One Last BIG High School Show

We did Guys and Dolls as our Spring Musical my senior year and I was surprised that many members of the Football team and other “Jocks” tried out and made the cast.
The roles of Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit were Theatre Students, but many of the other characters (including Big Julie, Harry the Horse and Nicely, Nicely Johnson) were cast from the “Jocks”.
I think it reflected of the makeup of our class that the “Jocks” were secure enough to give Theatre a try, but the that fact that many of their girlfriends were involved with the Fall play may have had an influence on them.
They all did a great job and everyone had a good time.

I had worked on Guys and Dolls a few years earlier with the Sayville Musical Workshop.
After working backstage on all the previous productions I thought I would give acting a try and at my audition I was asked if I would work backstage if I did not get a part.
I did not take that as a good sign and, Surprise!, I did not get a part.
But I did not want to do lights again so I asked to be the Stage Manager.

I helped make to show run smoothly backstage and I think many of the “Jocks” saw me something like a coach, helping them and making sure that they were in the right place at the right time.
One of my most important jobs, although not official, was taking orders for beer before the cast party.
I was 18 and so was the drinking age, this cast party was a little more fun then my first one a just a few years earlier with soda and cupcakes.

After the cast party I do remember taking one very drunk and sick actor home, his head was hanging out the window of my car and his girlfriend crying all the way.
The actor will remain nameless here but, I will e-mail him this Blog.
I got him home, up his front steps, rang the door bell and quickly drove away.

It was a great way to end High School with several groups of students not normally evolved in productions working on it and having a good time.
At our class reunion 30 years later, two people paid $40 dollars apiece for extra copies of the show’s Program that I had brought, the money going to the Class of 1974 Scholarship.
It may seem odd that I kept them all this time, but then again I have a leaf we made for the Yokum Berry Tree for Li’l Abner back in 1971.

I know I have left out a few stories and if I can piece them together I may share them at a later date.
I clearly remember that we all had fun working on the plays, musicals, holiday shows and music concerts as well as going into the “City” to see Broadway shows.

High School would soon be over and College was straight ahead.
The first thing I learned in college, even with all I had already done, was that I still had a lot to learn.
I would have this feeling again and again, even today.
There is always something new to learn and to experience, and no two shows are ever the same.
This is one of the big reasons I love working in Theatre.

Growing Up, Thinking about College

My Junior year was very busy for me as I worked on six different play plus a few music concerts.
The experience I had gained from working on all the different productions at school plus the ones with the Sayville Musical Workshop had given me the confidence to think that I might try a career in Theatre.
When I applied to college I decided to give a career in Theatre a chance.
I was not sure about it, but I thought I would try it out and see if I liked it, and 35 years later I am still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
Some days I love it and other days I hate it and that it has more to do with the teaching then the working in Theatre itself.
My comments and stories about teaching are yet to come as I still had to finish High School, go to College and Grad school plus some time working in New York City and some regional Theatre.

I look back at photos of me in High school and I was a late bloomer.
As a Freshman looked liked a kid, maybe 5‘-1“.
Senior year would bring a few less shows but lots of changes.
I finally reached my towering current height of 5’- 8 “ and did not look so much like a little kid any more.
All the work on the plays and maturing a bit gave me a little more confidence in life.
Our school cast parties, New Year’s Eve and other parties were a little more fun now that I was “grown up“, well almost.
My friends and I did not always work in the theatre and I remember a group of us going to Heckscher State Park to play a some softball or toss a Frisbee.

We really did not have enough for any teams nor did anyone bring a bat or ball, we just paired up in couples and went in different directions and "explored" paths in the woods for a while.
It was not all work for me all the time, we did take time for fun.

Like all High Schools there were many different groups or cliques of students.

I never really thought about it too much back then but I guess I was in several.

Of course I was in the Theatre clique but I was also in the Honor Society plus other sub groups like the students who studied computers, played chess, former alter boys and those who collected stamps and other odd bits.

I liked having many different freinds and interests.

My Big Senior Year Musical was next.

Non-Theatre Jobs in the "Real World"

I have been very lucky in that I have not had to work outside of Theatre too often.

