My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway

Last January, my main New Year's Resolution was to do less theatre...I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't do a little more writing, a sort of return to my first love (without, you know, the creepy FB stalker thing that most ex's indulge in)--but that was a foolish pledge. In the last 12 months, I have directed 4 plays, acted in 4 plays, and written bupkes. Well, nothing I was interested in sharing with the world, anyway.

All my directing occurred at the high school where I work. We did Tira Palmquist's The Island of Dr. Moreau in January, which was a fantastic experience for the kids involved. They got to create something no other high school had ever done. We took it to the state thespian conference, where the kids were received like rock stars when it was over. They were never better, and I had a rollicking good time working with them. Later that spring, I directed my own little comic 15 minute adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed during an evening of one acts.

Then I left town to spend 5 weeks in beautiful Granville, Ohio, where I was engaged for a 2 play contract at Weathervane Playhouse in nearby Newark, a summer stock theatre that puts up five plays a summer. I had a grand time, for the most part, met some wonderful people, got to play a bucket list role (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) and Captain Keller in The Miracle Worker.

MFL was a terrifying experience, initially. Those who know me know I am not much for the musical theatre genre. I respect it a lot more than I used to, but I still find it a little frivolous and too filled with "fabulosity" for my taste. But I always thought Higgins was in my wheelhouse, and a friend emailed me that spring to say she'd recommended me to Matt Trombetta ( the artistic director) for the role. I heard nothing from them and was mentioning to another friend how this tempting tidbit had been dangled in front of me, and then--nothing. She said she was seeing Matt that evening, and would mention it to him. She did, and he contacted me the next day, we arranged an audition, and I got the role, and was offered Captain Keller in the bargain. We set a fair price for my services, which included putting me up for the length of the contract.

I knew my Waterloo would be the songs, and learning them in a 2 week, summer stock format. I had a month between casting and first rehearsal, so I downloaded karaoke versions of Higgins' numbers, and drilled them into my head, every day. I decided against watching the movie (which I had never seen in its entirety), and figured I'd go it my way.

Rehearsals were long and intensive, and I learned a new respect for the musical theatre performer, and what it takes for them to get it all down. My main trouble was that, being deaf as a post, I couldn't hear the piano if I was singing (being profoundly deaf from birth, my life has always been mono, never stereo). Plus they placed the piano far, far away, in our echo-ridden rehearsal room. It was enormously frustrating--one of the few times I have really felt handicapped (another time was when I was fired from a convenience store job in college, because I couldn't hear the people talking on the speakers from the gas pumps). As a result, I was constantly going off rhythm, and slowing the progress of the show.

My pride wouldn't let me back out, however--I think one of the great things about the theatre is that there is always something you need to increase your reach for, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd taken the easy way out. Finally, I did the actorly thing--I threw a hizzy, and announced it was pointless for me to continue until they moved the piano closer, in the approximate with where it would be on the stage . I had asked for this before, but no one seemed to hear it (maybe they were deaf too). It took a raised voice and a scary countenance ( I can do both pretty well when I wanna) for people to pay attention, and they moved the piano, and I started to line up with the runway, finally.

Opening night was one of the few times I have ever been stricken with nerves before a show. Though the sound level was better (this was the 2 piano arrangement of MFL), there were still many times when, if I was loud, I couldn't hear the pianos. Throughout the run, I did much of it by guess--I would sing, or sing/talk my line, then listen to the filler notes between the melody to see if I'd timed it right. There wasn't a single performance where I got it all on the bead, but I started to relax and actually look forward to the numbers. Most of them, anyway. I always dreaded " Ordinary Man", because of all the tempo shifts, and all the movement within it. But, strangely, a number of people told me afterward that was one of their favorite moments of my performance. That and "Accustomed to her Face", the final number, which was my personal favorite.

