It began simply enough.

            Sam Lutfiyya had lurked around the periphery of my life for several years. I knew him mainly as “the drummer” in the pit at Rainbow Stage and as a Manager at St. John’s Music. He also hired, in consultation with the MD, the musicians in the Rainbow pit. Our connections were usually back stage, minimal and, with a simple “Hey” to each other, affable but noncommittal. It was during his involvement as the drummer in the “Now You’re Talkin’” Workshops that we registered with each other … at least, I did. Because of the nature of the beast, I had a lot of discussions with our Musical Director and it seemed that Sam was always nearby, offering a suggestion here and there to beef up the orchestrations and the tempos of the songs I’d written. There was nothing aggressive about his approach but the comments were always considered and thoughtful and very useful. He obviously knew me better than I knew him. Watching me from the pit year after year on the stage just above his head as I sang and danced about had given him a context for me. But it seemed that with the workshop, I had given him something more to go on and our relationship advanced to another level. We now spoke sentences to each other.

            One couldn’t call it a social relationship. Sam wasn’t big on small talk. There was always an uncomfortable quality to his demeanor if the exchanges were inconsequential, weren’t about the music or the show. Mention a song or a musician and you were off to the races … in spades. I quickly understood that our interests were much the same and it was an easy journey into a friendship. Then three things happened at once. I had, in passing, told him that I had an upcoming Tour with the Air Command Band, that I was thinking of applying for the Rainbow Stage Producer job and that my renovations and decorating of my house were almost complete. In response, he told me that he would negotiate my fees for the Band Tour (he got me double what had initially been suggested by the Air Force  … but the Tour kept getting shortened and I eventually opted out), that I should go for the Producer job (let the lobbying begin!) and that he wanted his condo (his “joint” as he called it) redecorated. Okay. Who WAS this guy?!

            During my own renovation I’d learned the lay of the land with regard to paint and wallpaper suppliers, and agreed to spiv up his home; on top of it all, he would pay me a nice fee for doing the work. When he had out-of-town meetings he would pick me up on the way to the airport, give me his car to do the shopping and get out to his place on the outskirts of the city, and I would pick him up when he returned. It became a routine. I became a factotum of sorts, getting his car in for servicing while I had it, painting his place, wallpapering, buying decor accessories and cleaning up in time for his return. He loved what I’d done and it was at that point that our relationship changed.

            We were in his car on the way to dropping me off at my place one afternoon. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a pad and pen and handed them to me. “I want you to draw five points anywhere on this paper” he said. Baffled, I did. “Now, I want you to join all the dots together using only four lines”. I looked at the dots mentally trying to figure out how to make it work. I couldn’t. There was always a dot left over. “I don’t see how that’s possible” I said. At a red light, he reached over, took the pad, studied the dots for a moment, and drew the first line connecting two of the dots. But he didn’t stop at the second dot. He extended the line way down the page until he came to a point where, angling back, he could join two more of the dots on a new line. From there he just connected to the last dot and returned to the starting point with the fourth line. “The trick is to go outside the box”, he said. I later learned that it was an old party trick but at the time I was amazed. And slightly confused.  Just before we got to my house, he asked me what I thought would be my ideal salary for a job. “What kind of job?” I asked. “Any job, outside of performing, something that would satisfy you”. So I said “A thousand dollars a week”. That was a lot of money to be earning on an annual basis. “Good to know”, was all he said. WHERE was this going?

