The four seasons at MTC had set the bar very high in a number of areas. Production (sets, props, costumes, etc.) and Stage Management had always been superb. One never worried about the quality of the environment in which we were to present ourselves. The performers were astonishing in their abilities and commitment to each project and, most importantly (at least to me) to each other. But one crucial element of putting the shows together stood above all the others. That was the Directors! Richard (Ouzounian) had directed many of the productions himself but he also brought in massively experienced directors from around North America and beyond who were experts in certain styles and approaches. They “knew their shit” in no uncertain terms and their insight and vision established a standard by which, even today, I judge all others.

After returning from Ottawa, I was immediately hired by the Manitoba Opera for a touring production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” playing ‘Sir Joseph Porter’. This was a touring “Theatre For Young Audiences” production, a Contract that Actors’ Equity had established a number of years earlier to allow schools and Community Organizations to experience professional performances usually in areas away from the larger centers. There were more cons than pros to this Contract. One “pro” of course was the length of these engagements – working for extended periods of time was good! The “cons” made themselves very apparent in the low fee scale set by the Union, the number of performances allowed in a week and the conditions in which we were permitted to work. Oh! My! God!

I must preface my accounting of much of what follows by saying that I face a conundrum in “how” to write about these experiences. I’m not normally one to be mean-spirited or nasty to or about another human being. At least I try not to be. I recently saw a quote saying that if someone is having a negative impact on you there are two approaches; one, get that person out of your life or two, call that person out. I have chosen to do neither. Any negative references to people (and there are a number of them) in the pages ahead will leave out the person’s name, although a bit of research would make identification relatively easy. They will not escape my reactions at this point in time to their behaviour or actions “back then”!

In approaching the TFYA engagement, I had no idea what to expect. Of course I was happy for the work but somewhat apprehensive based on horror stories I’d heard from others who had been through such tours. I was fortunate to be working with some wonderful people, particularly Tracy Dahl and Richard Margison, also neophytes to the contract and both very early in their now-spectacular international operatic careers. Our struggles began mounting rather quickly. This production of “Pinafore” had a company of 8 (!) artists (not all professionals) and once on the road was to be augmented by community or student on-stage involvement. While well-intentioned, our “Director” (who had been a Stage Manager in Opera for a number of years and now decided he wanted to “move up” in this genre) was, to put it mildly, ill-equipped in every way to mount this production. That became apparent very quickly during our rehearsal period as he demonstrated his basic inability to stage a scene! He had no awareness of the character relationships, the flow of the story (as demonstrated by his brutal editing of the script) and, in purely practical terms, no idea how to talk to artists as human beings in order to achieve results!

I was the senior (read “oldest”) artist in the group with a fair amount of on-stage experience. After each small stage direction to one of the other players he would look over at me for approval of what he’d done. This was maddening! Catching on to what he was doing, I would turn away following a bit of staging refusing to meet his eyes. At the same time, I began feeling sorry for him because he was so obviously out of his depth and pretty much at sea as to how to put it all together. As a result, we would stand around for hours on end as he tried to figure out how to make it work. Remember that I had been dealing with Broadway and International directors for the four years previous. I tried to be patient but as time went on, we all started to get very frustrated. The result were inevitable “we vs. him” stand-offs which, as Deputy, I had to mediate any number of times if only to get us through the rehearsal process. Add to this already tense situation, a tiny ancient woman named Bereth Berse from the Ladies Opera Guild would arrive from time to time, unannounced and uninvited, and, as a self-appointed guardian of the English Language, would sit and yell at us about our diction and volume! But we weathered it, coming out the other side not a little the worse for wear. It was a great relief to escape into the tour.

Initially, ensconced in our rental van, we were a merry little band (“merry” because we were away from the clutches of our theatrical persecutor) as we headed out into rural Manitoba. Our Director had savagely cut the normally two-and-a-half hour production down to one hour for the day time School Performances (and ninety-minutes for the evening Community Shows). That left us grasping to make clear the traditionally convoluted G&S story line and character relationships for our audiences! The young kids in the schools couldn’t have cared less. This was time out of the classroom! Watching adults spouting unintelligible language and singing and dancing in weird costumes was little more than baffling to them and twenty minutes was usually the far end of their attention span. For us, it was HELL!

One of our collective duties was to unload and set up the “scenery” before the show. Another was to then do a short rehearsal with the kids who had been selected to play the Sailor Chorus in some of the numbers. They didn’t have to sing but just stand there, listen and react as we guided them about the stage into various formations. It was like herding cats! Of course everything we had rehearsed with them had completely evaporated by the time they were herded onto the stage and we invariably had to improvise everything. Forcing a dozen seven and eight year olds to move to various places on a tiny stage or the gym floor while singing “When I Was A Lad” was exhausting to say the least. Doing it ten times a week month after month was downright debilitating!! But, as is always the case in the Theatre, we got through it.