Weathervane has a terrible policy of lining the actors up outside after the show, so the audience can file by and shake your hand. It felt like an inspection line, or like I was a preacher standing by the church door and shaking the hands of the exiting congregation. I have always tried to eschew meeting the public after my shows. I prefer doing my monkey dance, get the applause, and then slip out the side door to my car. I hate all manner of pretentious "talk-backs"--a terrible practice currently in vogue in theatre. To my way of thinking, there is a contract between audience and performer, and I fulfilled my part of it by giving my all on stage. I never slack, I never phone it in. And I have nothing further to add than my performance. If your production needs the talk-back to illuminate the show, then the production is wanting. I know a lot of actors who enjoy talk-backs, but I guess I have always been old school that way. Weathervane doesn't do the afterschool special thing, but you have to stand there while the folks file by, shake your hand raw, and smile while all you really want to do is get to the bar or Rally's for an American Cheddar Melt.

I bring this up because, against my will, I started to enjoy it. I appreciated that people responded to my work so favorably, with hugs and back slaps, questions like "Will we see you in anything else this summer, I hope?"...even the tired old questions most civilians ask " How do you remember all those lines?" (My stock answer to that one is " How do you know I did?") Because Weathervane exists outside the normal theatre hubs of a big city, there is a proprietary feeling that comes from the patrons--it's their theatre, and they have a stake in it. And that's valuable. And the exchange takes on a more personal tone than it does in the cities.

The meet and greet for the next show was an entirely different color altogether, however...

On the final day of My Fair Lady, we did a matinee, an evening performance, and then struck the set, which lasted well into the wee hours. I was determined to sleep in my own bed, in Grove City (about 60 miles away), so at 3 am I said my goodbyes, and hit the highway, looking forward to my one day off, and hit my pillow around 4:30 am-- the roads were so foggy I had to travel about 30 mph most of the way home. At about 9am, I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Tim, informing me that Matt Trombetta, the artistic director and director of The Miracle Worker (which was a week into the 2 week rehearsal), had been killed in a head-on car collision, on the same road I had traveled, about 20 minutes behind me. I dressed and headed back to Newark, too late for the meeting with the board and admin staff, but in time to commiserate with the stunned and grieving company. Many of them had known Matt for years, to the point that he was like family to them.



One of these "family" members, Erika, who had directed MFL, had to step in and finish MW. It was a heroic effort on her part, a sort of focus I can only imagine. That final week of rehearsal was surreal, the usual joy and nerves replaced by a grim sort of realization that we had to get it done. Not for Matt, necessarily. But because in theatre, that's what you do. Theatre people attend. Life exists outside the building, not in it. I will often make that speech to my high school kids--theatre.people.attend. If your mom dies, schedule the funeral for a day that won't coincide with the rehearsals or performance.

And so we got the thing up. To standing Os every night, but I'm sure they were in honor of Matt and our ability to put aside the shock, rather than for our performances (though the little girl who played Helen Keller had some serious chops).

The people in the meet and greet lines hugged us all, and it became a situation where you had to remember why they were doing it. In their minds, we were heroic to get a show up under the circumstances. People would say, " This must have been hard for you.", and I would start to answer, well, the accent was challenging to bring off, then I would realize they were thinking about Matt. But in the adrenalined after-moments of performance, the mind, at least MY mind, wasn't on that at all. I was thinking about certain moments that could have been better, or why wasn't my prop in its place tonight, or "wonder who is at the bar" or "hope Rally's is still open". I didn't know Matt as well as most. My sadness was the sadness of a young life, any young life, suddenly gone-- not for someone who was an intimate part of my world, which he wasn't-- and I moved on as other priorities rose up. Selfishly, I discreetly lamented the loss of future work--Matt and I had discussed my returning in 2011 to direct a children's play, and act in Boeing, Boeing, but those plans were lost on that foggy night.

So, that get us up to July of 2010. Act Two of " Mark's Theatrical Self-absorption" comes up after these messages from our sponsors...