Gateway, Part 3

By the end of the first day at Gateway we all knew a few things about how the summer would go.

The shop had no bench power tools: no table saw, no band saw, no radial arm saw, not even a hand-held laser cutter.

Our rooms were small, the beds were awful and the food was even worse.

From those who had been there the summer we heard stories before how bad the food had been and they told that we should be happy how good it was now.

Evidently they went through a few cooks, one who made the cast sick because she did not know that you take the giblets out of turkeys before you cook them.

Another cook served the cast and crew beans and franks on the opening night of one of the plays and they plastered the walls of the dining room with the food.

The cook the summer I worked at Gateway tried his best to give us good food and even some special treats when he could, but on a whole it was pretty bad.

We always had a big vat of “Bug” juice to drink, Mmmmmm.

In those first few weeks we quickly learned about each other as we worked on the first play “West Side Story”.

We explored the buildings and grounds of Gateway; the two theatres, storage and work spaces and found our favorite places to hang out after work.

I used to like to sit up on the roof of the rehearsal hall late at night and look up at the stars.

But we always seemed busy with little time off.

Sketch I did at Gateway back in 1976

Actor Kieth Rice by the pool and building in my drawing.

The only power tool that we had was a circular saw which was by far not my favorite tool.

By the end of the summer I had gotten over fears and became pretty handy with it.

I had also brought the tools that I had bought for school, including my hammer, and they all got a great deal of use.

It was that summer when my hammer gained some of the magic that is now in it.

It seemed to me that the Technical Director spent most of his time dealing (fighting) with the producers and I do not remember him working in the shop too often.

We had problems with the wiring of the lighting boards and I worked with the Technical Director and a few others to re-wire the lighting boards.

We worked all night right after we closed “West Side Story” so that the dimmers would be ready for the next show.

That night turned out to be July 4th, which was America’s Bi-Centennial and I heard but did not see any fireworks.

The three lighting boards were old Luxtrol Autotransformer dimmer six-packs.

I had worked with this type of dimmers before and had some knowledge about them, but learned a great deal more that night.

Some of the wiring had insulation that was so old and dried out that it was crumbling off and causing short circuits.

More fun was yet to come.

Updated 12/18/18

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Gateway, Part 2

The summer of 1976 was a great deal of fun for me.

It was the summer of America’s Bi-Centennial; I was 20 years old, had two years of college behind me and had just spent a month working off-Broadway and now I was about to work the rest of the summer doing Summer Stock Theatre.

Gateway Playhouse is in Bellport, Long Island and has a long history, starting first as a hotel in 1941 and then producing their first musical in 1950.

More about Gateway’s history can be found on their Web site:

http://www.gatewayplayhouse.com/history.html

The summer that I worked there most of the company was made up of college aged actors and technicians from all over the country.

My family home was only ten miles away and a few others were also local but many came from off Long Island, some as far away as California.

There even was a woman from Columbia; a funny story about her will be in a later post.

We all lived at Gateway in one of several buildings ranging from the big main house and former hotel to a few small simple dorms.

I was lucky enough to live in the “Hilton” with the other male members of the technical staff.

The “Hilton” was part of the original old Barn Theatre and we thought our rooms had once been stalls or chicken coops.

We were on the far side of the new Mainstage Theatre building far away from everyone else and the dining room in the main house.

This was both good and bad at different times that summer.

For the most part we all got along and had fun that summer, but of course there were a few big bumps and interesting surprises in store for us.

Not everyone there was a college student.

The Directors, Designers and Technical Director/Lighting Designer were all older professionals.

To a 20 year old older could have meant anywhere from 28 to 40 or even 50, my memory is not clear on it.

I do remember that the Scene Designer was local High School Art Teacher and the technical staff got to go to his house for a party.

Perhaps I should have said the first scene designer and Technical Director/Lighting Designer, as the there would be big changes in the middle of the season.

The male technical staff was made up of mostly college students with two exceptions.

One was an older man (30 – 40?) who was a career counselor at a local community college and the second was a 16 year old high school student, who along with the 16 year old son of Gateway’s owners, would get themselves into some interesting adventures that summer.

In the years since working at Gateway I have come across several of the people who I worked with that summer.

With the aid of Google and Facebook I have found that some of those who worked with me that summer stayed on to work in Theatre, while others have seemed to have followed other life paths.

