Once again, the “Gotta Getta Gimmick” Cabaret series was back in my life for a while. This time Brad had curated an Evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein and I was asked to “play” host. Janice Dunning and Jacques LeMay had taken on the coaching duties for the varied complement of performers who turned up at the first meeting. I worked hard to get the narration just right, not getting too “scholarly” but giving behind-the-scenes information more about the creators than the shows. But since some lesser known material was scattered throughout the evening, I also had to take a bit of time touching on the rather convoluted plotlines for “Allegro”, “Pipe Dream” and “Me and Juliet”. But, as usual, it was always the more familiar material where folks seemed comfortable and attentive.

I’d been referring to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s big hits near the start of the performance and we’d dispensed with the rarely heard material. I thought it might be fun to ask the audience to shout out the name of their “favorite musical on the count of three. Ready? One. Two. Three!” And everyone yelled out “Oklahoma!” or “King and I!” or “South Pacific!” or “Carousel!”. Someone even shouted out “Les Miz”! A bit dryly I said, “No, Madam, Rodgers and Hammerstein did not write “Les Misérables””, much to everyone’s delight. Their song “Edelweiss” was on the program and, like they do during the “Concert Sequence” in the actual production, I asked that everyone join in after ‘von Trapp’ sings the solo. To no one’s surprise, they all did, all one hundred of them, sounding wonderful! When it came to the bridge -“Blossom of snow” – I yelled out “With Harmony!” and they all broke out into a glorious four-part chorale that would have broken your heart! Granted, most of these folks were Musical Theatre nerds, afficionados, fanatics, so they knew the words and music pretty well. The “free-for-all” portion of the evening – out in the Theatre Lobby after the intermission, where anyone could get up and sing anything they wanted – was a high point that a lot of folks had prepared for. This was when you got to hear folks do their party pieces and show off their talent … and there was a lot of it. I was feeling a lot more a part of this community now with a second show under my belt. Before that evening was over, I was asked to be in their next event, an evening of Charles Strouse and his lyricists. Assignments to come.

            I really didn’t know what to expect as we headed into “Spring Awakening” that Fall (2014). The months leading up to it had been happily jammed with lots of out-of-town visitors and the Museum Tours. But now, I was tugging at the bit to get back into a rehearsal hall. Michael (Shamata, our director) and I had spoken a bit prior to things starting. He was, in fact, working for the Performing Arts College in this case. As it was a co-pro of sorts between The Belfry and CCPA, he had given over most of the production process to the College. As a part of their training, the kids of “Company C” (the 13 third-year students, most in their late teens or early twenties) were responsible for every aspect of putting up the show. They did everything from designing the set and lighting, the sound, the costumes and props, filling out stage management duties, creating the marketing plan, all in addition to their roles on stage. So the pressure was off Michael except to direct.

We’d talked about the fact that all of the roles I was playing – nine of them – were, for the most part, monsters in one way or another. We would do a lot of “exploration” during rehearsals certainly, but he suggested that I work on trying to find justifications for the actions of all these Adult Men – there were certainly no obvious redemptive qualities – and to work on “believing it”. Some of the parts are very small – one line in one case – so there wasn’t a lot to establish and grab on to. None of them take any kind of journey, there was some physical violence, and they seem to be representing all the “bad” that the young people experienced with Adults in the production’s setting – Germany in 1893. For me, it was a case of going black and white with very little grey to play.

Michael also requested that I allow myself to mentor any of the young people who might need some assistance and I was very happy to agree to that. I wasn’t the only Adult in the cast. The beautiful Amanda Lisman would be playing all the Adult Women roles and we both entered into the first rehearsals with some degree of apprehension. The young people had been working with Michael for a week prior to our contracts starting, and we discovered that our arrival had been greatly anticipated by the Company. We quickly learned that our every move was being watched, and not surreptitiously either, but openly and with purpose. There was no escaping their eyes even when we weren’t on deck. These kids were sponges, completely focused on how to approach the craft on all levels – how Amanda and I worked on our feet, how we took and responded to Michael’s notes following a scene, what we did in the moments leading up to an entrance. Absolutely everything we did, I found out, was evaluated and talked about by the cast. I was glad to have learned about some this well after the fact, as I’m sure I would have been a lot more self-conscious about what I was doing. I was aware of my demeanor all the time and had thought I was making an effort not to be too distant or curmudgeonly … as, so I’ve been told on occasion, I sometimes am.

            The fact that I had been working on these nine characters for months prior to starting rehearsals went a long way to keeping me level-headed and open to suggestions. The process was much as it would have been for any rehearsal period at any theatre. We all worked very hard and every now and then Amanda and I would sit and watch the kids at work and comment to ourselves on how fresh they were, how avid, involved and unassailably committed they were, and we thought back on how we used to be like that and laugh a bit!

            For the last week of rehearsals and tech, we moved to the Belfry where the show was to be performed in their Studio Theatre. The effect of this change was noticeable if only because the energy ramped up for the kids. They took off their actor hats and put on their stage hand or set painter or seamstress or light-hanger hats and took as much joy in doing those tasks as being on stage. In our actual performance space the sound came to life and with the lights and costumes happening, I could see this was an excellent production. On the afternoon before opening we assembled for Michael’s last notes after a run, and to receive his sail-on message. Just before we broke, I said to the group, on behalf of Amanda and myself, how wonderful they were and how much we’d enjoyed working with them. “We thought you hated us”, said one of them. “What??”, said I, completely astonished. “Oh my Lord, no, no, not at all, we love you” and I fell over myself apologizing that they should have felt that way. That made them happy and they said they loved us too. So much for my trying to keep the impression of distance and curmudgeonly-ness at bay.

            The whole experience was incredibly rewarding and, unexpectedly, very inspiring. They were obviously in love with what they were doing, completely devoted, extremely focused, energetic, positive and dedicated to getting the show on. It spoke volumes to how special these thirteen kids actually were. We experienced a flu bug toward the end of the run but at no point did it take a toll on any of these talented kids. The theatre held only about 90 people and it was packed every night. The College usually only did 4 performances for their “Company C” productions. But in this case, and probably because it was being performed as part of The Belfry’s season, there were 13 shows. I had a great time right through to the end and was sad to leave these wonderful young people.

            Mom was maintaining. Teresa had come into town for a bit as had my niece Samantha and Eric, her husband and Chase, their son, so while there were visitors for Mom to see, none of us were quite sure if she knew who they were. But her learned behaviour kicked in every time and she gave a great impression that she did … I think. Morgan was under the weather for a while. He was having trouble walking and I managed to get him on some new medication that seemed to work for a bit. He was twelve years old at that point and my vets kept cautioning me not to expect him to act like a puppy anymore. It crossed my mind that Mom and Morgan were getting toward the end of things. I couldn’t help but dwell on it when Mom had a fall or Morgan couldn’t walk very well. What would I do when they were gone. Would I stay in Victoria? I admit to growing very fond of the weather here and didn’t think I could face the Winnipeg winters again. I was also still carrying a bit of a grudge toward Winnipeg based on the Rainbow Stage rejection and I couldn’t get my head around getting back into the “swing” with the community. I found life good in Victoria, comfortable and maybe a bit too easy. Doing a show from time to time would be good, but that wasn’t guaranteed anywhere. It would have to be taking one day at a time. And that’s what I did.

            The Strouse Cabaret for “Gimmick” came and went. Got to sing some great music, notably “Once Upon A Time” from “All American”, a favourite I’d done in concerts and recitals many times before. But the experience seemed a bit low-keyed this time round. There were a number of other productions happening around town that took away the “regulars”, the long standing performers who had followings that filled the stands, so it was a bit second-string I felt. But those who attended ate it up once again. Ron Krug was in town from Winnipeg and he saw the performance and raved about the concept and the talent which was nice. Tracy Dahl was in town doing “Lucia Di Lammermoor” for Pacific Opera and I raved about her performance as ‘Lucia’ to anyone and everyone I saw. And I got my five-year pin at the Museum.

But Mom began to diminish by late Spring. Most of the time I was there mid-morning. Dr. Muller had taken her off Aricept (the dementia medication) because it was seeming to make her dozy. She got active later in the day, I was told, but those morning visits lacked focus. She didn’t look up very often and her speech was getting more garbled. Her hand-eye coordination was slipping and she needed help eating. It was very hard to watch. She was still mobile and very strong physically, but the person was obviously ebbing, quickly. She would still wander the floor and end up in someone else’s room, falling asleep on their bed which would initiate a search on my part when I’d arrive for the visit. I’d find her and wake her up with a “Hi, Mom”,  and then guide her back to her room. As we’d walk down the hall, she’d look at me and say, “You’re a good guy”. It was some consolation, but heavily tinged with the fact that, right then, she had no idea who I was. Then, there were moments of lucidity that baffled me – moments when she would pull herself out of the grogginess and very quietly say something like “Be careful, Rick”, out of the blue, sounding like she used to sound, saying my name directly to me. Or “Bye, Dear” as I would leave the room. Those were massive jolts to me because they came out of nowhere, unprompted, as if nothing was wrong, that everything was as it should be. Then on the other hand, she would get insular and non-communicative, like she was getting “ready to check out” as Angie, one of her favorite caregivers, would put it. Then, in the next moment, she suddenly would get feisty and verbal, and rally.

With nothing else to do, I began creating a garden off of my back patio. There was a huge slope covered with ivy that stretched up to a bank of trees and a walkway that passes along the back of the complex. I bricked out a number of terraces ranging up the hill taking the debris and weeds out as I went and the space took shape slowly, but steadily. The photo here is half way up the hill at the beginning of the process where the lower area has been cleared a little … there were another fifty feet to go … straight up. With there being so much shade, the only suitable plant with any variety at all were hostas which I’d grown to love from my Winnipeg garden, and that was where I started. There are over 1,200 varieties and I would go nuts at the various garden centers around town, looking for the out-of-the-ordinary types. The garden grew over time (and space) and was a constant source of physical activity and horticultural challenge. In fact, it became a refuge for me, a place where time stood still and my only focus was on dirt and green plants and creating order out of chaos. At times it was also a place of contemplation and reflection.

            Mom continued downhill as time went on. There was one day when I decided I was going to let her know that she could “leave if she wanted to”. She was lying in the hospital bed we’d rented for her so the care staff could access her more easily than in her own bed. She looked very frail and unfocused. Her eyes wandered as I sat beside her in a chair, singing “A Bicycle Built For Two” to her and talking about nothing in particular. Every now and again she would brighten a bit and smile at me. I could tell she wasn’t really aware of very much. I wasn’t feeling any sadness. It had been such a long journey to this point that my own preparation for the inevitable had settled in and I knew it was coming soon. It had been something of a roller coaster, but a very gentle one – one day I would sit and watch her thinking she would stop breathing any moment, and other days I’d arrive and she’d be sitting having “conversations” with other residents. Mom was going to go out as she lived her life, gently, with dignity. As I spoke the words, “It’s alright if you want to go” I thought of how many times I’d said them in my head. I don’t know if she heard me. Her eyes had closed. But in that moment, saying them out loud was the complete acceptance inside me. I had no idea how long this was going to take but she seemed to be easing away from this plane very gradually. There was no pain, no turmoil, no rancor or angst, just a peaceful retiring from the physical.

            I went into rehearsals for another Cabaret for “Gimmick”, this time Leonard Bernstein was the composer! This was a huge cast – 35 people! How they were all going to fit onto that small performance space in the Belfry Studio would be anyone’s guess, but the sound they would make in the ensemble numbers would certainly be something to hear! There were a number of kids from the CCPA “Company C” taking part this time. It had only been a few months since we had closed “Spring Awakening” and it was a joy to see them again, now under less structured and stressful circumstances but just as exciting for them. It was an easy turn for me. I was only in the “Candide” segment and one other ensemble number, but loved watching the kids trying to get their heads around Bernstein’s complicated melodies and harmonies. The guys kept coming over to stand beside me to learn what they were supposed to be singing in “Make Our Garden Grow”. But I couldn’t be much help as I was doing the ‘Pangloss’ harmony line which was altogether separate from theirs. My big solo was “Best of All Possible Worlds” which I’d done for years but always with the original Richard Wilbur lyrics. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince Brad to let go of the less poetic 1978 revised lyrics by John LaTouche, so had to work to get those new words (to me) in my mouth … and I realized that it wasn’t as easy as it used to be. There didn’t seem to be anything to put on the line anymore, and that was frightening. Maybe it was over for me, and I would have to find something else to occupy my time, something else to do with my life.

            The show was another hit. The “Wonderful Town” and “On The Town” Sequences were great but it was the “Candide” section, in particular the whole cast singing “Make Our Garden Grow” that brought the house down. We had rehearsed and rehearsed it and the sound was overwhelming in that small space, washing up over the audience as we hit the huge a cappella chorale section – “we’re neither pure nor wise nor good …” – with those young “Company C” voices and us older legit voices from the regular crew. It was heavenly and over much too soon.

            For months my daily routine had been anchored by the morning visit to Mom at 10:30 and an afternoon visit at about 2:30. Gradually, what used to be the unexpected became the expected. She hardly ate anything and drank only a little. But I would still chat away at her and sing “Bicycle”. One afternoon, I repeated my earlier sentiment about “going if she wanted to”. She had the covers up around her face. She stirred a tiny bit and, in a small but distinct voice said, “I’m trying, I’m trying”. That rattled me a great deal. All I could say in response was a whispered “okay” and left it at that. Those were the last words she spoke to me.

I forced myself to be upbeat and energetic, but the visits got shorter and shorter. I’d look at her face and wonder what was going on inside her head. I could only hope that she was at ease and free of anxiety. The Staff were making her very comfortable. The sun shone every day so it was always bright and cheery in her room. They would check on her every two hours, and a “butterfly” shunt had been put in her arm to administer morphine should she show any pain or distress. I left after the Wednesday afternoon visit and sat in my car and shook for a little while, trying to calm myself down before driving home. I didn’t feel like eating but forced myself to pick at some leftovers, trying, as I did after each visit, to put things into perspective and always failing because there was no “perspective”. My Mom was dying and that’s what it was. I was putting the dishes in the washer when the phone rang. Seeing “Sunrise” come up on the phone screen wasn’t surprising. It was an instantaneous relief because I knew what it was about. Hearing the actual words “Your Mom has passed” wasn’t traumatic or dramatic. I had a small sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and my mouth went dry. Earlier, the Staff had told me that she was incredibly strong and a “fighter” but I hadn’t thought that. I knew she must have been very tired … trying to “go”.

And she did. At 6:50pm on June 17^th, 2015, flights of angels sang Mom to her Last Rest.

I snuck back into Winnipeg. I didn’t want to take the chance of someone seeing me so I’d booked a room at the Marlborough Hotel, which, as it turned out, was full of folks from flood torn Reservations just outside the city and very busy. I adjusted quickly to a very small room with windows that wouldn’t open, and waited out the time before making my way via every back street in downtown Winnipeg to the Theatre Center where Doreen Brownstone’s 90^th birthday celebration was about to take place. I wanted to arrive somewhat late, and managed to sneak into the Lobby via the side entrance on Rorie Street and melded into the crowd. A few people’s eyes popped when they noticed me, but I put my finger to my mouth requesting they not betray my presence, and that worked … for a while.

            The party had been organized by Patricia Hunter, and Teresa, her sister Michele and Heather Paterson had been co-opted to deal with the food and such. Having positioned myself directly in their eyeline, I managed to elicit screams from them as they stood together on the other side of the Lobby and finally noticed me. It was a remarkable moment of group disbelief. Eyes wide, O-shaped mouths and squeals spread through the space as word spread that I was there. After a few hugs and kisses, Pat mustered me, along with Robbie who was also very surprised to see me, to escort Doreen from the limo that had brought her to the Theatre, along the red carpet and into the Lobby. It was like the Oscars for a few minutes as people lined the sidewalk and building entrance taking photos and calling out to us. Doreen was speechless when I took her arm as she got out of the limo. With all the commotion that greeted her she just kept looking at me trying to figure out if I was real or not! It was wonderful! The ladies admonished me for not letting them know I was coming into town and I told them that it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if I had.

            The rest of the evening was filled with speeches and songs and toasts for Doreen, and way too much chatter about how I was liking Victoria and if was doing any shows and when was I coming back to Winnipeg. I learned that word of my impending meeting with Rainbow had already begun to circulate (how that got out I had no idea), so I found myself fending off speculation … at least for a while.

            The following morning, I met with Julie Eccles, Rainbow’s “Acting” General Manager, and we spent a couple of hours of in-depth talk about the Company, the Job and the Future. While I’d not had much experience as an Artistic Director, I’d had a LOT of experience with Artistic Directors. The one thing that kept buzzing around my brain (but which I never brought up) was why Rainbow was casting about for an “Artistic Director”? They only did two shows in the Summer and that was it. There had been a short period a while back when they’d added a Winter Show, but that idea bit the dust after three years. An AD usually creates a varied playbill based on a particular theme or through-line and always with a thought toward illuminating or expanding an audience’s perspective. Maybe that was a grand vision, but one that couldn’t really be addressed by a Rainbow “season”. Large Commercial Musicals were what they did and that wasn’t going to change. To me, the job was, and always had been, that of a Producer, and I couldn’t figure out why they were wanting to change now.

            The meeting went very well, and I discovered that Julie and I were somewhat on the same page, although she was flying pretty blind when it came to process. This seemed to be why she wanted to meet with me in the first place. She asked a lot of questions and I did my best to answer them – all theoretical, of course, and with nothing set down in stone. Getting an administrative structure in place was, to me, the first order of business and while the Board had a great deal of input into Rainbow’s operation (for better or for worse), Julie needed to get a bead on how a new structure would work. There is a very fine line between a “Producer” and a “General Manager” and now, they wanted to add an “Artistic Director”. It wasn’t making a lot of sense to me and coloured my approach a bit. Julie wrote down just about everything I said. I kept trying to make my responses as generic as possible, but admit to gearing the specifics toward someone who knew the Company’s identity and character very well and who also had extensive knowledge of the community’s resources and involvement. Once done, we agreed to talk some more and I left.

            Needless to say, my mind was doing flip-ups as I wandered down into the Waterfront area trying to clear my head and get some air. It was a beautiful fall day and I realized that this part of town was new to me. Over the past few years, it had become highly developed with upscale townhouses and condo complexes along the Red River. I began to speculate on whether I would like to live there, how big the floorplans were, and what they cost. Whoa, Richard! What are you doing? But I couldn’t control it. Maybe I didn’t want to control it. Maybe I was getting way, way ahead of myself … and the circumstances. But the fact that Julie had ended our meeting by asking “Next steps?” had put the prognosis onto another level. Or was that just my mind working overtime again?