While in High school I inherited my older brother's cleaning job at a local bank.
Each day after school I would work cleaning the main branch of the Oysterman's Bank, the attached lawyers' office and an insurance office across the street.
When we were done a couple of us would drive to one of the small bank branches and clean that too.
Our boss paid us for two and half hours to get it done, but it never took us more than an hour.
It didn't take too long and I still had time to eat and go back at night to work on the plays.
For a while I even worked for the bank itself.
I'm not sure of my title I did a bunch of odd jobs.
I filled orders in boxes to send to the branches; pens, paper, paper clips, printed forms, drive-thru envelopes and other fun items.
I think they had at least six ways to tell you that your loan was over due from a very polite note to one letter threatening to send Vinnie over to break your legs, or something along those lines.

The times in the 1970's were a bit more relaxed then today.
I would take blank checks and money orders on my bike a few miles to one of the small branch were I would stay and shred bank documents in the basement.
I was not bonded, didn't have a gun, but at 17 I did have a key to the bank.

While in college I did a few odd non-theatre jobs.
I worked for a Temp agency by day and did Theatre at night.
I painting fuel tanks, cleaned stores, but mostly it was stacking and moving items in warehouses.
One summer I worked a month or so with my brother in a metal shop that made "Radio Wave Proof" rooms that were used to protect early computers.
If you ever want to get really dirty you have to work in a metal shop.

After Grad School I again got to work with my older brother for a year in a Photographic Studio in NYC.
I built sets that were used in photos for items sold in JC Penny and other catalogues, so it was almost like Theatre work.
It was fun for a month or so but I was glad when I got to go back to Theatre full time and have never had to work another non-theatre job after that.

I do have one good story from my time at the Photo Studio.
One winter day I walked six or seven blocks to go buy paint needed for a job.
It was cold and icy and on the way back I slipped on the ice and a gallon of brown paint flew in the air and came dome on the sidewalk.
How do you clean paint off the sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan?
I tried to mop it up some with an old newspaper and covered it a bit but I could not do much.
So I had to go back and buy more paint.
On my return trip past the spill I saw a man in a suit getting up covered in paint.
I turned around and walked the long way back to work.
I have always assumed the man had to go to a store a buy new clothes before he could go to work or back home.

Yes I followed my older brother into theatre and a few jobs, but I did pay it back by getting my younger brother into theatre and got him a paying job one summer.
I had a few other little jobs here and there: I got paid to mow a lawn once, I sold greeting cards door-to-door (I think I had 1 order besides my mom), filled in helping paint a home on Fire Island and maybe a few other small jobs which have faded with time.

Again I have been lucky that I have been able to work in Theatre as much as I have.

Brush-up Rehearsals

As I gained more experience working on the High School shows I also got more responsibility with the Sayville Musical Workshop.
During my Junior year I moved from running a follow spot to helping run the lighting board.
I also helped to hang and focus the lights.
The Workshop had an old resistance dimmer lighting board, sometimes called a piano board, that they would wire in to run extra lights.
It was old even by 1972 standards and a bit dangerous.
You could easily stick your hand into the unit and get electrocuted if were not careful, but it still worked and gave us a few more lights to work with.

That year I worked three productions with the Workshop: Promises, Promises, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Camelot.

When I tell people I work in Theatre they often ask if I have ever worked with anybody famous.
I always say: “Besides Me?”
I tell them yes and give them a few names.
Many times the people I worked with were not famous at the time I knew them but went on to gain fame later on.

Ten or fifteen years after working on Camelot I was looking through the program and there was a photo of the actor who played King Arthur.
At the time he was a 35 year old businessman who liked doing Theatre.
He turned out to be two time Tony Award winning actor Brian Dennehy.
I really do not remember much about him, I was just 16, and he was just another actor in the show.

Brian Dennehy in Camelot 1972

It was while working on Camelot that I saw what fun people could have during Brush Up rehearsals.

Now as an educator for 27 years I will always tell my students that every rehearsal is important and that a brush-up rehearsal is important to the show, and not a time for the cast and crew to have fun.
A brush-up rehearsal is done after a show has been off for a few days and helps the actors with their lines and timing before the next weekend run of a play.

