The Story of Jumping Mouse, 1990

Twenty-four years ago today I helped work on a production of The Story of Jumping Mouse produced and performed by Das Puppenspiel Puppet Theatre.

Das Puppenspiel was a well know puppet touring company that closed down in 2010.

The Department had brought them in to perform and they were fairly self-contained so I had little to do except help them set up and then sit back and enjoy the show.

I enjoyed the show but even more I enjoyed the performers as they were all fun and one guy in the company was truly nuts.

After the show I went out with them to eat.

While at the restaurant as I was talking with one of the puppeteers he took out a small finger puppet and put on a show for a little girl at the next table but all the time still talking with me.

Of course the little girl was captivated by the puppet and laughing the whole time.

The 1990-91 season had the normal for plays and four music events but that year we had several extra plays and music events.

Our plays that season were The Day Room by Don DeLillo, a collection of three one-acts by women writers, Roshomon by Fay and Michael Kanin and Dark of the Moon by Richardson and Berney.

Additionally we did an original production of Jacob’s Ladder written by one of our staff and the cast included Taye Diggs and his very talented mother Marsha Berry.

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42nd Street, Summer 1990

42nd Street, Summer 1990

42nd Street, TD and Lighting Designer, 1990

42nd Street is a big, fun musical based on the 1933 movie with songs added from other movies of the period.

Of course it was hard for me to jump right back into the swing of things when I returned from my mother's funeral, but once I did get back to work there was something comforting about being back in the Theatre.

Drew had design a nice set that was a mixture of all new construction with a few pieces re-used from other shows.

We had a good crew including a former student who that I was able to hire as my assistant who  had come back home to Brockport after finishing Grad School.

Like most sets we re-used some pieces, altered some stock pieces and made some from scratch.

For one scene we re-used some of the mirrors from A Chorus Line from the year before.

The mirrors were hung in a semi-circle for one song in  42nd Street.

We also re-used some of the Rosco silver slit drape that I had used in Anything Goes a few summers before.

We did some welding of several step units, which yes we still have and I just used in our last production.

In building the train for the Shuffle Off to Buffalo number my assistant Jim suggested using stress-skin platforms something I knew about but never used before.

The platforms worked out well and I have used stress-skin platforms many time since then.

As with many productions there are always a few small set pieces that are difficult to construct.

For this show it was large coins that are carried in and then danced on.

After several tries the finished coins were made of several layers of foam with 1/8" Masonite on the tops and bottoms, or should I say the heads and tails.

We're in the Money!

My crew, especially the guys, enjoy this shows as there was lots of naked girls running around back stage.

Sitting out front setting the lighting for the show I did not get to enjoy the view but I heard all about it.

As there were many quick changes the chorus girls would run off stage and into the back cross-over hall where they would disrobe, many time just wearing their panties.

As they ran along the hall they would pick up the next costume and run back onstage.

This happened mostly in the sequence starting in the train station with the Lullaby of Broadway and ending on the train for Shuffle Off to Buffalo.

As I was told the girls would run off stage and strip off most of their clothes and just put on a trench coats, go back onstage and do a number, again run off stage, drop the coats and this time put on 1930's nightgowns and underwear and then run back onstage and sing again.

My crew, always trying to be helpful, were always at the door to hold it open as the girls ran through.

Playing a smaller part in the show was the college-age son of one of our talented students.

Back then he was Scott L. Diggs but today he is Taye Diggs.

I remember a bit he did with an older character actor in the show.

We needed more time for a set change and the tow of them did a few minutes of improv about miss-matched socks or other earth shaking stuff.

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West Side Story

In the summer of 1986 we did only one play instead of the two shows we had done my first three years at Brockport.

Our musical that year was West Side Story.

I had worked on the same show ten years before at Gateway Playhouse but I was eager to work on it again as I like the story and enjoy the music.

Although we did only one play we also had performance of Garth Fagan’s Dance Company that summer after the musical was over.

I had a good group of student workers and the set offered some interesting challenges.

 

Chain Link Fences.

Putting up a chain link fence is not too hard once you learn the basics, but when you cannot dig a hole and support the posts with concert that you need to come up with other solutions.

