User:Kjoenth/Gracies Dinnertime Theatre

Gracies Dinnertime Theatre (GDT) was a student run, but not college endorsed, publication founded by a group of three students from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Published from 1995 to 2005, its 257 issues were notorious for political incorrectness regarding topics such as race relations, bizarre end-time prophecies, baseless conspiracy theories, provocation of the established student magazine, Reporter, the Clinton and Bush administrations and in particular, RIT President Al Simone.

Perhaps GDT's greatest single contribution was the article "The Politics of High Tech Damnation," which examined the close, covert links between the CIA and RIT in the early and mid 1990s.

Less controversial content included a weekly chess puzzle and frank sexual discussion.

GDT's presence on the internet initially began as a text-only finger plan. By the fall of 1995, GDT had a web site hosted by one of its creators, making it one of the first student satire publications to have a web presence. In time, the hosting of the web site migrated to servers owned by RIT Computer Science House. Its final resting place came to be on the Hell's Kitchen server.

GDT spawned five sister publications which all published under the combined title of Hell's Kitchen. This was distributed for free on four universities in Rochester, NY and Rutgers University. Under this combined title, GDT received notable attention from the Independent Press Association, Rochester's daily newspaper The Democrat and Chronicle, and had a few articles reproduced via UWIRE.

History
GDT was originally conceived as an unnamed weekly column for The Reporter. The original article was submitted and rejected in late 1994. In early 1995, Kelly Gunter, Sean Hammond, and Mark Trzepla reworked the original piece and decided to publish it independently.

The first issue was published on one side of an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper with an intentionally wide right margin to allow for marginalia illustrations. The insertion of illustrations directly onto the article page persisted for most of 1995, after which illustration scanning and digital insertion of material was used.

By the end of Spring 1995, GDT had discovered that paper has two sides and began publishing a single sheet, front and back, and laid the groundwork for an overall feel and style guide that persisted from 1995 to 2000.

Main articles
Kelly Gunter, Sean Hammond, and Mark Trzepla collaborated on the first page articles which they would simple refer to as "main articles". No author credit was attributed to these articles because they were group efforts. The general idea behind main articles was that one person would contribute a draft that the other members would add content to until everyone was satisfied with the result.

To quote one of the early regular writers for GDT:

"Imagine a poetry slam, spelling bee, intellectual salon, left-wing political rally and mad scientist's convention competing for space in the confines of a dorm room (with the energy of a Klingon Bat'leth tournament) and you come close to the atmosphere of these weekly gatherings"

Later editors moved away from the "main article" concept and embraced more of a weekly column and submitted content format.

A fixed publication date
Sean Hammond considered missing publication deadlines as unprofessional, and was especially displeased when The Reporter would miss theirs. For that reason GDT would publish at least once a week during the RIT academic year during the time period he and Kelly Gunter were co-editors.

Regular columns
Rather than primarily be a collection of materials submitted by stringers (Stringer_(journalism)), GDT worked to have regular, weekly named columns. Some of the columns included:
 * Martyr of the Week - discussing a different catholic martyr each week
 * Ask the Barefoot Girl - An advice column
 * Fey Denizen - Delving into faerie folklore
 * The Magic Wonder Show - A column examining popular culture, music, and movies
 * Tourist's Movie Reviews - What is says on the wrapper

Photocopies and layout
Working on a tight weekly financial and time budget, GDT focused on rapid turn around, simplistic layout, and a heavy use of photocopiers. While this was a choice of necessity by the founding editors, it stylistically created a visually different format when compared to The Reporter which prided itself in its use of color lithography and experimenting with complicated layouts popular in the mid 1990s.

The use of photocopiers and lack of folding machines meant that multi-page issues, common starting in Fall on 1995, needed to be manually folded. This led to the creation of "folding parties" where "printer daemons" would work together.

Original circulation of GDT began with 60 single page copies, but would grow to average 28 pages a week with a circulation of 2000 copies distributed for free at RIT, the University of Rochester, and Monroe Community College.

Origin of the name
The original article submitted to The Reporter in late 1994 had no column name. After the founding editors decided to self-publish, the name "Gracies Dinnertime Theatre" was chosen as a nod to Mystery Science Theater 3000, recognition of the dining commons named "Gracie's" on the RIT campus, and a nod to the idea that the theater is filled with uncomfortable satire.

Publication's logo
The logo for GDT was created before GDT existed. The shape of the logo was derived from what it looked like when the three founders of the publication stood shoulder-to-shoulder—in order of increasing height—and placed a meter stick on their heads.

Sister Publications and Hell's Kitchen
As GDT expanded in circulation and length, the writing staff increased. It limit staff size and expand the scope of content, GDT intentionally splintered to found multiple sister publications. Each was student run, but independent of universities. Each publication would go on to have their own style and their own main distribution location. Each of the sister publications would be printed along with GDT. These multiple publications would go on to found the 501(c)(3) organization Hell's Kitchen (EIN 161513436).

GDT's Sister Publications

 * The Melancholy Predator - cooperated with GDT on the RIT campus
 * The Melancholy Homewrecker - the successor to The Melancholy Predator, focusing of the University of Rochester
 * The Iconoclast - inspired by GDT and published on the Rutgers University campus
 * Cereal - Began as a place to publish serialized fiction and the annual Halloween stories, it expanded into its own publication focusing on Monroe Community College

A narrative history of the publication
Two of the founders of GDT were interviewed as a part of an "RIT Iceberg" project. The complete (2.5hr) interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmstcsemCAg

Rumors Regarding the "Unity" Sculpture


A sculpture entitled "Unity" was installed in the quad between the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, the College of Applied Science and Technology, and the College of Engineering in 2008. Designed as a collaboration between the RIT faculty members Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez and Leonard Urso, the sculpture is visually similar to the logo used by GDT from 2000 to 2005 and has led to speculation that it was inspired by GDT.

Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez taught at RIT as an adjunct professor in the School of American Crafts within the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences(CIAS) starting in 1994 —the year GDT began publishing on the RIT campus. At the time of its founding, two of the original three co-editors were in programs within CIAS, and GDT was involved in protests related to proposed budget cuts to the School of American Crafts and School of Art and Design in April 1996. GDT would later go on to publish a piece that examined the close connections between CIAS and the actual CIA.

Intentional misspellings in title

 * "Gracies" would appear to be a possessive pronoun referring to RIT's Grace Watson Dining Hall (colloquially "Gracie's"). Used without the apostrophe, "Gracies" may be read as plural, suggesting a multiverse of parallel dining halls.
 * "Dinnertime Theatre" may recall a formal Dinner theater production, or it may simply denote theatre that occurs coincidental to meal without the willing participation of the diners. Socialization based around the sharing of "food" (not only physical nutrition, but also information) was a recurring theme in GDT production culture.
 * "Theatre" uses the British English spelling; another frequently used affectation in GDT articles.