It was usually in late winter that the gusts of gossip began. “Have you heard …?” “Are they really thinking about …?” “Did you know …?” Late February of 1996 was no exception as little hints and clues wafted in the chilly air, rising and falling as each day passed, some swirling furiously only to disappear within hours, others maintaining lift and credibility giving hope to the possibilities. It was the Annual Fall Playbill Speculation Furor! The major theatres in town were verging on making known Playlists for the following season … or at least what they were considering for their seasons. It was a dicey time as performers, huddled in corners like drug dealers, would trade the latest nuggets of news, and then rush out to spread the speculation on the street and await confirmation.

            I had some credible sources but was always sworn to secrecy as a title was whispered in my ear inside a “cone of silence”. It was perilous work, calculating production dates for conflicts, assessing what one might be “right for”, and reaffirming one’s relationship with this or that Artistic Director. Of course, it was all moot because no one had officially announced anything! It was a game we all played, some of us better at it that others. I listened. I overheard. I was subtle and tactful, and never betrayed a confidence. In other words, I was good at the game!

            For me, the 1996-97 Possibilities List was attractive – “Travels With My Aunt” by Giles Havergal from Graham Greene’s novel; “I Do, I Do” for a provincial tour; Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”; “Cyrano”; “Rocky Horror Picture Show”; “My Fair Lady”; the recent sensation “Picasso At The Lapin Agile”; “Death of a Salesman” with a major star as ‘Willie Loman’; “The Inspector Calls”; the world premiere of “None Is Too Many” by Jason Sherman; and on and on. Manitoba Theatre Projects was putting together another “Short Shots” series; there were film projects to be auditioned for as well as voice-overs and narrations to be considered. It was a heady time.

            The fortunate thing in all this was that, while not contractually confirmed, I was already in place for “None Is Too Many” and “Picasso” was close to the same. There was to be another workshop for “None Is Too Many” and it was intimated that I was “set”. Now it was just a matter of settling timeframes and organizing what else would fit where. There were things I wanted to do (actually, I wanted to do it all, and even had some “Actor’s Nightmares” in the course of fretting) but quickly realized that either the choice wasn’t mine or they wouldn’t fit into a gradually developing schedule. I kept my eyes and ears open and waited.

            In the meantime, there was no shortage of things to do. This was the time of year when fundraisers were taking place and I’d been tagged for a lot of them, hosting or performing. There was the annual Juvenile Diabetes “Starry, Starry Night” Gala, a Benefit for the Pan-Am Games, the “Winter Cities Gala”, a “Pasta For The Arts” Fundraiser for Shakespeare in the Ruins, our annual Equity Fights AIDS weeks of Fundraising, early prep for the next “Winnipeg Cares” Gala as well as some Grants Juries for the Manitoba Arts Council.

            The Symphony popped up again, this time with a “Musically Speaking” Concert for Young People. I was reading a new piece by Maestro Tovey based on “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, and Evelyn Hart was to narrate “Peter and the Wolf”. “Ev” is a National Treasure having achieved a deserved International reputation as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Prima Ballerina, but she was very nervous in this unfamiliar context. “Peter” is a difficult piece requiring precise timing for the Narrator, and while she had diligently worked on it, was still terrified about doing it with the orchestra. At her request, we had some sessions together just to settle her down a little, refining the different voices she was using for the many characters in the piece. I told her that what she was doing was great (it truly was) and that just like her dancing, her attention to detail was astonishing and would pay off. She had to head off to Munich for some ballet performances and I knew she would be a basket case when she returned the day before our performance. We took an hour before the final rehearsal and she found her joy in the piece and that was ultimately how she performed it, with great elegance, wit and so much charm. I told her that when she wanted to leave dancing, she could have a second career acting. It was a great show. Bramwell’s piece was well received, and I would get another crack at it in the Fall.

