that DDS
drivers, at the very least, deserve a tip
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
What did you do last Saturday night?
Did you see a movie? Go out dancing?
Well, if you were drinking, you just
might have run into me.
I spent Saturday night (and the bet
ter part of Sunday morning) riding in
one of the three
Reporter’s
NOTEBOOK
patrolling Des
ignated Driver
Shuttles. DDS
is a free service
offered by the
ASUO to all
University students as a means to get
home when they can’t manage on their
own, if you know what I mean.
It is important to note that the driv
ers will only take people HOME, not to
other parties, bars, etc.
The shuttles run every night while
school is in session from 10 p.m. to 3
a.m., which is when the dispatcher
stops taking new calls. Most vans oper
ate until 4 a.m. The number to call is
346-RIDE (346-7433).
There are four vans in the fleet, each
of varying size, that are equipped to
drive anywhere within a five-mile ra
dius of campus. For the van I was in, #4,
“equipped” meant having a CD player.
Trust me, some good tunes made the
six-hour shift go by a lot more smoothly.
What follows is a chronicle of an
evening in the life of a DDS employee.
10 p.m. — The DDS employees for
the evening meet in the ASUO office.
Maureen Haegele has volunteered to be
the dispatcher because she feels ill —
not the best condition for driving a van
all night. The remaining six employees
split up into teams of two — a driver
and a navigator. Not all DDS employees
Turn to DDS, page 10
Pocket Playhouse performance leaves things in ‘Pieces’
The final
Pocket
Playhouse
show features
a‘Choose Your
Own
Adventure’
style
production
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
This has been an incredi
ble term in the Pocket Play
house, with nine amazing
shows. The final show,
“Pieces,” starts today and
will end the Winter Pocket
season confused rather than
concluded.
The show, conceptualized
and directed by Kat Reese
and Darlene Dadras, is by far
the most experimental one
this term. It started with two
10-minute plays, one by
Reese and one by Dadras,
both written for a workshop
last term. The directing duo
took those scenes, cast the
four men needed to fill those
parts and then cast an addi
tional three people to help
develop the show as audi
ences will see it this week
end.
You may wonder where
those extra three people fit
in. Building off the two
scripted sections, the actors
developed various “pieces,”
or scenes spawning from the
pre-existing material. These
sections reflect the actors’ in
sights and interpretations of
the characters and action, but
I’m not exactly sure where
some of them came from.
When they were done, they
ended up with 35 pieces that
could be interchanged and
rearranged to make some
thing into a show.
There is a beginning and
an end to each show, but
every performance will con
tain 14 different pieces to
compose the action and di
rect the tone of the experi
ence. Dadras said that it’s
something like a “Choose
Your Own Adventure” book
for the actors.
Hoping to create a new
world for their pieces to fit
together, the Pocket stage will
be painted white to accentu
ate the many colors used in
the lighting design. This vi
sual difference from other
shows makes the production
more playful and surreal, a
Turn to Pieces, page 8
Chrystal McConnell Emerald
Wayne Bund, dressed as a carrot, indulges in the forbidden fruit of a ripe orange.