As it turns out Brian Dennehy could not make the brush-up but the director wanted to have it anyway, plus I think it was just his chance to play the King.
After weeks of hard work everyone just want s to have a little fun.
Lines are said a little different, accents used, different props used etc.
During Camelot’s brush-up the royal Thrones were replace by two toilets.
At some point in the second act the director got pissed and yelled at everyone to take it seriously.
Not everyone had heard the outburst and someone had replaced Excalibur with a toilet plunger for the last big speech.
From behind a large box upstage I remember seeing a hand come up as the director was emoting away and replaced the sword taking the plunger away just in time.
I do not remember any other production with as much fooling around, but with the absence of the lead actor and the director overacting it was hard not to have some fun.

Now on brush-ups for other shows I worked on maybe the lighting was just a bit too green or lights flickered during a romantic moment or maybe a sound cue or two may have been added, but I would not know anything about it.
I was too busy laughing.

Adventures in OZ

I am not sure why we did a third production my junior year but in May we did The Wizard of Oz.
The play was staged in the Theatre in the then new Junior High.
Before we opened we took scenes to all the elementary schools to advertise and drum up a demand and sell lots of tickets.
It was interesting to see all the stages and lighting equipment in the various schools.
Green Avenue Elementary was the oldest school and had some of the scarcest lighting equipment I have ever seen that was still in use, but it also had some fun features like pop-up footlights.

By contrast the lighting in the Junior High used a newer more state-of-the-art electronic dimmer control board.
It was fun to work in a new stage, but it was far from perfect.
I have worked in many theatres over the years each has it own unique oddities, but some are just poorly designed.
The Junior High stage was designed as a multi-purpose theatre, always a bad idea.
One big problem I remember was that you had to wiggle through the locking rail for the fly system to get off stage right.
You can not get any scenery past the locking rail to the off stage storage space.

They had many rules for us and of course we broke most of them.
The told us not to paint, nail or screw into the stage floor, we did all three.
We painted the Yellow Brick Road right on the stage floor.
I think it was washable paint, but if it was not it must have worn off by now.

We built the sets in the High School stage and they were moved over to the Junior High.
I had an accident that has scared me to this day.
I was working on the house that fell on the Wicked Witch of the West.
I was using a Yankee or ratcheting screw driver, with sharp groves along the shaft, to put in some screws used to hold the wall to the platform.

The Yankee Screw Driver was always hard to use and I am happy that we use drywall screws and screw guns today.

As I was sitting on the platform trying to both hold up the wall and put in the screws the Yankee slipped off and the metal groves cut into my arm.
At the same time the wall falls over on me with only my feet sticking out.
My memory has embellished that I was wearing red sneakers that day, or were they ruby red?
After what seemed like several minutes of laughter, I do not remember if they sang “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”, the others on the stage crew lifted off the wall.

Using advanced stage crew first aid techniques, I used some paper towels to stop the bleeding.
I have a scar near my left elbow to this today.
I am not sure if the scar to my ego has ever healed.

The rest of the play went without incident.
　
　

B A N G !

By my junior year I had gained confidence working on the stage.
I was designing the lighting and helping building the sets.
I was given more responsibility and was enjoying it.
Our first play that year was Night Watch and I have no special recollections from this show so it must have all been wonderful and everyone had a great time.
. . . .or it was hell and I have blocked it all out.

The spring musical was The King and I and it was both fun and challenging.
We used risers as platforms for both the palace and dock scenes.
We decided to tape brown paper painted as wood grain for the dock in the first scene and then quickly tear it off for to reveal the palace for the rest of the play.
I helped paint the paper each day as it was ruined when we would tear it off.
The second or third time I decided to hide my name into the painted loops of the wood grain.
With only minutes to curtain I pointed it out to somebody who got a good laugh and we did it again the next day adding a few more names.
Never did hear any complaints from the director.

A special effect of a gunshot was needed when Tuptim or her lover is killed offstage.

