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The convergence of things continued, forcing me to focus in a way I’d rarely done before. While I’m pretty organized, having so much to take care of – and it wasn’t small stuff – was confounding me. Each project was demanding complete attention and I would lie in bed at night resisting encroaching sleep just to keep everything in order … at least in my head. Each morning I would hit the ground running, always with a to-do list, and would judge the success of each day by how many items I actually got to.

At the top of the list wasn’t anything I had to physically take care of. I just had to think. We were still a ways off from the start of Rainbow’s “Singin’ In The Rain” rehearsals, but already details were occupying a large part of my brain. And one detail in particular. For some unknown reason, Ken (Peter – our Producer) had decided we were going to use a combination of live and recorded music for the show. The Musical Director would conduct to a “click track”, a metronome “tick-tock” sound embedded in the recorded music which he heard through headphones he wore during the performance and from which there could be no deviation. I had my suspicions at to where the idea had come from, and it was soon confirmed that Ken had been convinced by a Board Member and the show’s Choral Director (a local music teacher) that his newly purchased computer program could produce music good enough to replace, or at least augment, the pit orchestra! There were indeed music sequencing programs being used by some of the MSI arrangers, but these were guys who had major careers using very high-end (and expensive) technology. At the same time, my MSI job had also taught me that “Live Music Is Best” (the AFofM’s slogan) so I had grave doubts about Rainbow’s plan. In fact, it turned out to be a colossal miscalculation on a number of levels. But for the moment, ‘thinking’ was all I could do about that part of the project.

“Lear” had continued extremely well with great houses. The matinees with high school kids astonished me with their complete attention to the piece. It was a fine production and another of which I had trouble letting go. The “Christmas Carol” CD launch at McNally Robinson’s Bookstore was a treat. Their coffee house area was filled with a lot of familiar faces, and I read the First Stave (chapter) live. We sold a load of “product” afterward and a few days later, the Dalnavert readings began. We were now up to 9 nights of performances, all of which had sold out in October. The CDs flew off the Museum Shop shelves every night and I mentally ka-chinged my way home after each show.

Then, the “Y2K Bug” seemed to take over every aspect of Life! The notion that, with the change-over to the year 2000, computers around the world would stop working and planes would fall from the sky, consumed the media … and us at MSI. Sam was anxious because we were now relying on computers for just about every aspect of our business. In a slightly panicked effort to combat the “crisis”, we decided to create a private network which would tie our various local contractors in Chicago, Toronto, Las Vegas and New York into a mainframe located in Winnipeg. All the guys would be able to link up and access anything on the home site at any time of day or night. It was actually advanced thinking at the time. We made plans to have our former go-to Trombone player Marc Donatelle, who was now working in computer programming and formatting, create the system, and then to bring in the reps to learn how to use it. In the meantime, “Swing” was, sadly, limping toward its end in Toronto, but Sam was committed to extending the production’s life. And life it had! In the year that followed, “Swing” was mounted in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center, in Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Minneapolis and on and on. From the ashes, Sam, with his usual perseverance and tenacity, made it rise again!

But I couldn’t focus on all that. “Singin’” rehearsals were about to start.

The Orchestra situation continued to bother me. Scott (Drewitz), our choreographer, also had concerns about this unconventional approach, especially for his dance rehearsals. While we had a rehearsal pianist in the room with us, tempo changes and cuts were being made on the fly, and without the “arranger” there watching and taking notes there was no way to insert these alterations to the recorded tracks. He was ensconced in his basement far away from the rehearsal hall creating the augmentation in a vacuum. Our trepidation grew.

The other element of pre-production that had worried me mightily was the creation of the “The Dueling Cavalier” and the other film sequences that are played on-screen during the show. With so little rehearsal time, the intricacies of making the movies had to be well in hand in advance so that no unnecessary time was wasted with camera set-ups and shots. Even though the sequences were very short, doing the actual filming was going to take a couple of days.