We welded up some diagonal supports with flanges that we could bolt to the floor.

Like many other good set pieces I have talked about in this Blog I still have some of them and use them from time to time.

Upstage of the main chain link fence was a structure that represented a bridge with fake “I” beams and steel girders in force perspective to make them look taller than they really were.

 

They were hard to put up but looked good once they were in.

There were small rolling platforms for the Dress Shop, Maria’s bedroom and Doc’s Soda Shop.

I large flying wall came in to cover the fence for the dance at the Gym.

In place of the main curtain there was also a flying fence section that played at three different heights depending on the scene.

For the big rumble scene the front fence was all the way to the ground and the audience had to look through it.

 

The fire escape platform and Maria’s window unit was built into the stage right box closest.

I do believe that I still have some part of that set unit but I know some of it was modified for other productions.

I am sure that there must have been some other set pieces but I do not remember them.

Many in the cast were Theatre or Dance students from Brockport but a few others were mixed in.

A young 16 year old kid from Buffalo was in the show, Jesse L Martin.

He went on to star in Rent on Broadway and then spent ten years on TV’s Law and Order.

More about him can be found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0552509/

Other members of the cast also went on to work in “Professional” world; Jesse had the biggest success, so far.

After the play was over and while working on the dance concert I somehow found the time to buy a new car.

It was my first really new car, a black 1986 Ford Escort GT.

I liked it, it got 40 miles to the gallon on the highway and I had it until 1993 when I traded it in for a new white1993 Ford Escort GT.

Although the Escorts were small they had more room to move things for work than my 1977 Camaro.

 

 

Peter Pan and the Summer of 1985

The work on a play often starts months ahead of the actual performance and if a play is part of a season of plays it may be selected more than a year in advance.

Musicals can often take a bit longer to plan than straight plays and our summer musicals were no exception.

In the summer of 1985 we were to do Peter Pan and sometime during the school year I went with the rest of the production team to see a local production of the play and get a backstage tour after the show.

The producers wanted to make sure that the flying was safe and that it was an expense and challenge that we wanted to undertake.

Twenty-seven years ago, and still today, the best choice for safe and easy flying is to use Flying by Foy.

http://www.flybyfoy.com/

After the play was over we got to see the equipment used and talk to the staff about how easy it was to run and if there were any problems.

The set needs to be designed with the flying in mind and the backstage crew needs to be able to see the actors and be able to hook the cables to the actors with being seen, both of which are not too hard to do if planned ahead of time.

Also safe places for Peter and the other actors who fly to take off and land are needed.

In addition to learning about the flying the producers also like the girl who played Peter Pan and she would end up playing Wendy in our production that summer. 

The musical calls for some fun scenery in addition to the flying.

The play starts and ends in the nursery of the darling children,  Act II is in Never Never Land and most of Act III is on The Jolly Roger .

The realistic set for the nursery was flown out to reveal the underground lair of the lost boys.

We build a 30’-0” wide, 8’-0” high cave platform that was stored way upstage and was rolled downstage for the scene.

The boys could climb on top and slide down a fireman’s pole to get into the lair.

We needed to make a tree stump that was to be the chimney of the underground lair.

It needed to have a little trap door on top and give off some smoke.

Today we could use a small battery powered fog machine but that was not available back then.

To make the puff of smoke I used a rubber hose filled with talcum powder that was attached to the bulb of a turkey baster.

As one of the actors came up to the stump they stepped on the turkey baster and PUFF we had a little smoke.

It was not a great effect but it worked.

The stump was classic scenic construction: Plywood top and bottom, 2x4 frame covered with chicken wire and papier-mâché.

Like many other items it would stay in our stock for years and was used in many other plays and acting projects.

The Pirate Ship was a side view with the ship’s railing and ropes hanging down form unseen rigging and masts.

We did have some canvas hanging down too but I do not have any photos from this show so I do not remember all of the details.

One of the Pirate actors did make his own prop telescope.

It was a simple, a couple of pieces of PVC pipe, but he had a plastic eyeball at the end that he could have move side-to-side. 