            Dinner that evening with Robbie and Heather at Teresa’s buzzed with conjecture and predictions. They were excited with the possibility of my return to Winnipeg and this new opportunity. But, always at the core of this for me was a reality that couldn’t be ignored – the meeting had only been a fact-finding mission, no offers had been made and, my base point, Mom. I had to rein myself in and get real about things. Just after arriving back home in Victoria, an e-mail arrived from Julie with a synopsis of the job’s requirements as we had defined it. While her breakdown always referred to “the individual”, her note to me at the start of the post referred to the job starting in November and to her understanding that “physically you (me) may not be able to get here so quickly”. In reading the job description a number of times, I could think of very few people who fit these specific qualifications  – “a working relationship of, and exceptional knowledge and contact with the Winnipeg Arts Community, prior knowledge of Rainbow Stage and the workings of an outdoor theatre, a background in directing Musical Theatre productions, open to teaching theatre classes, speaking in public, etc., etc.” – other than myself. A few more days of e-mails back and forth and we set a date for a “formal interview”. With all this in mind, and out of an abundance of caution, I began to set some wheels in motion with regard to a major move. It might have been a case of putting the cart before the horse, but it seemed that the horse wanted to get going, and, like me, was already tugging at the bit.

            I managed to find a flight that would get me in and out of Winnipeg on the day of the interview and, filled with trepidation and excitement, I took off. Julie picked me up (it was a jolting minus 13 degrees) and took me to the office. A member of the “Selection Committee”, Judge Joy Cooper, was also in attendance and, with no fanfare at all, we started. They had prepared 20 questions and took turns asking them. They’d ask, look at me for a moment, and then I would talk … and talk … and talk as they put their heads down and wrote and wrote! It went on like that for two and a half hours and I was hoarse by the time we finished. I think I said everything I wanted to say. The questions had been framed in such a way that I could express a lot of things that Julie and I had spoken about six weeks earlier. I felt I was eloquent, intelligent, informed, personable and managed to soften some of the thoughts that I imagined might ruffle a feather or two once I said them out loud – the Board’s historical lack of involvement in particular and their lack of connection to the performing Company. The ladies were like sphinxes, stone-faced, no reactions or responses. We touched on EVERYTHING … position definition, administrative structure, production choices, creative decisions, marketing, fundraising, future vision, dreams, challenges. Toward the end, they asked me if I had any questions. “Only one”, I said. “When does the job start”. They looked at each other. “Yesterday”, they said. They also assured me that the current Board was a lot more involved than just flipping hamburgers at the annual Summer barbeque. That was heartening.

            When we were done, Julie asked if I would like to pop out to the Stage to see “the changes” that had happened since I’d left. We were quiet in the car, careful to avoid talking about what had just happened. I’d never been out to Rainbow in the Winter. There was a lot of snow in Assiniboine Park (Rainbow’s Summer home) and it was cold and damp backstage in the theatre. To my eye nothing much had changed. A bathroom had been remodeled and a lot of accumulated scenic junk had been disposed of, but that was about it. Julie said she had a long list of things that needed attention. We had some food at Kelekis’ on the way back to the airport and talked about our lives  … again, rather than the interview. I was feeling pretty good about the day. I wished I’d taped the interview. The words I used and how I used them came right from my heart and from a deep understanding of the business in general and of Rainbow in particular. “Passion and Purpose” was the foundation for all that I said, and summed up my feelings about working with the Company.

            I didn’t get the job. Two days later, I received a short e-mail from Julie letting me know they’d gone with someone else (from Toronto as it turned out … an affront, as far as I was concerned based on Rainbow’s long-held Manitoba Talent Mandate). After reading that, I put my head down on the edge of my desk, defeated, forlorn, and allowed the growing numbness to envelope me for a while. The days that followed found me nursing a low-grade nausea as I tried to work my way out of an unshakeable sadness. Depression set in as I began thinking about what could have been, and what I was to do now. I worked my way through the logic of it all, rationalizing and accommodating this new pathway, and at times, chastising myself for having built up the potential so much in my head. Trying to figure out what I’d done wrong was an exercise in futility. I was never going to get an answer, and I let that go in short order. Trying to figure out who actually got the job was also pointless. That would be announced in time and I would suffer a little bit once more. The rejection was a huge hump to get over but, as is usually the case, the pain gradually faded.

            There were a lot of folks who commiserated and were sympathetic and I appreciated their concern, but there was nothing to be done. I regrouped, recharged and recalculated. Since Mom was now being taken care of at Sunrise, I decided to move, and listed the condo for sale.

The trek  to find a new home went on through the Holidays. I still had the Museum Tours to do and concentrated on my Art work just to keep me occupied as visits by potential buyers for my place interrupted my days. I eventually found a townhouse in a large and pleasant complex just outside the downtown area and signed a lease at about the same time the condo sold. Now someone else would have to deal with things that went wrong and while it would be strange going back to renting, it left me with bucks in the bank and a bit more secure financially. But Geez, what a few months that had been!

            The Spring that year (2013) was spent organizing my new space, cleaning out the back patio area, creating space for a garden and keeping an eye on Mom who had maintained pretty well at Sunrise during my upheaval. I got involved with “Gotta Get A Gimmick”, a Community Theatre group who did one-nighters of a single Musical Theatre Composer’s work. I’d been asked to be a part of a couple of their previous evenings, but things had conspired to prevent me from participating. This format was new for them, but with those previous shows having been very well received, they’d settled in and, from what I could tell, seemed to know what they were doing. Rehearsals were one night a week for three weeks prior to putting the resulting Cabaret-style performance on its feet. The composer this time around was Jerry Herman. If only to stand out a bit from other concert presentations around town, the music curated for performance was from the composer’s lesser-known repertoire – in other words, in Jerry Herman’s case, there were no big “Hello Dolly” or “Mame” numbers. I was to sing a song called “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow” from a short-lived show called “The Grand Tour”. It was something to look forward to and would get me back on stage … for a night anyway.

            Popped down to Portland for a few days to see the opening of a new production of “La Cage Aux Folles” that dear friend Greg Tamblyn had directed … again. He’d ask me a short while ago to be involved in this new mounting, but I’d passed. It wasn’t a hard choice to decide to go down and see what the show looked and sounded like with someone else playing “my” role, ‘Zaza’. It would also be a chance to see my old boss from Portland Civic Theatre, Isabella Chappell, and a few other friends. Greg’s production was great! I sat beside my old co-star, Rick Lewis, during the show, and we kept nudging each other and whispering comments back and forth about the “then” and “now” approaches. It was other-worldly to see it from out front because Greg was using much of the old blocking and choreography from our years-ago production and, even after all this time, it was so familiar. There was still a bit of muscle memory there! Afterwards we spent a bit of time with the guys playing “our” roles. They had been “up-and-comers” on the scene when we’d done it before and were anxious to know if their performances had met with our approval. Nice to be thought of in that way. Touching base with some great folks from those wonderful Portland years was just the boost I needed. Victoria hadn’t resulted in a lot of new friends and this visit down South was a real lift. And I would be back down there for Isabella’s 90^th birthday celebration in a few months.

            There was a part of me that was a bit apprehensive about doing the Gimmick show. While I’d taken to purposefully singing in the shower every morning, it had been a while since I’d “put myself out there” vocally. My involvement in “The Life Inside” at The Belfry had been in the Ensemble with no responsibility to speak of. Now I was doing a high energy, six-minute solo that required a hell of a lot more eating-the-scenery performing than I was, of late, used to doing. Most of the initial rehearsals were spent on the group numbers in the Herman Cabaret so it was only in a very short once-through session that I got any sense of how difficult this number really was. The song is basically the sung Prelude to “The Grand Tour” and sets up the story of a Jewish Man (originally played by Joel Grey) who is trying to evade the Nazis in 1940’s France. In the song, he tells where he has travelled from and what he has encountered up to this point, and lets us know that he owes his life to always keeping a positive attitude (“I’ll Be Here Tomorrow!”). It was a gang buster number!

Since we met only once a week, by the time we got to the third (and final) week I’d had only one other session with Brad, our musical Director, and was seizing up with fear that I wasn’t going to be prepared enough to carry it off. Our Director (or “coach” as she was called) had been imported from somewhere and had decided that the presentation theme/concept was going to be “a fabulous party” and we were supposed “to get in touch with our fabulous selves.” Well, I thought that was a load of hogwash from the outset, and after one “meeting” with her, she thankfully left me to my own stressed-out devices. Our choreographer had suggested a few good staging ideas but basically, my “fabulous self” put the piece together alone at home. It was hard work! The first time I performed it full-out was for the rest of the cast at the dress rehearsal on the day before the performance. I felt relatively confident that the character was well in hand and that I’d created the tone and energy that would propel me through the number. I happily discovered that I “still had it” and all the work I’d done on my own had paid off. The cast whooped and hollered after it was over and set my mind somewhat at ease for the following evening. Robbie and Heather were to be in town for their daughter’s graduation from UVic and would be at the show. As friends who knew me very well, they were also a source of calm and security. I needn’t have worried. The whole event was a big hit and I managed to enjoy myself as I did my thing. It’s strange how high-stress and heavy-duty moments like this get indelibly imprinted somewhere in one’s head as you’re going through them. To this day, I can still remember the entirety of the song, the words, all the staging, the breathing, my facial expressions, the body language, my constant mental assessment as I went through the three sections of the song, clocking the audience’s reactions and my own confirmations that I’d done what I intended to do on each line. It’s all still there, amazingly, all these years later!

            The months into Autumn that followed were fallow. I continued with my art work, enjoyed visits from dear friends-from-away, and spent a lot of time with Mom as she descended further into the maze of dementia. Another trip to Portland for the birthday party was a welcomed diversion, but driving back up the highway to home gave me time to think about the changes that had taken place in my life. My world had become very small, very compact, and while I held out hope for something, anything, to happen, nothing did.

By now, I’d been volunteering at the Museum for almost five years, and, with a change in the Administration and its structure having recently taken place, I was approached by the new Management to find out how I was “feeling” about the state of the Tours Program. I took this as an opportunity to set down some thoughts that had been percolating for a while and sent an e-mail off to my Boss. I also copied the Museum’s newly installed CEO, Jack Lohmann, a very affable gentleman and the highly respected President of the Canadian Museums Association. In my “assessment”, I got pretty detailed about how I thought things were, and how I thought they could be. As well, I set down what I thought would be interesting to pursue as new projects, notably an idea I’d been developing in my head over the past months, my “Museum Alchemy: The Art of Setting The Stage” Tour. It would be a new approach to the public’s view of the facility, and how everything got put together for them to see in the Galleries. I also included the suggestion of initiating Audio Guides for self-directed Tours – something I’d always loved whenever I went to museums elsewhere – and of making the very existence of the Tours Program a lot more obvious to Museum visitors.

Well, did that raise a stink or what!!! My initial post had been sent out on a Friday afternoon and by late Saturday morning, there was an e-mail from Jack Lohman to half the Museum Staff attaching my post and calling for my “sensible and attractive” ideas to be initiated! There was a frenzy in the weeks that followed as the powers-that-were scrambled to address the changes and ideas that I’d presented. The Lobby advertising for the Tours increased and speakers were installed in the Lobby over which the start of a Tour could be announced. It had always baffled me why that element of public engagement had never been implemented. It just seemed like common sense. I made plans to create an Audio Tour sample tape as an example of what I had in mind. It was another watching brief.

Thankfully, the evolution of my garden off the back patio took me into the Spring and, as Morgan lay on the warm patio bricks, I cleared out more ivy up the hill and officially started a hosta garden. Nothing like creating garden to get you out of your head!

Then, out of nowhere, I got offered a production of “Spring Awakening” at the Belfry.

It wasn’t long before I let my held breath out regarding Mom’s residency at Somerset House – “the resort” – on Dallas Road. Without going into too much detail, and there was a lot of it, it was decided for me that she needed more attention that they could provide her under their Independent Living licensing limitations, and we were “asked” to find somewhere else for her to live. That was a blow, but there was nothing I could do about it. Part of me understood that this road we were on was getting shorter and, despite my wanting it to be otherwise, more attention was required and I was back on the hunt for what was, painfully, an “Assisted Living” facility. It took a couple of weeks trekking about to find another home for her, and somehow I arrived at a spectacular place called “Sunrise Senior Living”. I got Mom in for an interview which went surprisingly well. I was amazed at how animated and vocal she was in the conversation with the Administration folks. Their questions were designed to assess how much help she would need in their care structure and Mom dazzled them (and me) by responding to what I thought would be difficult recalls for her. When they asked her when she was born, the answer tumbled out of her mouth without a moment’s hesitation. I was stunned! It was the same with most of the other questions. Who was this person??

            Long story short, she moved in a few weeks later and the settling-in was fast and, happily, uncomplicated. The only down side was the expense, but I figured it was worth it in that she would be getting the kind of attention she had needed all along – a devoted staff who were up for just about anything. And it would certainly come to that as time went on.

            Gradually, over the following months, I relinquished the structure and order of my Spreadsheets Life – my budgets and payrolls – as Music Services International closed down for good. It was an easy let-go, but I found myself at sixes and sevens for want of something to take the place of those organized numbers, something that I could look at and experience that pleasure I found in organization and control. Then, unbidden and unexpectedly, the drawing I’d done months earlier made its way into my head and settled in to the point where I couldn’t ignore it. How should I respond to this vague idea of spending some real time with what I now decided could be another aspect of that part of me that needed fulfilling? Never one to do things by halves, I went out and bought as many books as I could find on drawing and, adjacently, the world of Coloured Pencils. I felt that painting with water colours or oils or acrylics would be much too messy for tidy me, not to mention a set-up that would require a lot of preparation and, worse, a clean-up afterward. A pencil could be picked up on a moment’s notice, anywhere, on a whim, and I could start drawing.

I devoured the books I bought, starting with the “Drawing On The Right Side of the Brain” Workbook. It was a “guided practice” book and at the first page, I was hooked, deeply and fully. I did every exercise over and over again – negative space, contour, perspective, proportion, and on and on – and combined with the other books, I found myself thinking about the lessons and practice sessions even when I wasn’t actually doing them and wondering what my next step should be. One phrase repeated over and over again in every single book I read was “draw what you see”. It was a simple sentence to read or say out loud , but it wasn’t until I fully understood what it actually meant that this new world opened up for me. It came down to trust, trusting my eye to “see” beyond “looking” and trusting my hand to reproduce what was really there. Even the challenge of the concept thrilled me, that difference between “looking” and “seeing”.

But I had a problem. I discovered it was very difficult for me not be “perfect”! That might sound somewhat pretentious, but I found it hard to leave something only part way done. “Sketching” was impossible for my mind. If it wasn’t completed to my persnickety visual satisfaction, I had to keep going until it was. It was a chore to work just one element of an image and leave it. It’s probably a flaw from an artistic point of view but if you looked through my sketch books, they are all full images, nothing half finished, nothing part way, nothing “sketchy”. It was a blessing and a curse and limited my full understanding of an aspect of drawing at the same time. I decided that I would have to learn as I went, that each project I tackled would have to be a learning experience in and of itself. And once that had settled in (and it took a long time), I sailed! It was confining to a degree, but I knew that the only way I was going to get any satisfaction – and that’s what I was looking for – was to finish whatever I started.

While there were some small experiments out of my imagination to gauge shadings and structures in my sketch books, most of what I drew was from photos I’d taken or found on-line. The first major effort was to draw a pair of my socks. Pictured on the left is the photo I took of the socks and below, the drawing of the socks. It shocked me as I drew. I could see the image come into being as I coordinated my eye and hand and I was incredulous that it could happen this way. This was the “photorealism” I found myself going for and the result actually gave me a great sense of accomplishment and the courage to go forward. The time ahead now had some definition.

I touched base with the UVic folks to follow-up on the possibility of another Musical Theatre class, but this time, despite all the positive response we’d had, there was no way through the budget cutbacks that had now been imposed on the Department and I had to let that go. However, where one door closed, another opened and it was the Canadian College Of Performing Arts that provided another opportunity for work. Their Administration had changed and two folks from Alberta had been installed as GM and AD and I set up an appointment with Derold Roles, the new AD, to see if there were any positions that needed filling. Derold was an extremely affable fellow who was still finding his sea legs in his new position but intimated that with so much on his plate he might have to give up some of his teaching duties. We basically taught the same curriculum with the same approach, and he suggested that there might be a class-sharing opportunity down the road and he would get back to me as soon as things settled down. I left feeling positive and upbeat about the prognosis.

I was now into my second year volunteering at the Royal BC Museum. Somehow, I’d been chosen by the Museum as a go-to spokesperson for the Tours Program. I think their choice had to do with my theatre, on-camera and voice-over experience, and I ended up doing a few local promos that had turned out well. They were easy for Museum Staff to organize and easy for me to put together on a moment’s notice. So I was somewhat taken aback when that small facet of my volunteer position got a lot bigger. I was now being asked for by Management when they’d been approached by international tourism organizations and found myself the center of attention a number of times, the largest of which was for the Japanese National Television Production Company. I was to present my entire Tour live and it would be filmed by the visiting production crew. By now, my tour – the Insect (Entomology) Tour – was fully in my mouth and I had no trouble delivering it at the drop of a hat. I’d been doing it for months and it was just like being on stage. So on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by all the Company’s equipment, technicians and assistants, only one of whom spoke English, we took my usual tour route and I did my thing – in English, of course. The only difference was that I was speaking to a camera rather than a bunch of tourists. We stopped at all the usual exhibits and “backstage” areas on my tour. I’d do my spiel, they’d film it and we’d move on. With crew chattering away to each other in Japanese I was in the dark most of the time about how it was going, but the young lady who was translating back and forth assured me that I was doing exactly what they needed. We finished the tour, which had taken a couple of hours, they all bowed at me over and over again saying “thankyouthankyou!” – all one word – and that was it! I smiled and bowed back over and over again as they packed up all their gear, and, with a lot more bowing, disappeared through the Museum’s big front doors, leaving me standing in the middle of the Lobby wondering what had just happened! It was all rather surreal. I never did find out if I’d made it on to Japanese television, but was told later that the TV production company had been very pleased with the results. A strange day, to say the least.

I’d again been in touch with Ken at Rainbow and asked if there was anything on the horizon. He quickly responded with a “definitely”. The up-coming summer would see “Footloose” and “Annie” on stage. From my point of view, directing “Footloose” would be the only way I could be involved. I was now much too old to play ‘Shaw’ again and I couldn’t spend more than one show away from Mom. So we left it, again, in the air. Then, out of nowhere, just before Christmas, news came that Ken had died suddenly of a heart attack. To say I was shocked and massively saddened would be an understatement. It was the same helpless sense of loss I felt when Sam passed, no words or thoughts to make sense of it, no way to ease the pain and only an emptiness that surrounded me. He was 66, same age as me. He had been a huge part of my life both personally and professionally for most of my time in Winnipeg and his death left a huge hole in the Community. The prognosis for the Company was anyone’s guess and I wondered what they would do. There was no successor in the wings and they would probably have a difficult time getting past this. I was thousands of kilometers away and felt helpless once more.