Certainly, the cast was ready. Our first days of rehearsal had been incredibly productive. The leads were more than I could have hoped for in their commitment and preparation. I’d not worked with Danny Austin before and was somewhat apprehensive because he had done the ‘Lockwood’ role that summer in Ontario. But it turned out that he was dying for direction he’d not received the last time ‘round, and our collaboration was wonderfully rewarding. Shannon (Phoenix) as ‘Kathy Selden’ was a delight, funny and hard-working. Mike Donald had an infectious energy, and our Winnipeg Stars were superb in some crucial character roles – stalwart Cliff Gardner as ‘R.F. Simpson’ and the effervescent Debbie Maslowsky as ‘Dora Bailey’. Jennifer Lyon was hilarious as ‘Lina Lamont’. It isn’t until well into the story that we discover her voice is a fingernails-on-chalkboard, high pitched noise, quite unsuitable for the new “talkies” now being made – the main plot point in the show. The first time I heard her speak in the ‘Lina’ voice, I was on the floor … as was the rest of the cast. When it came to listening to her sing with that voice … well, we all lost it! Singing slightly under pitch on purpose is very hard to do and she was nailing it. I was starting to feel a bit more confident.

I should have worn a beret, an argyle sweater vest and plus-fours for the directing of the film sequences. It was all so other worldly. The actors looked wonderful in powdered wigs and elegant costumes and had all their “lines” down. I had story-boarded all of the scenes, some of which were pretty complicated, but fortunately there were only a few people in each. Trying to frame shots was very foreign to me but we had a good crew from Global Television, and, despite interminable waits for set or lighting changes, we managed to get almost everything “in the can” in the allotted time. The other aspect that was bothering me was how the “film” was going to look. While the video was shot in colour, all the sequences had to be converted to that grainy black and white of the period look and I was anxious that they look like I wanted them to. That would take some time.

Even though I was very organized, I was painfully aware of how little time we had. Thankfully, while the filming was going on, Scott had been getting the big dance sequences set, and I would escape for a few minutes here and there so do some scene staging. Amazingly, we managed to do a stagger/work-through after six days and I was very happy at the amount we’d accomplished. Because of time constraints during rehearsals, I had only loosely sketched in some of the blocking for the Ensemble in a couple of the crowd scenes; so during the run I was on my feet side-coaching them as to where to focus and how they should be responding, trusting they would remember. The Ensemble always gets short shrift when it comes to providing details while staging a big scene. “We’ll fix it later” is usually the in-the-moment response on the part of a director under pressure, but I was determined to make them feel as comfortable as possible in the “sooner” rather than the “later”. Fortunately, they were attentive and responsive as I skulked about, whispering a small playable action into an ear or subtly adjusting a group of people to better inform a physical or visual relationship – things that wouldn’t really be noticeable to an audience but would help to define our “world” for them a bit more. Actually, that “not noticeable to an audience” thing isn’t quite true. It’s almost certain that at least one pair of eyes somewhere out in the house is on you! Maintaining focus when you’re playing background is very, very hard, but, having been there myself, I felt it was important to try to give the actors something to hold on to while standing there, to give a bit more depth to the Truth the watchers had hopefully bought into. We would quickly repeat a section for them, and it was confirmed that they understood.

Our Stage Manager, Katie East, was a brick during all of this. She must have been feeling the tremendous stress, but always managed to keep me calm by handling every situation that arose. There is nothing like a great Stage Manager … and I had one. The only problem that neither of us could handle was our Producer, Ken. While he was great at dealing with the multitude of details outside the stage environment, he had decided that, in order to save some money, he was going to take on the job of Production Manager himself! This is a very specialized role in the mounting of any show. It is this person who is responsible for every aspect of the physical mounting of the production. He’s in charge of all the technical elements (sets, costumes, lighting, stage crew, schedules, etc.) and makes sure that budgets are being adhered to and personnel are where they should be at any particular moment.

Katie was particularly affected by Ken taking over this job. She would send him the “Production Notes”, lists of urgent problems and concerns that had been generated from the previous day’s rehearsals and meetings with the various departments … but he would never read them! It drove her up the wall. I had my moments with him too. He would sit in my staging rehearsals and whisper in my ear about what he thought of a particular scene always starting his comment with “You know what you should do?” These remarks made no sense to me and were quickly becoming distractions I didn’t need. At one point during a break, I hauled him into a corner and let him know that he was just going to have to calm down and let me do my job. I was cajoling and semi-polite, and I think he got the point … at least, he stopped the whispering. I think he was getting somewhat overwhelmed by the additional duties he had taken on.

