THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT – Part Twenty

            The script drafts, revisions, rewrites, the music sketches and printings and the demo and test tapes of “Now You’re Talkin’” sat in a file case on the corner of my desk like a painful and taunting reminder of the hours and hours of work I had, so far, put into this project over that past year. What was the point of all this? The ambiguous responses from the various theatres to whom I had sent scripts and tapes sat close by, keeping me aware of how my efforts had seemingly been for naught. I don’t know why I didn’t salt them away in a closet or a drawer. Perhaps I just wanted the jolt of seeing the material from time to time to keep some perspective in my life. But, for the moment, I relinquished those possibilities and got on with other things.

The meeting with Leslee (Silverman) was, I knew, not about the show I’d written. A few months earlier, in the course of an update about “Now You’re Talkin’”, she had asked me if I would be interested in getting involved in a new project for Actors Showcase. They were considering mounting their first fully-fledged Musical, a production of “Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang”. She had offered me some choices: I could be in the show, do the Musical Direction or direct it. It was nice to have options. I’d thought about it and this meeting was to cement what my involvement would be. Simply put, the piece was an adaptation of a story by Mordecai Richler about the empowering of children. It had originally been commissioned by Young People’s Theatre in Toronto and musicalized by Dennis Lee and Jim Betts in the late 70’s.

I’d not directed for quite a while, not since my Portland days; but the thought of opening another avenue for income and creative control was too much to pass on and I took the Directing job. We signed the contract and I was off to the races. I decided that getting together a production team would be the first order of business and then I would turn my eye toward casting the show. I was, at this point, being held captive in a show at MTC called “Royalty is Royalty” by W.O. Mitchell, one of Rick McNair’s favorite writers, and had an infinitesimally small role playing the leader of a rag-tag marching band – more “rag” than “tag”, with eight lines and some crowd scenes – so I spent a lot of my off-stage time in my dressing room organizing my concept and approach for “Jacob”. I had again been reminded of what I did NOT want to do as a director while watching the McNair School of Staging, which was to call people on stage, tell them to start talking and “let’s see what happens”! “It’ll work itself out” was his mantra and, out of our own self-preservation more than anything else, it usually did. Steven Schipper, who was one of the Assistant ADs at the Theatre, would come in from time to time and clean things up, but it was a confusing and uncomfortable process. I was happy to have something to do with my time off stage!

Putting together my creative team was not an easy task. My involvement had been confirmed pretty late in the season and, as a result, a lot of the better folks had already been snapped up. I was scrambling to find people I knew could do the job and, importantly, with whom I would enjoy working. I settled an excellent Stage Manager (Janet Sellery) and Lighting Designer (Kevin Fraser), a husband and wife team I’d met in Toronto in the late summer. After some back and forth I brought Bev Aronovitch in as our Musical Director. Because my visual concept for the piece was rather complicated, I needed someone with a lot of design experience and who didn’t mind going off-the-wall a bit. Enter crucial Thread Number Five in this saga!

I’d met Jack Timlock at MTC (where he was Production Manager) just a short while after arriving in Winnipeg and our paths had crossed any number of times over the past years. He was freelancing now and I hired him as my designer. Timlock (I’m going to use his last name to differentiate him from Jack Shapira – who would re-enter the story very shortly) was a feisty guy to say the least. He was outspoken, very funny and bitchy at the same time and, as he put it, “said things that other people were only thinking”. That got him into trouble from time to time, but most of the time I appreciated his down-to-earth manner and his candour. Because he had been a Production Manager at a lot of theatres, he knew what limitations were in play for any particular engager – financial, physical and aesthetic – and that was a reassuring asset in putting a show together. We began our trek into “Jacobland” as I explained my needs. He sketched and modified designs as the days went by and we were both getting excited by the potential of the visual component of the show.

Most of our meetings started with some chattering back and forth about what was going on the community, mostly gossip but usually substantiated snippets of the theatre drama about town. It was during one of these preambles that he told me about some “financial irregularities” at Rainbow Stage. As their Production Manager, Timlock was responsible for keeping his eye on budgeting and expenditures and the Company’s accounts. There was a group of Rainbow’s Board (which included the City’s Mayor (Bill Norrie) and the Lieutenant Governor (Pearl McGonigle) which, over time, had become aware of some questionable expenditures and had asked Timlock to notify them of anything that caught his eye in this regard.

