“How fast can you get a budget to me?” It was Jim Pappas, President of the Rainbow Board, calling. I was winding down my time in Portland and had been sporadically getting reports on what had been happening at home. Remember, these were the days long before the Internet had any “oomph”, when getting “on line” was done by connecting a special cable from your phone to your computer and “surfing” specialty “chat rooms” through various “browsers”. “Land lines” with real people’s voices was still the mainstay of communication!

      The process of closing down “Sondheim” in Oregon, relinquishing my involvement with the kid’s show to an Assistant, and getting back home was intense. My departure was further complicated by the fact that I had to begin rehearsals for a production of “Arsenic and Old Lace” at MTC the morning after closing night in Portland! The flight arrangements involved a lot of people, not the least of whom was a helpful travel agent who managed to find me a “red eye” home via Houston and Minneapolis. I exited the stage at the end of the closing performance (pictured above), changed in the blink of an eye, was rushed to the Portland Airport after a lot of hugs and farewells, sporadically slept on the three flights, was picked up at the Winnipeg Airport and whisked from the plane to the theatre arriving only 25 minutes late for the first rehearsal. Everyone knew what I had gone through to get there on time. Nonetheless, I still managed to piss off Director Malcolm Black for a few minutes. Then we settled in. It was hard to believe that not twelve hours earlier I had been on stage singing Sondheim in another country!

            “I gave you six budgets in my proposal before I left” I said. “Yeah, but they were all over $600K” he said. “We need one to come in under $400K.” There was a slight desperation in his voice. “Which show?” I asked, trying to remember them all. “It doesn’t matter. I have to present it to City Council in order to get our funding renewed”. He proceeded to tell me that the shit was hitting the fan for all Arts groups in the city and although the press was sensationalizing things somewhat, City Councilor Al Golden was on his continuing war path against giving “the People’s Money” to artists, and this time he was going for broke – “Rainbow Stage has raped the city!” he crowed at one point during a Council Meeting. “I’ll get something to you right away” I told Jim. “I’ll be back in town soon. We can talk further then.”

            My part in “Arsenic” was rather small affording me some days off to catch up on all the Music Services work that had greeted me upon my return. I also had another set of rehearsals happening at the same time for a Winnipeg Symphony Christmas concert. Bramwell Tovey, the orchestra’s miraculous conductor, had written a new piece called “The Bremen Town Musicians” in which I was speaking the ‘Narrator’ role (as well as taking yet another stab at singing “O Holy Night” in the process). The Concert Hall is just across the street from the Manitoba Theatre Center so dashing back and forth for a few days became routine. Combined with the perpetual payrolls for “Les Miz”, the massive organization of developing a show by Dean Reagan called “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” (which was playing at a new Dinner Theatre called “Showstoppers” owned and run by, of all people, Jack Timlock!), I was still keeping tabs on Rainbow’s intrigues and making sure that things were still moving forward. I was getting tired! Yet another year (the third) of doing “A Christmas Carol” readings at Dalnavert Museum presented timing complications as they were on the same nights as the Symphony performances. Dalnavert shows were early enough so that, once finished, I could have a cab waiting to take me to the Concert Hall arriving at intermission in time to go on for the second half and my, by now, breathless involvement.

            I would look longingly at my garden knowing that even if it weren’t covered with snow, there wouldn’t really be time for such pursuits. It was just after the New Year that everything ramped up. The newspaper items about Arts funding and Rainbow Stage came fast and furious with conjecture, commentary, opinions and editorials creating a buzz that seemed to infuse the air anytime two or more people gathered during rehearsals or at performances. The articles were sensationalistic and rather tabloid-y, but beneath it all was a truth that none of us could ignore. This was a crisis that we’d not faced before and it was somewhat scary. Meetings and phone calls and faxes brought us together and letter-writing campaigns to people in power were initiated. I’d made some good friends in the “political” world over the years in the city and now felt neither hesitant in my approach nor apprehensive about pulling punches in letting them know my thoughts. They all responded making sure I knew they were aware of the situation but offering little more than that. It was heartening and frustrating at the same time. We wanted a magic bullet from the power brokers but it wasn’t forthcoming. Behind the scenes, I found myself in the midst of Rainbow’s planning for the time ahead. Pappas had included me in the emergency meetings keeping me informed of progress. The Board was still awaiting word from the city regarding the usual three-year lease on the Stage facility, but without operating funding the question became what to do with the space. Do we rent it and do public fundraising or damn the torpedoes and go for broke by staging a single production that summer with the Arts Council’s financial backing? It was tense!