* * * Now before I go on I must tell you that Sayville High School is a suburban school about 40 miles from NYC and not a rural school in the Midwest.
People are often surprised when I tell them that back in 1973 there was a rifle range in the basement of the school and it was not unusual to see somebody carrying a rifle case walking down the hall after hours.
I do not know if it is still there, but I can not imagine that they would still be using it.

So back to the play, and our technical advisor asked one of the students to bring in a rifle or two to use for the gun effect.
A blank was put into a .22 and was not loud enough.
A blank was put into a shotgun and again the teacher did not think it was loud enough.
Several live .22 bullets were fired backstage into the floor and into the stage left closet.
I saw a bullet hole in the ceiling of the closet years later when I made a return visit there.Next was a live shotgun blast into the floor up stage left under the risers.
I was running the lighting board stage right when the shot was fired and pellets from the shell ricocheted under the risers and came out on my side scaring everyone there.
The next day I had a box of newspaper there for them to shoot into and contain the blast.
I was told later that we were lucky that the paper never caught fire.
What were they thinking.

Now I have been involved in a lot of wild and unsafe stuff in theatre, and I am guilty of some of it, but this was the most unsafe, insane thing I have ever seen.
Wait, there was a crazy stunt in Barnum years later, but that story is still to come.

I do not remember why, but we did a third production my junior year.
In May we did The Wizard of Oz.
Stories about this show and touring scenes to the elementary schools coming up next.

A List of Shows, Part 1

I feel lucky that I was able to work on and see many shows before I went off to college.
When I talk to new students who want to work in Theatre I will ask them how many shows they have worked on and how many professional plays they have seen.
I often am shocked on how few shows the students have been exposed to.
There are of course exceptions and sometimes I see myself in them and wonder what adventures lay ahead for them.

Just for reference a list of plays I worked on or saw while in High School follows:

Plays worked on while in High School
Love is Contagious
Li’l Abner
Done to Death
Brigadoon
Night Watch
Holiday Show ‘72
King and I
Wizard of Oz
Holiday Show ’73
Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch
Guys and Dolls

Plays worked on with the Sayville Musical Workshop

Hello Dolly
Guys and Dolls
Fiddler on the Roof
Anything Goes
Camelot
Promises, Promises
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Company
No, No Nanette

Broadway and Off-Broadway shows I saw while in High School
Jesus Christ Superstar
Godspell
Grease
Pippin
The Fantasticks

In Paris
Cyrano de Bergerac

There are some other odd bits of things I saw or worked on.
I know I saw a production of Amahl and the Night Visitors at some time or place but the details escape me.
I went to see the Rockettes’ Christmas Show with my Family at Radio City Music Hall.
As a student the school took us to see the film Nicholas and Alexandra also at Radio City.
We had touring events come through the High School and I often got to work setting them up.
A production from Julliard and several music events, but again the details have been lost to me.

More surprises awaited me junior year and details are coming up next.

Summer of 1972

In the Summer of 1972 I have no idea what I did in June or August but I know that I spent July in France.
For only $750 I flew to France, had French classes at the University of Strasbourg, meals plus three side trips; a boat ride on the Rhine and vineyard tour, a weekend in Switzerland and a weekend in Paris.
I took $300 in spending money and brought about half back home.
The next year the same trip doubled in price.
For a extra $10 I took an extra day trip to Luxemburg.
More about that trip below.

I had inherited $1000 from my Godmother and talked my parents into letting me go.
Needless to say at 16 this was very exciting, and a great adventure.
The classes were boring but luckily only in the morning, we had the rest of the days free to explore.
The city is in eastern France, on the Rhine and its Medieval Cathedral is unique.
Unlike most, the Cathedral in Strasbourg has only one spire.
they had planed two, ran out of money and then decided to keep it as it was.
There are also canals and an "Old Town" section.

The food was, well, umm. . . . it was French university food.
We ate out sometimes and that was OK.
When we got to Paris some of us were going to eat snails.
I had had them before on a family trip to NYC.
So a small group of us go to a restaurant with big 4 or 5 foot high letters that said: ESCARGOT.
Opps. . . . . sorry this was France, the letters were 1.5 meters high.
When the waiter comes by he says “Sorry, no snails today".
We got Pizza.