            We started rehearsals for “Medea” at the MTC Warehouse. I hadn’t done The Greeks in a long time but with Miles Potter at the helm and Seanna McKenna playing ‘Medea’, it seemed like the old “Mackers” days, but now with a personal sense of confidence in a small cast where one wouldn’t get lost in the crowd. I was playing ‘Aegeus’ and had a few good scenes with Seanna. Unlike the last time we’d worked together there was no “testing” going on, and I was feeling very comfortable. That is until the sand arrived! Ah, the sand! It had been decided for some reason that our setting would be a desert and the stage was FILLED with eight inches of white sand! Because of the incredible weight of the sand the stage had to be massively reinforced from below. It was very difficult to walk on and thoroughly deadened the sound in the theatre creating an eerily intimate feeling. It was also very dusty and the churned up motes would hang in the air after being walked on. After each performance, my nose had to be “mined” to get rid of the accumulation of grit! But the visual effect was glorious. The white sand reflected the light and gave an iridescence to our environment (see photo). It was as if we were walking (read “trudging”) on light. But we ploughed through … literally … and eventually opened to a rapturous reception. The production was spectacular. Who knew Greek tragedy would still hold people’s attention, but it proved to be a moneymaker for the theatre.

            During all this I was still working part time at the Rainbow office, but was also becoming more and more consumed by what Sam was now paying me to do – not the thousand bucks a week, but an hourly rate. I should mention that with a “partner in crime” he was now hell-bent to conquer the Musical Theatre world in some way. It was immediately apparent that a LOT was expected of me. He had suddenly become a major part of my life, neatly edging himself into my day-to-day existence. I now found myself up to my eyeballs in making his incredibly complicated airlines reservations (flights within flights within flights), creating musician contracts, orchestra budgets and hiring folks for various local projects. Keep in mind that at this point the Internet was in its infancy. Computer programs were primitive and hook-ups to “The Web” were by phone lines. There were no cell phones and the “fax machine” was a brand new way of communicating. No one knew what was coming technologically so we just managed as best we could with what we had … or could create. For me, a pencil and paper, a Casio calculator and a typewriter were still the order of the day. There were points where I asked myself what the hell I was doing, but it just kept happening. Our meetings were held at my dining room table as Sam “off-loaded” on me prior to taking off for somewhere to negotiate a deal or a new project. I was left balancing my theatre life with what was now becoming my business life! Little did I know how quickly this would morph and how huge it was about to get!

            This was the era of the mega-musical. It had started in England with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Cats” in the early 80’s. The show had become an instant hit and, after a long sit in London, had been remounted New York for an even longer go on the Great White Way – 18 years, to be exact!! Behind the scenes, the genre was being refined and “purified” all with an eye to establishing total control of the “product”, making buckets of money, global franchising and establishing a template for everyone else to follow. That was Cameron Mackintosh’s way of doing things. The resulting shows were typified by very large casts, mind boggling production values (sets, costumes, lighting), stories set in the last century and operatic in their musical scope in that they were “sung-through” … which is to say, all the “dialogue” was sung. First out of the gate was “Les Miserables” written by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michele Schonberg based on the Victor Hugo novel, opening in London in 1985 and taking the theatrical world by storm! It transferred to Broadway in 1987 and ultimately ran for 21 years. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

            As is usually the case with successful Broadway shows late in their substantial New York runs, they begin touring … everywhere … including Canada. “Les Miz” (as it quickly became known) was definitely no exception! Never one, I discovered, to let the grass grow under his feet, Sam saw possibilities here and began lobbying the Canadian Producers, the Mirvish Organization in Toronto, to be involved with the Tour as the National orchestra Contractor after the Toronto sit. He convinced them that having one person take care of this huge element of the production was to their benefit and after some negotiating, WE GOT THE JOB! This meant that, in addition to the five travelling rhythm players (two keyboards, bass, guitar and percussion), we would be required to provide 22 local musicians in each of the Tour’s Canadian cities – Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. This was really big, but there was a problem. We were breaking ground here. No single Contractor had ever done this before.