            But life still went on. “Arsenic” opened and I accepted the added responsibility of doing “the audience pitch” following the intermission asking for donations to the Theatre’s Scholarship Fund. As the baskets were passed through the rows of seats, I was to keep up a banter letting them know that supporting young people in their theatre education was a good thing. “Just do stand-up” Malcolm Black had said. And so I did. After a few runs at it, I got pretty good at cajoling and coercing. During a pitch one night in the second week, I became aware that I wasn’t alone on stage. The audience had begun to titter (for want of a better word … but that’s what they were doing) and I looked to my left to see Heath Lamberts poking his head out from the wings. Heath was a magical performer, inventive, courageous and committed. There was, however, an element of danger about being on stage with him. One never quite knew what to expect. He was always within the bounds of the script of course, but there was a hint of mischief in his eyes that made one apprehensive and put you on your guard. He was playing the role of ‘Teddy Brewster’, the eccentric (crazy) brash brother in the family who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt! Dressed in his safari costume for Act Two, he peered at me and I motioned him on stage. The audience applauded and thus began our Abbott and Costello partnership that ran for the rest of the run. Because he was so off-the-wall and uncensored, I never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. Sometimes he was ‘Teddy’, sometimes he was Heath; but he was always joyous and so very funny. I found myself laughing along with the audience most nights. At one performance, in the spirit of asking for donations, his bombastic opening exhortation to the audience (this night as ‘Teddy’) was “God gave you all your money! (long pause) NOW GIVE IT BACK!!!” The baskets were full to overflowing that evening. Some nights he came out, some nights he didn’t, but when he did, I felt complete and fulfilled! Our requests ultimately raised over $15K for the Scholarship fund! His antics were the icing on the cake!

The newspaper articles continued non-stop. At one point, the “Bring back Jack (Shapira)” campaign was resurrected but, thankfully, the idea once again died away a short time later. By now, the city’s Arts Advisory Board was floating the idea of Rainbow being taken over and run by amateur groups. THAT got the professional troupes riled in no uncertain terms. The amount of support for us from all quarters was amazing. Equity was on board and writing letters to the City Council. Winnipeg entrepreneur Sam Katz joined our mission. Ideas for Fundraisers and myriad Letters to the Editor all served to mobilize regular folk into action. It was then, in yet another “emergency” conversation with Jim Pappas, that I found out the Producer job was mine! It was mine! But it was an inconsequential victory in light of all that was happening. There were a number of groups that had put their names forward to operate the theatre, so the question became, “what should WE do?”, “we” being Jim Pappas, Campbell McIntyre, Craig Kushnier, Vi Bodi and myself, a Committee out of the Board that had taken on the “saving” task.  My initial proposal became the template for our approach; but in the back of my head was a niggling little voice warning that this was all going to turn very messy and did I really want to balance the Rainbow turmoil with the burgeoning work for Sam? Radio, television and newspaper interviews kept our involvement alive and in the fore, but it was still anyone’s guess how this would turn out. As the “unofficial” Producer, I wrote out a detailed timeline as to how this should all play out in the days ahead – the announcement of my official appointment and the unveiling of our plans and the productions for that summer. I was leaving on the “Arsenic” tour to Calgary shortly and wanted everything to be in place before going.

            Then, an emergency City Council meeting considered re-instating Rainbow’s funding. Calls started coming in from all over the place. I was stopped in the street by strangers expressing support. The Stage’s creditors demonstrated the same by working out a plan with us for payments on past due bills, essentially confirming a path toward putting on shows in the summer. We were careful to keep all this movement in-house, but somehow things got out (as they always do) and my involvement became massively public. I was concerned that our Committee would think that I was the one leaking this “information” but was relieved when the writer wrote that “He (me) would not confirm that he had the job” and “had referred all queries to The Board”. This was accompanied by a photo of me dug up from some ancient archive that just added insult to injury. There were suddenly ideas floating about that “we” (the Committee) should join with other groups in town to present a staging of the perennial favourite “Fiddler on the Roof”. I didn’t know who these folks were, but I felt that our identity would be diluted if we started involving other entities.