Then the calls started coming in. I found myself at the two ends of an emotional spectrum – being careful of what I wished for, and waiting for a call that never comes. That was all in my head of course, but the fact that my association with Rainbow had been long and somewhat prolific fueled speculation from the outset. My dear friends, Robbie and Teresa, always on my side, brought the realities to the fore. Would I consider taking over the reins there if they asked me? They told me that other folks had asked them the same question. Apparently, for some it seemed a no-brainer. The potential got me very excited, but the personal ramifications were enormous. To my mind, they were going to need someone in place relatively fast as auditions for the upcoming season were quickly approaching. I’d heard there had been talk about splitting Ken’s job into two positions – a GM and a Producer/AD – but that would mean hiring two folks to run the organization and it was going to be hard enough to find one. I tried to remove myself from it all, but those thoughts kept intruding into each hour of each day one way or another. This all brought back vivid memories of being in the same situation years earlier when Jack Timlock had been let go from Rainbow and the Board had splintered into two warring groups regarding the Company’s direction. One faction had called me while I was working down in Portland and actually offered me the job. The other had decided on a different approach and, a few days later, they rescinded the initial offer. The “careful what you wish for” end of the spectrum was hard to ignore, but I knew that I was being unrealistic. Mind-bending chaos comes easily to me when I face something over which I have no control, and the angst I generated for myself was debilitating. It was, seemingly, just a matter of time before something would happen … one way or another.

There was a routine that I’d established with Mom while she was at Somerset House and which I now continued at Sunrise – two visits every day, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon, just to touch base and make sure that things were in order. There were some adjustments, no two ways about it, and I still had to thwart her occasional insistence that she was going to move back to Toronto and get a job! That was a head shaker for me and I combatted the thought by saying “Well, we’ll have to look into that” … and five minutes later it was forgotten. There were some “off” days for her – the “wobbles” as she called them – but as the weather warmed up and the flowers started to bloom,  the new place began to gradually register with her and she settled down, even to the point of making some friends, one in particular, Betty Maud. They were constant companions and entertained each other.

I was in constant communication with her Caregivers, and the Staff with their input were encouraging and incredibly compassionate. At the six-month point, I had a meeting with the “Care Heads” who told me they were very pleased with Mom’s involvement. They said that she would take “leadership” positions now and then and that it was a good sign of acclimatization and what they referred to as “diminishment of elopement” … her attempts to leave the residence. She did that for a bit after they’d tried reducing the dosage of one of her medications, but once back on the normal dose the escape attempts stopped happening. In fact, the Staff told me, she would caution others about going out by themselves when they wanted to leave. I know this sounds (at this point in time) like unimportant details to be putting in these writings, but it was (at that point in time) a goodly part of my life. Everything centered about Mom’s condition, and while I understood all the ramifications and the down-the-road picture, I could not come up with any alternatives that would result in any other options for me. This was where I had to be and, deep inside, I loved doing it. It was a purpose, a mission, and, while not being on stage or directing shows, it was another kind of commitment, and deeply rewarding. There were times when I’d look a her and have to fight off a great depression about the difference between who she used to be and who she had become. The only merciful thing is that the disease only permits a Life “in the moment”. There was no “then” and “now” for her, no comparisons … and I took heart in that.

            I applied for a “Drama Teacher” job at St. Michael’s University School here, a private, high-end school, but never heard anything back. This spurred me into putting some thoughts and observations about Rainbow down on paper and sending them off to Cam McIntyre who was still on the Board there. He got back to me indicating that it was going to be some time before any decisions were made and we left it at that.

            Visitors kept me busy. Robbie and Heather came out to see their daughter, Tara, off to the Philippines for a bit. A dear friend from Portland days, my Musical Director, Vera Long came in for a day with her husband prior to an Alaska cruise. The Museum began a new program called the “Street Team” which put some of us Tour Guides out on the streets of the Inner Harbour to drum up business for the exhibits in our Galleries. Unfortunately, that didn’t last more than a couple of weeks. Popped down to Portland to touch base with Greg Tamblyn who tried to entice me to do “La Cage Aux Folles” again for him, this time as ‘The Senator’ rather than in my “old role” as ‘Zaza’ for which I was much too old now. It was nice to be asked.

             As part of my delving into drawing, I had taken out a subscription to a publication called Ann Kulberg’s “Colored Pencil Magazine’ and had accompanied my order with a couple of my drawings, a series I’d been working on called “Shirts”, asking for some input if she had a moment. I was pleasantly surprised when she wrote back requesting permission to publish one of them in the magazine (July 2012). It seemed she was impressed, writing … “as to your art … Wow! Loving this concept and execution as well. I hope you’ll enter one of these in our Member Show. They are really very interesting, unique and technically beautiful. So glad you shared them, Richard”.  It was just the boost I needed and started me thinking that maybe this whatever-it-was-I-was-doing was something more than just “exercises”.

            Those last few paragraphs sum up the comparatively regular things which, according to my Journals, occupied my days. The flux I was experiencing with Rainbow, my concerns about Mom, and my day-to-day existence were taking up a lot of space in my head, and it’s only been by way of my Journals that I have any clear picture of what I was going through at the time, my brain having gradually erased most of those long-ago memories if only out of self-preservation. Reading back the very sporadic entries paints a rather dire set of circumstances I was facing. I think it was only by writing that I managed to purge what was festering and needed to be exorcised somehow. I found that “handing over” my turmoil to my subconscious when I went to bed and letting whatever happened way down deep happen seemed to work. In fact, it was astonishing. Somehow, from somewhere, a kind of physical release gave me the opportunity to take deeper breaths during the daylight hours, and while my life seemed to be getting smaller and more compact, I managed to keep an even keel and plough through … thankfully.

            I continued to nag Cam McIntyre for a bit but with few concrete results. Then, one morning, I got a message via Facebook from a lady named Julie Eccles. I didn’t know who she was but in her post she wrote that “a little birdy” had told her I was going to be in Winnipeg in late September (something about which I had told almost no one) and “could we have a meeting with regard to your affiliation with Rainbow Stage?”  I wrote back asking who she was, who the “little birdy” was and what “an affiliation” meant. I didn’t hear anything back so I wrote Cam asking him what was going on. He wrote back saying that I should “take the meeting” and, as he was texting on his phone, it was “too complicated to explain further using two thumbs”.

            As it turned out, Julie was the General Manager at Rainbow (since March of 2010 apparently, something that was news to me) and she had been charged with the task of “determining what the AD job could be”. I wrote her back and we ended up setting September 29^th as the meeting date. I was indeed going back to the Peg for that weekend to surprise Doreen Brownstone at her ninetieth birthday celebration. How Julie had come by that information was a mystery as it was also going to be a total surprise for all my friends who had organized the event. I had told them that I wouldn’t be able to attend. In any case, in my post back to Julie, I wrote that I was perplexed that there wasn’t a job description created by past Producers. She responded by writing “Hi Richard, I have a very loose plan of action established, however, I need to discuss the plan with someone of your calibre as it pertains to an Artistic Director. I hope you are still interested in discussing it with me. Thanks, Julie”. Cam had already intimated that they were thinking about splitting the “Producer” job and this was their first gambit.

            What a weekend that was!

Somehow, things started to come together over the weeks and months that followed. God’s laughter receded into the ether, and I took this as confirmation that going with the flow was the right choice. A lot of my initial forays hadn’t resulted in anything of a concrete nature, but one sort of did. Ken Peter called, filled with apologies for not getting back to me sooner. As usual, his explanation was a vitriol-filled rant about Actor’s Equity not giving Rainbow a concession to its professional performer quota and threats of going non-Equity … again. I listened without comment knowing that it was all a part of the game he loved playing with the Association. He eventually told me that I was “in mind” for ‘Gus’ in “Cats” and ‘Edna’ in “Hairspray”, their shows for the following Summer’s season (2012). He said he’d get back to me … again. But this two-show potential presented me with a dilemma … Mom.

           Those shows in Winnipeg would take up about three months, and I was at a loss for what to do about leaving Mom alone in Victoria. She and I had discussed it a bit but, with no apparent solution for either of us, this quandary hung in the air. In the course of our conversations I had ventured into territory that was, for me, frightening, and for her, confusing. Her inability to remember was becoming problematic from a number of perspectives. “Am I losing my mind?” she asked me at one point. “No, Mom, not your mind, just your memory”. I explained what was happening to her physically, how the enzymes that controlled some connections in her brain were failing and not letting her remember things. She asked if there was something she could take for this condition, and I told her she was taking it already – the Aricept pill I gave her every evening at dinner. I had made an appointment with her Doctor (Marlene Muller) earlier in the day requesting her help in further explaining to Mom what was going on and why it wouldn’t be wise for her to live by herself any longer. It turned out that this appointment would be the first time I think Mom had a glimmer of what was happening to her, and I breathed a small sigh of relief knowing that Dr. Muller was on-side and I wasn’t completely alone. We began to consider some alternative living situations and I made some appointments to view facilities around the city … and there were a lot of them.

I was also navigating another fraught situation initiated by Sam’s Family relative to the Pension funds that Sam and I had been putting away for my retirement. We had gone back and forth for much too long and it had come down to my lawyer filing a suit against the Estate. Apparently once filed, that kind of thing becomes part of the  public record and as a result, and probably because of my profile in Winnipeg, I was approached by a Court Reporter wanting me to comment on the case. Of course I didn’t respond, but the following day there was an article about the suit in the Free Press! Could this get any worse? Once out in the world, the news brought calls and e-mails of support from a few folks, and while it made me feel a bit better, I was well aware that I would be travelling this road alone. I was hopeful that the article would be the end of the press coverage and that this would all be dealt with out of the public eye. I steeled myself for the court date.

At about the same time, Ken got back to me let me know that the Rainbow Board wanted to approach George Wendt (‘Norm’ from “Cheers”) to do the ‘Edna’ role in “Hairspray”. I couldn’t figure out why they were going that route. It was probably costing them a hell of a lot more money than I would have, and he certainly wasn’t “Manitoba Talent”. But there was nothing I could do about it. Ken suggested that I play a few small roles and “cover” ‘Edna’. He also informed me that the “Cats” director (from Toronto) didn’t know me and was hesitant about casting me. The role was now to be ‘Deuteronomy’ and I was concerned about having to hit the high G’s in his “Addressing Of Cats” number. We’d not talked about fees but I was informed that Rainbow wouldn’t cover accommodation (at least not for me) and I began to feel less and less inclined to venture back to Winnipeg for this contract. It became another watching brief.

One thing that did take a swing in the right direction was the UVic Musical Theatre Performance Class in May. The course was listed in the Theatre Department’s Catalogue and was another wait-see situation. I’d been very clear about the class size limit and, with the wonderful Jan Wood, who I’d worked with on “The Life Inside” at The Belfry and who was now the new Department Head, lobbying for me, I was feeling a bit more positive. It had been years since such a class had been offered at the U., so, just to give a taste of what the course would be like and to “drum up business”, we arranged an open Lecture-Dem during a lunch period. I would coach with a couple of pre-arranged volunteer students for forty-five minutes in front of whoever turned up …  and I was told there was a lot of interest. If nothing else, the past months had served to highlight the tentative nature of just about everything in my life, so with this class being a bit more secure, I held on to it for dear life.

The Lecture-Dem was great! There were a few dozen folks in the seats loudly chattering away when I arrived in the studio. The two volunteers, a boy and girl, had worked up some material and were eager to get going. Jan introduced me with an enthusiastic pitch for the class and I hit the ground running. I could feel the tension in my back start to ease up as we began. It was so easy to get into, so familiar … like the old days teaching in Portland or the classes and workshops in Winnipeg. I felt so at home. This was where I belonged and the time with the excellent young performers flew by. I knew the numbers they’d chosen really well and spoke to the audience about the potential challenges in the material so they’d have some frame of reference for my focus, and then we began to work. I’d not heard them sing up to this point but figured out their experience very quickly and honed in on their strengths, using them as take-off points for most of the approach. We all soared! The world outside the studio disappeared. They responded to my input enthusiastically and that went a long way to fueling my joy, urging them on to greater heights. When it was over – well beyond the time that had been allotted – folks, including some of the Professors who had dropped in to see what it was all about, crowded around me with questions and thanks for the class. I was on a massive high, physically buzzing as I drove home, now feeling like this could actually happen. I waited for the Enrollment Status numbers to be listed.

In the meantime, I was back to Winnipeg for what had now become a Mediation rather than a trial prompted by the suit. This trek had been going on for over a year now, and the upheaval of the months previous had been almost more than I could bear. I couldn’t bring myself to set all it down in my Journal, to re-live the chaos, so my entries during this time were very sparse. I just tried to get through each day and then let it go, but that didn’t work too well.  My anxiety began to manifest itself physically. My stomach was constantly in knots, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and at times my head felt as if it would explode!

Not having experienced anything like this before, there was a part of me that was very objective, like an observer who took in details and atmosphere from a distance, like I was watching a movie. But the other part of me, the inside-the-drama person, was filled with trepidation and angst. The evening before the session with the Mediation Judge, Norm (my lawyer) and I had a long conversation to prepare for how the process would play out. Although we’d spoken on the phone, this was the first time we’d met face to face, and I found him very focused and attentive, business-like but with empathy. I knew I was expected to make a “statement” at the start of the session and had decided to read the “Conceptualization” section of “The Book”, the detailed document I’d created for whomever was going to take over my job at M.S.I. It was a small narrative telling how the Company had come about, how it had evolved, and how it functioned. Norm asked me to read it out loud for him. For the first time and  much to my surprise, I found myself getting very emotional as I read. I had to stop at one point as I started to tear up and my throat began to constrict. As I spoke the words, the memories of those early days came flooding back and I realized how affected I was by the depth of Sam’s and my relationship. Norm “suggested” that my emotions become a part of our case along with the factual evidence we’d brought along to present. And that was pretty much how it played out.

At the start of the day, after the Judge arrived in the large room with the four of them and the two of us seated on opposite sides of a long table, Norm spoke a little bit and then asked me to say a few words. I read the essay again and even though I’d been through it once already, I found myself losing it again try though I might to suppress the cracks in my voice. I didn’t want to merely “reproduce” what had happened the evening before but I couldn’t hold it back. When it was their turn to speak, Sam’s two sisters said a few quiet words I couldn’t quite hear and then his brother made a statement that made my back stiffen from my glutes to the top of my head. “Sam didn’t have friends”, he said. “He only had business associates”.

I remembered my lawyer’s warning from the night before that I shouldn’t show any feelings when the other side spoke, but it was all I could do to keep myself from leaping over the table and yelling in Sam’s brother’s face. His words were embarrassing. Maybe I’d missed something in the twenty years that Sam and I had worked together, but from the outpouring of feelings and love in the memorials and messages that were sent or relayed to me in the days following his passing, I knew how wrong this statement was. Sam was a friend, on so many levels, in so many ways to so many people.  It was just remarkably sad that his Family never knew him the way the rest of the World did.

With the Family now in one room and me and Norm in another, the remainder of the Mediation was simply a case of the Judge going back and forth between each party with dollar amounts and counters. I tensed up each time the door of our room opened and the Judge came in with a new number. It was like gambling, like a bidding war, never knowing when the other side was going to say “No more! We want a trial” and walk away. Eventually they settled on giving me most of the Pension amount and that was it. It cost me 20% of the total award going to my lawyer, but it was over, and I hoped I would never have to go through anything like this ever again. The funds would be designated a “gift” from MSI and non-taxable. But the lingering question in my mind after all this was “why”? Why had this happened? What did they have against me? They didn’t know me. They knew nothing of Sam’s and my relationship over those twenty years. I found out later that they simply didn’t believe me … or Cindy, Sam’s Assistant who was a witness regarding the account. The other fact that perplexed me was why they hadn’t been satisfied with the absolutely gigantic American Federation of Musicians Pension Sam had accrued over the years. He  had designated his Estate as beneficiary and, by default, those funds belonged to the Family. I had many thoughts over the time that followed but ultimately decided to write Sam’s older sister. I’d come to believe that she had been the voice of reason on the other side but had been overruled by her brother. I wanted to express my sadness that all this had happened. I never heard back from any of them.

When I got back, Mom and I picked up where we left off looking at “retirement” homes and had been making some headway. I had previewed a few by myself and became somewhat depressed by the lower-end places I saw. The heat and smells of them reminded me of the depressing “old folks homes” we used to perform in when on various concert or theatre tours back in the early days, and I knew that Mom (and I) would definitely not be up for any of those. It was only First Class facilities that I put on the viewing list, and we ended up finding a couple that pleased us both. The fact that the folks who took us on the tours read Mom’s personality to a tee was a great advantage. At one place, The Somerset on Dallas Road, the lady showing us around kept calling Mom “Doctor Blackhurst” and Mom loved that! It was obvious that they had done follow-up research based on the application I’d submitted, and had discovered all the titles and positions she’d held over her decades in Canadian Business, Administration and Education. They knew to appeal to her ego and that went a long way in us deciding that this was where she should live. The road to this point had been bumpy to say the least, and our initial conversations about a move had not gone well. But it was this heavenly facility, like a resort hotel with beautiful appointments, great staff, great food and lots of activities, that won her over. And all the flattery didn’t hurt. Hell, I would have moved in if I could have afforded it!

            It wasn’t an easy move by any stretch of the imagination, but we got it done and she was soon ensconced in an upper floor suite and everything was settled … or at least I thought it was. It quickly became apparent that the labyrinthine geography of the huge building was going to be problematic. She would get lost, baffled by all the different wings and the many floors and hallways, and the staff would find her wandering about unable to find her way back to her place. To be honest, I found it a bit confusing myself. It broke my heart to see her so addled and getting depressed in spite of the surroundings. We (the Staff and I) decided that a place on the main floor, with fewer direction options would be best. So we moved her into a “Garden Suite” with a small outdoor patio just off the Lobby. There was only one direction in which to go once she left her room and that led right to the Main Hub with all the amenities. Her spirits seemed to rise now that things were much simpler to navigate and as she started to meet people and get involved in some of the activities, I held my breath. How long this would last was anyone’s guess.