Concurrent to all this was the continuing set-tos between the entire Arts Community and the Winnipeg City Council. Arts Funding was an explosive topic at Council meetings (which were broadcast locally on cable and made for some exciting viewing). The constant attacks by anti-arts Councilors Alan Wade (“The Wicked Witch of the Arts”) and Al Golden about “why these artsy folks should be given “free rides” from the city” were the focus of conversations in artist’s hang outs and Arts Board Rooms around the city. Additionally, as if to give credence to the municipal acrimony, the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Canada was being fiercely debated. Part of those embroilments concerned The Arts and resulted in a national Commission called “The Status of the Artist” (in which, over the months ahead, I was to play a small part). Across the country, the viability of funding for the arts became extremely contentious. It always comes down to money doesn’t it!?

Thus, Shapira’s appearances before the City Council asking for money when, in the back of some minds he was “doing stuff” with Rainbow’s coffers, were the settings for some major arguments. His request to the City for $72K for the production of “Anne of Green Gables” was met with sneers and an approval of only $12K and the war was on. It didn’t last very long.

I popped in to the Rainbow office a few days later to discover that “Jack Shapira was no longer with Rainbow”! WHAT??? My mouth must have dropped a mile when the General Manager told me this. There had been a blow up at a Board Meeting a few nights earlier and that was “it”. People were being told that he was “on vacation” but no one believed that. The full Board had been informed of the financial irregularities, confronted Shapira and, despite his heated objections, had told him he was done. He was being replaced by … wait for it … Jack Timlock! In talking to Chickie (Shapira’s wife) I learned that even she had been concerned about how her husband had been acting of late, thinking that it was ten years ago and that he still held sway over his empire. In a way, it was sad. Why would someone sabotage themselves like that? He was a wealthy man in his own right. Why embezzle from Rainbow? A few days after that conversation, Shapira called. I’d not heard from him for quite a while. He sounded beaten but still managed take umbrage that no one was calling him. What the hell did he expect?! He had indeed been away, in San Francisco, getting psychiatric help (he said) and had come to a lot of realizations, like how much of a bastard he’d been to a lot of people over the years and how humbling the therapy sessions were. He swore me to secrecy until he made his formal announcement. The newspaper headlines said it all.

But that certainly wasn’t the whole story. Timlock, who chose me as his vomit pail for some reason, let go over lunch one day, telling me that he had known what was going on for a couple of years and had been accumulating Xerox copies of phony cheques and ledger entries as he didn’t want to be seen as an accessory should all this come to light, as indeed it was about to. Initially, Board spokespeople were treating it as an internal matter, trying to be pro-active and circumspect. But with the municipal and provincial government connections sitting on the Board, it was only a matter of time before the real story came out. And a week later it did!!

The timing for this could not have been worse. With the arts under siege across the country, to have a scandal come to bear was a coffin nail. But there was no let-up in the headlines! The commentary, analysis, editorials, Letters to the Editor just kept coming, day after day after day! Investigations of other arts groups in town were now being threatened. From time to time I would get messages from Shapira on my machine. “Why aren’t you calling me?’ and a hang up. “Some friend you are!” and a hang up. How could I respond to all this? It wasn’t as if I could offer any advice or commiseration. I blamed him for what was happening and would have gone off on him had we spoken. I lay in bed at night getting angrier and angrier at the memories of his constant pleas of poverty when negotiating contracts, his battles with Equity about raising professional quotas and my coming to his defense with Equity over and over again; we’d all been duped! And it wasn’t over!

We were now well into rehearsals for ‘Jacob Two-Two” and I was grateful to have an oasis from all this upheaval. It wasn’t a peaceful oasis but served to center me and put my head in another space. The lead up to our first meeting was exciting and energizing. Even though it was late in the season, I’d got my first picks for the Adult roles. Robbie and Pat Hunter were on board for “Mr. Fish” and “Mistress. Fowl” and they were my anchor. The kids were another matter. I auditioned dozens of them and, with some degree of agony, managed to find the right shapes and sizes and abilities.