We all got along fairly well with only a few exceptions.

There was one guy from California who annoyed everyone by always telling us how better it was back at his College and he hogged the only payphone talking for hours with his girlfriend back home.

Tales of the two 16 year olds will follow soon.

But as a whole we got along if only to fight against producers and how the theatre and shops were run.

The scene shop was extremely underequipped with few power tools, open to the air on one end and we were given nails in one pound boxes.

We had to ask for more nails several times a day.

It was only when the ATD was sent out to buy 25 more one pound boxes and returned with a 50 pound box for less did the producers see that maybe there might be another way of doing things.

There were other issues and problems with the Theatre and some of them lead to the first Technical Director firing or quitting after the second play.

Regardless to any of the shortcomings or problems that may have occurred that summer, I learned a lot and gained a great deal of confidence in my own skills and have always been glad that I worked there.

More details to follow in make next installment.

Updated 12/18/18

* * *

Gateway Playhouse 1976, Part 1

There are many things that I want to write about during my summer at Gateway Playhouse.
We did four plays: West Side Story, Annie Get Your Gun, Candide and The Ritz plus several Children’s Shows.
There were so many memorable things that happened and I have started a list to help me remember the details.
I have not decided what I want to talk about first and I am not sure that I want to write about things even after 33 years.
You may have to wait for my book to find out the fun details, but who knows, I may tell you anyway.

Stay Tuned.

The Outline so far:

Mostly College Students
The Hilton
Hurricane Belle
Bicentennial 4th of July
Pound of Nails
Pizza and Miss New York runner-up
Ragtime
The Hobbit
Costume Designer Quits
Re-casting Annie Get Your Gun the last day
The Benefit Show
Jackie Gleason’s TV Sets
The High School Girls
Hugh and the Girls
The Shower
Missing Girls
ATD Bob
TD and Scene Designer Fired
Children’s Theatre
Parking Cars
Going back ten years later to visit one of my students
The Food
The Snake
The Bee Sting
Bugs
The Shop and Tools
Re-wiring the Light Board
Double Headed Nails
The Producer’s 16 years old son
The guy from Cal State Irvine
The Pool
The Character Actor

And yes, Naked People!

Still Here, More to Come Soon

I have been very busy with the current play that I am working on, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and have not had any free time to write.

http://www.brockport.edu/theatre/

In addition for the first time in 27 years I am moving to a new office and have to pack up everything by the end of next week.

I have given away many of my extra books and have been bringing my plants home as my is new office is smaller and has no windows.

This move is only temporary as they are renovating the Tower Fine Arts Center.

It takes a long time to pack when I am always stopping to go through the papers, photos, draftings and toys that I have accumulated over the past 27 years.

I will get back to writting over the Christmas break and will continue the story of my favorite summer working in Theatre.

Working for a month in NYC was great but many more adventures would happen at Gateway Playhouse.

As I noted in an earlier post the Theatre at St Clements Church has been both an active Church and Theatre for many years and is still going strong:

http://www.stclementsnyc.org/

Gateway Playhouse too has a long history as a Summer Stock Theatre and more information about it can be found on its WEB site:

http://www.gatewayplayhouse.com/

If you dig through their WEB Site you can find copies of the programs for the shows that I worked on back in 1976.

I am looking forward to getting back to telling my stories, adventures and mostly true tales.

Small World

It is often said that Theatre is a small world and everyone working in Theatre knows everyone else working in Theatre.

Although it is not true there are time when it does seems that way.

Just the other day I was returning two mic stands that I had borrowed for a concert.

When I was talking with the worker in the Classroom Technology Office he asked me if I have ever done any work on movies.

When I said that I had he revealed to me that he had been my assistant on a PBS documentary about the poet Emily Dickinson that we worked on over twenty years ago.

Details about the film will be in a future post.

George had been a student at RIT and worked a few weeks on the film shoot.

This began me thinking about other times that I had run into people I had worked with in the past years later.

As mentioned in an earlier post , I recently ran into Lighting Designer Alan Adelman

after 34 years at the USITT conference in Cincinnati.

It is nice to run into someone I have not scene in a while, but most of the time it may be only five to ten years rather then 30 plus years.

On the last night of the conference I had dinner one night with one of my students from my first year teaching who has been working at Ohio State University for 19 years.