The Musical Theatre Performance Class was a huge success. While the initial registration of 23 was too big a group for me, it began to level off and even dropped a bit. I got nervous that they would cancel it again. But the University had relaxed its quotas and we ended up with 19 students which, after the first class, went down to 16, a perfect class size. No cease and desist order arrived from Administration and we continued forward. Ah, what an oasis this became for me. Those two and a half hours in the classroom each day took me far, far away from the upheaval outside. I luxuriated in this focused environment that filled me with great joy. As I knew would be the case, there were a couple of, well, lesser lights, a few kids who might have thought this was going to be a “Mickey Mouse Course” (it certainly wasn’t) and they could just turn up and get a grade. It reminded me that a University atmosphere could be slightly mechanical at times. I had to keep the awarding of grades uppermost in mind. But then, that was why these folks were taking the course, so I had to deal with it. On the other hand, there were a lot of “stars” in this group, kids who were serious, who prepared for each day, and brought their best game to each session. I had a great accompanist from the Victoria Conservatory, Michael Drislane, who could play anything and was incredibly supportive of the students. This is not to say that everything was smooth and rosy. There were a couple of kids who thought they knew more than I did. I’d encountered this in the past a few times and found that the only approach was patience combined with objectively presenting options and performance choices. Urging them into a technical approach for a bit and not challenging any emotional reaction to my input usually calmed them down and made them a bit more responsive to gentle “suggestions”. Those folk kept me on my toes.

            But there was one young Japanese girl, newly-arrived in Canada, who presented me with a unique and baffling situation. She was very timid, spoke almost no English, had no Musical Theatre experience and didn’t have much of a singing voice. She’d entered the class three days late and it was very hard for her to pick up what was going on, try though I might to make things simple for her. Even the other students tried to help by suggesting some easy song choices to her, all to no avail. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she had enrolled in the class. I had a conversation with Jan  about what I should do because I knew I was legitimately going to have to fail her. “There’s nothing one can do about a student’s lack of preparation except to encourage and assist however one can”. As it turned out, she dropped out at the end of the second week, saving me the guilt I knew I’d feel in failing someone.

But it struck me that teaching in this kind of environment, at least teaching Performing Arts in this kind of environment, is often filled with pitfalls. I can remember leaving Sir George (Williams University in Montreal) so many years ago after eventually coming to the conclusion that, for me, the place to learn Theatre was in the Theatre. I’d been through three years of University classes and was getting bored with the purely academic approaches to Theatre. While some of my professors were inspirational (Norma Springford to be specific) most of the available classes were based in analysis, formal, dry discussions, not addressing what I needed to perform on stage. From personal experience, I have always approached teaching Performance as an essentially active, on-your-feet involvement, where one needs to engage and motivate students to the point of them tugging at the bit, desperate to get up and do it themselves! Halfway through the second week of the class, at one point during a break and thinking I was alone in the room, I found myself spontaneously jumping up and down, dancing about in response to a) what I was feeling in the moment and b) what the students were achieving in the class. Apparently, there was a group of kids just outside my eyeline. “What’s that about?” one asked, surprising the hell out of me as they came down the steps into the studio. I just smiled at them and said “Sheer joy!”

We had a Class Presentation at the end of the course. There were a lot of people there – friends, families, other students, professors – and I was so incredibly proud of how they performed. After three weeks we had become this brave little company showing what we could do, not just for acclaim or praise, but because we could! I felt so deeply grateful to have been able to touch this incredibly fulfilling part of my life experience again. Jan, and some other faculty, were over the moon about what they had seen that afternoon, and we began another conversation about this Class being offered again, this time as part of the regular semester programming. But that was another watching brief to add to my possibilities down the road.

            “People Plan. God Laughs!” In hindsight, this was the theme for the New Year (2010) … and beyond. As MSI moved toward its closure, there were a lot of details to be dealt with now and in the few months remaining. The payrolls had diminished to a trickle as the last shows on our roster finished up, some sadly, others not so much. I’d already sent off the tax forms to the musicians who had worked for us in the previous year and now, as each show ended, I enclosed their current T4A’s with their final paychecks. The last show, a regional production in Calgary, closed at the end of May and, simply and quietly, after an astonishingly eventful 20-year adventure, we were done! It was tough. Really tough, mainly because I was all by myself. The morning-after-blues set in for a bit, but I eventually shrugged it off and started to think about the future. I knew there was a danger of falling into a depression, not that I’m prone to doing that, so I sat in the sun for a while, mentally listing all the possibilities I’d not followed up on, and vowed to get something happening.

            I don’t know why, but as a little experiment, I got out an old sketch pad one afternoon and started to draw my hand, just to see if I could do it. The result wasn’t great (the colour in the photo opposite was added much later), but the attempt struck a chord somewhere deep inside. I found myself thinking about where this was coming from and how I did what I had just done. It baffled me and for the next few days I couldn’t get it out of my head … not the drawing itself but the “act” of drawing, the physical connection between what I saw through my eyes (my hand) and the translation of it into the lines I had made on the paper. There was some kind of need to understand what this was, and I had to investigate further. And I did, as it turned out, in spades!

            With all this time on my hands, I intensified my dive into finding things to do. I had noticed that the Royal B.C. Museum had been picked as one of three North American Museums chosen to host The Terra Cotta Warriors Exhibit from China next year. I decided to get myself involved now rather than later, so set up an appointment for an interview to become a Museum volunteer. I was “spoken to” by a tart woman after explaining to her why I was interested in getting involved, and was told that I would start my “probation” in the Gift Shop (a thought that turned me off right away) and then perhaps move into doing Tours in the ”Behind The Scenes” Program starting in early Summer. My Saturday mornings were now filled.

            My Musical Theatre Performance Class at UVic now had an enrollment of 17 students and registration was still open! I was stoked. But Warwick (Dobson, Department Head) thought 20 would be better. It would mean that he wouldn’t have to “argue” the case with the Dean for the class to go forward. I had also sent an introductory letter and resume along with the Course Outline I’d done for UVic to the CEO of the Victoria Conservatory of Music about doing the same sort of class there, but I’d not heard anything. Then out of the blue, the head of their Voice Department (Ingrid Attrot) asked me to meet with her. At exactly the same time, UVic pulled the plug on the Performance Class! Warwick had gone on vacation so hadn’t been around to fight for the class. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this” began the e-mail from the Department Secretary … and I knew what the rest of the message would be. “Where one door closes, another opens” got me through some depressing days and also bolstered me to not let it go. I found out that it had been the Associate Dean who had made the decision about cancelling “my” class and I decided to appeal to Sarah Blackstone, the Fine Arts Dean. I told her that I would even be willing to volunteer to teach the class – an act of heresy that would certainly send the powers-that-be into a tizzy. She was back to me immediately telling me that she’d known nothing about the class as she had been in contract negotiations and, if I “could be patient”, she’d “find out how we could take advantage of (my) generous offer”. So I waited.

            In the meantime, I began my Gift Shop “probation”. I had only experienced “working retail” once before – in a teeny tiny “satellite store” at The Bay for St. John’s Music during a week one Christmas selling keyboards and musical knickknacks. And that was Hell, utter Hell … standing about for five hours, alone, waiting for someone, anyone, even by accident, to enter the temporary “store” crammed into a space behind the refrigerators and ovens of the Appliances Department. I tried to keep myself occupied in the face of utter boredom. While the Museum Shop was massive, a going concern, and a lot more interesting, I had been assigned to work in a small section of the store selling little stuffed animals (wooly mammoths and the like) and cards, and out of which I could not go. All the “good stuff”, the pottery, jewelry and art work, was in another part of the shop and out of bounds for me. There were a number of ladies working in other areas and we would wave at each other from a distance, aching to mingle and compare notes about the wares in our charge. Heaven forbid we would approach a customer in another part of the store and ask if we could help them find something. Whenever my “boss” (the lady who had interviewed me) was “on the floor” – thankfully not often – and I had the good fortune to get a customer, she would swoop in, take over the conversation and guide them away into another area. That pissed me off thoroughly. And it wasn’t only me. In the breakroom we would commiserate with each other, and I couldn’t wait for my shift to be over. Three and a half hours went by very slowly.

And so did the two weeks before I finally got notice that I was to attend a four-hour “Museum orientation” session in preparation for taking on an “animation” position inside the Exhibition Halls. As an “animator”, I couldn’t be aggressive in any way and found myself using telepathy to lure passersby, mentally asking if they were in anyway interested in learning about “The Painted Turtles of British Columbia” while standing, forlorn, behind an exhibition cart with some printed information and a turtle or two in a glass aquarium. I’d seen pitiful individuals, now me, when on visits to other Museums around the world doing exactly the same thing, and always felt sorry for them. Rarely had I ever seen anyone listening to them and thought it was a dreadful way to educate folks about any particular subject. It was appalling, but that was what I was about to experience for myself. It would be another month before I was where I wanted to be – the “Behind The Scenes” Tours.

Threaded through all this was taking care of Mom. I arranged all kinds of things for her to do, all shots in the dark as far as what might captivate her and keep her interested for a few hours. The James Bay Community Center offered some group activities, and it was a bit of a boon when I could drop her off in someone else’s charge for a while. Doing some day trips, going to the opera or a play, socializing with folks at her church, doing a writing or art  class all passed time, but it became clear that anything without constant guidance wasn’t hitting the mark. She wasn’t big on television. Reading had become a chore. The days would go by, and I was thankful that the weather was nice so she could sit on the balcony in the sun and nap. She seemed satisfied with that. Some visitors were scheduled for the Summer months, and I was happy when she was happy. The fact was that I had grown used to assessing how she was reacting to an activity moment to moment, trying to experience it through her eyes. There was something rewarding about that, almost like it was a game, because I got instant confirmation of whether my approach had been right or wrong. It was making those constant adjustments that kept me going. For how long was anyone’s guess.

I finally got back into some theatre … an emotional and psychic life-line arriving at just the right moment. “The Life Inside” is a musical play written (and Directed) by James Fagan Tate inspired by Maeterlinck’s 1895 played called “Interieur” about a young girl who is found dead in the river outside her house and the reactions of the people in her Village. Thanks to Michael Shamata, I had been called by The Belfry to do a couple of workshops of this new piece, and approached the dates with anticipation and excitement. Except for Michael, I knew no one. The first workshop was a week long and the second, two weeks. The Composer, a patient and gregarious lady name Joelysa Pankanea, was also our Musical Director and played the marimba. She had produced a very interesting soundscape, beautiful, atmospheric music, with some songs that were a bit on the difficult side vocally but a nice challenge. There were 15 in the cast for the first workshop (the largest show that The Belfry had ever staged) and it felt slightly strange to be back in the saddle but in a foreign environment. I made some friends quickly enough, but we didn’t really settle in until the longer and more intense second workshop. I played a character called ‘The Beekeeper’. The piece was very short – one Act, just over an hour – and I had little to say but lots to sing as part of the Ensemble. I came to adore the music and most of it came off the page with a bit of practice. A few new folks came in during the second workshop including one lady who would become the tacit (for the most part) bane of my existence, a nice enough person … but she sang flat. And I don’t mean just a bit off-key. It was Elaine-Stritch-in-the-“Company”-Original-Cast-recording flat! I have an involuntary physical response when someone sings flat. My glutes flex, the muscles in the left side of my neck tense up pulling my head down toward my left shoulder and my left eyelid begins to flutter. It’s a reaction I can’t control, try though I might. It took me a while to gather up the courage to mention something to Joelysa, but she didn’t seem to be too concerned. She thought it added an “authentic” flavour to the group sound! The group sounded incredible so, for me, it was a shame that this lady was allowed to continue to sing. When she was out sick for a couple of days, her absence was noticeable – as if providing proof of her effect on our sound. But she eventually came back, and we soldiered on. James (Jimmy) and Joelysa were always in great form, upbeat and extremely accommodating, and as the orchestra (marimba, harp, violin and bass) was added, the dreamlike, ethereal soundscape filled out the overall feeling of despair and sorrow of the piece. I looked forward to an audience seeing our “Presentation” at the end of the workshop.

            I had also put in an application to direct something for the Victoria Operatic Society, the only Company in town that did Musical Theatre. Unfortunately, it’s a non-professional  organization and holds “auditions” for all of its production’s Creative Teams (including the “Producer”) so I didn’t hold out much hope of getting anything. I eventually got an interview, and the Committee was very pleasant. It turned out that they did pay an honorarium – $1,500.00 max. for a four month rehearsal period – and asked me what shows I would be interested in directing. I told them I wouldn’t say no to “A Chorus Line” or “42^nd Street”, both of which I’ve done, and we left it at that. A few days later, I received a very complimentary let-down letter. At least they know who I am.

            The time that followed was fraught on a personal level. Mom was erratic to say the least, but I managed to keep things afloat for the most part. I learned a lot about myself in the course of all this, mostly to do with accessing my patience gene. There were times when it was all I could do to hold my tongue … and sometimes I didn’t, which I always regretted afterward. And there was also an evolving situation with Sam’s Family having to do with some money we had been setting aside over the years as a Retirement Fund for me. It became such a contentious issue that I eventually resigned as the Estate Executor and retained a lawyer to represent me in the fight over this Pension Account in the Company’s holdings. That battle would go on for much longer than it should have. Families and Wills apparently do not mix very well.

”The Life Inside” finally went into its official rehearsal period. I found it complicated balancing my life around rehearsal, tending to Mom and Morgan and the unending back and forth with the Estate. But, truth be told, the show rehearsals were a small oasis of sanity for me. The cast had now ballooned to nineteen people, and we were a tight bunch during the rehearsal period. However, once we moved onto the stage, things got a little … well, weird. The Belfry is a small theatre seating about 275 people. It used to be a church and the balcony wraps around the space giving it a very intimate feel, perfect for this show we were doing. But there was one strange drawback for some reason. Our cast’s experience level varied somewhat and that manifested itself in the vocal levels used during the later rehearsals and run-throughs. When we were singing, it was wonderful – full throated and beautiful (for the most part … that flat lady hadn’t improved) – but when it came to speaking the lines, it was something else altogether. I think some folks thought that because the space was so small that one didn’t have to speak up, that the Theatre Schools many of our Company members had attended never stressed this aspect of performance. I can remember years ago walking on stage at the Manitoba Theatre Center for the first time in “The Elephant Man”. My first spoken lines were met with Richard Ouzounian’s stentorian command from out in the house …  “LOUDER!!”. My experience had been in smaller theatres which I knew how to fill. MTC’s Mainstage was 800 seats in a vast auditorium, and I learned quickly to speak up for fear of incurring the wrath of Richard again. But now, a new-fangled “naturalistic” delivery was something that drove me nuts. There were points when I couldn’t hear people standing three feet from me, a problem when it was my line and I was straining to hear my cue! I mentioned this to Jim and in his pleasant and gracious manner he would ask for more volume, but the request never seemed to stick. It wasn’t until the talk-backs after some shows during the run when audience members made mention of not being able to hear some performers that things improved, but only minimally.

            The show was very well received – as it should have been. Notices were most positive and audience comments centered on how “beautiful it was to watch” and “I was mesmerized” … some maybe a bit too much on occasion! We (the Ensemble) were seated in chairs on-stage facing the audience for the entire show. During the quiet parts (most of the production) I could see people nodding off or in full sleep mode. Slightly off-putting but understandable. The show closed as it had run … quietly. In the last week, the flat-singing-lady had a cold and couldn’t sing … at all. It was at that point that I discovered that I hadn’t been the only one who had complained about her. Vindication was mine!

            I probably didn’t realize how subtly stress can overtake you … in fact, I know I didn’t. During the Saturday matinee at the end of the second week, I began to feel odd. I’d felt somewhat drowsy and a bit light headed earlier on, but I kept taking deep breaths hoping the feeling would pass. We were on stage from start to finish so I couldn’t get some water or lie down for a minute. During the last ten minutes we were standing at our chairs to sing the last number and this light-headedness became more obvious and I had to sit down. I began to feel as if I might pass out and I certainly didn’t want to do that on stage, so, as subtly as possible (NOT), I walked off stage and got down on the floor and started to gag and heave, which freaked out the Assistant Stage Manager. I began to feel a little better, but some wheels had been set in motion. I could hear all the stuff happening on stage without me but managed to get to a chair. Jan Wood, who plays the Mother in the piece, comes off stage after learning her daughter has drowned and goes through a very high-intensity mourning process – rolling on the floor, keening and crying and moaning, a routine none of us knew about. She slowly came back to “normal” and put her hand on my knee asking me if I was alright.

            At that point the backstage door to the outside opened and there were three paramedics with a gurney about to make their way on stage to collect me during the quietest moment in the play! In frantic whispers I managed to let them know that I was feeling better and directed them through another door into the Lobby. Stage Management still had the show to run so I was on my own. My insistence that I was feeling better was ignored by the paramedics as they began poking and prodding me with needles and taking blood pressure and asking me questions. They insisted I go to the hospital, so I was pulled up on the gurney, rolled out the side door, down the handicap ramp, rammed into the ambulance and we jetted off the Jubilee Hospital! I had not lost consciousness at any point and knew exactly what was going on, but I was really more concerned about getting home to make Mom dinner and taking Morgan out to pee. And there was another show coming up in a few hours! It was all incredibly embarrassing and silly but, as they kept saying during our ride to the hospital, it was better to take care of things now rather than going down again and not being able to do all the things I was listing off to them!

            At the hospital, the paramedics wheeled me into a hallway and bid me farewell as a couple of nurses parked me in an alcove in the emergency room and started to ask more questions. Then, suddenly, Michael (Shamata, the Belfry’s AD) was there, looking down at me with great concern holding my street clothes (I was still in the ‘Beekeeper’ costume!) and my stuff from the theatre. What a brick! He stayed with me during the whole episode. The nurses did some more poking and prodding, took some blood samples, did an ECG and put me on a monitor. Then they asked when I’d eaten last. I told them I’d had some coffee and an apple for breakfast and that set them off. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and they tore a strip off me for not taking better care of myself. So guilt was now added to my embarrassment and humiliation. Trudy, a crusty but sympathetic nurse, arrived with a can of Ensure and was followed by a doctor letting me know that there was nothing wrong with me and what I’d experienced was probably due to dehydration or low blood sugar (and the underlying stress about which I told no one).

            Michael, upbeat and chatty, drove me back to the theatre where I was given some soup by Stage Management and got ready for the evening show. There were a lot of commiserations from  the cast which I appreciated, but I just wanted to forget the whole thing as we sailed into the evening without any further problems. I had called one of Mom’s friends, Sharone, to let her know what was going on, but Kim, our Stage Manager had already called Mom to tell her what had happened. That sort of freaked me out, but Sharone managed to calm the waters with Mom and the evening show went well. I think I heard a little laugh from the heavens.

Fall in Victoria was passing uneventfully enough. I had settled in, Mom had found a routine, Morgan was battling arthritis but coping, and the Offices, here and back in Winnipeg, were functioning well, dealing with everything in our normal, efficient fashion. I found lots of places to explore around town with Mom and, while my outreach was minimal as far as new friends went, the days were full and quite peaceful.

            Then Sam went into the hospital. Toward the end of October, he had called and told me that he had cancer. I remember a ringing in my head beginning when he said the word … actually more of a high buzz along with a tightening of the skin at my temples.

“What?”, I said after a moment, a whispered, feeble, confused response to something of which I could make no sense.