Being organized is almost a sexual experience for me. (I can’t believe I actually wrote that down … but it’s the truth!) There is a visceral joy at having everything in order to be used as a foundation for the challenges and the unexpected when putting a show together. If you “know your shit” you can deal with anything. And I knew my shit! I knew the show backward and forward and inside out and had taken great pains in explaining the concept to everyone so we were all on the same page. At one point during that first cast meeting, Leslee (who was watching everything that was going on … after all, it was her theatre) come over to me at a break and told me that I was using words that were too big for the kids to understand. “What??” says I. “I don’t think words like “ameliorate” and “expeditious”” are day-to-day words for 8 year olds!” says she. It had been a long time since I’d been in a “kid environment” so I toned it down a bit. They would creep back in from time to time, but I monitored myself.

There were up and down times – as there always are putting a show together – but I was immersed and, like a warm bath, I was luxuriating in it! Scheduling was a problem that frustrated me. Some of it was of my own doing. I was still doing “Royalty” at MTC and constant commercial recording sessions early in the day and this lead to unavoidable conflicts, especially on matinee days. The kids weren’t available till after school and my Musical Director was only on site for three hours a day. I knew that the “Festival” sound she was trying to coax out of the kid’s singing was going to go the way of all flesh once we hit the stage. I would be side-coaching them, screaming “Louder!!” or “”More energy!” or “Tell me!!”, but I let the “technique” sessions take precedence for a while. It was helter-skelter but we managed due mainly to everyone’s spirit and energy. While the kids bounced off the walls from time to time they got down to business when it came to doing the job. The adults were stabilizing influences and, with my crackerjack Stage Management team, we got the show on its feet, shaky though they were. Our first run-thru was stupendous! Our second was like we had never rehearsed the show at all! But that’s the way it goes sometimes.

While I had pretty well bought into the script, the music, for me, left a great deal to be desired. It had been written ten years earlier and was very dated. With the exception of a couple of the songs, the musical numbers bore little relationship to what was going on in the story. They seemed to have been inserted for the sake of “let’s have a song here” and that didn’t sit well with me. So, in my arrogance, I decided to write some new material to help the story along and give the characters some depth. We found out rather quickly from the licensors that this wasn’t going to fly at all. It sort of miffed me because I’d written some good material and it was being sung very well in rehearsals. This was back in the day long before “re-imagining” existing scripts or “reconstructing” older material was a trend. At this point in my life “recreating” a theatre piece seems a bit like cheating or taking the easy way out. If a play doesn’t “work” for you, do something else, or write your own material. But back then the published version was sacrosanct and I was, like I said, arrogant and thought I knew better.

Performing to music “tracks” is pretty well “old hat” these days. Back then, it was new. Very new. Bev, my MD had mastered computer sequencing and in the time she’d not been with us, had turned the rather lame score into a virtual symphonic masterpiece. The great thing about tracks is that they are consistent. The bad thing about tracks is that they are consistent! Once the “play” button is pushed, there is no room for error. There is no turning back. There is no vamping till ready, there is no missing an entrance, there is no screwing up of any kind. The cast found that out rather quickly when they started rehearsing with Bev. The cue word for the music to start was the cue word and once it was said the musical train was headed for the next station.  It took repeated tries but once it was in their heads, it was great. I was over the moon and so was the cast. It was just the boost needed to take us to the next level.

There is a dreadful time in the course of putting a show together when the company moves from the rehearsal hall to the stage. The group is thrown into a new environment that bears no relationship to where the past weeks have been comfortably and, ultimately, complacently spent. In this new space, emotions are forced to the surface. The “normal” disappears. The bright stage lighting, the costumes, the backstage darkness, the ranks of audience seating in front of you, the busy stage crew all serve to remind you that the performer is no longer the focus. Now the production becomes the most important thing. It surrounds, envelopes and overwhelms you. As a Director, I love this period! Deep down inside there might be a few misgivings but you know, IF you’ve done your job, that all the elements are in place. The mechanics are set. If you’ve also been a performer, as a Director you understand the upheaval that is about to take place for those poor folks on stage. But you also know that it will all settle in short order.  This new “reality” will become a haven, an all-too-brief tight-knit family unit of joyous human beings doing what they love. That’s it! That’s why this happens! And that’s how it did happen.