The third weekend was suppose to be open with no formal side trips planed.
Our chaperon left us in charge of another teacher and went off the Spain to see her boyfriend.
I heard that another chaperon was taking her students by train to Luxembourg and I tagged along.
So for just $10 I got to see another country and travel by train with the classic European cars you see in movies.
The train cars had small compartments with the passageways off to one side of the train.
We played Chess on the train to pass the time, saw the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace and most important we found a place to get Ice Cream.
Maybe not a wild trip but I was glad I got to go.

Me atop The Eiffel Tower, 1972

Theatre, oh yeah my blog is about Theatre.
While in Paris a group of us went to the Theatre.
We went to the Comédie-Française and saw "Cyrano de Bergerac".
The theatre was beautiful, the stage was wonderful, the play was great and I didn’t understand a word.
Because I really could not understand but a few words of the play I focused on closely watching the sets and lighting.
The end of the play was classic; strong lighting and leaves slowly floating down as Cyrano died.
I had to smile 15 years later when we did the same thing for our production at Brockport.

Junior year was still ahead and more Theatre adventures were to come.

More and Better Cast Parties

My sophomore year in High School also brought two more shows with the Sayville Musical Workshop.I would run a follow spot for both “Guys and Dolls” and “Fiddler on the Roof”.
This was something new for me and lots of fun, but even more fun was the Workshop’s Cast Parties.
The Cast Parties were always held at a local restaurant, usually one with a piano, and a late night buffet was often set up for us.
Some time around midnight, after the final performance, 30 or so people would show up, quickly eat, have a few drinks, and then the other customers were treated to hearing the entire just finished show sung again plus many selections from the best of Broadway.
Some people enjoyed it, others would move to another area while others would leave altogether.
It was at one of these parties that one of the women working on the show bought me, then 15 or 16, my first Whiskey Sour.
Nothing funky ever happened.
At that time I was still short, very young looking and had not yet become the Greek Adonis that I am today.
The parties were fun and I always had a great time.
It seemed to me that this is what working in Theatre should be, hard work followed by lots of fun.

My Aunt recently showed me a photo of my grandmother, who did a little work on Broadway, at a cast party for some show in about 1918 or so.
There was some then well know silent film actor there at the party.
It did not look as wild as the Workshop parties, or of the ones that I went to later in college, but you could clearly see that they were still having a good time.
I always knew that my Grandmother had played piano for silent movies, and that she did some stage work but late in her life she told us about working on a few silent movies while they still were being made in New York City before moving to Hollywood.
It turned out that my Grandmother lived across the hall from the then young Dorothy and Lillian Gish, famous silent film stars, and that my Great Grandmother would baby-sit whichever one was not working on a movie that day.

It turns out that my other Grandmother, my mom's mom, also did a little work in Show Biz.
It turns our that she sang in a Speak Easy during Prohibition.
No wonder nobody in my family raised an eyebrow when I decided to work in Theatre.

Sophomore Year

The fall of 1971, sophomore year, brought an expanded role for me.
A large group of seniors had graduated in June and only a few experienced stage crew members were left.
This meant that I quickly moved up the techie ladder.
Our Fall show was “Done to Death”.
An over the top, very campy murder mystery with special effects.
I think there were “hi-tech” mouse traps used to fling objects off shelves and large clam shells used as flash pots.
Explosives always fun and I have few stories from college and grad school to share in future posts.
It was all very silly but a lot of fun to work on

The Spring musical was “Brigadoon” and lots of fun.
The show opens with a fog covered stage that quickly brings the audience to the highlands of Scotland.
One student was in change of the fog machine and carefully planed how much was to be used to give the right effect.
Of course fog machines are fun and everyone had to play and add a little more fog and a little more fog and . . . .
The curtain opened and a wall of fog slowly moved forward and into the pit.
This was old style mineral oil fog and very smelly.
Within just a short time the orchestra started to cough and a minute later the audience started to cough row by row by row until everyone in the theatre was coughing.
The next night nobody played with the fog, I think there was an armed guard next to it.