The American Federation of Musicians is the North American Union for professional musicians and has “Locals” (offices) in every city of size in both Canada and the US. These were zealously-guarded little fiefdoms run by local union officials who set their own rules and regulations and fee schedules. Up to this point there had never been anyone to challenge their grip on who worked in their towns. Then Sam came along … with me bringing up the rear. By now, he and I had formalized our business relationship and I had registered our newly-formed company as “Music Services INTERNATIONAL, Ltd” (Sam had big plans!). There was no resistance to us in Winnipeg because we lived there, but it very quickly became apparent that other Locals were not going to stand for somebody from “outside” contracting “their” musicians. This closed-shop mentality was not going down well with Sam and set the stage for some major harangues. As for me, the learning curve was in the extreme! I was flying blind on so many levels, not the least of which were my attempts at getting fee schedule information out of the Locals to create the essential budgets for the Producers. It was like pulling teeth! Their resistance to providing the information was fierce and very acrimonious! These were battles! Their interrogations, the accusations and the derision were all exhausting and emotionally draining. I told Sam what was going on and he went ballistic. After a few intense phone calls with bigwigs in the New York AFM Head Office (Sam had made a lot of friends over the past months), word went out that “resistance was futile” and gradually, begrudgingly, the information I needed was released.

            As all this was going on, I was feeding my soul rehearsing “The Rothschilds” for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre and performing daily in a series of small ten-minute plays called “Short Shots” for the Manitoba Association of Playwrights. Somewhat frighteningly, I found myself actually wanting to get back to the budgets and hiring phone calls and contracts of my “other” job. My days were almost too full and, even while on-stage, I found myself thinking about what needed to be taken care of for “MSI” the following day. Life was becoming a lot more complicated. Sam and I had had conversations about exactly this – how my performing life would affect my “business” life and if they could really co-exist. He didn’t seem too concerned saying that I’d demonstrated my ability to organize and compartmentalize and he had complete trust in me to get the work done … slightly passive-aggressive, but I’d already drunk the cool-aid. The “Les Miz” National Tour was big stuff. I became aware of my almost irrational fear of making a mistake either in creating the budgets for the Producers or in writing the contracts for the 27 musicians in the pit. My accuracy or lack thereof would affect people’s lives and the pressure I placed on myself was enormous. But there was no alternative. I forged on.

            Sam decided that we (read “I”) had to get the payrolls done in advance for all 18 weeks (at that point) of the tour even before it actually started. So I created a template to include all the earnings and deductions (all figured out on a calculator – this was long before computer spread sheet programs were commonplace!) and made the connection with TD Payroll Services to generate the weekly pay cheques and deal with all the tax implications. This was hell brought to life! With each city having its own rate schedule, each series of budgets was different and keeping things straight was a challenge. Two cities – Calgary and Vancouver – went wild when they had been told they would have no say in who was hired. I was always quick to assure them that the folks we hired would be local and that we would keep them completely in the loop. In fact, their rancorous resistance went on for YEARS, but Sam always had Canadian Labour Law on his side and there was nothing they could do about it. Closed shops were illegal. Even though there would be variables along the way (extra rehearsals, changing musicians for one reason or another, and instrumentation changes) I managed to get the preliminary payrolls done and waited for the tour to begin.

            Not far from this center of my life was still Rainbow. Its struggles had begun to resurface and the question now revolved around the City Council’s continued reluctance to keep funding its operation. Indeed they were attacking the funding of ALL the Arts in Winnipeg! It was also discovered by a reporter that Shapira had been behind the circulating of a lot of the misinformation that was creating some of the turmoil. There was even a bomb scare at one point. But all of this constituted the perpetual watching brief that always seemed to be simmering away on the back burner. At least I was still being subtle about my desire to head the company and managed to keep it quiet … until I couldn’t.