He told me he had seen a doctor who Garth (Drabinsky) had arranged in Toronto and had received the diagnosis along with a dismal prognosis. Then, once more with Garth’s help, he’d found some holistic treatments in Florida and said he was just going to take it one step at a time and “take care of business”. This had all come out of left field for me and I was stunned. Sam and I talked multiple times every day, but I’d not seen him face to face for months. Earlier, someone had sent me some photos taken on the Red Carpet for the “Come From Away” Opening Night in Atlanta but I couldn’t find Sam in any of the pictures. That was odd. I knew he had been there. But I thought no more about it. Now, I looked through the pictures again and there he was, in a group photo, virtually unrecognizable, gaunt and emaciated. The change shocked me. The image stayed stuck in my mind. Then things happened very fast.

            A few days later, Cindy, Sam’s Assistant called, telling me that his friend Shane (Nestruck) had taken him to the hospital in the middle of the night. The doctors had told Shane that they weren’t even going to operate, indicating that it had all gone too far for surgery. Another wallop! I didn’t know what to do. In fact, there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. On the one hand, there were so many elements to the business that would have to be dealt with and I was the only one with any authority. There was hiring to be done for shows down the road that we’d already contracted, some contracts that had gone out already for productions a year away. On the other hand, I wondered if he had been “taking care of business” because he knew what was going on inside him. Sam had requested that his condition not be made public. Very few people knew what had happened, but it was a hard secret to keep. I shared it with Teresa if only because I needed to for my own sanity. But I was sure the news would get out now that he was in the hospital. It was tense.

            In the midst of all this, Michael Shamata at the Belfry Theatre had called inviting me to be part of a week-long workshop of a new Musical they would be producing in the near future. Michael said it would be “great to have me in the building” and would be a good way for me to meet some folks in the theatre community here. It cheered me a bit and gave me something to focus on, but that was short-lived.

            Just after Sam’s hospitalization, Cindy called again to say that there “wasn’t much time left” and that I’d better get there fast. It was a mad scramble, getting a flight, getting Morgan boarded somewhere, organizing Mom as much as I could and trying to decide when to book a return flight, not knowing how complicated this was all going to get. I immediately called Jim Saper, Sam’s lawyer, to let him know what was happening. I had Sam’s Power of Attorney, so I needed to get him in the loop. I told him I didn’t know if Sam’s Will was with Jim’s firm, but the Executor needed to be informed. “That would be you”, he said. WHAT? Floored again! Sam had said nothing about that. This was the first of the many surprises that were to beset me over the chaotic days that followed.

            Teresa picked me up at the airport and, after dropping off my bag at the hotel, we went up to the hospital. I had no idea how I was going to react. In my head I had planned an upbeat approach, that I would try to be positive and hopeful. I walked into the room. There were some people I didn’t know sitting in chairs set up around the bed, like an audience around a small thrust stage. The room was very hot, and the air was thick and heavy. The people turned and looked at me, but I was focused on the bed. That wasn’t Sam lying there. It was a person who had been ravaged by something dreadful. It was the shell of the man I knew. I walked over to the far side of the bed. He didn’t speak and had hardly moved since I’d walked in. I took his hand. “Hey, Boss”, I said in as normal a voice as I could muster. There was no response. I held his hand for a few moments and put it back down having received no indication that he even knew I was there. I didn’t know what to do. I found out the people in the chairs were Sam’s two sisters and his brother. Talitha and Cindy from the office were there. Levon (Ichkhanian, our Toronto rep.) had flown in as had Tim (Burke, our Chicago rep) and his wife Luci, and Jack (Gaughan, from Las Vegas) and Shane were standing in the hall and at the door of the room. It was surreal.

   I’d never been in this situation before. We smiled at each other, but no one could come up with anything to say. We were statues and it was like the funeral was already happening. I walked back to the hotel in what was, for Winnipeg, rather un-November-y weather, sunny and a little bit warm-ish. Levon called and asked if I wanted to have a drink down at the bar. Jack and Tim joined us, and we managed to laugh and chatter for an hour. This was not how I had planned to come back to Winnipeg – that was to happen a month down the road to do some nights at Dalnavert reading “A Christmas Carol”. I called Robbie and Olaf to let them know what was happening. And I called Mom to tell her I’d be back on Tuesday, not knowing if that was true.

            Back at the hospital the following morning it was different. Sam had grown very uncomfortable in the night, and they’d increased the morphine drip. To my eye, Sam had already left. It was just a depleted body, breathing labouriously, fundamentally on auto-pilot, as the doctor put it.. He informed us a short while later that he didn’t expect him to last much longer. Again, I walked back to the office, mostly to get some air and try to settle myself, get some organization into my head. As soon as I got to the office, Luci called to let us know that he’d passed. There was nothing to do now. Time wasn’t important anymore, so I walked back to the hospital. I called Teresa, who had gone home to bake after having spent the night doing watch shifts, and let her know what had happened. She would meet me at the hospital a bit later.

            There was another different feel in the room now. His Family were still in their chairs, weeping now.  I wondered why I wasn’t feeling more than I did, why I wasn’t getting emotional like everyone else. I had mentioned this to Teresa at one point because it confused me. We had no answers. My mind was moving to another mode now, contemplating all that was still going on outside these large, sad moments, in the real world. Sam was gone, but the business wasn’t, and I started to mentally list all the things I had to take care of right away. I called Kevin Prokosh at the Free Press to ask if he could write an Obituary.  I met up with the out-of-town guys for a bit to talk about the future responsibilities we all had with regard to the shows still running. For me, this had started already, and I headed home the following morning. One image that stayed with me was an overhead, out-of-body view of Teresa and me, grabbing a smoke in front of the hospital during a break from the sadness upstairs. “Sam’s not in the world anymore”, she said at one point. And that summed it all up.

            Word had spread very fast! There were dozens of e-mails, phone messages waiting for me at home, and tributes on Facebook. I began getting in touch with engagers, letting them know what had happened. I’d reach someone who would come on the line and when I’d say, “Hi, it’s Richard Hurst calling”, there’d be a split second of silence and the voice would get very quiet and low when they’d say, “Aw, Richard” and launch into words of condolence. That happened over and over again, so by the time I reached Larry Issacoff, the TD at MTC and a good friend and it happened again, I laughed out loud. I told him what had been happening and he laughed too.

            Before leaving Winnipeg, I had had a short meeting at the hotel with Sam’s Family (the Estate). In almost twenty years I’d neither met nor spoken to any of them, and, surprisingly, now had to explain to them what MSI did. In the course of the conversation, they told me they didn’t want the Company to continue and gave me six months to close it down. That took me completely off- guard. We had contracts with Producers for a goodly part of the year ahead. I tried not to think of that crucial element in all this upheaval, but soon after returning home had to come to grips with it. When I started to let some folks know about the closing, they were disappointed but, at the same time, got somewhat pissed off . We’d been working closely and very well with a LOT of Companies and Engagers for a very long time and soon they would have to fend for themselves. I told them I would give them all the help I could, but they’d have to find someone else to deal with hiring their orchestras. They didn’t like that! There were also a number of wolves who, seeing a ready-made opportunity, wanted to swoop in and “save the day”. I was pleasant enough to them but inwardly seething, and told them I’d not made any plans. So, what was to happen now? I prayed that the answer would make itself apparent … and soon.

            It became obvious rather quickly that the folks who had been our local contractors in the various big centers – Toronto, Chicago, Las Vegas – would become the inheritors of the MSI legacy. I had mentioned that to them over the weeks that followed, and the transitions would be seamless because they were already doing all the local hiring and payrolls under our Supervisor umbrella, and that’s just what happened.

I trekked back to Winnipeg to get the Dalnavert Readings taken care of and to freeze my butt off in what was now seasonable Winnipeg weather – minus 31C – and fit in a meeting with Jim Saper, explaining to him what MSI was all about, how we operated and how we would have to proceed from here following the Family’s edict. It was becoming clear that Sam had kept the Company’s workings pretty much to himself. But Jim said he’d put together a document to make it all clear for me from a legal perspective and get it to me right away. He was being incredibly helpful.  I also learned along the way that a Memorial for Sam was being planned in Toronto at exactly the same time I would be on a long-planned cruise with Mom in January. I told the Committee that I couldn’t commit to being there, but I’d let them know. A quick trip home to pick up Mom and off we went – for me “escaped” – to London to do Dickens.

            It took ages to get there. With Mom in tow, it was a bit more complicated. Finding out which was the easiest route to get around in the various airports took forever and I got very nervous to learn that our overnight flight to Heathrow had been delayed. Fortunately, we made up some time in the air but arrived somewhat haggard at 4:00 in the afternoon. My first performance was at 6:30! Trying to explain to the Immigration Officer why I was coming all the way from Canada to England for only a four day stay was a bit of a trial. I didn’t have a Working Visa and couldn’t say anything about the Dickens House readings, so I blamed the short stay on Mom, who was standing beside me, totally oblivious to what was happening. I told the Agent that my Mother, who had dementia, wanted to go to London and these four days were all I could spare from work and that seemed to satisfy her. Dear, sweet James (Dodding, who had arranged this whole adventure) was waiting for us when we got out of Immigration, and after presenting Mom with a bouquet of flowers and me with some snacks and city maps, we hightailed it on the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. We caught a cab to the hotel and, moments after throwing our bags into the room, took the very short walk to the Museum. I could hardly catch my breath! All during this, Mom kept asking, “Where are we?” It broke my heart, but each time I told her we were in London, it was a big exciting surprise for her all over again. This would be, for me, a source of some hilarity and some frustration in the days that followed.

            The Performances were in the Library at Dickens’ House. It was a small space in the basement which sat about forty people and reminded me very much of the old Dalnavert attic space, right down to the creaky old floors and the smell of old wood and books! All three performances had been sold out in advance which surprised the hell out of me. I was somewhat jet lagged, and my mouth wasn’t in the best working order, but I engaged my “Christmas Carol Auto Pilot” and got through it. James was perfectly pleased and couldn’t stop praising how I’d editing the story down to an hour, and how captivating my delivery was. He said he’d been watching the audience the whole time, and they were rapt, even the children. And that was pretty much the case for the two evenings that followed.

            The next night with another full house, I was more relaxed, knew the space, had become used to the kind of folk I was dealing with (avid Dickens fans) and was now used to Mom falling asleep half way through the reading. It was a surprise that night to learn that a family of four from North Carolina was in the audience. In the silence after “God bless Us everyone”, which ends the reading, I heard a loud, distinctly American “Wow” as the group started to applaud. I spoke to them afterward and they said they’d seen a notice earlier in the week and managed to get some tickets and considered it the highlight of their visit.

 During the days, Mom and I did some trudging about. It was damp and coldish, but the British Museum and the Foundling Museum were very close by our hotel and with food stops thrown in we made the most of our time. On the last night, the Curator of the Museum, a very young man named Florian Schweitzer, who had been at a Dickens Conference in Holland and wasn’t able get back for the opening, got up at the end of the show and admitted that he was “forced to speak after what (he’d) just seen and heard”. He said that in eight years of curating the Museum and hearing a lot of “CC”s, this was the best and his favourite! That was very nice, and I was impressed that he was impressed. It was a memorable experience to say the least and when it was all over, Jim presented me with a brass door knocker in the shape of Marley’s face and wished us a safe trip home.

Even though we’d only been away for a few days, it was great to be back in warmer weather and to see Morgan again. There were a few payrolls to deal with, arranging a remote account set-up for Ceridian Payrolls and purchasing some internet time on the cruise ship so I could get connected “at sea”. And we were on the road again.

The Panama Canal and that part of the world was incredible! We had a wonderful suite complete with a butler (Nilesh) on the Celebrity Constellation and were waited on hand and foot. I’d been worried about how Mom was going to navigate the maze of hallways and decks whenever she left our room, but, amazingly, she always managed to find her way back. I had bought a pair of walkie-talkies so we could communicate if she got lost but she could never figure out how to use the talk/listen buttons so that idea bit the dust rather quickly. We loved the heat, and between naps, took land tours and walked about the various ports. It was heartening at how well she managed to stay focused although on the third day, she started to re-pack her suitcase because “we’ll be getting home in a couple of days” even though there were still ten days to go. I persevered.

Being back home was strange. The world seemed a little barren after all the events and travels in the past two months. While I was still running the Company, there was nothing I could put my finger on to identify the unease that seemed to float around me. I guess I’d not completely processed Sam’s passing and not talking to him every day was just plain odd. The mundane details of the closing down process hung about me like a constant thick fog … like what was I to do with years and years of paper and files filling towers of boxes in storage in the basement of our office building – where should they go? I found myself tugging at the bit to get this over and done with, but dealing with the Estate and our lawyer on the interminable conference calls were turning contentious for some reason I couldn’t figure out, and were sucking the positive energy out of me.

Then Mom started talking about moving back to Toronto, an idea that came out of the blue one afternoon while we were sitting in her lawyer’s office reception area waiting to sign some docs. I mentioned this to her lawyer and try though he might to talk her out of such a thought, she contended that her church and friends were waiting for her to return. There are few if any good things about dementia, but in this case, it was something of a boon that Mom’s memory was pretty well shot. The subject of Toronto eventually evaporated. It was brought up in passing from time to time, but my response was usually couched in a “well-I’ll-have-to-look-into-that” approach and it wasn’t mentioned again. I got her involved in some activities at the James Bay Community Center, some art classes, group day trips, going to the Ballet and Opera and movies and lots and lots of restaurant dinners with me. It seemed normal, to a degree, but I would just hold my breath whenever we started talking about … well, just about anything for fear she would bring up Toronto again.

The UVic Musical Theatre Class was officially confirmed. All that remained was trying to understand the University’s Administration structure and how it affected my class, and me. The confirmation letter indicated that a minimum of 35/40 students were required for a class to go forward. That startled me! I immediately wrote Warwick (Dobson, the Department Head) of my concerns that this number was much too high for a performance class like mine. He wrote back telling me that it was a number he had to use “officially” and that the 16 to 18 I’d requested would be the number we would stick with. I did have to create a course outline however and, with some formatting help from Warwick, I created a very detailed document which, as Warwick put it, “thwarted anyone from going-down-a-wrong-headed-road – it’s all in writing” and described a class that I would have loved taking in my school days. I requested a piano as part of my “class equipment requirements” and the paper work was done. I was so ready to get some Theatre and Music back into in my life. I had something exciting to look forward to!

In hindsight, everything moved very fast. However, in the moment, it seemed that the snails in my burgeoning Springtime garden were speeding by me as if I was standing still. Things were happening, certainly, but now, with the end in sight, my anxiety was building to get everything in immediate order and to leave. There were sleepless nights to be sure. There had only been a couple of viewings of my house and with all the financials pending, I was getting frightened it wouldn’t come together as it had in my vision. But Dave, my real estate agent, was ever optimistic, so I just went with that. Packing was well under way but trying to get a moving company secured was incredibly complicated – one thing depended on another which depended on another, etc. and that drove me nuts! I lowered the asking price a little bit to move things along, and with Sam generously maintaining most of my salary in Victoria even though I would be in “retirement”, the price reduction wouldn’t cause any problems.

            Another thing I had done was to contact the UVic Fine Arts Department and offer my services as a Theatre coach … on a voluntary basis. The chair of Department was back to me almost immediately to let me know she’d passed along my resume to the Theatre and Music Department Heads and within a few hours of the initial posting, the Theatre Head, Warwick Dobson, wrote back requesting I come in and see him as soon as I had settled in Victoria! Then there was a post from Michael Shamata asking when I was getting into town. So, all those prospects calmed me down a little.

            Within a week of each other, both Mom’s place and mine were sold! I was over the moon. It was touch-and-go for a bit on the day a couple, who had already viewed the house twice, came back with their college-aged kids to see it again. It had been a last minute request, so I had to vacate the premises. I drove around the Lindenwoods Circle (seven minutes per circuit) four times, but they were still in the house at the end of my fourth pass. Too anxious to go around again, I parked down the street within eye-shot of my front door. I could tell the moment they walked out with Dave, all smiles and shaking hands, that they had signed the offer! I fogged up the windshield with my huge sigh of relief, overjoyed and just a little weepy. It was done!

            I zapped back out to Victoria. Ji, the bank manager was happy that everything had worked out so well, but also glad, I think, to finally have us out of his hair. The mortgages Mom and I were carrying were small, and we headed down to the condos for me to take measurements for furniture and to think about paint colours. The daffodils were coming up and the cherry blossoms were already out making the city look bright and welcoming. My desire to get there was almost overwhelming. Got Mom packed up and arrangements had been made for her move the day after I left for home. Her phone had already been turned off, so I would be relying on Sharone, Mom’s real estate agent, to keep me informed of how things were going. Once back in Winnipeg, moving details took up the days along with a bunch of payrolls. Fortunately, most of the shows that were on the road were closing at exactly the same time I would be driving out to Victoria, so getting the office into boxes was the last thing on the list.

            I had decided to do a Garage Sale as part of the huge “Annual Lindenwoods Garage Sale Day”. I had way too much stuff to fit in the condo and thought I might make a few bucks and get rid of a few things at the same time. But I’d misread the Annual Sale date and had prepared my Sale for the week-end before the Big One! I could have waited the week, but thought getting the jump might be to my advantage. I dashed about the neighbourhood a few days prior to my now “Advance Sale” and put up signs hoping that folks would turn up. The night before, I parked the car on the street and, after putting price tags on most of the items, set up the rented folding tables inside the garage loaded with things that were small-ish and easily transportable, leaving bigger pieces in the house so folks could see them “in situ”. And there was a LOT of stuff. Start time was 10:00AM. When we (me, Teresa and her sister Michele) opened the garage doors at 9:45 there were people sitting on my front lawn, on the lawn across the street, lined up on the driveway and sitting in cars parked down the block!. I was amazed! We had to hold them back as we moved the tables onto the driveway. Then it was just a matter of getting out of the way as they rushed into the garage and started rifling through my stuff. I had wondered how I was going to feel seeing strangers picking at my things and asking me “will you go lower?”. Strangely, I’d divorced myself emotionally from the experience as soon as the garage door went up, and, aside from some pushy individuals who wanted to pay “one dollah” for everything, no matter what was on the price tag, the day was a huge success. The following weekend was even better. We knew what to expect. Teresa and Michele had even brought over some things of their own to sell. In all, I think I made just over twelve hundred dollars for the coffers. The house was now looking bare. Some rooms had even developed echoes.

            I flew back out to Victoria one last time before the move just to assure Mom that I was still coming, and got the final papers and condo keys in hand. I met with my painter, Merlin (!), to discuss the wall colours I’d angsted over for weeks, and he told me everything would be taken care of … and much too expensive. He was meticulous in his attention to details I’d not even thought about, and that set my mind at ease about the eventual results. I dealt with the internet, phone and TV cable installations, the office phone line (separate from my own), the additional phone outlets, the TV wall bracket installation, coordinated the installation timeline (after the painting) for the new (and, once more, much too expensive) curtains for all the windows, liaised between the Victoria and Winnipeg banks over and over again, walked the area around my new home to get another lay of the land and spent some time sitting on the beach thinking about where I was and calming down before heading back East … for the last time.

