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/

Junior Year at UB 1976-7

I was eager to get back to college after all the work I had done in the summer of 1976.
This would be a bit different that school year as I decided to move to the main campus closer to the theatre Department and most of my classes.
The new campus at UB was fun, but I was spending too much time on a bus getting back and forth just to go back to the dorm to sleep after long days at the Theatre.
The Theatre Department’s Lighting Design teacher had taken a leave to finish his MFA and we had his assistant in charge that year.

I guess I was a bit pumped, a junior now ready to take on new challenges and responsibilities.
That year I again worked on many plays in many different capacities including serving as the Lighting Designer for Harold Pinter’s “Old Times", Technical Director for Euripides’ “The Bacchae” and the Stage Manager for Eric Bentley’s “From the Memories of Piteous Pilate”.

We had a nice core of tech students who had now worked together on many shows over two years.
We were now upper classmen and took leadership roles on all of the productions, but still worked on each others shows even if not assigned.
Even with all our work we always found time to party.
By my junior year many of the theatre majors had moved off campus as I would do in the spring semester.

One friend and his housemates had a great Halloween party that year and another the next year.
They got complaints from the neighborhood homeowners association, so you know it must have been a great party.
What was there to complain about?
They moved their living room furniture, rugs, TV and lights all on the lawn for a nice display.
Inside there was plenty to drink and someone had set the beer up so it came out of the kitchen water faucet when you turned it on.
The next year to top the lawn display from the previous year they took a car that one of them had been working on and tipped it on its side, “crashing” into the house, with a dead body hanging out the window and colored lights inside the car.

Working as the Stage Manager for Eric Bentley’s “From the Memories of Piteous Pilate” was interesting and different from the things I normally worked on.
Eric Bentley, 93 as I write this, is a well known and respected critic and scholar of the work of Bertolt Brecht.
His best known play is “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: The Investigations of Show-Business by the Un-American Activities Committee 1947-1958”.
In his prime he toured the world doing his one man show signing the songs of Bertolt Brecht.

For several years Bentley was a guest professor at UB and came to some of our rehearsals.
He gave me script updates from time-to-time, but the director told me to just thank him and put them in the back of my prompt script.
Several years later when the script was published I was not too surprised to find that the written play did not match the version that we produced.
One day while waiting for one of the rehearsal to begin I got to hear Mr. Bentley play the piano.
He played selections from the two music books that had been left there, The Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan Songbooks.

The Department brought in a guest director from NYC for the play.
He asked me to sit with him during the auditions and after one actor left he asked what I thought of him.
I did not think he was very good, but who am I to say, so I just told him that the actor gave him everything he had, he was not hiding anything and that there was not any more depth to him.
He got a part.

Several weeks later when the rehearsals were to begin we found out that the director had quit and was to be replaced.
The new director stayed with the original cast and we went on.
I enjoyed the show and the rehearsal process, but never stage managed again.

Gateway, Part 7

I have a few final stories from my summer at Gateway.

The two 16 year old boys, the owner’s son and the local “Wonder Kid”, were soon joined by a dozen or so 15 to 17 year old high school girls who came to take theatre classes and work on the children’s plays.

To the surprise of one of the actresses, she was assigned to be the chaperone to the young girls, living with them in their dorm.

It came as no surprise that the two boys were soon hanging around the girls.

One night the chaperone came to the “Hilton” looking for the two 16 year old boys who were not there.

It seemed that two of her girls were missing, so several of the male techies made a “Posse” and went out looking for the missing girls.

Within a short time the two missing girls and boys were found sitting and talking in a tree in front of the main Theatre.

Coming back from lunch one day noticed that one of the extra stair units seemed to have been moved just outside the window of the girls shower room.

It seems that it was moved a little closer each day until it was under the window but no one noticed.

We had a good laugh and moved it back to the storage area.

One day we had a little free time and the ATD and I decided to go downtown for some pizza.

We talked one of the actresses, a former Miss New York Runner-up, to come with us.

Well she made a big impact on the owner of the pizzeria as free beer and pizza was soon at our table along with the owner drooling over the actress.

After a quick bite and a sip or two the actress was off to some club for a little more up-scale evening, but the ATD and I got our free pizza and beer and a few laughs.

We had a woman from the country of Columbia working with us, and like me, she chose to read a little in her free time but had occasional problems with English from time to time.

One day while reading “Ragtime” by E. L. Doctorow she asked someone for some help with the meaning of a word, but the person asked turned red and told her to she had to ask someone else.

All afternoon she was passed from person to person as no one wanted to explain the word to her.

The word: Fellatio.

Several times that summer we would do performances for special groups who would buy all the tickets for one of the shows.

The producers made several of the actresses to serve as special ushers and I think they even helped give out door prizes at intermission.