            My relief, from what I now considered to be “The Craziness”, was “The Rothschilds”, an obscure show by Bock and Harnick that has little distinction in the Musical Theatre canon except for some remarkable rhyming on the part of lyricist Sheldon Harnick –“may Bonaparte be blown apart” – the likes of which, as multiple world characters (‘Metternich’ pictured left) wanting to do business with the Rothschild Family, I had to sing every night! The playing of those people presented obvious challenges. How to best differentiate between them using only my voice (and costuming, no wigs) resulted in an on-going struggle between our director (Joel Greenberg) and our musical director (Bev Aronovich) as to how I should sound. Nothing was really ever decided which resulted in a critic calling my performances of those folks “indistinguishable one from the other”. I was also bothered by some of our designer’s costume choices, in particular the outfit I had to wear for ‘Prince William of Hesse’. From the ankles up it was acceptable … regal, brocade and fitted. But, for some unfathomable reason, it had been decided that I should wear yellow low-heeled ladies shoes. When my Mother came to see the show, her only comment to me about my performance was that it looked like I “was wearing bananas on my feet”! Those shoes were nowhere in sight the following evening and for the rest of the run!

            It seemed that the more projects I had on the go, the more focused, disciplined and deliberate I became. I was decisive and stuck to a rigid timetable and stayed, albeit precariously, on top of everything I had to do. The evenings were for “art” and the days were for what I was now calling “work” … like normal people. There were minutes set aside for finessing my lines and lyrics in the show, for thinking about the details of a fast costume change, for laying out what I was going to say while hosting a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, for making sure the translation to French of a contract for a musician from Quebec was delivered, and, underlying all these thoughts, the PAYROLLS. The death-defying payrolls! They were being presented to the “big boys” in Toronto as proof that we (MSI) were on top of the situation. There were flight and accommodation arrangements to be made for the travelling musicians, keyboard and guitar amplifiers and speakers to rent in each city and some musician auditions for Sam to take care of; but, in spite of all my anxiety, everything was finally in place for this huge Tour to begin. It had been a baptism by fire and, in hindsight, I don’t think I would have had it any other way. It was the frenzy and urgency that forced me to up my game on so many levels and prepared me for the tsunami that was to come. TD Payroll took my first payroll submission, processed it and, somehow, miraculously (at least to me) it had all been calculated perfectly and in a few days our now-confirmed first orchestra in Winnipeg was about to be paid by (drum roll!) Direct Deposit – the marvel of the banking industry! Our trek had begun!            

A play called “Live With It”, by a very young and brilliant playwright named Elyse Moore had been skirting about my performing life for a several months. It was a two-hander concerning the turbulent relationship between British playwright Joe Orton and his lover Ken Halliwell. I’d already done one workshop of the play in its embryonic stages and hadn’t thought much about it since. Now it popped up again in yet another workshop, this time with a more intentional and formal approach and I played ‘Ken Halliwell’ once more. The material had been flushed out, greatly expanded and deepened and was very good writing. In the course of the new workshop, Harry Rintoul, the AD of Theatre Projects Manitoba, had chatted with me saying that his Company wanted to do the play and was now offering me the part. I had really only been jobbing on the workshop and hadn’t thought about any down-the-road involvement, so it struck me odd that he would ask me to do this role. It was very serious, very heavy drama. Aside from the earlier seasons of the Ouzounian Company at MTC, I had become known in the city as a song-and-dance man. As a performer I was centered and grounded with good technique, but since I could sing, no one had been rushing in to cast me in “straight” plays. This could be a chance to open some eyes and I accepted the offer. I was pleased about the season I’d managed to layout for myself. The Rainbow summer put me back into a remount of “Wizard” and into “Guys and Dolls”; then out to Oregon to do “Side By Side By Sondheim”, to Edmonton Opera for a “Fair Lady” and then topping it off with the premiere of “Live With It”. Even this far in advance of that event, I was nervous. Aside from the fact that there were only two of us on-stage for the whole play and there were a gazillion lines to deal with, the intensity of what the characters had to go through frightened me. It would come down to opening up parts of myself that hadn’t been opened before, at least not in public, the bulk of which was found in the last part of the play. It wasn’t only my soul that was going to be bared … it was, literally, ALL of me!!

But all of THAT was yet to come …