            Debbie (Maslowsky) had started working at the office and was easily getting a hand on all the information I was desperately cramming into her. I had arranged another phone line to connect directly to me in Victoria, so I would always be a button-push away in case of any questions. I would still be doing the payrolls for an indeterminate amount of time, but she would be dealing with everything else. I was over the moon that she had agreed to take the position. Smart, quick, incredibly friendly and nothing fazed her! I couldn’t have felt more confident with her at the wheel. This would be a long phase-out process for me and Sam. He knew it and, reluctantly, I knew it. A complete and utter cut-off would not have been good for the company, or for Sam’s soul. That was never spoken of. Sam always kept feelings close to his chest and my leaving, despite the fact that we’d been easing into it for a very long time, was a hard thing for him. Always professional, we were very pragmatic when it came to how we ran and related to each other in the business. But there was the other side of the coin … the “unspoken”. It was just a “sense” of each other more than anything else. We knew how to tell each other things and how to respond to situations and circumstances with each other. The fact that I was “still on board” was, I think, a leave-taking he was able to deal with, knowing full well that I would still be just a phone call away. But that wasn’t quite the way it worked out.

            The packing continued all the way to the end. There was more divesting as I made some hard decisions about whether or not I really needed what I was putting into each box, and gradually, it was down to the final days. There were some kiss-off brunches and final coffees with folks who wanted some quiet time with me. Robbie had organized what had started out to be a surprise going-away party for me and Morgan, but we let the “surprise” part go when he asked me what date was best for us. It was held in the Warehouse Theatre Lobby and, while the invitation read “Potluck”, Teresa and Michele and Heather had cooked and baked up a storm to give the party an anchor and sense of festivity. There were lots of cards and love and some speeches that just about did me in, including some precious words from Robbie. I spoke a bit about living in the moment despite challenges presented to us, about having each other for support and to hang on to. It had been only a few days earlier that dear friend Olaf, who was there, had been diagnosed with cancer, and I was talking to him specifically. It was a tearful moment.

The final day, all that remained was to load the Jeep with all the office stuff I would need as soon as I landed in Victoria, the computer set-up, and to make some sandwiches for the road – tuna salad to be specific. Teresa was bringing some ham and cheese sandwiches that Erik had made for us. It would cut down on time stopping at restaurants along the way. The movers arrived at 8:30am and, over the next four hours, loaded out my house. I had arranged a deep clean by my long-time cleaning ladies after my departure, so I knew the house would be immaculate when the new owners walked in.

At 1:30, I closed the front door, locked from the inside, and drove down to pick up T. We hit the road at 2:30, celebrating with a couple of sandwiches and Diet Pepsi in our seats … and that was the end of my life in Winnipeg. Simple as that. No people lined Portage Avenue waving goodbye, no exit music, no to-do, just an uneventful leaving behind of 28 years of a full and productive existence in this great city. As we got further and further away, I could feel the ties breaking, quietly, gently, and my mind was set forward. There were no regrets as each mile took me further into a new life, and a calm settled around my car, a small, safe bubble which, for the moment, contained all my excitement and anticipation.

            The drive to the coast was wonderful! The Jeep handled extremely well and, while it took me a while to push it to the speeds Teresa kept insisting were a part of highway driving, I managed to quickly get comfortable whizzing along at 110 clicks per hour. In fact, approaching small towns along the way and having to slow down to 50 or 60 kpm made it feel like we were standing still. The first night was at a Holiday Inn on the Highway just outside Regina that allowed dogs (a $200.00 deposit!), and we were off at first light the following morning with some tuna fish salad sandwiches for breakfast. The plan had been for Morg to sit with T. from time to time, but that never happened. His position in the car had aways been lying in my left arm and that’s where he stayed no matter how we tried to get him over to Teresa’s lap. By mid-afternoon we had made it to Calgary but decided to push on a bit further to Golden, or “Blondie” as T. took to calling it, and were there by early evening. We were definitely in the mountains now and getting up to take Morgan out for a pee at 6:30 the next morning, I was met by the smell of cold, fresh mountain air and the glorious sun rising on the huge range that backed on to the motel. We took some breakfast at a café beside the motel, deciding to save the remaining sandwiches for later in the day. Got to Revelstoke after a drive through the incredible scenery in Banff National Park and some slightly harrowing mountain passes. We made a gas stop and decided to finish off those sandwiches … only there were no sandwiches. They had just disappeared. We took the back of the car apart looking for them. We thought that if they were still somewhere in the car, like down a wheel well or something, they’d eventually start to smell. They never did! We still talk about that as “the great sandwich mystery”. Made the 3:00 ferry and were on the Island ninety minutes later. Morgan hadn’t liked the ferry and all the noise. We were required to stay on the car deck because dogs weren’t allowed up stairs and he shivered in my arms for most of that journey. He was happy to get back into the car … and my left arm.

            Mom was overjoyed to see us. We had actually arrived a day early because we’d pushed the driving. Teresa, being a particular friend, was a bonus for Mom. And I was eager to see what my condo looked like. The colours were glorious. The white crown molding and base boards set off the depth and intensity of the deep blue, green and dark beige walls and I couldn’t wait for the furniture to arrive and to get everything organized. We’d brought inflatable beds so started living in the space right away.

And at this point, I find myself stopping in real time for a moment, realizing that I have departed drastically from the focus of these posts. Over the years, I’ve rarely delved into my non-professional life. There have been a few times when the personal and private have become unavoidably enmeshed, but, at this point in the story, there are no on-stage/off-stage stories to tell. I think I realized this at the time as I was still making daily Journal entries, but this Blog was nowhere in my mind, thus my observations and commentary were for my eyes only. So, essentially, I’m apologizing for going off-track for a bit. Day-to-day life was all I had for a while. Unpacking the house after the moving van arrived and the excitement of setting everything up took a while, and getting used to being a few steps away from Mom and her requirements was a new part of my life. Teresa had left and my last tie to Winnipeg was gone. And for a bit there was a little … homesickness, if that’s what I can call it. Adjusting completely after almost three decades of another place and circumstances doesn’t happen with any speed. Oh, perhaps it does on the surface, on the get-through-the-day veneer. But inside there are constant reminders of the differences and the new way of having to do things and all the “regular” stuff that isn’t there anymore. It was nothing I couldn’t handle but that adjustment would touch me when I least expected it.

            Out of necessity, the office was set up first. I was a bit behind because the moving van was a day late arriving, so getting everything connected and functioning was ground zero. Needless to say, I couldn’t work in a messy space, so as the computers were hooked up, the office was put into perfect shape as well. With the morning light streaming in on my first full day “at work”, all was well. But the rest of my new home still needed a lot of attention. I needed to settle in to a routine, nothing strenuous or too demanding. The phones and internet functioned just as they had in Winnipeg and getting calls transferred from the Main Office worked a charm. I’d done all of the budgets for pending shows before I left so converting them into the weekly payroll format was a simple transition. The days went well. With the two hour time difference, I was a bit behind the rest of the country, but folks got used to not calling before 11:00am their time and my day ended mid-afternoon. I could get used to this!

            Mom had also settled into having me next door to her. When we weren’t checking out another restaurant on our “places-to-eat-at” list, I’d make dinner each night and we’d sit at the kitchen table in front of the window with Douglas Street only feet away. The condo was on the first floor, raised above street level, so we’d smile and wave at folks going by while we ate. We also began going on day trips as something to do for Mom and to get the lay of the land further afield for me. Those were great treks, unplanned for the most part and just another way to be together with no pressure or timetables bearing down on me. We re-established our connection and took on roles, oddly reversed from what they once were – I was the parent, Mom the child. It was somewhat of a struggle from time to time to keep the meds schedule in order as time seemed to mean little to her. But we managed and, while patience had never been my strongest suit, I altered my mindset on a number of levels, adapted, and we got on just fine.

            I finally spent some rewarding time with Michael Shamata. I’d not seen him since our long-ago time doing “Cabaret” in London at the Grand Theatre and at MTC in Winnipeg, and it was great to catch up. Michael gave me the lay of the land in Victoria and it was helpful to know what worked and what didn’t in this city. As I thought would be the case, there was nothing for me in the upcoming season but making that connection was important. I also touched base with Brian Richmond at Blue Bridge Rep who was very generous in offering me ‘Lord Capulet’ in a UVic Phoenix Theatre production of “R&J” later in the Fall, but I had a conflict. That offer was a good sign. Another very profitable meeting was with Warwick Dobson, head of the Theatre Department at UVic. After a wonderful chat and getting to know each other, he confirmed a Spring “Trial Workshop” for my proposed Musical Theatre Performance Class the following summer. There had been such a class listed in the Department catalogue for years, but it had been designated as “non active” since there had never been anyone to teach it. Could this be more perfect? There would be details to iron out, but since the class wouldn’t happen until May, there was a lot of time to learn how the University system formally worked and to prepare the course. And the London Dickens House engagement was also confirmed – three performances just before Christmas as a part of a Fundraiser for the Dicken Trust – just before three more performances in back at Dalnavert in Winnipeg. Mom would come with me to London (that would be interesting) and having something for her to look forward to always kept conversations going if only because each time was like the first for her. I found myself taking great joy in telling her about going to London each time and watching her get excited about this “new” prospect. So the down-the-road picture was somewhat active, nothing too strenuous or anxiety-ridden.

            I was supremely happy here. I still had a work ethic in my physical being that I couldn’t shake. I still awoke at 7:10am, took Morg out for the first pee, had coffee, showered, took Morg out for the longer walk and then settled in at the computer. All automatic. I never felt guilty about doing errands during the day or sitting down at the ocean with Morg for an hour just watching the water and the people walking by. The Winnipeg Office was doing alright. Sam was fully involved in a new production called “Come Fly With Me”, a Frank Sinatra Tribute being directed by Twyla Tharp. They’d become great friends, and Sam’s contributions had now extended into the creative evolution of the show. Debbie was on full time but began to feel somewhat overwhelmed by some personal situations happening in her life. Sam and I had conversations deciding that we could deal with whatever we had to now that I was settled out here.

            And then … Sam died.

In preparation for my replacement, about which I continued to pressure Sam, I decided that creating some kind of primer that would explain the elements of the position might be helpful to whomever was going to take over. I wrote an “Introduction” describing how I came to the job, (it was actually through a lot of casual conversations with Sam in his car as he drove me home from Rainbow performances – he was the pit drummer) and how, over a great many years, it had evolved. Setting that down was the easy part. But trying to describe a typical day was impossible because there were no typical days. There were things that had to get done of course, but nothing was routine. I ended up dividing this task into big topics – “Conceptualization” (something Sam was very big on), “The Process”, “The Payrolls”, “The Database”, “Visas” – and then, in a narrative form, I started to break down what each of those topics entailed.

            Oh my God! Thinking about the job was one thing. Writing it down in progressive detail was something else altogether. Trying to explain Sam’s need for “conceptualization” before approaching the “Process” was the first of a great many hurdles. I knew that Sam always had the “big picture” in mind, and over those many car conversations he explained how the details (in theory) presented themselves and how we (he) would respond to them. It was more philosophy than pragmatism and while it established our level of communication, it did nothing to tell me how to do the job. “You’ll figure it out”, he would say, and, to my surprise, I did. But knowing about that foundation between him and me was useless in writing a clear approach to the practicalities. The devil was in the details and those devils led me down some complicated and pretty boring paths. Try though I might, using a chatty format as if this trainee and I were having the kind of conversations Sam and I had didn’t work. It would have to be a point-by-point “do this” approach and that was another hard thing to deal with because everything affected everything else. In my head it worked, but not on paper. I laboured over an outline for weeks, structuring it logically before adding the simplest, clearest, most precise instructions for each of the subtopics in each big topic. It ended up being Five Chapters over 40 pages and represented, as I later realized, the ground zero of my life as it had come to be over the past 19 years! I kept reviewing and revising for the months prior to a two-week “try-out” of the candidate Sam had placed at the top of the Short List, a lady named DeAnn Boise.

            In the meantime, I had managed to get Mom settled into her wonderful new digs in Victoria. Each visit left me chomping at the bit to move there myself. But I was still in payroll or budget mode as “Chitty”, “Chicago” and “Cats” Tours were on the road and a number of regional productions were running or in rehearsal. Not to leave well enough alone, I also found myself working on another “Primer”, this one for our local reps and contractors (and the new “me”) who worked for us in various cities throughout North America and who needed to know how our process worked for them at their sites. That task was a bit easier if only because all the hiring and contracting was done by our office and all they had to do was provide scheduling and personnel updates when and if they happened, hand out the cheques, and keep us in the loop about any problems. Organization! That was the key to everything. By just keeping it organized, they should be able to manage it.

            We headed into “Pride and Prejudice” rehearsals for MTC in early October with a mostly Winnipeg cast. I was playing the very minor role of ‘Sir William Lucas’, a character who pops up in a few crowd scenes, makes a few Austen-languaged observations, and otherwise has very little to do … except when it came to the dances! Ah, those dances! In my halcyon days, I used to cut a fine figure with any choreography handed me. I could pick up choreography very quickly and execute pretty much anything required, solo or ensemble. In fact, I’d even choreographed several shows myself during my time in Portland. But, alas, those days were long gone, and that vocabulary had abandoned my physical memory, leaving me struggling to keep up with what was, at one time, pretty basic stuff. And there were nine dance sequences, five of which required my participation! Our choreographer was Jan Alexander-Smith, one of our cast members and an exceedingly pleasant lady … when she wasn’t choreographing. Teaching very precise and complicated Georgian Era dances to a group of unruly castmates turned her, from time to time, into our own personal “Dance Nazi”. I couldn’t blame her for getting pissed off with us because we were bad children when in those rehearsals … and there were a lot of them. There was a military precision to the dance patterns and her rehearsals demanded absolute focus, which some of us sorely lacked. I felt that my character, a bit of a flake, wouldn’t have all the steps correct anyway and I used that as my feeble excuse when I screwed up the choreography. Our messing up would only result in more dance rehearsals being added to the schedule. I don’t think we (I) ever got those dances completely correct.

            Our Director, Robbie (Paterson), was the essence of clarity in his approach to the material. I had worked with Robbie countless times. He always knew the script and subtexts backward and forward and had done his homework to a T. But he would tell me about there being a touch of fear under the surface. I couldn’t see it. He astonished me with how relaxed he was when he spoke, without hesitation or ambivalence about the characters and their relationships, about the background and style, always and unquestionably on top of things. And this show was no exception. I was impressed with him for being so calm, consistently and graciously in charge of what could have been a complicated process. It was to be our last collaboration.

            The cast was a dream – Torontonian Matthew Edison as ‘Darcy’, Mairi Babb as ‘Elizabeth’, David Warburton and Marina Stephanson Kerr as ‘Ma and Pa Bennet’, Carson Nattrass, Jan Skene and Stefani Wiens, the last three of whom became my nightly Scrabble partners as we were all off stage for very long periods of time. While I could feel the production was good, our Scrabble tournaments tended to remove us somewhat from how the show was actually taking shape. It was during the Previews for the Young Audiences that we got an idea how it was going over out front. These usually unruly kids were eating it up! The piece is rather high-falutin’ with rather stilted language and very little “action”, but they stayed with it, kept still and laughed uproariously in all the right places – a nice change from the raucous, penny-throwing kids in the past. The entire run was smooth, drama free and a great pleasure to perform. And I won a few Scrabble games.

            DeAnn Boise finally arrived to check out The Job. We’d had a long relationship with her as a Production Manager and Company Manager on a great many U.S. Touring productions we’d contracted for Troika Entertainment. Her most notable quality was that nothing, nothing, ever phased her. She was aways calm, very empathetic and never out-of-sorts no matter what the problem or crisis was. I loved calling her about something if only to hear her cheery voice and to gain yet another insight into how to deal with a concern. This was the first time I’d met her face-to-face and we hit it off right from the start. She was incredibly astute, understanding the structure and intricacies of the job immediately, and took great pleasure in how I had organized the description of the job. “It’s all so clear”, she would say over and over again. We’d spend a few hours each day going over details and all the variations, and there was nothing she hadn’t dealt with in some form or other as a Production Manager. She met the ladies in our office and got along with them right away. There was only one thing she had to get her head around and that was moving to Winnipeg. DeAnn lived in Las Vegas and while the weather during her Manitoba visit in early November wasn’t all that bad (for us), it was still a jolt for her. There was no doubt that she could do the job, but it would take her a while to consider the implications of moving to another country and another kind of job. In all honesty, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

            It was apparent now that word was getting out about my leaving Winnipeg. I’d not been vocal about it but it’s a relatively small community and things have a way of circulating. So when Kevin Prokosh from The Free Press called and asked for an interview I knew the jig was up. We spoke for a half hour. I had always been slightly wary of Kevin. I had to keep in mind that he was a reporter and would be on the lookout for a “scoop” or tidbit that was newsworthy. He’d gotten me into trouble before by leading me into saying things I shouldn’t have, but this time, we were both relaxed and chatted about the past 18 years and my feelings about “having made a mark” in the city and about leaving. I was of two minds about what he would end up writing, but I just held my breath and hoped for the best. It ended up being a nice article.

            It was at this point that my “Little Shop of Horrors” casting plans began to crumble. While Ken had made all the approaches we’d talked about, folks started to fall by the wayside for various reasons, and I ended up re-casting most of the show. All the potential ‘Mushniks’ bailed, and we finally ended up with Frank Ruffo who would do very nicely, I thought. Peter Huck “couldn’t make it work” so we went with Simon Miron as ‘Orin’, a great singer and a bit more menacing than Peter was, and Kevin Aichele replaced Nick Atkinson as the voice of ‘Audry II’. It was still shaky ground in some other categories, but I just kept harping on Ken to make it happen. The set designs were how I wanted them, but we were now waiting on floor plans. Costumes needed to be confirmed, either made or rented, but until the casting was complete that detail would stay in a holding pattern. I kept telling myself to be patient, but with everything else that was going on, in particular Mom, I was getting anxious.

            As if all that wasn’t enough, Morgan was diagnosed with a luxating patella! He’d been lethargic and not the spritely pup he used to be. He was now six. He’d balk at going up stairs and no longer jumped up on the recliner to sit with me. I’d taken him to the vet a couple of times and the only suggestion was to put him on Metacam or children’s aspirin. That didn’t sound quite right to me, so it was off to another vet, this time, to be told within two minutes of the new doctor’s exam that the problem was with his right hind leg’s knee cap (patella) and that it should be attended to immediately! She suggested a surgeon and I made an appointment right away. The diagnosis was confirmed by the surgeon and by the following Monday, my baby went under the knife! I got him back the following day. When he was carried into the waiting room, he went nuts upon seeing me and started whimpering.  When I took him in my arms he started to “cry” as he licked my face and hands. It broke my heart. The weeks that followed were complicated with all the medication for the pain, the physio I had to do with him daily and the required love and attention, something he continued to cash in on even after the pain had subsided.