After dinner we ran into one of my classmates from Michigan, who I had not seen in about twenty years, who had just had dinner with one of his first students.

I have known my friend’s first student for about fifteen years, he also teaches and just had one of my more recent students in his Theatre program at the University of Georgia.

The two “first” students did not know each other but as they talked they found out that they knew many people in common and shared some good laughs.

These kind of meetings happen all the time at the USITT conferences.

I have also had these kind of meetings at the American College Theatre Festivals.

Just this past January I ran into some old friends and classmates at the Festival in Philadelphia.

While I was in Grad School I worked several dance tours to the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan.

Ten years later, now working at my present job, I served on a search committee for the Dance Department and it turns out that one of the final applicants we interviewed had been the Technical Director Interlochen when I worked there.

After Grad School I worked for a year in NYC and it seemed that every two weeks or so I would run into someone I knew.

One day I went to see the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.

After checking out the tree I was cutting through a building when I ran into someone from UB.

We talked briefly about what we were doing and then went on our separate ways.

As I came out of the other side of the building minutes later I ran into someone from Grad school.

Again I had another brief chat about what we were both doing.

The photo studio that I worked in was just a few blocks North of Union Square and while walking to work one day I ran into another classmate from Michigan who was working in a costume studio several blocks away.

Sometime later in about the same spot on the street that I literally ran into Andy Warhol.

Warhol was not a classmate.

One day while walking to Penn Station I cut through Madison Square Park near the Flatiron Building and ran into a guy I knew, but could not remember his name.

I knew that we had recently worked together in some theatre, but I could not remember where or when.

What I did remember was the fact that I really did not like him, but I still smiled and made small talk before going on my way.

It was only later while riding the LIRR train home that I remembered his name and where we had worked together.

Last year while trying to research some information on Theatre stage equipment I called a major supply company.

Forwarded to someone who could help me with my questions and it turns out to be another of my former students from twenty-five year ago.

I had seen him a few times over the years but had not spoken recently.

We ran into each other at the USITT conference in Cincinnati.

Several times I have had former students call me to ask about another student, that they do not know, who are applying for a job with their company.

These are just a few examples of Theatre being a small world, there are many more.

If I remember any other fun or interesting examples I will post them.

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.

Naked People Everywhere. Part 1 of 57

Several of the first shows that I worked on in college had an element that was a bit different from the plays I worked on in High School or Community Theatre.

Naked People.

Some were on stage, some were off stage and even a few just wandering about here and there.

Times were a bit different, it was the middle 1970’s and the people producing the plays were not all that far removed from the 60’s Theatre scene.

For an eighteen year old this was very different, interesting and of course fun.

But just a few years later I remember that the attitudes had changed and nobody wanted to be naked onstage anymore.

One memorable play at UB was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven”, a compilation several different Shakespeare plays cut and pasted together to make new scenes.

They had done “Shakespeare Heaven” and “Son of Shakespeare Heaven” in the years just before I got to college.

One section of the play was a take off of a game show, another was a spoof of the movie The Godfather, plus there were several other skits and monologues all mixed together.

In one scene an actor walks in dressed as a monk speaking lines from “Timon of Athens” as I remember.

As the scene progressed the actor completely undresses, sits down at a small table, puts on make-up, then puts on a bra and other women’s undergarments and puts on finally a wedding dress.

The play being “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” everyone had a wedding dress on at the end.

One actress was a Hawaiian Bride wearing just a grass hula skirt and a lea of flowers, with just a bit of tape to keep the lea in place.

The funniest naked person in the show was the actor who played the various statues.

All he wore was white make-up head-to-toe.

If the statue he was doing had a fig leaf then he had one, a helmet and small wings on his ankles when he was Mercury, but other then that he wore just the make-up and a smile.

The play was so popular that it was held over for an extended run.

For the extra run of the play an actress joined the naked guy and did famous paired statues.

I remember when they were taking the cast photo there at the end of the front row were they two naked people.

I wonder if Kodak printed the photos or are they in some lost back room with lots of other fun pictures?

A few other plays my first year had an occasional naked person or two, but it was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” that had the most and was enjoyable even without all the naked people, although I did not mind.

Not all the naked people were on stage, but back then it seemed at times that everyone backstage was running around naked, actors, crew and few other oddballs.

More fun with naked people to come in Part 2.