Thursday, January 29, 2015

Dark of the Moon, Adam Lazarre and D-Day.




In May of 1991 we did Dark of the Moon was written by Howard Richardson and William Berney.
Dark of the Moon  is set in the Appalachian Mountains.
A basic love story, boy meets girl, except the boy John is a “Witch Boy”.
John,   the “Witch Boy”, seeks to become human after falling in love the human girl, Barbara Allen.
The set was a stylized view of a rustic town and surrounding area in the back woods of the Appalachian Mountains.
There was some fun in costumes of the sexy witch girls played by dancers.
The cast was made up with mostly college students with a few adults and children mixed in.
The woman who played Barbara Allen was a bit . .  . mmmmm…….Odd, no Unique.
She was a widow with a 5 years old son who was always around the theatre.
He was not a problem but most people were a bit surprised that he was still breast feeding and one night during a talk-back onstage he just came up onstage and had a little drink.
I hoping that that young boy is now a very well adjusted 29 year old man who loves his mother greatly.

This was the last play for long time and well-loved faculty director Adam Lazarre.
Adam worked in Hollywood back in the 1950’s and 60’s was now the department chair and had been the dean of the arts school when I was hired at Brockport  in 1982.
He had a small part in the movie Guys and Dolls and I saw him in an episode of Perry Mason on ME TV.
After the last performance of the show a small tree was planted in front of the building with a commemorative plaque.
The tree is still there and is now taller than the building.

I really liked Adam because he was not full of crap and would tell just what he was thinking.
Some people did not like him because they could not bull shit him and get away with it.
One day Adam and I were talking about nothing too important when he just switched gears and for the next fifteen minutes talked to me about D-Day.
He was part of the Normandy invasion on June 6th 1944.
He told about his group of men being trapped at the bottom of the sea-side cliffs and how he spent the night listening to the injured men that could not be reached or helped.
During the night the men called out for God or their mothers but as the tide came in things got quieter.
I was not sure what to say so I just listened.
Back in college I had several friends who were Vietnam Veterans and from time to time they would tell of something that had happened to them and I found it best not to ask too much but just let them talk.
I think that they must reach a comfort level that finally frees them enough to talk about it.
My father never talked too much to me about his experiences in WWII.

The play was fun to work on with the various witches and a few special scenes but a amusing moment came from our department secretary.
She was concerned for all of us working on a play that dealt with witches and black magic so she had her church pray for us.
The next year when would produce Dracula she was even more upset and there was even more pray for us.
Well all the pray must of worked as both plays did well and there were no devil sightings.

Oh yes we still have a few pieces from the Dark of the Moon and recently  reused a large shelf unit in our  production of Fox on the Fairway.




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