It was a luxury of sorts when we had evening Community shows with Adults in the house AND helping us as our Chorus. Some of the groups had even prepared the musical responses to “When I Was A Lad” and joined in at the appropriate places during the song which made us all very happy. But, as time went on spending every hour of every day together, tiny tensions arose among us. Little frays began to show. Folks took to making little “improvements” to their parts, mugging shamelessly for laughs, changing blocking and responses to lines and not caring a whit how if affected the rest of us. Gentle reminders from our poor Stage Manager to stick to the script bore little fruit and toward the end of our run, we descended into a contentious little group. Fortunately, by that point, we were into run-outs which meant that we spent nights at our own homes and drove to the venues only short distances from the city.  The weekends were also small reprieves from our challenges and we could get away from each other and back into “real life”. The production sputtered somewhat ungracefully to an end and I vowed I would never again be put into another situation like that. Needless to say it was a vow I couldn’t keep!

Without the regularity of Company paychecks in my life, scrambling for work became a high priority. Even while on Tour, I was networking, letter writing, making phone calls, just trying to stay connected and keeping my ear to the ground for things to do. I had maintained my interest in photography and managed to build a small reputation by taking headshots for actors around town. That was somewhat lucrative. My connection with the Augustine United Church Choir was on-going and very involving. I was a paid soloist there and rehearsals and services served to keep my voice in good shape. Along with all this was a very active commercial voice-over career. I got calls constantly and hardly a week went by that I wasn’t standing in a studio doing ads for some local or National business. My most ardent employer became Travel Manitoba, the government agency overseeing Tourism in the Province! I guess I had the sound they wanted for their annual campaigns (usually about 40 commercials) and that went on for a number of years. I became known as “the Voice of Manitoba”! There was one year when they hadn’t called me for the campaign so I had gone ahead and scheduled and paid for an extended trip to England. When they finally did call only to discover that I was going to be away during the time period they needed me, they went nuts. They ended up paying all the hotel, air and excursion cancellation expenses and penalties just to keep me in town. Nice to be wanted! And it all certainly kept my head well above water financially for a very long time.

Jack Shapira was a titan in the local music and theatre business! By the time I met him, he had been going strong for years with his Orchestra, on CBC with “The Show That Jack Built” and, since 1966, as Producer and General Manager of Rainbow Stage. Rainbow had been in bad shape when he swooped in to reorganize and revitalize the Company. There was no doubt about his single-minded devotion to the performing arts in the city. And, for a time – a long time, in fact – he held sway during the summer months producing Musicals at the Stage in Kildonan Park and bringing in thousands of people to Canada’s major outdoor Theatre. My first involvement with Rainbow was as ‘Perchik’ in “Fiddler On The Roof”. Having just come out of Gilbert and Sullivan with a cast of 8 I was jolted into “the big time”, now surrounded by a cast of 50 actors, singers and dancers, all well-heeled and raring to get this big show on stage.

Jack was enigmatic to me. He took me under his wing for a time because I was usually amenable and always forthright, something he respected greatly. He admired my spunk and focus and honesty. Hardly a day would go by that he didn’t call me to gossip (which he loved to do) or commiserate or to rant about having to pay Equity actors “so much money”, as if the salaries were being taken out of his own pocket and not the Company’s. He would threaten to make the theatre non-professional and save lots of money. Those parts of our conversations always made me nervous but I would just cajole him and eventually calm him down. But at the heart of it was always the fact that, to him, the outside world was taking advantage of him, infringing upon his kingdom and he didn’t like it one bit. Little did anyone know then that this dark aspect of his personality would lead to a series of events that would send shock waves through the industry some years later.

The production values were adequate based on the somewhat primitive environment in which they were created. This was back in the day before the physical stage facility had been expanded and modernized to the state it is in today (Old and new Rainbow photos at left). Back then there was no major stage housing, the audience sat outside (although a huge dome was eventually added in 1970), and there was no fly gallery or adequate back stage space. Sets and scenery were tracked on from the wings and nothing was “flown”. The roof leaked, sometimes massively, depending on the size of the storm, and the orchestra pit would flood regularly. Dressing rooms were cramped, damp and dumpy. But there was a sense of “putting on the show” against all odds … and there were a lot of them. Raccoons, mosquitoes, heat and humidity (remember, this was all outdoors) and a sound system that left a great deal to be desired!

In the time ahead, I’ll touch a lot on Rainbow (I did 31 shows there as a performer and Director over the years to come) but this first experience was bliss. It reminded me of the old summer stock days in Nova Scotia and of being a part of something unique. This “Fiddler” was directed by the fiery Tibor Fehergyhazi, a passionate, confrontational and thoroughly experienced crazed Hungarian refugee who had seen life from all sides of its challenges. He would guide by provocation, encouragement and mad harangues but always lifted a production above and beyond the norms and I loved working for him. The rehearsals were always in the MTC Rehearsal Hall and then we would move to “The Stage” (and the heat and mosquitoes) for the final rehearsal stages. In “Fiddler”, ‘Perchik’ is the young revolutionary who turns up in Anatevka and eventually takes away ‘Hodel”, Tevye’s daughter (in this case, the wonderful Andorlie Hillstrom), thus beginning the spiral of dissolution. It’s a beautiful role with some beautiful music to sing and I loved playing the part. Local Legend Cliff Gardiner was playing ‘Tevye’, a part he had played a number of times before. He had the role down to a tee and was marvelous to watch and to act with on so many levels (below is a photo of Cliff and Evie Anderson in the Wedding scene; you can see my head just to the right there!)! Winnipeg audiences LOVED “Fiddler”. The large local Jewish population guaranteed full houses every night and the show has always been a money-maker for Rainbow.