            Music Services, as it always did, was still keeping me grounded in the real world. “Music of the Night” (the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber) with Michael Bolton was on the road; The Royal Winnipeg Ballet was about to set off on tour; “Joseph” was continuing; the Calgary Stampede Grandstand Show had been added to our roster, “Showboat” was still playing in Vancouver and two new biggies (“Sunset Boulevard” and “Ragtime”) were about to be added. The increasing number of MSI’s projects was getting too much for me to deal with by myself and we felt it was time to bring someone else on board. That was when Sharon Harris, our first employee, was added to the team. And what a teammate she was! Organized, efficient, affable and profoundly loyal, she was a calming factor working with Sam, now in Vancouver where he’d taken up residence for the six-month “Showboat” run. Absolutely nothing fazed her, and she was always on top of whatever crisis Sam had managed to create somewhere in the world. It was a blessing for me to have someone reducing some of the administrative pressure, and we became a closely knit trio. It was also at this point that we committed ourselves to improving our computerization which had become more essential and complex since we were now operating in two cities. Though we tried to keep up, burgeoning technology made each new system and program obsolete as soon as we installed them! This would be an on-going struggle!

“Phantom” was still in Southeast Asia and my relationship with the Hong Kong Taxation Authority grew antagonistic with the back and forth about the tax demands being made on our orchestra musicians and the effect on the weekly payroll. This was to be a continuing saga when the Production moved to Singapore. If you want to know anything about the Singapore Inland Revenue Service, just ask me! At least I wasn’t having to submit those payrolls – the show’s Company Manager took care of that – but the tax calculations required from my end never abated – even after the show closed months later!

There were always perks in working for Sam, and two happened in quick succession. We had been licensors for Dean Regan’s “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” for a very long time. In fact, we had set up a separate Company (Lutvick Enterprises) to deal exclusively with this highly in-demand product. Somewhere along the way, someone had decided that this small-house/format show deserved an “upgrading” and plans had been set in motion to give it the good old Broadway spectacle treatment. This new production would be called “Patsy!” My only involvement in the show had taken place years earlier, organizing the music publisher rights and performance royalties contracts for all the Publishing Houses who owned the songs being done (or even musically alluded to) in our show. There were 32 publishers! This aspect of my job drove me to distraction. I understood the established royalty formulas pretty well, but the good old boys in Nashville started getting up my nose by demanding that Favoured Nations clauses be added to their contracts. This clause meant that one publisher could not receive a greater percentage of the royalties than another! This made me the point man in juggling rates for yet-to-be-negotiated contracts down-the-road! There were nights when I cried myself to sleep over these tussles. Now, except for arranging a few added song rights and royalty calculations, I had not been connected in any substantial way to this new project … until the opening in Toronto.

There was some theatre drama associated with this brand new project. It turned out that one of the producers had been “misappropriating” investor’s funds, using their money to pay his rent, hire personal staff and a myriad of other things. It came to light that out of the $300K that folks had invested with him, only $70K had made it into the show’s coffers! Sam and our Producing Partners (Mid-America Arts Alliance) were fit to be tied! I had arrived in the early afternoon of opening night as this crisis was in full swing. Desperate, Henry Moran, the CEO of MAAA, and Sam had spent the entire afternoon at the Toronto condo of a very rich elderly lady trying to convince her to invest a quarter million dollars in the show on the spot. They did … and she did!

The show, which until now had played in very small houses, was opening at the 1,250-seat Queen Elizabeth Theatre at the CNE Grounds. By the time Sam and I arrived the lobby was jammed with obviously-wealthy people dressed to the nines. Sam quickly disappeared and I was left to wander about, marveling at how high-end an event this was for such a twangy, down-home, Country and Western show. I ran into Richard and Pam Ouzounian. I’d not seen my old Boss for ages. He was now the CBC Toronto Theatre Critic and it was a flashback to the good old days for a few minutes. He told me that “word on the street” was very good about the show. It amazed me to find myself in the middle of this almost-fantasy world where phrases like “word on the street” were being bandied about. I found Sam again in a group of five or six tuxedoed men who, upon my being introduced, whooped and hollered and hugged me like a long-lost brother! I’d spoken to all of them on the phone over the past two years and found out later that Sam had told them that the show couldn’t have gone on without me – an exaggeration, of course, but it was nice to feel a part of something special.