This is also the first play that I remember having a cast party.
It was at a local church hall; people signing each others programs, music, soda and cupcakes.
Not a wild time by most standards, but it still seemed like a lot of fun to me at the time.

The seniors who had graduated had left their homemade lighting board used to run lights for dances in the gym.
Taking a few lights and cables from the stage we would put them up on the basketball backboard frames and shine colored lights throughout the gym.
The teachers working as chaperons always wanted to make sure that there were lights shining into all fours corners, but as I recall they didn’t always stay on.
We only made a few dollars doing these wild “Light Shows”.
One year the class president decided halfway through the dance that he wasn’t going to pay me.
I had the janitor (or was he a custodian?) turn on the gym lights and started to take the stage lights down.
Quickly the class president changed his mind, I got paid, the lights went back on and the dance continued.

Unlike the urban legends of the time, Eric Clapton never ran in and played with the band at any of the dances I worked.
After the dances were over the staff was always surprised by the beer and liquor bottles under the bleachers as they were pushed back.
Oh those crazy High School kids.
Shocking!

Outside of Theatre

Unlike writing a book I have not written all of my blog posts before they are posted.
I have taken some time today to review a list of all the plays that I worked on in high school and with the Sayville Musical Workshop.
They total about 18 plays and musicals.
I will have to go through my collections on programs to check a few titles and dates.
As I have made my list it has brought back many memories.
Some are very clear and others I have not thought about in a long time and are a bit fuzzy.
I am sure as I write I will need to go back a correct a few items and some will be out of order.

At the time I was in High School did not know that Theatre could or would become my career.
At 15, 16 or 17 what did I think?
Who knows, I was a teenager.

What did I do in addition to Theatre?
In Junior High I was a “mathathlete“, we played other schools solving math problems to score points.
I don’t remember how many games we played or if we won or lost.
I also worked on the school paper, OK it was more a newsletter and I think I mostly worked on the lettering of the masthead on the ditto master.
Do you remember the smell of dittos?

I High School I briefly worked on the yearbook, I know I this because my photo is in that section of the yearbook one year.
There was a chess club, honor society and senior year I got to play on computers.

10 Print “Hello”
20 Go to 10
99 End

I also rode my bicycle a lot, even after I got to drive the family car.
My longest trip was about 30 miles round trip which I did few times.
I need to get a new bike and ride again.

What was I planning to do in college?
I was thinking about studing Engineering or History or maybe become a teacher.
The SAT’s did not have a place for Theatre in the intended major check-off box.
But as I worked on each play I enjoyed Theatre more.
Even as I went to SUNY Buffalo I was not sure about Theatre, but I thought I would give it a try.

But I am jumping ahead of myself and I have more stories to tell about my High School days.

Sayville Musical Workshop

I had fun working on my first plays and concerts.
Living in Sayville I had another opportunity to work in Theatre with the Sayville Musical Workshop.At the time it was the oldest community theatre group in New York State.
It had a long history of quality productions and I was lucky to have had a chance to work with them.
I was saddened years later when I learned that they disbanded in the 1980’s after 35 years of productions.
One of their last productions was all White production of “The Wiz”.
I think someone in charge might have missed the point, but I was not there.

***[Update 02-27-14: I am glad to find out that I was wrong about the Wiz and at least there was some Black actors in the show. In the world of Theatre where most people say that they support "Colorblind" casting it is sometimes hard to pull off. I have seen it work well many times and in other productions it causes some awkward moments. I was young when I worked with the SMW and learned a great deal about how to work in Theatre.]***

In it’s heyday there was a great core of people running the Workshop.
People from the professional business world brought their own specialties to running the Workshop.
Business people took care of the money, a retired Broadway stage hand designed the sets, many real carpenters and electricians helped with the building of the sets and running the lights.
As I remember many of the actors were young school teachers.
A few professional or semi-professional actors were also in the mix.

My first production with them was “Hello Dolly”.
The Workshops’ treasurer was a friend of the author Jerry Herman, they knew each other from summers on Fire Island I was told, and our production was one of the first amateur productions of the musical.
15 and still learning about theatre, I was part of the backstage crew moving set pieces during the show.
I remember that there was very little room backstage and that I sat on, under or behind set pieces to move them during set changes.