A few weeks before the show a technician from Foy came with the equipment and set up all of the flying rigs.

He taught us how to run it and take it down after the show.

The equipment was well made and easy to use.

It was designed to do one thing and one thin only and that was to fly people in Peter Pan.

The company has made many changes and improvements to the flying systems since then and that can be seen in many shows today.

The flying went well and we had no problems, well that is until the last show and one of the last fly cues.

Before a flying scene the actors would move upstage by the window curtains where there was a small hole in the wall from which the crew could attach the cables before the flying scenes.

The hook was simple, just a metal bar that slid out of two drill holes and was snap back when the cable eyelet was in place.

The high-tech method used to hold the bar in place was a rubber band, yes just a rubber band ! ! !

In the last scene time has moved on and Wendy has grown up and now has her own daughter Jane and Peter Pan returns and flys off with her.

Jane was played was played by the same actress as Wendy.

Just before her last fly cue the latch that hooked the cable to the flying harness jammed open and we could not get it to lock.

With only seconds to attach the cable I made the decision after what seemed like minutes to tell the actress the just fake it.

The young actress turned and went on with the rest of the scene, jumped up on the window sill and then jumped into the air to fly away.

She would fell flat on her face on the mats we had upstage of the window.

We all ran in to see if she was OK and as I got to her I thought she was crying, but when she turned over she was laughing uncontrollably.

Without the pressure of the show it took just a few seconds, and a pair of pliers, to free the latch and hook her up for the curtain call.

Do not feel bad for the actress, she was OK and would return a few years later to be in our production of A Chorus Line and then go on to have active career on Broadway and is directing a play this summer at The Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Check out Jessica Stone’s work on her Internet Movie and Broadway Database pages:

http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=74951

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0831953/ 

It seems we had another local Star in the cast and the guys on the crew all got a good laugh when they found out that the actress who played Tiger Lily was a featured dancer at one of the local strip clubs.

Some of the goys talked about going to see her in action but I am not sure if anyone really went to check out her show. 

That summer was fun and we had a good group of workers, many who had worked on previous summer productions.

We worked hard and played hard too.

Parties, Wednesday Barbecues on the loading dock and a little time away up at the lake.

I think it was that summer that I saw baseball cards at the store and said: Gee I haven’t seen these in years.” And of course bought a few packs.

The next year I bought a few more packs and the next year a few more and . . . .  well ask my wife as I have too many card now, but that is for another Blog, or better yet E-Bay.

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Brockport Alumni, part 1 of many

Current projects have kept my away from my blog for a while, but fear not as I still have a great deal to write here.
Recently we had four successful alumni from the 1970’s come back and give a talk about their work in Hollywood.
These guys were students at Brockport before my time but after 29 years of teaching I will of course run into some of my former students from time to time.

Stu Krieger ’73, William Fichtner ’78,  Paul Pape ’74, and Jesse Goins ’74

http://www.brockport.edu/newsbureau/1597.html

I was working with my student the next day when two of the alumni stopped to walk around the theatre a bit more.

We talked about what was going on at the college today and I was able to show them a few posters I had from their days here at Brockport.

My favorite part of the visit was when asked to take a photo with me, just like you see when somebody runs into a famous person on the street.

Most times it is not an arrange visit like Friday’s but just an unannounced surprise.
Just this semester I have seen and half a dozen alumni, a couple each from the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s.

Recently I ran into a guy from almost twenty years ago in Wal-Mart with his two kids.
He had taken my stagecraft class, I think he was an Art major, and went on to have several different professions but after being a general carpenter and now is building guitars.
He said he learned the basics back in my stagecraft class and when he was looking for a new career path the skills he had learned in my class helped him choose his new path.
I know that I do not turn out master carpenters from my class, but it was nice to hear that he felt what he did learn helped him transition to his new career.

Of course many students graduate (or drop out) and I never see or hear from again but I am always surprised by how many I do hear from.
The alumni always seem to appear in groupings over the year: around Christmas time or during the summer when they are vacationing and just happen to stop by.
Some do make special trips just to see what has happened since they left.
Many have come by recently because we have gone through a major building renovation and they want to see the changes.