The production was absolutely stunning! While the story and music remained the same, it was the production values that were astonishing. They were massively high-end, very big, technologically cutting edge and incredibly theatrical. The audience was with the cast right from the outset. They responded with cheers and yelling, clapping along to the country music, adoring the cornpone comedy and down-home fiddle playing. At the end, the house rose as one body! Gail Bliss, our ‘Patsy’, brought out Dean (Regan) along with Charlie Dick, Patsy’s husband, and the crowd went nuts.

Before the show, during intermission, and afterward, all kinds of meetings and mini conferences were going on. This was the time for the Producers and staff to be selling and hooking up with the investors and presenters who had flown in from all over the place. I could feel a business-like energy mixed with the crowd’s celebratory effervescence! It was electric! I was in the inner circle at the party afterward and was again introduced to more people who had only been voices to me over the past while. Eric Goldstein, who had been its Production Manager and was now General Manager for the show, was especially happy to finally meet up with me. As it turned out, he would work with us for years to come. All the reviews in all the media were unanimous in their praise, Now we had to get through the summer. What happened after that would be anyone’s guess, but I was happy to have been a part of this great occasion! Zapped home to do a small part in a film called “The Arrow” for a few days and then headed off to New York … the other of the Sam perks.

Summer in New York is oppressive. I knew that, of course, but coming out of the airport and being hit by the incredible humidity was always a surprise! I was drenched with sweat by the time I got to the apartment. After a quick gab with my housemates (the two Jims) I headed up to National Artists Management to get signatures on the Orchestra contracts for the “Grease” tour that was about to begin in Winnipeg. The other perk I never failed to take advantage of was the free tickets I could get, either for shows in which we were already involved or about to be. Since we were contracting part of the “Sunset Boulevard” tour later in the year I’d been given a ticket for the show. Betty Buckley’s ‘Norma Desmond’ was astonishing and stays in my head to this day!

In a conversation just before leaving, Sam had asked me to investigate some New York real estate! The request had surprised me. The amount of time he’d been spending there had certainly increased over the past while, but I could see no sense in buying an apartment in a very expensive market for just a few visits a year! However, he was adamant. I must admit that in my heart of hearts, I thought it would be great to have a place “of my own” to stay in New York. While being with the Jims was always fun, I was relegated to the uncomfortable fold-out couch in the cramped office and felt like a guest even though my name was on the lease. It would be nice to have a real bedroom. I found a couple of Open Houses after looking through the Sunday Times and headed out into the heat of the afternoon. I didn’t really know the protocol for looking at real estate in NYC but quickly learned that it was not the most welcoming of experiences. The two older lady agents who stood guard in the two apartments gave me the distinct impressions that they were being inconvenienced. I hesitantly explained that “we” (our Company) were interested in a pied-a-terre and I had to report back my findings. All that was true, but in my mind, there was no way we could afford the asking prices of a half, and three-quarters of a million American dollars for a tiny one-bedroom! I was depressed by the two places I saw that afternoon. They were in high-rises on the Upper West Side, unfurnished, white walls, shabby parquet floors, tiny galley kitchens, one indistinguishable from the other and not at all sure that this was what Sam had in his head as the “image” of a New York apartment – at least not at these prices. I brought the Times back home with me and the pictures on the spec sheets the ladies had given me and, sort of thankfully, that was the last we spoke of the idea … until ten years later.

“Picasso At The Lapin Agile” is a play by comedian Steve Martin that explores the relationship between Art and Science. In a small bar in Paris called “The Lapin Agile”, Albert Einstein (Andrew Akman), Elvis Presley (Ari Cohen), Pablo Picasso (Dimitri Chepovetsky) and the bar’s denizens go back and forth about the value of genius and talent. It gets heady at points but is always funny. I had been cast (finally) in the somewhat substantial role of ‘Sagot’, Picasso’s art dealer. In real life, Clovis Sagot had been a circus clown before entering the art world and based on that information, Martin has created a character with great energy, bombast, verbal gymnastics and in constant motion. While nowhere near as fraught an individual as my last role months earlier, there were some issues on which Stephen (Schipper, our Director) and I went back and forth, mostly to do with the technical approach to the energy definition and placement. Ah me!