The production ran smoothly until one night in mid-run. During the “Sabbath Prayer” scene, there were some wonky notes coming from the pit. It sounded as though a clarinet player had a broken reed. We thought nothing of it. The scene continued until we became aware of loud talking coming from someplace other than the stage. The voice got louder and louder and we realized it was coming from the PIT!! As time went on we found ourselves competing with another scene going on just a few feet away below us. The voice began yelling incoherently … “We’ve been waiting all our lives for this” and other things that didn’t make any sense. Our focus was quickly ebbing as we tried to maintain what was supposed to be happening on stage, but lines were being lost and Cliff was becoming more and more distracted. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bob McMullin, our mild-mannered conductor, walk from his podium over into the Woodwind section. I had thought that, somehow, a drunken member of the audience had managed to wander into the pit and was causing all the commotion which, by now, was getting completely disruptive. My exit from the scene approached and ran off to one of the stage managers frantically whispering “What the hell is going on!?” From their position way back in the wings they could see none of what was happening but when I pointed out the mayhem it became quite obvious that something was very wrong.

Usually, Nick Rice, who was playing Motel, the tailor, and I had a small in-character exchange in the wings just before his entrance to make him aware of the action in the story on stage. We were very serious about maintaining our own suspensions of disbelief at every quarter. I tried to incorporate a little of what he might “discover” once he went on stage but the coin didn’t drop for him and he toddled out to Tevye’s house to ask for his daughter’s hand. I ran back to the dressing room to tell the guys what was going on and as I got there, we heard the sound of swelling applause over the Tannoy, growing and growing to ovation proportions. We dashed out into the wings just in time to see one of our stage hands, the massive, hulking ‘Big Burt”, lying on his stomach on the runway surrounding the pit, reaching down, grabbing a middle-aged clarinet player under his arms and, with a huge effort, hoisting him out of the pit! The audience was going crazy as Cliff, Nick and Rhona, who was playing ‘Tzeitl’, stood frozen, transfixed by the insanity playing out right in front of them. The audience was now standing up and “ovating” for all they were worth! The extraction was followed by three more stagehands scrambling up onto the runway and pushing the musician forcibly off-stage and it was over!

As it turned out, the clarinetist had arrived at the theatre inebriated and during the first Act our Conductor had told him to stop playing because he was hitting so many wrong notes. Apparently there had been a rivalry and tensions between the two of them for years and it all came to a head on this particular night. At intermission, the Police were called, Shapira arrived to calm things down, and the show went on with all the clarinets moving up one to fill in the missing chair. This episode had taken a full ten minutes to play out (an eternity on-stage) and is indelibly imprinted on the memories of all who witnessed it. Ah, a Life in the Thea-tuh!!

During the Spring and Summer that year, the entire theatre community in Winnipeg awaited, with bated breath, the announcement of next Artistic Director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre. What would this person be like? Would we know who he or she was? And, most importantly, what opportunities would be available for the performing community in the new playbill? This all became abundantly clear very quickly with a press release to which one could hear our collective voices rise up asking “Who?”

Rarely one to let the grass grow under my feet, I let the dust settle a bit and quickly made arrangements for a welcoming interview and to let him (yes, “him”) know that I was at his disposal. I arrived at the appointed time and Joanne, Richard’s secretary and a good friend, indicated that I could go in. It struck me that she seemed slightly tentative, which was unusual for her, and rather distant. I stepped up to the open door of the AD’s office and knocked on the door jamb. He was a small, skinny man with uncombed hair and a scruffy beard. “Ah, the artsy type”, I thought. He looked up from what he was doing, paused and said “I have nothing for you”. It took me a moment to actually process the words he had spoken. I didn’t know how to respond. I could feel some syllables forming in my mouth but nothing would fit together or come out. I think I stammered a little. He looked at me as if to say “Was there something else?” I could feel my eyes widen a little bit and the skin on the back of my head start to tighten, still trying to make sense of what was going on. I quietly said “Okay” and backed away from the door, stunned, into the area beside Joanne’s desk. I looked over at her and she mouthed “I’m sorry”. I guess it was that moment that brought me fully into this reality and I walked away. The whole episode took about fifteen seconds.

“I have nothing for you” … out of the approximately forty roles in all the productions in both theatres! Over the weeks ahead, I thought about the encounter and remembered how a male lion, when taking over a pride, did everything he could to rid himself of any of the previous alpha’s male offspring, either by killing them or forcing them out in order to thwart any threat of a challenge to his dominance. Any vestige of disciples from Richard’s regime was to be eradicated and that’s just what happened. It was maddening, sad and vindictive and it took me a long time to get over it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever really ever gotten over it!

I never exchanged another word with him and I didn’t work at MTC for two years. Eighteen months later he was gone, fired for breach of contract!

 

NEXT: In High Demand