"Oh, Boy" by Jerome Kern and P G Woodhouse

I was always grateful for the support of my family when I decided to go in Theatre.

Some families are not flexible and have unyielding or inflexible dreams of what they want for their children.

I was lucky in that my family wanted me to be happy and successful if possible.

I knew that there was some history of family members working in the performing arts in the past, but I wish now that I had asked more questions of them before they passed away.

It turns out that both of my grandmothers spent some time on the stage, both in the same city but in very different parts of town.

My grandmothers led two very different lives and although friendly with each other they always addressed each other formally

It was Mrs. Musante or Mrs. Radgowski, never Ethel or Mea. 

My mother’s mother worked as a housekeeper for several rich Long Island families during the Depression but found time sometime along the way to sing in a Speak Easy during Prohibition.

She passed away when I was only 17 and the only story of that time she ever let slip out is that she saw someone knifed during a fight in one of the clubs.

For my father’s mother music was always part of her life.

I always knew that she had played piano on stage during the silent movie error.

She would play for during the holidays and when the movie The Sting came out and gave a resurgence to the music of Scott Joplin she said: “Oh, I know that” and then played a wonderful rendition of The Entertainer.

We always joked that she played liked she had extra fingers as she always seemed to add some extra flourishes to whatever she was playing.

My grandmother lived to be 102 years old and as older people often do she repeat the same stories over and over again, but surprised even my Aunt with several things that she revealed in the last years of her life.

When my grandmother was young she lived in NYC and it turned out that she lived across the hall from Dorothy and Lillian Gish the famous silent screen actresses.

It turned out that my great grandmother would babysit which ever Gish sister was not making a movie that day out in the Brooklyn film studios.

One day she tells my Aunt that she went out to the film studio some times and was in some of the movies.

My grandmother was in her 90’s and my Aunt was shocked to hear it.

There is no way to find out anymore as too many of the old films have been lost over the years and she had no memory of the title of any of those films.

Another shock was to find out that my grandmother was a replacement member of the chorus in a Broadway play back in 1917.

The play she was in was Oh, Boy! by Jerome Kern.

Post card for tour of "Oh, Boy"

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_Boy!_(musical)

http://www.musicals101.com/1910bway.htm

It turn out that my grandmother even had a stage name but I can find no traces of her being listed in documents I have searched.

Her name was Ethel Keefe, I am not sure when the family dropped the “O” from O’Keefe or if it was ever there in the first place.

My grandmother acted under the name of Baby or Babe Keefe or O’Keefe, my Aunt was not sure.

My Aunt did have a photo that appears to show my grandmother in postcard of the play, another copy I was able to find on eBay.

My grandmother?

My Grandmother, c.1920

I was able to buy a copy of the Playbill but it does not list my grandmother in it, but I will keep looking.

My Aunt also has a photo or two from that time period that shows some actors and my grandmother at a cast party.

Gee some things never change.

One of the actors went on to make movies and my Aunt would tease my grandmother that she should have married him then she would have a famous actor as a father.

I am not sure what my grandfather would have had to say about that.

Is it my grandmother on the postcard?

I am not sure but even if she was not in the play she did do many other wonderful things.

She was involved in music her whole life from performing in string quartets, playing for silent movies and accompanying on piano for my aunt’s music class performance well into her eighties.

Oh, my grandmother was also a hooker.

What, she made hooked rugs, what were you thinking?

My grandmother also taught me copper tooling and taught painting at the senior center to people 10 years younger then her.

Looking for something else I found my old copper tooling sheets that I made when I was about 14 or 15 years old:

My grandmother was active until her mid 90’s and even went to see Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway.

When I asked her about the play she said that she enjoyed it but the language was a bit rough for her.

If you know David Mamet’s plays he does use the “F” word a lot.

I would suggest to my readers to make sure you have all your own families’ stories written down so you do not lose your unique family history.

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My 1st Lighting Board

Just for fun here is a photo of me standing in front of the Sayville High School Lighting Board.

The photo is from my from my junior year yearbook (1972-73).

It was an old autotransformer system with 15 dimmers, three masters and one grand master that could move all the handles at once.

My hand is on the main power switch and behind me is the operator patching system.