Smack dab in the middle of rehearsals, “Winnipeg Cares” hit the boards once more. I had become very aware that the enthusiasm was waning in our Committee. This was our sixth year and while we had the format in hand, it had come to feel routine, automatic, and we had lost much of the happy energy that had propelled us in the past. It was sad, but inevitable. Geoff (Hayes, my producing partner) and I had run ourselves ragged in the weeks leading up to this year’s event and we weren’t having any fun. The show was still great, and the audience still enjoyed it, but we were just going through the motions now. Even though we had already started talking about what to do next year, our hearts weren’t in it. And, as it turned out, this was indeed the end of the run. Over the next few months, we talked about letting it go and eventually made it official, disbanding the Committee. We took heart in the fact that we’d raised well over a quarter million dollars over the years, but to realize it was over was very sad. But onward!

‘Sagot’ continued to give me problems in rehearsals. There are different ways of using energy on stage. Sometimes it can be focused and meted out in a controlled manner; sometimes, for effect, it can be wild and blatant and aimed in every direction. Neither seemed to be what Stephen wanted and trying to find a balance drove me to distraction. There were points when I was completely at a loss, on the verge of tears of frustration, and angry with myself for not being able to define him. Then Stephen said one word that we’d not used before and the new ‘Sagot’ was, literally, launched! The word was “flamboyant”, not in a gay context but rather using a very big, maniacal exuberance to fill the space when he was “on” – and that was all the time. Getting it set in my head took a while; but the morning I first tried it full-out in rehearsal, it took the folks in the room by storm. ‘Sagot’ has a tour-de-force monologue about why no one should buy pictures of Jesus or sheep, and I went all out! They were doubled over. “Afterburners” they said. “A manic’s manic”, they said. They laughed and laughed as I bounced off walls and dashed about with the sweat rolling down my face and back, flailing the air with ‘Sagot’s’ verve and vigor. It was a great feeling to have finally discovered what to do!

The opening was tremendous. The audience ate us up and let us know it at the end of the night! Ticket sales went through the roof and we were all on a high. The Monday after we opened, we were treated to the presence of Sir Peter Ustinov in the sixth row! He was in town for an exhibit opening at the Art Gallery and I’d suggested to Theatre Management that we invite him to a performance. Imagine our surprise when he turned up! He came downstairs afterward, and we gathered about him as he regaled us with theatre stories for fifteen minutes. It was magical standing next to this legendary man and to feel linked to the theatrical history that had attached itself to him. A neat little experience.

We closed “Picasso” at MTC and headed off to Ottawa for a sit at the National Arts Center. I’d not been there since “As You Like It” years ago. We opened to audiences who, for the run of the show, thought they were watching a sit-com! The laughs were always in the same place night after night, and we luxuriated in the responses. Despite knowing that saying goodbye to the wonderful “Picasso” cast would be very hard, I still missed my house and was tugging at the bit to get back to Winnipeg.

I stopped off in Toronto on the way back to take a look a brand new show in previews that Garth Drabinsky was producing, and which was joining our contracting roster. It was called “Ragtime” by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and, to put it mildly, I was blown out of the water! I had been listening to the music on CD for a little while but had no idea what I was in for visually! I even wrote Garth afterward telling him how wonderful it was and told everyone I knew to watch for it when it hit a stage near them. Did some narration work in TO for “The Arrow” film I’d done a couple of months previous and zapped back to The Peg. I started budget work on the Livent Tour of “Showboat”, dramaturged a new musical by Olaf Pyttlik called “The Wave”, completed Dalnavert’s ninth year of “A Christmas Carol” and, exhausted, headed off to Hawaii for some much needed R&R.

Yeah, I know this probably comes across as a laundry list, but I just wanted to tie up loose ends before jumping into a new year!