At one of these performances there were many in the audience who had too much to drink before the show and who drank even more during the intermission.

At the end of “West Side Story” Tony runs onstage followed by Maria and then Chino with the gun.

It is the biggest and saddest moment of the play, but that night just as Chino shoots the gun at Tony some drunk lady starts to laugh and cackle out loud.

Of course it ruined to end of the play and the actors were very mad after the show.

The final play we worked on was "The Ritz", a comedy in which a mobster hides from killers in a NYC Gay Bathhouse.

I was looking forward to working on the play as my brother and I saw it on Broadway the year before.

The set was large, two stories tall with many doors, all of which I put in.

In addition to learning how to really use a circular saw, the hanging of all doors and putting in the door knobs was an important skill that I learned that summer that I have used many times since.

Because I had to return to school before the end on the plays run I did not work on the run crew and this is the only one of the plays that I watched from the audience.

The Ritz, with some of the doors I made.

A inside joke, not known to the general audience, is that many of the Gay Characters were played by Straight Actors and the Straight Characters were played by Gay Actors.

After a long summer I think the actors needed to have some fun and this was enjoyed by everyone in the show.

The actors also had fun when they entered the Steam Room on the set as they would whip off their towels and “Moon” the audience.

There are many other bits of fun that summer (a few more naked people here and there I am sure) but I think I have given you a good sample of all the things that happened that summer.

Yes there were many problems, but I learned a great deal and gained lots of confidence in myself and wanted to continue working in theatre even more.

I know that many of the people I worked with went on to work in the Theatre, some went on to Broadway and Hollywood and still others went into Education like me.

What happened to those two 16 year old Boys?

Well the owner’s son now runs Gateway and has expanded the size and quality of the shows they do.

The other “Wonder Kid” went on to work Theatre in NYC and runs his own production company.

Over the years I have run across a few of the others from that summer, but there are others I can find no trace of when I search online.

Between working off-Broadway and at Gateway, I had a great summer and was eager to get back to school and see what adventures were to lay ahead.

Updated 12/18/18

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Gateway, Part 6

Building sets by day and running shows at night we got into a regular routine.

I even found time to read a few books.

Between fly cues I found an out of the way corner with a little work light and read The Hobbit and a Sci-Fi novel by Isaac Asimov.

I was nice to just escape a little from the busy day.

I was very surprised when during the second production when an actress came running right in front of me for a quick change.

She stripped down to just her panties, re-dressed and then ran back on stage.

Of course I was one very shocked 20 year old but managed to act professional, did not drool too much and helped her out when needed over the next three weeks.

Flash forward twenty years, I am now working on an outside production we had brought into the college Theatre.

One of my students was working backstage during the run and told me that the lead actress was naked backstage during her costume changes.

With my years of wisdom, and thinking back to working at Gateway, I told him to act professional and not to make an ass of himself.

After getting the play up and running I was in my nearby office during the run of the play.

One night my student ran in and told me that they were having problems with the actress’s wireless body mic.

So I ran backstage with a new battery and knelt down next to the nearly naked actress who was wearing only pantyhose and the mic belt and I fumbled and sweated a bit as I tried to fix it as fast as I could.

My student got a good laugh about it watching me trying to be cool and working under fire.

Back to Gateway . . .

It seemed obvious to everyone at the time that the firing of the original Technical Director was planned all along.

The new guy came in with designs and plans ready for the third play, Candide.

It seems that he had worked on the then recent revival in NYC.

He was a good guy, his designs and work were fine, I think everyone liked him and we just moved on.

Candide

Candide

I am sure that there must have been some talk but there really was not any time to worry about it.

It was three weeks later when the Costume Designer quit, and I do not think these events were connected.

The new TD seemed to get along with the producers better but we still did not have enough tools and supplies.

I do remember that when we built the last play, The Ritz, we chose to build the set with double-headed nails that we set all the way in.

We did not know it at the time, but they left the set onstage all winter and opened the next season with the same play.

After sitting onstage for 10 months the wood swelled around the nails and I heard from someone who worked there the next year that it was a bitch to get the set apart.

Hey if we had the right nails in the first place it would never have happened.

If you believe that I have this bridge for sale…...

I still have a few more stories of the people that summer.

Until next time . . .

Updated 12/18/18

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Gateway, Part 5

We had quickly gotten into a daily work routine that changed once the first play opened because we would now have to work all day building sets for the next play while working at night running the current production.

That made for very long days for most of the summer as the plays ran for three weeks with some double performances on days with matinees.

During the 1950’s Gateway became a training ground for many future actors of the stage and screen.

They had a stock of old scenery some of which was supposed to be old Jackie Gleason Show sets from his TV program.

I remember that we took apart some of the old velour flats so that they could make costumes for “Annie Get Your Gun”.