            It was just part of what was quickly becoming a new kind of life for me … the rapidly diminishing theatre action that had driven me for so many years, Mom’s condition in Victoria, a sick dog, getting the house ready for sale, sussing out moving companies, preparing for a massive garage sale … all what I imagined to be more a “regular person’s” kind of existence. It also became apparent that my involvement with “Beauty and the Beast” at Rainbow that summer (2009) wasn’t going to happen. My move was scheduled for early June, and I had planned returning to Winnipeg for the show. But leaving Mom alone for two months was becoming less viable. It was tough to let it go.

            Just before escaping to Hawaii for a couple of weeks to recoup, I found a live-in companion for Mom, a real estate agent and a former nurse named Sharone. They had become friends through The Union Club which Mom had joined just after moving to Victoria. I learned that Sharone needed some interim housing before moving into a new apartment, so it seemed a perfect match. She was exceedingly attentive and provided “reports” every few days which put my mind at ease about that situation.

            While away, I got the expected but disappointing news that DeAnn had decided not to take over my job with MSI. Winnipeg is no Las Vegas, to say the least, but I think it had more to do with the fact that this was an office job, and wouldn’t put her in the thick of the show action she was used to. She would have been so perfect. Never one to let the grass grow under his feet, Sam had made contact with a lady named Cindy Hutchinson who had worked for him at St. John’s Music and also had worked in the Winnipeg Symphony offices for a time. So just after I got back, she began the “training” with me. I knew it was overwhelming for her, but I could see a certain mindset in her approach to the job – focused, fearless and very smart. She’d worked with musicians so knew how to deal with them (a big bonus) and caught on to most of the process quickly. She was honest about feeling somewhat out of her depth and got uneasy about how she was going to learn “all this stuff”. I told her that I would still be around for a few months so the transition would be gradual. The fact that we could work together on things that were actually happening in the moment was a bonus – putting together budgets, hiring musicians and creating payrolls “for real” was the best way to learn the ropes. Time would tell.

            Then, things turned on a dime! Out of the blue, a few days before I was to head out to see Mom over a weekend, she called to tell me that she didn’t want to live in the golf course townhouse anymore … it was too “up Island”, as she called it! What? Whaa-at?? Turns out she wanted to be “in town” and to that end, she and Sharone had been out looking at places, and had found side-by-side condos Mom thought “would be perfect” for her and me. Oh! My! God! When would this end? Needless to say, my visit was chaotic. I arrived in my rental car at the address she’d given me, and they were waiting for me at at the front door. It was right across from Beacon Hill Park on Douglas and was magnificent in every way. It was five blocks from the Inner Harbour and two blocks from Mile Zero and the ocean! The apartments were beautiful, and I started to get rather excited about a) the Park environment and proximity to shops and such and b) being right next door to Mom. We walked about the area a little, had some ice cream at the Beacon Hill Drive-In in the next block and, within two days, decided to take both places. Monday found us back at the bank and, after juggling some funds with Ji, our Advisor, the deal was set in motion with some financials still to be confirmed, mainly on the sale of my place.

            I returned to Winnipeg, stressed and out-of-sorts. I hate disorganization and upheaval and now Morgan had developed an intestinal infection which needed my attention. What next!! Well, next was the fact that Cindy didn’t feel that she was up for being my replacement. I had spent ten days, six hours a day teaching her the ropes. On the last day, she told Sam that this wasn’t what she had signed up for and we were back to square one. By now, Rolaids became my best friend and trying to calm myself seemed futile. But then, the amazing Debbie Maslowsky, who I’d worked with on stage many times, appeared on the scene and would be taking over part of my job. Unbeknownst to me, she had great business management skills and, after a thorough explanation of the work, thought that she might be able to deal with some of what I did. It was at that point that Sam suggested that rather than quit completely, I could do a lot of what I did in Winnipeg … in Victoria! I had dealt with remote work when I was on the road for shows, so it seemed this arrangement would probably work just as well. It wasn’t truly retirement, but at least it would only be “part time” and at my leisure. The one thing I didn’t want to do was to find myself sitting at my desk for eight hours a day, looking at the park across the street with paths leading down to the ocean and wishing I was outside rather than in.

            There was a tiny point in time when Mom and I had four houses in limbo between us. But, with the prospects in hand, I felt a bit more “up” and, more importantly, so did Mom. I started getting rid of stuff by selling all my books to Aqua Books. That was a hard thing, but I couldn’t accommodate them at the new place and the thought of boxing and transporting hundreds of books was in no way appealing. Kelly Hughes, who owned Aqua, came and looked at them and offered me $500.00 for the whole shebang. I said “yes” as soon as the number came out of his mouth and that was that. The following day, he arrived with a truck and took every last one of them! This was real now. Deciding what to get rid of (the condo apartment was half the size of my house) was on-going as I tried to imagine how things would fit in Victoria. Gradually, stuff got thrown out, given to friends or donated and some rooms started to get that unfamiliar empty echo sound.

            Teresa decided that the plan of her driving across country with me was a good one and that was set. She would be excellent company, certainly a lot of fun. I wouldn’t have to have Morgan on my lap the whole time and T could do some of the driving as well. I love driving long distances and there would be no one better with whom to share this experience. Things were looking up and I was getting more excited.

            Then, out of the blue, with no warning or discussion, “Little Shop” was cancelled! I found out through an e-mail Sam had copied to me. He’d been in touch with Ken about some orchestra details and it came out that the show had been axed! What?? I immediately called Ken to find out what the hell was going on! I yelled at him that I should have been his first call. Apparently, up to the Monday before rehearsals were to begin, they’d sold less that a thousand tickets for the entire run and 10% of those were to Alan Kliffer’s (our ‘Seymour’) Family!! The Board had decided to cut bait rather than lose more money. Well, they were going to lose even more money because they had to pay off a lot of Equity actors who had already signed contracts … including me! I know that a lot of folks had turned down work for this show and I discovered that some had not taken the news well. For me I was really disappointed. It was going to be my swan song and I was looking forward to working with all the folks I’d cast and in particular, to working with Don Horsburgh, our Musical Director. But I couldn’t dwell on it. There was too much else to deal with.

            So it seemed that my theatrical life was over. All that remained was finding out if Debbie was going to be working with us, when Mom’s house would sell, when my house would sell, when the movers would arrive here, when the movers would arrive there … oh Lord, when would all this end???

The plans for the MTC 50^th Anniversary “Homecoming Gala” were moving along. Still a couple of months away, I had a grip on what was happening as far as the entertainment was concerned. There were a couple of people missing from the roster, and some of the taped greetings were still in the offing – like the one from Judd Hirsch (who had played ‘Willie Loman’ in “Death of a Salesman”) saying a few words and introducing local actor Harry Nelkin in a small scene from the show. Some of these videos would affect the live performances. There was also the matter of confirming in-town folks and making sure the structure was secure so that everyone felt comfortable – no “off the cuff” bullshit, which always makes people squirm, both in the house and on-stage. All was under control and intended it stay that way.

            I threw my hat into the ring for a role in “Pride And Prejudice” at MTC. Robbie was directing and there was only one part I was right for, so that was in the picture. I was also in an “on-hold” mode with James Dodding in England. During “Earnest” I had given him the CD of the “Christmas Carol” readings I did, and he floored me by asking if I would be interested in coming to London to do a few performances of it for The Dickens House Society! He sat on the organization’s Advisory Board and, before leaving Winnipeg, told me that he would start the wheels in motion for some dates that Christmas. It had been a while since I’d heard from him and I didn’t have a lot of details; but I forced myself to not press the issue, to stay calm and, like a seasoned professional, act nonchalant allowing things to take their course. But my God! Dickens House!? London!? “Calm” really wasn’t in the picture!

            Thoughts of moving became more persistent during another trip to Victoria with my friend, Teresa Lee (“T”). The May weather was a tad on the dreary side and showed the city in a different light. But spending time with Mom was the point of the trek and she seemed to be in good form. The three of us spent hours walking about the beautiful Inner Harbour area enjoying the shops, being together and doing touristy things again.

            Sometimes there’s no way of avoiding a reality which, out of self-preservation or not knowing how to respond, one has placed to one side. I found myself confronting the inescapable one night at dinner with Mom and Teresa. Mom had a great affection for T, and they got along like gangbusters. They always had something to talk about or laugh about. They were very comfortable with each other. It was during this dinner that the full force of Mom’s condition hit me.

            We had wandered a bit in our conversations, and Mom would continuously repeat questions or remake observations which we would let pass. At one point, we found ourselves talking about Mom’s childhood as she regaled us with adventures she’d had with her two brothers, Johnny and Billy, when they were small. The stories were told in great detail, and she got very animated, as if she were reliving them. She was so present, clear, lucid, and I was enjoying listening to her. Then something suddenly changed. She started talking to me as if I was my Uncle Johnny. “Do you remember the three of us jumping on the bed? We weren’t supposed to do that, were we! Do you remember that?” She was looking into my eyes and smiling, waiting for me to answer her. It felt like I was in the middle of a play I’d never rehearsed! I didn’t know the lines and was completely at a loss. A weak, stammered “What?” was all I could manage as my mind scrambled to make sense of a) the question and b) the face of the person looking at me, waiting. From across the table, Teresa very quietly under her breath whispered, “Go with it.” A prompt! A lifeline! And I grabbed on to it, making something up as if I was Johnny saying “yes, I remember”. I was completely stunned. I wondered what Mom was seeing through her eyes, where she had gone, what had triggered her to leave the now and go back to the then, mentally casting me as my Uncle in a vivid and real place for those moments. It lasted only 15 seconds or so and then eased back into reality. I felt like I had been falling forever, not knowing when I was going to hit solid ground. I don’t know if Mom realized what had happened, but we made no mention of it afterward.

            I understood that for Mom it wasn’t an “incident”, rather just a part of a conversation we were having. But for me, it was very frightening. That was fifteen years ago now, and I can still remember my skin tightening around my temples, the sound of T’s voice and the swirling confusion in my frontal lobe, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed. It’s an indelible sense memory now, not academically or theatrically, but fused into my DNA – that moment when I lost my tether to the lifelong safety of my Mother, realizing that something profound had happened and would keep happening from now on. I would have to address it … and had no idea how to do that.

            The days that followed were good, seeing a great performance of “Regina” by Pacific Opera Victoria, lots of walking, Mom and T going to Church on Sunday morning. I walked about by myself looking at places that might be options for a new home. T even managed to get Mom to her doctor to re-establish the medication regimen she’d been put on months earlier but had stopped taking. When you can’t remember to remember, Life becomes a vacant space with no guardrails, and, with no parameters or limits, order begins to fade. That seemed to be where Mom was at, and it scared the hell out of me to leave her. She was functioning, but to my mind, just barely. I vowed to keep in constant contact with her once home and to offer prompts and reminders as subtly as I could without upsetting or confusing her. Patience, something of which I’d always been woefully short, would now become the basis of every exchange.

            The “Homecoming Gala” night was finally upon us. I’d kept things pretty well under control. Despite Stephen (Schipper, MTC’s Artistic Director) adding items to the line-up making the presentation longer and longer, my original concept was still mostly intact, and though little details kept me on my toes, I was relatively calm. Frantic Films, who generously coordinated the filming of all the greetings from folks who couldn’t be there in person, had done a great job, and it was now just a matter of our tech folks pushing the “Play” button at the appropriate moments during the show. We ran through almost everything at a rehearsal that afternoon.  At some point, Stephen had decided that since the house would be so small (only about 120 based on the advance sales report) he would name and thank everyone who came, individually! All of them! Of course, I’d not factored this into my timing of the show, but it was Stephen’s event and what he wanted, I would accommodate.

            The rehearsal went smoothly … for the most part. The Ecco Singers Choir sounded great, and Kevin Aichele was wonderful doing a number from the new Olaf Pyttlik musical “Quo Vadis”, which MTC was helping to develop. The pit band was a solid anchor for all the Musical Theatre moments and the drama scenes went well. But no matter how diplomatically and subserviently I tried, I couldn’t convince Len Cariou to cut his song, “Try To Remember”, from three verses down to two. He did, however, understand my “clock” appeal and eventually picked up the tempo and shortened the song … by a few seconds! “The Marathon” number – that List of famous lines from all the MTC shows over the past fifty years and which would be recited by six actors with a stop watch counting down on a screen behind them – was supposed to come in at 4 minutes, 48 seconds (I have no idea why I decided on that timing) initially read at five minutes, thirty seconds!! Oh Lord! We did it a few more times at breakneck speed but could only get it down by a few more seconds. It wouldn’t be until the actual performance that we would achieve our goal. In hindsight, it would have been the simplest of solutions to change the time we were aiming for, but I wasn’t thinking logically at that point in all the chaos. The only show elements we hadn’t run were the speeches by the special guests – Tom Hendry (the theatre’s co-founder), Len Cariou (the Theatre’s AD for a time) and Richard Ouzounian (also AD for all my years there). I’d shown them where the mic would be on stage, the route to get to it and reminded them of my request that their remarks be very short (five minutes had been the suggestion).

            That night … well, we got through it. I was in the wings acting as a quasi-expediter/Stage Manager, trying to keep things moving. For the most part, the rehearsed bits went off very well. It was the “winging it” aspects of the show that provided some “moments”. The speeches were within the boundaries I’d set. No one strayed too far afield, although I know Len wanted to talk for a LOT longer than he’d been given. Ouzounian was wonderfully eloquent and touching as he talked about his years heading the Theatre, and brought a lump to my throat as he told us how reassuring it was to know that Robbie Paterson and Richard Hurst were, like the “Golden Boy” (the gold statue that tops the Manitoba Legislature Building), still a part of the Winnipeg landscape. My only on-stage involvement was as one of the “team” in “The Marathon”. The fact that we didn’t know if we were going to hit the time target had us all on edge and I explained all this to the audience when I introduced the act. Once the big digital clock appeared on the screen behind us, I could feel the folks out front lean forward as we threw the length of our rolled up “scripts” out in front of us to start the clock. It was manic! I could feel the intense focus as our ears strained to hear the cue lines, our mouths working to make the words clear as we sped through the famous quotes, bending over as we spooled the long paper through our hands desperate to get to the end. As we’d finish a line, we’d look over our shoulders to see where the time stood, and the talking would speed up. It just compounded the excitement and energy. We were frantic, laughing and jumping up and down trying to speak everything faster and faster. The audience was just as caught up as we were. I don’t know how many of the last few lines were intelligible, but the clock ran out just a few seconds before we got to the last line! I think it was our Herculean effort that made the house erupt into applause as we breathed a collective sigh of relief, took our bows and staggered off the stage, laughing all the way.

            Stephen had given his first set of remarks earlier in the evening. My five minute “suggestion” was handily blown out of the water when he went on for a remarkable sixteen minutes (all those guest’s names!). I stood in the wings wind-milling my arms (which everyone backstage enjoyed immensely) frantically trying to get his attention to wind it up, all to no avail. Toward the end of the show, he came to me backstage asking if we should shorten the introduction to the final “Quo Vadis” number. That intro took thirty seconds and gave a context for the song. He thought the show was running long! I almost hit him. But we finished to a great response and the folks I spoke to afterward told me it had been a great evening … and how well it had moved along. If they only knew!

            I found myself having to do some schedule juggling in the weeks that followed. Robbie had offered me a thankfully small role in “Pride and Prejudice”, and Ken wanted me to do Rainbow’s Fall show, “Forever Plaid”, and possibly their Winter show, either “Little Shop of Horrors” or “Cats”. “Pride” and “Plaid” overlapped by a week, but I thought I could manage it if I put Morgan into a Doggie Hotel for that time so I wouldn’t have to dash home between rehearsals and performances to feed him and let him know I was still alive. It turned out, mercifully, that young Kevin McIntyre would be available to direct “Plaid”, a show he’d done twice before and was much better suited for the material than was I. It was now a case of Rainbow deciding between “Cats” and “Little Shop”. For my money, “Cats” was not the right choice for the Company. When it had been suggested, I’d re-listened to the complete production recording. We didn’t have enough triple-threats in the city. It is a humongous show – vocally and physically! There is no Ensemble per se – everyone is a name role with a specialty moment. The cast could only be high-end singers and actors, and the spectacular dancing, what the show was known for, was incredibly demanding. We’d have to import a lot of folks which would affect the production’s bottom line and I relayed my thoughts to Ken. He told me that a decision would be made by mid-Summer, but it was only a matter of days after our conversation before the choice came down. “Little Shop” would be my Winter project.

            I don’t know why I tug at the bit as much as I do when a directing job comes my way. My “let’s-get-it-all-taken-care-of-now” approach appeals to my sense of order, and pinning down folks for production positions and the Cast well in advance calms me down and allows me to mentally focus on constructing my vision. And that’s just what we did. Ken wanted to enlarge the Cast a little bit – from ten to 14 – and I thought that would work if only to populate the Pantages Stage a bit more. We found Alan Kliffer, a Toronto-based performer who had the appealing nebbish quality for ‘Seymour’. Chelsea Duplak or Lisa Durupt would be possibilities for ‘Audrey’. The Vocal Back-up Trio would be Kimberley Rampsersad, Lisa Bell and Michele White. Our ‘Orin’ would be either Simon Miron or Peter Huck and Nick Atkinson would be the Voice of ‘Audrey II’. Harry Nelkin or Jay Brazeau or Nick Rice would play ‘Mr. Mushnik’ and the puppeteers for the ‘Audrey II’ were readily available from Ken’s connections. We could have the set and costumes from the Canadian Stage production, Michael Walton would light it for us, and Chris Peace would Stage Manage. Ken made the phone calls, and we were done! A no brainer! I was stoked! I had months to prepare!

            I popped back out to Victoria to spend more time with Mom and to look at a large townhouse on a golf course she thought we could buy together. It was glorious! Mom would live upstairs and I down. I immediately fell in love with the calm and serenity and the landscaping of the 36-unit complex. The house was 2,500 square feet with a huge upper level balcony terrace and a patio on my lower level just across from the golf course. Neither Mom nor I could hold ourselves back. We talked about it for the rest of the day, over dinner and all that evening. I could find no downside with it. We put in an offer through the agent and the next day it was accepted. Mom’s condo was listed at the same time the townhouse offer went in, a Tuesday. On Wednesday, her condo had three offers and on Thursday, we were at the bank signing all the papers. Breathless would be a good word to use to describe how I felt on the plane all the way back home. I’d just altered the trajectory of my life and, for those few hours flying back home, nobody but Mom and I and the real estate agent knew about it! Now I had to think about selling my place in Winnipeg. That would take some time.