In one memorable scene change the actors spun a large set piece on castors around and around during a song and sent it fly off stage left for the crew members to catch before it smashed into the rest of the set.
BAM!
I was there each night as it smashed into my outstretched foot trying to stop it.
Recently I found a link in the Sayville Library webpage to photos of the show.
http://sayville.suffolk.lib.ny.us/sayville%20musical%20workshop/sayvillemuscialworkshop.htm
I think these are the earliest photos I have of any plays that I have worked on.

Over the next few years I would work on many more shows with the Workshop; moving from the backstage crew to running a follow spot, then running the lighting board and finally I designed the Lighting for “No, No Nanette” after my first year in college .

I will write more about my experiences with the Workshop in upcoming posts.

Freshman Year High School 1970-71

Michael, My brother, is three years older then me and was already working on school plays when I got to High School.
He seemed to be having a good time working on the plays so I thought I give it a try too.
Mike was the stage manager and I did not want to be right under his feet so I worked with the set and lighting crews.
My first full length play was the fall production my freshman year “Love is Contagious” by Patricia McLaine.
I don’t remember much about it, I know it was a love comedy/farce or something like that.
It was silly, it was fun and I wanted to do more.
And I did.

The spring musical was next.
Working on “Li’l Abner” was the start of my knowing that theatre could be fun, that it was full of challenges and very important I soon found out that the stage crew could get away with murder in high school.
I have a few good stories to share about what we did in my high school and plan to share them in upcoming posts.
I thought I would post my tales in chronological order, but my memories may not always let me.

Yukum Berry Leaf

Unlike what I hear about kids working in high school today, back then they let us do it all; hang and focus lights, build and paint sets and run the plays.
There were few adults to get in the way.
Our stage crew supervisor was an Art teacher whose son was on the stage crew.
Working with a small group of seniors I got to work on a special project, we got to build a car.
They let us work in the shop and use all the tools.
We played with all the tools, even the ones we didn't need.
A sheet of plywood, some 2x4’s, two pipes, cardboard, 4 real car tires and the front hood section of a ‘32 Ford.
To finish it off we used a trophy that I had won, for some now forgotten event, as the hood ornament.
We built it in the shop and it looked great, then we had to take it apart to get it through the doors.

It was on this show that I got to help run the lighting board.
15 autotransformer dimmers in three rows plus one big locking handle that could run them all.
There was a classical operator patch system with the wires that pulled up and went into the various dimmer outlets.
I do have a photo of me in front of the old lighting board and may post it in a future post as I learn more about this blog program.

In addition to plays the stage crew helped work on the music events.
Lighting, microphones and putting up the sound shell.
Gee some things never change as I still have to do that almost 40 years later.

Comming up: Community Theatre, Cast Parties and real guns in school.

More Elementary School Theatre

So after my stage debut as a page a fairy tale play I moved on to other school skits of various “deep” topics.
I sixth grade I became a playwright.
I wrote a play for class about the Magna Carta.
1215, King John, Habeas corpus . . .
I remember that after I wrote it some others working on the play added some “English” to my American words in the script.
My first experience with collaboration in Theatre.
The play was performed on the stage of the “Cafetorium” of the then brand new Lincoln Ave Elementary school in Sayville, NY in 1968.
My future career was not yet clear to me at this point.
Junior High brought a powerful and moving skit about the bomber crew of the Enola Gay.
I believe we had some cardboard boxes as set pieces.
It was not until High School that I started to work on real plays and see Theatre as a possible career.

Hello from my side of the stage

Hi all and welcome to my blog.

I hope to use the blog to recount some of my favorite stories from working in theatre for 30 plus years.

Some stories will be mine, some will be those I have heard and some will even be true.

I can assure you that I will stray off topic from time to time, OK a lot I will bet.

First Story of my first experience in theatre:

In the first or second grade, 1962ish, I was in my first play.

It was in Southgate Elementary school in West Islip, NY.

I played a page, in tights, who told part of the story that had some magic cookies in it.

An epic drama.

It was here I was robbed of my first Tony Award.