A few years ago we did have an alumni come back and he performed his one man show and talked with a group of current students about working in NYC for the past twenty five years.
I will have pleanty more stories about my former students in the comming blogs.

My current project is Wait Until Dark a play we did here as part of our summer season over twenty years ago.

http://www.brockport.edu/newsbureau/1590.html

I will be returning back to the re-telling of my days working in NYC next and how it was that I came to work in Brockport.

A Christmas Carol, December 1980

For those of us who work in Theatre we all know that many of the things that go wrong behind the scenes are never seen by the audience.
Although I had many issues and problems putting together the set for A Christmas Carol, the production looked good and the audience enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it and liked the original songs written for the show.
It was put together like a summer stock show, quick, cheap and with most of the people hired in NYC with one popular local actor staring as Scrooge.

I found out that the actor who played Scrooge, George F. Piehl, still works in the area and has his own Theatre Company and recently celebrated 34 years of performing on stage at the Palace Theatre with a review show back in September.

http://www.stageoneproductions.net/

As I had noted earlier, things were not quit what I expected when I got to New Hampshire.
The cast and crew were mostly college students or recent grads like me and the show was put together in just a few weeks.
So when I got to town I found out a few things were not as they had told me in NYC, I had no crew; the shop was small, unheated and had few tools.
The budget, if there was one, was very tight and for most of the set I would pull and adapt set pieces from their stock.

I was told that I could charge paint and other items at the store right next to the Theatre, but when I tried to charge the first time I got yelled at by the owner.
“How dare you try to charge more when you guys already own us a lot for the last show!!!”
I apologized and explained that I was new, but then I went and yelled at the producer and told him to never put me in that position again.

I cannot find the right words to tell you how bad the rooming house really was.
The owner of the house ran a local photo shop and when I stopped by one day to complain about the lack of heat, he suggested that I leave to oven on with the door open.
It truly was a “Welfare Hotel” mostly filled with old men except for myself, my assistant and the “Creepy guy from across the hall”.
I was told that the “Creepy guy from across the hall” had just gotten out of jail, something about a murder but no proof.
One night when I came home from work I found blood outside his door and that the door was full of marks and dents.
Seems that the “Creepy guy from across the hall” had beaten the shit out of his girlfriend who was trying to kick in his door, but when the police came she begged to stay with him.
Ah, true love.

I was a bit apprehensive one day when the “Creepy guy from across the hall” knocked on my door and asked for my help.
It seems that one of the old men who lived down the hall had fallen out of bed and the “Creepy guy from across the hall” needed my help to pick him up and put him back in bed.

The long walk to and from the Theatre was extra hard when it hit 20 below zero, before the wind-chill factor was added, and I had to stop over for a while in the apartment of a co-worker and warm up a bit before I tried to make it back to my place.
I had to pull ice chunks out of my bread.
Fun.

One night while walking home alone in the cold and snow some crazy guy was following me, he was dancing in the road, bouncing about and acting, well crazy.
He did not worry me too much except when he ran ahead of me and down the side street that I had to take to get home and I decided that it might be wise to take out my new Buck knife and have it ready just in case, but I luckily did not need it.
I have never felt that I needed to have a weapon ready before or since that night; even I was staying at my brother’s place back in the summer of 1976 and was taking the “A” Train from Times Square back to Brooklyn late at night.

The show went well but there were a few surprises yet to come.

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Elton John Concert, Fall 1979

I got a phone call from the business agent for the stagehands union and he asked me which of two concerts the same day that I wanted to work on: The Police or Elton John.
I choose to work the Elton John concert.
The concert was to be in Hill Auditorium, the large and wonderful music hall on campus where I got to Carlos Santana  in concert the year before.
http://www.music.umich.edu/about/facilities/central_campus/hill/index.htm

The load-in call was 6:00 AM!

It was so early because there was a rehearsal for some university music group that could not be moved.

We needed to unload all items from the trucks that had to be flown over the stage, put them together and have them flown out before the Noon rehearsal.