The set for the show was, well, for want of a better word, a PIG! It had been rented from Huron Country Playhouse in Ontario whose stage was much larger than ours. It had been unloaded into the backstage area of the Pantages Theatre and once in, it was discovered there was no room for people to move back there. None! It had been rearranged twice in order to create narrow pathways for actors and crew to maneuver, but there were so many people that it was next to impossible to get from up stage to down stage behind the scenes! It was Ken’s job to figure this out. And he couldn’t. I felt somewhat sorry for him actually. I could see he was flailing about and trying to be helpful, but he was out of his depth. Katie managed to sort it out a little, but it remained a problem, one that would be compounded shortly by the production’s move to Brandon for a week of performances.

And still there was the music. The Choral Director remained in his basement across town putting off the demands that he get his ass and music over to the Playhouse. He’d not been teaching the Ensemble their music either, but thankfully one of our rehearsal pianists had been taking care of that. Finally, one afternoon he brought some of his “product” to the theatre. We sat down in the house to listen to what he had been working on for all this time. I don’t “lose it” easily, but with the pressure mounting I finally broke and went ballistic when I heard what he had done. I had anticipated hearing something akin to the incredible orchestral sound my friend Olaf had produced electronically in his studio for “The Wave” workshops, or the classy sequenced augmentations that Dave Pierce, one of MSI’s MDs, had been using for the Calgary Stampede Grandstand shows. I wasn’t remotely ready for what was coming out of the speakers! It sounded like a calliope, like a little Hammond organ or cheap Wurlitzer keyboard. I wanted to punch him! I wanted to go for his throat! I was embarrassed for him as he stood there making excuses for his work. Ken admitted to the fact that doing the music this way had been a mistake. Because of this stupid “augmentation” plan, the live orchestra that had been hired was much smaller than what the show’s score called for. Now the move to Brandon was only a few days away. It was too late to turn back.

At least the “rain” worked!!! It was a small triumph in light of the defeats that had plagued us almost daily. The machinery had been hooked up by Huron Country’s Scene Shop Technician and our crew had assisted. We all held our breaths as the switch was turned on. It was magical as the water came pouring down creating the illusion that the stage was in the middle of a rainstorm. Ultimately, it worked at every performance, perfectly, utterly captivating the audiences, and at that moment, eased some of the “what-else-can-go-wrong” feelings that were surging through all of us.

The situation with the huge shabby set, which looked like it had been through a war, was rectified by the designer from Ontario, Bob Ivey. It was like playing with an immense jigsaw puzzle and if I heard “it’ll all work out by opening” one more time, I was going to kill somebody! Ken was the brunt of my frustration any number of times as I yelled that “this has got to get together”. I began cutting set elements from the show to ease the backstage mess and it helped a little, but there was no time to worry about it. The final tech rehearsals in Winnipeg were a shambles. While the cast was on top of it, the production details were still a huge source of concern and Brandon was upon us.

Everyone handled the Brandon move-in mayhem with understanding. Katie maintained her cool and inspired everyone, especially me, to plough through some dangerous set moving moments in the new space, keeping everything going forward. The stage crew was amateur and even though they had been brought in to watch the four Winnipeg tech rehearsals from the wings, they still managed to screw things up in one way or another. The local crew chief seemed to be of no use at all even though he’d actually run the show a couple of times in Winnipeg. In spite of it all, the Brandon “opening” went adequately if only because we had nothing to which to compare it. We had never had an audience before and no one knew what the “real thing” was. Scott and I sat beside each other in the back row, cringing and clutching each other’s arms, but we gradually relaxed when a cue went right, or a number looked good or the Orchestra (with a very frazzled Conductor coping with the click track) kept it together. Even the movies looked good after having been put through a conversion program to add the vintage film feel. A few Board members had come in from Winnipeg to see the opening and were, amazingly, suitably impressed. The cast was grand and, justifiably, pleased with themselves. But we were still in rehearsal. Some things had to be fixed, mostly technical in nature, and some timing and blocking things for the actors were addressed. By the time we returned to Winnipeg (thankfully minus that local running crew), the actors were old hands, both at doing the show and dodging moving sets.

The afternoon of the real Opening was fraught with technical crap. I finally left after an hour of watching the perpetual set struggles and yet another new crew trying to force things into places they weren’t supposed to go. My level of anxiety was the highest I could remember at an opening night. My stomach was in knots. The house was packed – with friends and “real” people – and I was shaking as I took my seat up in the balcony beside the Stage Management table where Katie was calling the show.