I had to work hard to maintain my objectivity. As we went through the tech period I came to realize that the mistakes were minor and fixable and while there was still some detailing to be taken care of in the performing, I was impressed with the cast’s and crew’s work … and mine. We opened to great acclaim. Nothing went wrong (always a blessing) and despite the fact that the vast majority of audiences were made up completely of kids, the responses were always over the top and sustained. I did notice, however, that the kids in our show were giving in to temptation: “Wow, if I get a big laugh by doing the line this way, I’ll probably get a bigger laugh if I do this with my face while saying the line, or do that with my body!” I got on to that right away with a small but firm lecture about removing the “improvements” and honouring what we had all worked so hard to put on the stage. That seemed to work.

Before I knew it, “Jacob” was over. I was pleased and proud of the product but, as is always the case, when it’s over, you just walk away. In this case, I had put my foot back into the Directing Waters and would see what it led to. Needless to say, the constant thrum of the Shapira/Rainbow scandal continued to permeate the atmosphere like a behemoth’s heartbeat, fading then growing as the investigations went on and on. The call for arts funding re-assessments and audits of all the city’s arts organizations grew and, toward the end of the year, the Rainbow investigation was expanded. Now the Fraud Squad was looking waa-aay back as more financial “irregularities” surfaced. We waited.

I happily began teaching a Musical Theatre class at MTC and that was energizing, getting me back into a performance mindset as I had snagged a small role (“The Minister”) in Rainbow’s first winter show, “Anne of Green Gables” and was about to start rehearsals. Alan (Lund) was to direct. The wonderful thing about this experience was watching Alan work (again). In this case, he had directed the original production of “Anne” in 1966 and hundreds of times since then. I was anxious to watch how someone who knew a show so well would keep himself interested. The fact that the rehearsal period had been reduced to the minimum (two and a half weeks) put the pressure on all of us. Alan’s approach was incredibly methodical and VERY fast. He would get miffed from time to time forgetting that we had never done the show before and expecting us to read his mind about what he wanted to have happen in a certain moment. But then he would check himself and remember this was new to us and get back to his normal generous approach. The show opened to great audience reception (who doesn’t like the nostalgic and sentimental pap that is “Anne of Green Gables”?) and we were off on another run.

By now, Timlock had very quickly gotten the reins of Rainbow Stage firmly in hand. It always struck me as odd when he would arrive at the theatre during “Anne”. He would sit about in the Green Room with folks coming up to him and intimating their desire for work. I knew he hated being schmoozed by actors (“The only reason people like me is because I can give them work”, he would complain). Since he was now in control of things everyone’s attitude had changed toward him. I avoided him not wanting to give the impression that I wanted work too (which, of course, I did) but he would see me sitting waiting for my next entrance and throw himself down beside me with his head very close to mine and start whispering gossip; only this wasn’t gossip; it was information from the source! I was becoming a confidant, a confederate, slowing being drawn into the vortex of this whirlpool that was picking up speed. There was something exciting about it, but at the same time something that felt a just a little bit dangerous. At the same time it was all I could do to resist my impulses to ask what was being done in the coming summer and were there any parts for me. He eventually volunteered that information and I found out that, having now been appointed Resident Director, Alan had asked for me and that the Summer shows were “Sweet Charity” and “Oliver”.  I also learned that, in addition to his job as Rainbow’s Producer, Timlock was in preparations to open a new Dinner Theatre at the Westin Hotel. There were to be a LOT more changes in the months to come, most of which would heavily involve me for a long time to come.

“Anne” closed and I headed West to do ‘Maj. Gen. Stanley’ in a production of “Pirates of Penzance” for Edmonton Opera. Before I left I had tried to get in touch with Shapira to find out how he was doing but was usually thwarted by Chickie who would go on about him just hanging about the house, unshaved and unwashed. I hoped that I could get “news” from Winnipeg via newspapers at the Library (these were days long before the internet) because this growing saga was not over … not by a long shot!