Saturday, November 7, 2009

Buffalo to off-Broadway

As with each year while I was in college, my sophomore year at SUNY Buffalo, UB, was very busy.
I designed the lighting for my first play and worked on many other productions in a variety of capacities.
After my first year in college several faculty members left UB to go work at Brooklyn College.
During my sophomore year they returned with an updated version of a play that they had done at UB the year before.

The play was Old Timer’s Sexual Symphony (and other notes).
The play was an intense look at aging, ageism and sexuality, and like the other plays we were doing at UB at the time it had naked people in it.
The original poster for the play was a take off of the John Lennon album Two Virgins.
The septuagenarian looking couple acting in the play posed naked for the poster.


When the play came back to Buffalo I volunteered to be the House Manager.
During the time of the production I heard that they were planning to do Old Timer’s and three other plays that coming summer as part of a month long four play repertory off-Broadway in NYC.
I volunteered again to be on the crew and ended up running the lighting board for Old Timer’s and also worked on the other three plays.
During Spring Break before the summer season was to begin I traveled down to Brooklyn to see one of the productions at Brooklyn College because I wanted to feel like I part of the company.
Of course there was a late season snow storm and I was traveling by subway going to a place I had never been before.
Well I got there, saw the show and got back alive.

So in May of 1976 the plays were presented at the Theatre at St Clements’s Church on 46th Street, not far from the heart of the Broadway Theatre district.
St Clements’s Church is a well known off-Broadway venue that has hosted many productions of note and was and still is an active church and is an important resource for its neighborhood.
During one rehearsal I looked done from the top of the seating risers where the lighting control board was to see that they were having a wedding in a small chapel in the back of the Theatre/Church.
Another time we had to cancel a rehearsal because a popular prostitute from the area had died and they needed the Church for her funeral.
Each day going to and from the theatre I would pass several groups of Working Girls who always asked me if I wanted a Date.

When I was working in NYC I stayed with my brother’s in his dorm at Pratt Institute out in Brooklyn.
It fun riding the subway from Times Square out to Brooklyn late at night after the play was over.
The whole experience of doing theatre in NYC for the first time was great.

Old Timer’s Sexual Symphony (and other notes) got one of the worst reviews ever from the NY Daily News: “New Company Stillborn”, but went on the win two special Obie Awards.
That month long four play repertory was only the beginning of one of my best summers working in Theatre.

A week after I was finished working in NYC I went out to Gateway Playhouse and spent the rest of the summer doing Summer Stock.
Stories from Gateway to follow.

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