The show was like glass!! I was astonished! There is no other word for my reaction. The crew got every set change, the cast found every moment, the audience roared their approval after every number … and the rain was beautiful. By scene six I could see that everything was going to be alright, and I felt the tension drain out of my body. Katie said she could see me physically relaxing as the Act progressed. The first Act ends with the title song and, of course, the rain. The house went nuts. At intermission the noise in the Lobby was tumultuous. Everyone was laughing and talking in loud voices, and I felt people grabbing my arm and patting my shoulder as I walked through the crowd to the street for a smoke … and a breath of fresh air. The second Act was spectacular and at the end of it all, the audience rose as a single body and gave these incredible performers the acknowledgement they deserved.

Yes, the set did look shabby from time to time and yes, the orchestra sounded somewhat amateur because of the tinny computer sounds that could still be heard despite my insistence that the playback be turned down to the lowest level possible; and yes, the pace lagged a bit every now and then. But it was a good evening’s entertainment. I found myself smiling occasionally and even laughing out loud. Perhaps it was from relief or perhaps it was that good.

There are two images that stay in my mind from that production. One is of Danny (Austin) striking the iconic pose at the end of the title song, and the other was something very small a moment, for me, of theatre magic. It was the remarkable Jeff Kohut, one of the Ensemble members, playing the tiny role of ‘The Milkman’, dressed in a white uniform and hat and coming on stage with a milk bottle carrier, tap dancing his way from stage right to stage left during the “Good Morning” number. The look on his face was a mixture of utter joy to be where he was, to be doing what he was doing, and of his absolute commitment to doing it … so incredibly well. That moment filled my heart … and still does.

The day after we opened, I wrote in my Journal. “I’ve been paid my fee, and the script and score have been filed away with the other shows I’ve done. At points during the rehearsal, I kept reminding myself that I would be back in the spotlight this summer in a great role in what I was sure would be a great production (“42^nd Street”). That kept things in perspective for me at times when I was getting anxious. I don’t have to go through this again – at least not with Rainbow. And, if they ever do ask me to direct again (or if anyone ever asks me to direct again) I’ll have to think very carefully about my answer. I’ll ask a lot of questions about support staff and time frames. From the start of rehearsals to our first audience was exactly two weeks. That is too short a time to put on any show let alone a two-and-a-half-hour musical! Its insane and I will never do it again. But, never say never!”

And that turned out to be the case!

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As we moved toward the closing of “Crazy” three things happened at the same time. It seemed that things were always happening at the same time for me and, inevitably, I would be forced to make choices that I didn’t want to make, but had to. This time, that wasn’t the case.

Ron Meyers was a Rainbow fixture. I couldn’t have named a bigger Musical Theatre geek than Ron (aside from myself … and maybe Richard Ouzounian). He was a Provincial Court Judge but when he was at “the Stage” he was a Musical Nerd. He also sat on the Rainbow Board and was deeply committed to its well-being. We ran into each other socially during the time I wasn’t involved with Rainbow and he would always start the conversation by saying “we’ve got to get you back”. I would smile and say, “I’m waiting” and time would pass – six years, to be exact – before I was “back”. Our banter during “Crazy” rehearsals would invariably center on the merits of potential show choices for Rainbow, upgrading outreach, production quality and “getting more bums in the seats”. Oddly these were the same things we had always talked about back in the “old” days. I loved our chats.

One evening, I arrived for a performance to find Ron waiting for me at the stage door. He usually had an observation about something in the show or about a new show in New York or a new recording of an obscure show he’d just found. But this encounter seemed to have another purpose. Just as we got to my dressing room, he stopped and looked at me rather seriously. “Would you allow me to submit your name to the Production Committee to direct the Winter Show?” In an effort to shed the “just Summer Theatre” image, Rainbow had announced that it would be mounting a single major production at the Pantages Playhouse during the regular theatre season. To me, this was a signal that the “new management” was making some major changes and committed to following through. So far, nothing more had been made public. I was completely surprised by the question and had to stop myself from jumping up and down. “I guess it would depend on the show”, I said. “I’ll be in touch” he said and walked away. Five minutes later Ken Peter, Rainbow’s General Manager, walked into the dressing room and quietly asked if he could have a meeting with me the following week about directing. Ron and Ken were as thick as thieves, always off in a corner plotting, always whispering to each other and it was obvious that Ron had dashed away to report to Ken on the conversation we’d had. It now seemed clear that some conspiring had been in the works. “I’m at your disposal” and we set a date.