I do not know why Elton John’s people would agree to the break in the middle of the load-in but it all worked out.

After lunch we came back and set up the rest of the sound and lighting equipment and also set up the musical instruments.
It is always fun to move a full size grand piano in a road case, even one that was painted orange.
Gee, maybe it was the organ that was orange and the piano was painted yellow, I forget.

As we continued to unload the truck I noticed that there was this young teenage girl standing at the top of the loading ramp.
Over the next hour or so she slowly inched down the load ramp toward the door.
When she was almost at the door one of the road crew turned to the girl and said “You can’t be here, you have to leave”.
You could see her heart break as she walked away defeated in her quest to see her idol.

I still have this pin I got at the Concert

I got a look at Elton when he came in a few hours later and stopped briefly to say hello to the crew.
He was wearing some odd jumpsuit looked like it was made from several strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups pasted together.

The road crew members were very cool, mostly very tall and thin and all from England.
There was one short guy who was the climber who was up and down the backs of the speaker stacks and up on the light grid focusing lights.
As the load-in was just about done I was asked to stay and help with the light focus as one of the all important ladder holders.
I was not really needed because once he was up the ladder he was climbing all over the truss focusing the lights, all without a safety harness.
Only when he was done did he step back on the ladder as he came down.
It was easy money and I also got to stay and eat with the crew.

The caterer was wonderful, there was a food table stocked with food all day long, but the dinner was even better.
It was November and he made a complete Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.
For a crew, mostly from England, thought that this was very cool, enjoyed it all, especially the wine.

After dinner I went home during the show and listen to The Police concert which was simulcast on the radio.
When I came back for the load-out there was a small group of people waiting at the stage door waiting, hoping to see Elton, but all they got was me.
As I neared the door it opened and I was let in.
It was cool to think that I had the right look at 25 just to walk right past all the other people.
Okay, maybe it was how I was dressed, the tools I was carrying and the fact that I had just been there a few hours earlier.

The load-out went well and we got done just after midnight.
Just as the last truck was done and the door closed we noticed that the caterer had also just finished packing up.
He saw our disappointed look and opened his van and gave us a six-pack.
I do not know what brand of beer it was or even if it was cold, but it was best tasting beer I had ever had.
It was a looooong day starting with the 6:00 AM call, but it was fun day and I enjoyed it all.


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Scene Shop, Guest Actors and Christopher Walken

I spent my first year at Michigan working in the scene shop.
At the start if each semester we would have a day when all the undergraduate stagecraft students would come in and get a crash course in the shop; the power and hand tools and how to use them and basic shop safety.
The Graduate Assistants were all assigned a group of tools with stations set up in the shop and the students would move around the shop getting a short lecture at each table.
I got to demo the Boring Tools, drill bits, and it was too exciting for words.
In my present job I get to explain all of the tools at the beginning of each semester in my now famous “This is a Hammer lecture”.
To date I have given it 56 times.

Working in the scene shop was pretty basic and nothing too wild happened while I was there.
I do remember that I was assigned the very important job of building all of the special platforms and flats for the set of the Inspector General.
It turned out that all of the special platforms and flats were small in size averaging about one foot square.
The set was a collection of odd shaped walls and levels and my crew and I had to fill in all of the gaps.
I had one very important contribution to the action of the play.
There was a pair of large doors that were the main entrance into the stage and a small sliding door cut into the door to act as a peep hole.
As a joke, after it was made, I added a rubber band to the back of the door to make it spring shut.
The director happened to come through the shop and thought it was so funny that he added it to the business of the play each night an actor would get his nose slapped by the springing back of the little door.

Each of the Guest Artist Series productions had a professional actor, director and/or a designer and my first semester at Michigan when we did Richard II Christopher Walken was the lead.

Richard II, Scene Design by Steven Gilliam

Although all of the other guest artists were good, Christopher Walken turned out to be the most famous.
Back in 1979 Walken was still mostly a stage actor, although he had done a few films by that time.
He seemed a bit distant to me, he had just finished filming the Deer Hunter, and when I later saw the film I could see why.