I learned a lot on that board and even did some basic maintenance replacing the brushes on several of the dimmer rotors.

The Fantasticks

My third year at Brockport brought four very different productions that I would enjoy working on:  The Fantasticks, A Wrinkle in Time, The Shadow Box and As You Like It.

In addition to my regular duties as Technical Director that year I would get to design the lighting for one show, the set for another and by the end on the year my career at Brockport would take a big change, all of which was caused, in part, by the lighting designer not getting tenure the previous spring.

Because the Lighting Designer’s wife was due to give birth some time in October he had asked me to assistant on the Opera production in Rochester and also to design the lighting for The Fantasticks which was going on about the same time.  

It always amazes me how much more I can get done when I am busy, but when I have free time it is hard to get motivated to get simple things done, like writing in a Blog.

Many times I come home after a 12 to 14 hour workday and decide to the dishes, re-arrange the living room or some other fun project.

I think it is really just my way to wind down, still working on something but in a mindless way slowing down until I can go to bed.

The Fantasticks was to be the first play of the school year, simple a small cast and set but for those who knew our Set Designer at the time, Richard Montgomery, this was really was a typical “Richard’ set.

This is not to sat that is not to say it was bad, but it was different, maybe a bit odd or unique.

What did I have to build?

One 4’-0” x 8’-0” platform, 16 inches high with a step at each end.

The stage was wrapped a layer of clear plastic sheeting with the theatre’s black curtains about 4 feet behind.

The actors would enter through and sometimes play some scenes behind the plastic.

The set was framed with long sheets of bubble plastic on each side of the proscenium.

The nickname for the show was of course “The Fan-Plasticks”

Of course there was a bit more to do, we used one of the trap doors and there were a few props to be built, but this was really one of those rare shows that was really easy to do.

Too many times we start out with what is suppose to be a simple, low cost, easy to build production, but the set that keeps growing bigger and more complex each day.

The Set Strike was done in 10 minutes; the party of course lasted a bit longer.

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Eastman Theatre, Pizza and other random thoughts

After we ran Wait Until Dark I got a few weeks off before the start of my third year at Brockport and I traveled again to Long Island to visit my family, eat some good Pizza, Chinese Food and see a few movies and maybe a Broadway play.

My favorite Pizza back home on Long Island?

Well I used to enjoy regular slices from many different places but the biggest choice of specialty pies was from Satellite Pizza in Bayport, which is still there:

http://www.satelitepizza.com/Menu.html

Brockport is a nice town, but the Pizza is just NOT the same as I got back home on Long Island and it is one of the few things I miss from there; pizza yes, plus the beaches, family, friends, Broadway  . . . Ok I miss a few things from home.

We held over the production of Wait Until Dark and performed it again the first weekend of school in September.

I had gotten into a routine and felt comfortable with my job at Brockport but I was a bit apprehensive about what was going to happen that fall because the department Lighting Designer Michael had not gotten tenure that past spring and this would be his last year working at the college.

I know he was upset and bitter but fortunately he did not show it and never took it out on the students or his work on the plays; well as far as I could see.

Thinking he was going to get tenure Michael and his wife had planned a second child who was going to be born that fall and he asked me to assist him on an outside job that he had be hired to do.

I would also design the lighting for the first play of the school year to free up Michael to take care of the imminent birth of his second child.

He worked as the production manager for a local opera company that performed in the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, NY and he asked me to shadow him and take over in just case his wife was to give birth during the week of the production.

Eastman Theatre

I would assist him again on another Opera later in the year, learning a lot in how things got done working with the Union Stage Crew and how he managed the budget with the producer which would come in handy the next year when I took over the job.

The Eastman Theatre is one of the biggest Theatres that I have ever worked in and has a great history.

 Built by George (Kodak) Eastman in 1922 as a movie palace, it became a great musical hall instead.

One of my favorite stories is that when it was built some of the light fixture ordered from Italy did not arrive in time and two workers used galvanized metal washtubs tubs as a temporary fix that remains in the theatre to this day even after a recent multi-million dollar renovation.

The rest of the Theatre was first rate and even has an original Maxfield Parrish painting hanging in the lobby.

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