Then the “Shadow Board” appeared!

            Deep background … and we’re getting into skullduggery here … had discovered that a group of Past Rainbow Presidents had been quietly working on some stop-gap measures to follow through on the “Fiddler” idea. Rumours also surfaced that Shapira had become involved with the Past Presidents (aka “his old cronies”) as an “advisor”. What the hell did THAT mean!!?? I got asked by CBC Radio to take part in a “questionnaire” call-in show and was surprised at the number of folks who called in to express their support both for the Stage and for me. I returned home to find a lot of encouraging calls from friends waiting on my machine. The single exception was one message from the thinly-disguised voice of Jack Shapira saying “No more homos for Rainbow Stage”! Wow! Not making friends, Jack! I had noticed while on the radio how strangely academic this was becoming for me. My emotional involvement seemed to have faded into the background and a dispassionate objectivity had taken its place. I found myself answering questions as if this was a research project that may or may not yield the desired results. It was probably a case of self-preservation more than anything else, but my detachment deeply bothered me.

            Vi Bodi, who had stayed on in the office during all the upheaval, had been my connection to the Company while I was working elsewhere. I dropped in regularly to find out how things were progressing and, together, we had put some tentative plans in place for when the dust had settled. Her even-keeled and intelligent approach put things in perspective and she was always ready with information and maybe just a little bit of what gossip was on the grapevine – there seemed to be more and more of that as time went on. I had another meeting with Kelly Robinson (from “Guys and Dolls”). The Co-Pro concept for “Fiddler” now had expanded in a major way. It was no longer local but National in its scale. It would rehearse and open at The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, transfer to Toronto and then end up in Winnipeg for the last half of the summer. Josh Mostel (the son of the original Broadway ‘Tevye’, Zero Mostel) would star as our ‘Tevye’ and, with a $200K outlay and using only a 60% house capacity calculation (a ridiculously low estimate for this show, at least in Winnipeg) Rainbow would net about $600K over 28 performances. My calculator fingers came back into play as Kelly and I sat and talked through the plans. Rainbow’s lease was the only thing that had not been confirmed and there was still talk of amateur groups using the space during the summer. I was on the phone with the mayor (now Susan Thompson) and anyone else I could think of who had some power to get the city moving on making a decision, but there was a helplessness and frustration that surrounded all my thoughts about the Stage.

            Sam and I had developed our business relationship in a major way. Our conversations had quickly evolved into a verbal shorthand and our meetings were now speedy and efficient. There was a LOT of work to do while I was on the “Arsenic” Tour but thanks to now-prevalent fax machines, communication was a lot speedier than postage-stamp-mail. “Les Miz” was still ruling my office hours with the payrolls, but the demands of too many other projects started to overwhelm me at points, including a large and complex Tour for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Thankfully, Sam understood that despite my other responsibilities I was truly earning my “MSI bucks”. He made sure that I knew we were “working well together” and that he was pleased with the fruits of my labours. At least I had that going for me! And I headed off to Calgary with “Arsenic”

“A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” had become a lynchpin in our growing arsenal of projects. It had closed at “Showstoppers” and Sam was now “shopping” the show. After a great deal of negotiating on behalf of Dean (Regan) we had landed a whole year of productions from Thunder Bay to Edmonton and beyond. Generating the Licensing Agreements was big legal work and I loathed that part of my job. Covering each element of such a contract required incredibly close attention to detail and Sam didn’t miss a thing. As a result, the number of drafts numbered in the dozens and drove me nuts. However I made myself plough through and we eventually came up with the document that would provide steady commission income for MSI for some time to come. That is, until we went “big time” and International with it and had to start dealing with the Cline Estate, Publisher Agents and the politics of Nashville … but that’s another story altogether.