            I was still processing what had happened in Victoria as I found myself back at my desk just a bit on edge preparing budgets for a 23-city “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang” Tour. It was hard to focus. Sam was in Russia with a “42^nd Street” Tour, so I was holding down the fort. The “Chitty” Producers (Big League Productions) decided they wanted some major changes made to the orchestra budgets and since I couldn’t get Sam on the phone, I just bit the Executive bullet and implemented their requests. Sam would have to deal with the consequences once he got back. And then there was “Triple Sensation”.

            “Triple Sensation” was a talent competition reality series on CBC TV that had debuted a year earlier and was now entering a second season. It was billed as “A Project of National Cultural Relevance”. Nothing like pronouncements, is there? But, of course, that was only natural because the show had been created by Garth Drabinsky! As always, Sam had somehow managed to involve us (MSI) in the project and I had been organizing timetables, budgets and orchestra musicians for months. There had been cross-country auditions in the weeks previous, and then workshops and classes leading up to the big televised final sessions in Toronto. There were a lot of high-end people involved – Marvin Hamlisch, Sergio Trujillo, Adrian Noble, Cynthia Dale – as the competition judges, so I had assumed that the organization of the production elements would be of the same calibre. I should have known better. The project had now become the bane of my existence!!  It quickly became apparent that the folks behind the scenes were the most disorganized, inept bunch of dolts I had ever worked with – and that’s saying a lot. For some reason, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation uses a “divide and conquer” model for their corporate structure. In other words, always make sure the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There is an attitude of “Do you know who we ARE? We ARE the CBC, and we ARE in control” – one that persists to this day. In my years of experiences with the CBC as a Radio and TV performer, I was always aware of a tension that hung over a set or in a studio. Everyone was wary of each other. They did their jobs as if they were being watched by a Big Eye somewhere, and followed a strict hierarchical protocol that would not allow for decisions in-the-moment. If something was wrong, someone would have to tell someone else who would then tell someone else until the problem worked its way up the chain to the someone who could make a decision. I watched it happen over and over again and now I was in the middle of it. This time it had to do with changes in the taping schedule. Because I knew this routine, the timetable had been established months earlier and everyone … everyone – musicians, producers as well as mucky-mucks … had been notified, confirmed and reconfirmed for this particular weekend. Then, on the Friday night, someone decided to change the time of the Saturday Orchestra rehearsal and to ADD another rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon of the final taping!

            Of course, the protocol had to be followed and the structure observed, and I threw my hands up in the air and went ballistic. Perhaps I could have rolled with these punches a few years earlier. It would have been just another day at the mill. But this was viscerally debilitating, intensely frustrating. I felt put upon and ignored and finally lost it one day on poor Mark Camelleri, the show’s MD who had been my on-the-ground guy at the CBC Studios in Toronto. While we tried to get it organized, desperately phoning people with this new schedule, a lot of musicians had taken other jobs based on the long-standing schedule and could simply not be at the added rehearsal.  It was a low point for me. I mean, really low. All I could think of was getting to Victoria and being free of the bullshit of this job. It angered and saddened me at the same time.

            Not without some bruised egos and some very angry executives, “Triple Sensation” eventually worked itself out, as these things always did, but I became deeply aware that I no longer had the energy or the stomach for all … this. My fuse had become very short. My patience, such as it was, had at long last abandoned me, and I dreaded the phone ringing. I just wanted Sam to find someone to take my place, to let me go!

I’d never experienced a rehearsal period as a battlefield. “Earnest”, at the end of each day, left the wounded and maimed on the rehearsal room floor, dragging themselves toward the exits, seeking emotional solace at the nearest bar. I was never among the injured and I didn’t drink, so my involvement in that drama was minimal. My observations, private and internal, were from a distance, and only now find release. As time went on, the mood in the room grew darker and darker.

            An actor’s approach to their work is incredibly personal. Most of the time, that process is kept firmly contained below the surface, internally modified with each new set of conditions in the rehearsal room. When it isn’t, when “the play’s the thing” mentality is set aside and Ego becomes the driving force, the result is uncomfortable and counter-productive. In our case, this very quickly became the status quo. The degree of contention in every quarter was embarrassing and frequent. I suppose at base, these were nice people. I mean, they surely had loved ones and friends with whom they interacted well, social relationships that kept them on an even keel. But this was something else altogether. Niceties gradually disappeared and the personal dynamics became fraught, verbally combative and unpleasant. People were afraid of each other, openly antagonistic and rude, and it was all I could do to maintain focus as all this happened around me.

            Susan Clarke, a television performer from the U.S. (notably for her role as “Webster’s” TV Mom) was playing ‘Lady Bracknell’. While this casting might have been questionable, her work was clear, with a secure and wholly believable English accent and she seemed to stay above the fray … perhaps because she was “from away” and had no connection to these “colonials” and their petty squabbles. I, too, was having no problems, but just watching it all take place was extremely disheartening. Our hometown folks (Mairi Babb, Teri Cherniak, David Warburton) were doing great work and seemed placid enough. But every now and then they would be drawn into the conflicts that originated with the Toronto visitors. Over the years, I’d become painfully aware (and have written about it in other postings) that our Eastern friends had a distinct attitude when playing “the provinces”, a superior air that would invade the space and colour the mood. I vowed it would be my last experience in this type of environment.

            Things calmed down once we were into tech. The play was pretty well set, and the first run with costumes and hair brought everything down to the lowest common denominator – when everyone had to tuck their discontent behind the character’s trappings and focus on creating the reality of the piece. Since I was playing two roles, they had to be as distinct from each other as I could make them … and the externals were my foundation. While ‘Lane’, at the top of the show, was pretty well straight-forward looking basically Richard, it was ‘Merriman’ in the later scenes that took everyone by surprise when I walked out in full regalia … and three inches shorter. I had conspired with the Costume folks to provide me with very wide (period correct) pants that would allow me enough room in the legs to bend my knees without it being obvious and thus reducing my height. It took a bit of getting used to walking with bent knees like that, but only served to add to the age of the character – old and decrepit. A little theatrical trickery which I loved mining for all it was worth. The first time I appeared fully got up as ‘Merriman’, the cast went nuts.

            Opening was quiet, not as full a house as I would have expected, but the response was positive. By the time the cast got upstairs to the Lobby afterward, the crowd had pretty well cleared out and all the food was gone. I stayed for a very short while, said hello to friends and left feeling a tad let down. But then, that probably summed up the whole experience as far as I was concerned. Once into the routine of the run, the relationship between “Actors” and “Human Beings” became much more comfortable – the stress of rehearsals was gone and with the production up and running, we had the chance to get to know each other socially, or as “social” as one can get during performances. Away from the tensions of rehearsals, the folks turned out to be rather pleasant. There remained some distance between a few of us, but then, not everyone is always a “fit” and that was alright. Since I had a lot of time off stage, my dressing room became “Central” for the on-going Scrabble games that helped us pass the time. On the surface everything toddled along, but after the opening, I think we all started counting down the days until it was over … which is never a good sign. Sadly, “Earnest” just didn’t turn out to be one that would go down in the “I-could-have-done-this-show-forever” book.

            During the run, MSI kept my days full as always, with the payrolls and budgets. But now, since I had booked a cruise on the Queen Mary II to the Eastern Caribbean for a couple of weeks, I had to arrange for the weeklies to be dealt with in our office during my absence. The ship would not be able to accommodate all the faxing I needed to do to meet deadlines. As I started organizing the details for others to deal with, I found myself seriously thinking about what this job actually entailed, how complicated it had become. Over time, it had evolved organically, incrementally, addressing individual circumstances as they arose, and had morphed into what was now the company’s operating structure. With retirement thoughts growing more persistent, the thought of someone else doing this job frightened me a little – both personally and professionally. There was no date set for my departure, but the notion started to colour the time ahead. It affected how I felt about the job and seemed to ease the pressure I had been putting on myself for almost twenty years now. It wasn’t that I didn’t care any longer, but I came to realize that the all-consuming, all controlling intensity was wearing me down. Sam and I had superficially talked about it and, in his mind, the sooner someone could begin “training” to take over the better. Identifying who that person would be was another thing altogether. And even more difficult, at least for me, would be formally setting down what I actually did – the job description! The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this job was huge! In structural terms I was now Vice President and CFO of a multi-million dollar company, established and respected in the Industry. How would I even begin to write this down?

            I’d never gone on a cruise before. The Queen Mary II was the ultimate in luxury, a self-contained floating city and nothing to do but relax. The otherworldly isolation drove me inward. With stabilizers and modern engines, one doesn’t feel the motion of the sea. At night, standing on a darkened deck, the vastness of the sky is astonishing. One feels so small and a bit lost … “at sea”. My life was on the brink of fundamental change, and I would just have to deal with it.

            Just to keep one foot in the real world, I started organizing myself for “The Full Monty”. As a Director, this was a part of the process I loved most, making notes for the opening remarks, creating a timetable and laying out a framework in which everyone could feel comfortable and productive. By the end of the first week, Act One would be done and ready for a run, and we’d be touching on Act Two. Thankfully, the casting had come together and I was very pleased that there would be no chasing down of first choices because we’d waited too long to make offers. I had the folks I wanted signed and sealed. Once I set foot on dry land, all would be straight forward – a week in New York and then straight into rehearsals.

            The week in New York after the cruise was special because my good friend Olaf (“The Wave”) Pyttlik was in town and we spent days together seeing shows, sightseeing, and an entire morning walking around Lower Manhattan in pursuit of a vintage and very expensive Les Paul guitar Olaf had heard was for sale. It was fascinating hearing him discuss the pros and cons of the instrument with the shop salesmen and then to barter with them and settle on a price. In the course of that evening and the dinner that followed, in typical Olaf style, he fretted and questioned whether his ultimate purchase had been the right one. That angst-ing went on for a couple of days until he discovered that Les Paul himself was appearing at a little jazz club up on 59^th Street. He hauled himself (and the guitar) up to the club and, wonder of wonders, the fabled guitarist signed Olaf’s new purchase. It made the trip for him. We also went to see “Bodies; The Exhibition” which was happening at the South Street Seaport. Olaf always had a unique way of looking at the world and going to this exhibit was something I would never have done had I been by myself. It was a rather creepy experience, looking at real human bodies that had been preserved through a process called “plastination” and then taken apart and put back together to show how the human body works. There had been a lot of controversy surrounding this travelling exhibit because the subjects, deceased Chinese prisoners, had been “used” without any consent by either themselves when they were alive or their families afterward. Caught in the Olaf Whirlwind for this week, I became very aware of how sheltered an existence I had been living for perhaps much too long. He also convinced me to go see a production from Argentina called “Fuerza Bruta”! If you don’t know what that is, there is no way I can describe this extraordinary theatrical experience! Google it (“fuerzabrutaglobal.com”) and if you ever have a chance to see it, don’t hesitate … GO! Trust Olaf to open my eyes! But the break was over. I left this high energy fantasyland behind, ibuprofen coursing through my body to ease the pain from days spent walking the Streets of New York with Olaf.

            They say that casting is ninety percent of the job and I’d done my job in spades with “Monty”! One doesn’t really know that to be the case before rehearsals begin. One hopes, but it’s not until folks are in the room, on their feet and working that one knows for sure. There was immediate confirmation on our first day. My six guys (Steve Ross, Jeremy Koz, Marc Devigne, Mantee Murphy, Jeff Kohut and Gord Tanner) bonded as soon as they saw each other. There was no hanging back. From the very first moment, they launched into the blocking and musical numbers (Scott Peter as our Choreographer) with incredible energy, great humour and inventiveness, and it only got better as time went on. I was in heaven. It was so smooth and easy. The ladies (Debbie Maslowsky, Stacey Nattrass, Melanie Whyte) were the emotional anchors for the show, devoted and loyal, funny and willing to do just about anything to make something work, never shying away from a difficult moment. Oh, Lands, but they were good! I could not have asked for better artists!

            “The Full Monty” tells the story of a group of unemployed steelworkers in Buffalo, N.Y. who, in order to raise some bucks, decide to present a strip act at a local club after seeing their wives enthusiastic response to The Chippendales and the money that act generated. There is a heart and warmth built into this show as these loveable regular guys discover and overcome their inner demons and insecurities.

            The show-long lead up to the strip that the boys have to do took a couple of weeks to set in place. But we eventually got to “it”. For so long during rehearsals, the actual doing of it had remained a complete unknown. The mechanics of the strip had been worked thoroughly in advance, clothes on, and the choreography memorized. But it was all theoretical! Getting down to their “gotch” was scheduled toward the end of the second week. There was no way to tell what it was going to look and feel like until they did it. And that actually happened spontaneously one afternoon – a surprise to everyone, including themselves – a very natural progression during a run. Rather than stopping when they reach the song “Let It Go”, they just did it! Without encouragement or urging from me, it just happened. That was the first hurdle, and it was done. It was incredibly touching. The boys were so in tune with each other, all a bit nervous but honestly desperate to make it work, and, at the same time, having a great deal of fun! Next was doing it with the breakaway costumes but that had to be put off for a few days because they were late arriving from the South. It was frustrating because now they were tugging at the bit to do the real thing. The clothes eventually arrived. It was a case of them doing the strip down to their own underwear (which they wore under the G-strings) to get comfortable and accurate in the mechanics of taking off everything they were wearing.

            The afternoon of the costume run of the Second Act was fraught with anticipation. The whole cast was in the rehearsal room for the first time and as we got closer to the Finale you could feel the energy in the room rising. The boys started the number. The jackets and ties and shirts came off. The break-away pants disappeared at exactly the same time and the cast went nuts. They started screaming and hooting and that just served to buoy the guys on the rehearsal hall floor. Then it was down to the G-string and finally losing that. When it was done, the cast stood and applauded and yelled at the bravery of my boys and how great it had gone. I doubled over with laughter as it happened, more out of relief that it worked than out of amusement.  “What a rush” was Steve’s comment. The crucial test wouldn’t happen until we got into the theatre.

            The move into the Pantages was very easy, at least for the cast. Everything was in place as far as their work was concerned. There were some spacing things and an entrance or two that had to be altered, but for the most part, I knew we would sail through this with flying colours. The set was a bit shabbier than I thought it should have been considering it was a rental and was supposed to be in working order upon its arrival. But we had it repaired in no time and everything was running smoothly. It wasn’t until the Thursday before opening that the guys finally went down to the buff!

            We cleared the Theatre of all non-essential folks and they got into their security guard uniforms, this time with no underwear. Scott’s choreography was done to perfection, their voices, now mic-ed, rang out in the house, and I could tell that the guys were having great fun. Then, in a blink, it was done. The lead up to the final pose was complicated and had to be timed immaculately with the crucial lighting cue. At this point, they had only their security guard hats in their hands covering their private parts as they did the last steps of the routine. On the final musical button they simultaneously throw their hats away and step into a naked spread eagle pose as the huge wall of marquee lighting behind them spelling out “The Full Monty” flashes to life, basically blinding the audience for three or four seconds, silhouetting the naked guys followed by a blackout. Timing was everything. We had taken great care to make sure the boys felt as “safe” as possible. They were shown what the lighting looked like from both sides of the proscenium. From the on stage perspective the entire house was lit up like high noon from the marquee lights. They had that experience first. There is no way to trick your mind into believing that the folks looking back at you couldn’t see “everything”. You could see their lit up faces in perfect detail … why couldn’t they see yours? It was very disconcerting.  But sitting them in the house and having some stage hands play them in the moment the lighting cue happened, they understood that, indeed, they were blinded by the dazzling lights. In the days that followed they got to do it five or six more times and it didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. The next test would be opening and 1600 people looking at them!

            These talented young guys had been fully committed from the outset and met each challenge with a “this-is-the-job” attitude. Early on in the show, Jeff Kohut had to “audition” for the group showing his “reportedly prodigious credentials”, bare butt to the real audience but supposedly exposed to his friends. He wore a “sock” in the show, but in the absurdity of the moment as the guys have to look at “it” they could hardly control themselves. In fact they did lose it a few times. But the good humour of it all anchored the work and by the time we opened, they were having a total blast!

            Jeremy carried a huge burden as the major character in the show, and there were moments of understandable insecurity at times, but just before opening he settled in and blew me away with his truth and appealing vulnerability as both the character and the actor. There was a funny, crusty, open quality about him that went right to one’s heart. I told them all how proud I was of them and so grateful for their trust and honesty. I also told them I was completely overwhelmed by their trust of each other. When the Orchestra finally hit the pit and when Michael Walton’s grungy, industrial and theatrical lighting defined the stage, I knew this was another really GOOD show! It only remained that Winnipeg thought the same thing I did. 

            The structure of the story line is a constant tease leading, of course, to the big final strip number, “Let It Go”. The Pantages is laid out with boxes abutting each side of the stage and that is where we put the girlfriends and wives of the men. They would act as a subtle “guide” for how the real audience should be reacting. But on Opening Night, the real folks didn’t need any guidance! They played their part, laughing, cheering, applauding and laughing some more. All the performers nailed their roles, maintaining that honesty and focus, carefully building the dramatic arc of the song – tentative and slightly scared at the start, but slowly, with the vocal encouragement of the ladies, gaining more and more momentum. But by the time the clothes started coming off, everyone in the Theatre was on the same page. The screaming and yelling was overwhelming, and the guys played it for all they were worth, becoming more and more brazen and confident. I held my breath as we approached the last moments. The boys have been coerced by the girls in the house into “taking it all off”. After a moment of hesitation, the music ramps up into full bore, the dance continues, and the boxer shorts came off and are discarded leaving them in only G-strings. After few more dance steps sashaying up stage, bare butts to the house, they unhook their G-strings which spring free and are now hanging down from the hand protecting their modesty; the hat in the other hand comes down, covering the unloosed G-string for an instant. The G-strings are discarded at exactly the same time, and after another four steps toward the house, they plant themselves, legs spread apart and, with the final “whomp” played by the orchestra, they lift their hats above their heads and the wall of light snaps on, blindingly, to end the song.

            The house EXPLODED! I just started laughing out loud, again with relief. The audience rose to their feet en masse and cheered. The guys came out for their bows in white terry cloth bathrobes and were hailed even louder by the house! I was so proud of their work and took heart that we probably had a great run to look forward to. The after-party was joyous and somewhat giddily manic for all of us, and I got the feeling that the cast was anxious to settle in for the rest of the run.

            But those anticipated houses and sales didn’t materialize. No one could figure out why. It drove Ken mad. Folks who did come went wild for the production, but box office never took off and that baffled and angered him. I was sad for the cast. They deserved full houses. I’d not been this emotionally connected to a group of folks in a while, and, as the show whimpered to a close, we all took heart that we’d done our best. What was next?