As I had said in an earlier post, there were several personnel changes the summer I worked at Gateway.

The night before the last performance of “Annie Get Your Gun” the Costume Designer, who had a small role in the show, went back to the costume shop to check on how things were going for the next play.

For some reason he got very upset and started yelling at the girls working there and went into a triad for a few minutes.

He abruptly stopped yelling, apologized to the staff, told them he was quitting, went to his room packed and left. 

Annie Get You Gun

Annie Get You Gun, Note I painted the stone steps USC.

Annie Get You Gun

Annie Get You Gun

Well everyone heard all this go down and the next day there was a rush to fill his part in the play and figure out who was going to finish the costumes.

Actually everything went pretty well as the Director took over one part and the Gateway’s stock Character Actor took over the role of Sitting Bull.

I do not think that the audience knew what was going on, it was a bit tense backstage, but it was a fun show to watch, we were all waiting for it to fall apart, but it did not.

This event must have happened a few weeks after the Technical Director and Scene Designer were replaced, because the new TD designed the sets and lights for the third show “Candide” which opened only a few days later.

I do not know if the two events were related but it did seem to make things tenser for a while.

I think it was one of the actresses took over the Costume Design job and we were able to open on time.

Even with the staff changes we all continued to work hard and things got done on time.

There was still time for funny moments like when we told someone not to step on any of the many Crickets that were in one of the buildings.

These were the famous “Gateway Screamers” that would make a horrible noise if you stepped on them.

We also made up ghost stories about the old Barn Theatre and a fake story about murders and other strange goings on at Gateway.

There was also a small snake that used to sun itself next to one of the buildings.

I found a stick with a “V” shape at the end and made a point of trying to catch the snake.

After a few days I finally caught it, looked at it, let it go and then never bothered it again.

Not all of the troubles that summer were manmade because on August 10th we had visit from Hurricane Belle.

A category one storm with lots of rain, it put a good scare into many of the staff.

Growing up on Long Island it seems that a hurricane comes by every few years.

Looking back at the records I had lived through at least 10 storms before Belle came and I was not too afraid and had fun teasing the others.

The Producers moved everyone out of the small dorms and put us all in the big Theatre.

The storm would come through on one of our off days, of course, and did cause lots of damage on Long Island.

I do not remember if the lights were knocked out but I am sure they at least flickered and the wind made great sounds throwing things against the sides of the Theatre.

Oh yeah, I got stung by a bee that summer too. . . . .

Updated 12/18/18

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Gateway, Part 4

Gateway Playhouse is in Bellport, NY a small village on the Great South Bay of Long Island.

It is similar, but smaller, to Sayville the town where I grew up about ten miles away.

In addition to the Playhouse, Bellport is also the original home of Grucci Fireworks:

http://www.grucci.com/indexbravo.html?page=5

One of the early inventors of the Ball Bearing also lived in Bellport and I would pass a small monument whenever I walked into town.

I did not always find the town to be very friendly and I remember one store had signs aimed at the Gateway staff that simply said to buy something or leave.

As with all summer theatres we were always busy and had little free time to go into town anyway.

The technical staff had a big surprise on the opening night of the first show.

No, we were not served beans and franks, but told that we had to help park cars.

Normally the crew would be checking everything and getting ready for the show to begin, but no we had to go out and direct the cars into the back parking lot and then run in just before the show was to start.

Of course we were not happy doing this but had a big laugh when someone managed to drive onto a telephone pole used as a divider between the rows of cars.

The first play of the season was “West Side Story” and I was running the fly system.

The Gateway Theatre was the old style “Hemp House” (NO not that kind of hemp) that used sand bags and not the counterweights in common use today.

One night the 16 year old high school student who was suppose to be helping me came running in late, tripped and knocked me into the fly rail hurting my ribs.

The same thing happened on the crew the year before and someone’s ribs were broken.

With a sand bag system if you let go of the rope the scenery on the other end will fall onto the stage.

I was lucky not to be hurt too bad and I was able to hold on and the show went on.

All in all we had a good working report with each other backstage and enjoyed what free time we had.

We turned the back entry to the Theatre into our crew porch on which we relaxed before and after the shows drinking cold sodas and telling "War Stories" of our adventures in other Theatres.

From time to time I shared my late night roof perch with some of the crew and a few beers while sitting up there unwinding after a show.

I even got to use the company pool once in a while, but do not get too jealous, you have not seen the pool, or should I say cement bathtub.

The best use of the pool was the day that the Assistant Technical Director, ATD, and I tossed the owner’s 16 year old son into the pool.

Of course his dad would walk around the corner just after little “Paulie” was sent into the water but he laughed, shook his head and just walked away.

When I tell a few more of the stories of the adventures of the two 16 year old boys you will know why we tossed him in and wonder why we did not do it sooner.

.

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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