The “Shadow Board” came back into my life while I was in Calgary. Vic Pinchin, who had been a Past President and was also acting in “Arsenic”, had been tagged as an emissary from them to confer with me about my involvement with Rainbow. This group of heavily connected business men had somehow become the de facto power brokers for the Company as the actual Board had somehow faded into the background. Vic confirmed that they had indeed been in touch with Shapira about being just a “consultant” rather than handing the reigns of the organization back to him. They wanted me to be “on board” but were vague in what capacity. I mentioned the Co-Pro idea as an economically viable project for the stage to undertake with minimal outlay on our part, but he said I would have to talk to Cam McLean (another Past President … and now, apparently, the head of the group) to get some clarity on that proposal. WHERE was all this going!!?? A few days later, a Rainbow line item had been added on to the City’s annual budget and the Theatre’s lease had been “taken care of”. My concern now centered on what was to be presented that summer at the Stage. In one of our conversations, Vi had mentioned to me that, in talking to Mr. Favray (the Shadow’s “money man”), she had discovered they were thinking about reducing the number of Equity performers to 4 (which was “illegal” for a professional [ie. Equity] Theatre) and cutting the production staff, stage hands and musicians to a bare minimum! They were apparently surprised and impressed with the budgets I had created for my original proposal for the job, but everything still remained up in the air. Distance had become my enemy!

I slogged through the weeks of “Arsenic” with payrolls, contracting arrangements for a new production of “Evita” at Theatre Calgary, the RWB Tour and various other things that dragged my mind away from what was going on back in Winnipeg. Sporadic news was through occasional phone calls from folks who were keeping an eye on the situation. It was during that period that the “old” Board resigned and the “Shadow Board”, now called “The President’s Committee”, came to the fore.  This was, for me, among the final coffin nails. There was a group of amateurs expressing interest in running the place, but no plans had been announced by either The Presidents or this new group for the season upcoming. Now, with everything else that started to happen for me once I returned to Winnipeg, I began to lose interest in all the drama. Vi was fired and the offices were closed up with no plans to re-open.

I had the Winnipeg Music Festival to adjudicate and had been hired by the Kiwanis Festival to do the same for two weeks in Calgary. I had been asked to produce the re-opening celebrations of the renovated Pantages Playhouse and was resurrecting “Shubert Alley” for a Fundraising Concert for the Manitoba Opera Association. So it wasn’t as if I had time to sit at home and pine over the Rainbow loss. I did reflect a bit and chat with friends about the saga that had gone on for far too long. My thwarted intentions stung a bit but there was no point wasting more time on what might have been. It wasn’t my problem now. The adjudications for the Musical Theatre Classes at the Winnipeg Festival provided a wonderful distraction … that is until performances started getting weird. I honestly don’t know what voice teachers have in mind when giving 14-year-old girls a song like “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” to sing for a competition. I held myself in check and was gentle and polite, but it was a chore. There was one mature lady in an Adult Class who decided to sing “Old Man River”, unaccompanied, standing on stage holding an open umbrella over her head! While my instinct was to ask “What have you been smoking?” or “Have you gone off your medications?” it also crossed my mind that this was a put-on, but she was for real and dreadful in almost every way. I did a workshop one evening after a short session and tried to explain my approach to adjudicating and what the challenges were. It was well received as I talked about being patient and encouraging with young singers while still making points about how to “perform” on stage. But I think I got more out of those sessions than the performers did! It was distressing that during the Festival people would come up and ask about Rainbow. There was a point when I thought I should just tape a large badge to my jacket saying “I Know Nothing!” or “Don’t Ask Me!” It just wouldn’t stop!

Music Services work hadn’t stopped. Arithmetic and contract legalese seemed to bring me down to earth and center me. Musicians had to be paid no matter what and the schedule was written in stone. There was so much to deal with and I admit to reveling in routine after all the upheaval. Then it was off to Edmonton to do an “Artists For Life” AIDS Benefit for the Edmonton Symphony, truly a remarkable evening! My contribution was some Gilbert and Sullivan “arias” and, as I sometimes get when I find myself in a somewhat pretentious environment, I ate the scenery in a most shameless and irreverent fashion. Amazingly, the snooty audience ate it along with me and laughed up a storm. I also got a fundraising Concert obligation taken care of for the Manitoba Opera Association – though why they wanted a Concert of Broadway music was beyond me. It was a great success and they raised a lot of bucks. Secured a job doing ‘Pickering’ in “My Fair Lady” for the Edmonton Opera during the summer and, with the Pantages Gala also on the summer docket, I wasn’t going to miss Rainbow at all. Well, actually I was. For over ten years, the Stage had been a haven and its enveloping Family atmosphere both backstage and in front had always given me a deep sense of belonging.

But it wasn’t to be and I just shook my head as that part of my life faded away.