Richard II with Christopher Walken

Stulls Lumber

I have been very busy at school with our current production of Shaw’s Arms and the Man which just opened this past weekend.

I plan to continue with tales of my junior year at college but first a new story.

Last Thursday most everything was ready for the play to open.
We use special matches in the play and the match striker we had attached to a set piece had been painted over and no longer worked.
The long fireplace matches that we are using are hard to find but I thought I would try Stull’s Lumber, our local lumber yard, because they have many unique items and have saved me and our productions many times in the past.

We have a new Lowe’s in town that has taken most of their business away, but I enjoy going to Stull’s when I can.
So I ran out for some food and to try to find a new box of matches.
When I got to the lumber yard I asked the owner Bill if he had any of the matches and sure enough in a dark and little used back corner there was one last box with a price tag dated 1996.
Because they were old he gave me a nice discount, and as we had often done in the past, we made small talk as I checked out.

As we talked he just happened to mention that he had gone to a prep school.
I asked him where and he said Massachusetts.
I asked myself what I knew about prep schools in New England and the only thing I came up with was that the author John Irving went to one and was on the wrestling team and that it had been a part of some of his books.
So just continuing our small talk, we had already talked about the snow; I asked him if his school had a wrestling team.
Of course he wanted to know why asked and I told him why.
Then to my surprise he said that John Irving had been his college roommate.

It seems that they both went to the same prep school and decided to be roommates when they went to Syracuse University.
I also told me that he thought he recognized himself in one of the characters in one of Irving’s books.
Now I have to go back and re-read some of them.

Lowe’s has lots of items, and may be cheaper, but I will never get the help and interesting stories that I get from our local lumber yard.

I highly recommend shopping at locally owned stores and reading the books of John Irving:
http://www.john-irving.com/

Successful Classmates from SUNY Buffalo

At the time I was in school I had no idea of the success that many of my classmates would have.

During my first year at UB I would work with Alan Adelman, Mitchell Bogard and Ken Tabachnick.

Later I would work with Anne Militello.

Some of Alan Adelman’s work can be on various PBS shows such as Great Performances, Dance in America, American Playhouse and Live from Lincoln Center.

Mitchell Bogard has done a good deal of television lighting for such show as Live From Lincoln Center, Rachael Ray, The Chris Rock, Madonna: Exposed and early on he even worked on Sesame Street.

Ken Tabachnick has worked with The Kirov Opera and Ballet, the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Lyon Opera Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and The Trisha Brown Company.

Anne Militello has designed on Broadway and many other places both on and off stage.

http://www.annemilitello.com/

I will often catch one of their names when I watch any stage production that has been filmed for TV.

Another classmate was Tylor Wymer who worked years for Disney before starting his own special effects company. (I wonder if he still has the T-Square he borrowed from me?)

http://www.wow-works.com/index.htm

Jerry Kegler is the facilities director for the Center for the Arts at UB.
http://www.ubcfa.org/home.aspx

Actors?

I have not yet talked about them.

Yes even some of the actors went on to work on the business.

Tommy Koenig has worked all over the country as a stand up comedian and has appeared in several movies including: Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Dracula Dead and Loving it, and Stitches.

Unfortunately too many of my classmates fell victim to the Aids epidemic of the early 1980’s.

We lost too many talented people.

I know that several others of my classmates also went on to work in theatre, some teaching, some working behind the scenes but all having fun.

There are many others from my days at UB still working in Theatre that I have just lost touch with, but every once and a while I will hear from them.

I just heard from I friend that I was out of touch with for a few years because of this Blog.

It is hard for me to believe that my Blog is important enough to have the content listed by Google.

But it was nice to hear from Barry Besmanoff who still works for LiteLab Corporation, whose product line has changed a bit since they made the Disco Light Floor for the movie Saturday Night Fever.

http://www.litelab.com/document_1.html

I always tell my students that someday when they are out there working in Theatre that some of their current classmates will be out there too.

Their friends and former classmates can become people that they can count on to work with.

I have had calls former students who are now running Theatres and they ask me about another Brockport grad whose resume they have received.

Theatre is a small world.

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.