It was now also set that Sam was moving back to Winnipeg. He had been living in Vancouver for the past three years, variously playing in the “Show Boat” orchestra, navigating the bumpy Livent fiasco (which was on-going) and maintaining the existing shows on our roster while continuing the hunt for others. His return to town served to fuel circulating gossip that I would be moving to New York and that Sharon Harris, our devoted Vancouver factotum, would be my Assistant in an office there! This info wasn’t coming from me, so it seemed clear that Sam had been doing some talking. People were now walking up to me in various environments telling me not to leave town! I would just laugh it off in the moment, not giving it much credence. Before his return, Sam had requested that I begin a search for what he had started to call “MSI’s World Headquarters” in Winnipeg. I’d seen some spaces in various buildings and, knowing what would be acceptable to Sam, my first choices were in the Pantages Playhouse building or Centennial Concert Hall. Unfortunately, there was nothing available in the Pantages and the Concert Hall had restricted office-access times. After a bit more looking, I found a nice suite of rooms downtown at 93 Lombard and managed to negotiate a reduced-rate lease by paying a whole year’s rent in advance. That’s the way Sam liked to work.

For the past ten years we had used my dining room table as our office and, more recently, a somewhat more formal office in the sunroom of my house. Because it had been only the two of us for so long, I was now more of a business partner; once I became Vice President and CFO, my input was a lot more integral to the decision-making and operation of the Company. With this downtown office plan, I was not reacting as I thought I would. The prospect of putting in an 8- hour day like a “real” businessman was not at all appealing. As the Company had grown, I thought nothing of last minute requests for budgets or finding a substitute player or addressing a crisis at any time, 24/7. At home all the files were at my fingertips, and I could dash off a budget in my pajamas at midnight (which I’d done many times)! But with the computers and files someplace else and “formal” office hours, I wouldn’t be able to do that … and really didn’t want to. Sam and I went back and forth about what he expected in this more structured setting. I was in a huge internal conflict, one that would not be resolved quickly … or easily.

As all this was happening, the “Christmas Carol” CD had moved into the manufacturing phase. We had spent time looking at submitted artwork but nothing leapt out at me. I found some of the work rather odd, images that had nothing to do with the story or its theme, abstract “art” that was just plain weird and made me shake my head in confusion. Olaf had been pushing for something contemporary and Clint was leaning toward a more traditional feel. We ended up going somewhat traditional in the image but rather contemporary in the execution and the result seemed to please all of us. The images were printed off and sent to McNally-Robinson, a local bookstore, to Chapters Books and to Safeway for reactions. Walmart had also expressed interest and, of course, Dalnavert was anxious to get a shipment.

I had written some liner notes telling of my long personal experience with the story and that was it for the cover. The demo music we’d been using wasn’t going to happen as I was pretty sure that guitarist Christopher Parkening and the King’s College Choir weren’t going to allow us to use their recordings without shelling out a boatload of money in royalties. So, with Olaf’s incredible music skills and a group of singers from his studio, we managed to produce a very acceptable arrangement of “In Dulci Jubilo” and a baroque lute concerto along with some other “atmospherics”. They sounded wonderful. Our first order was for 2000 albums and the thought was that our financial outlay would be recouped in short order. We held our breaths.

The closing of “Crazy” was sad. We had been selling out and the winding down reminded me of my past Rainbow end-of-season experiences. It was usually getting cold and rainy by the end of August and a sense of loss and desolation had set in as the final performances hit the stage. I was aware of imminent departures, and felt a diminishing of the excitement and energy that had buoyed us for the months we’d been together. The show had been warm and comfortable and while there were no tears at the closing, I could tell that everyone was wistful. The feeling continued for the week after the Stage shut down and then I had the meeting with Ken at the office.

There had been murmurings of shows for this new Winter slot – “Annie”, “Grease” “Buddy-The Buddy Holly Story” – but those titles hadn’t interested me at all. Neither kids nor rock music were turn-ons for me, so I approached this meeting with some trepidation. Fortunately, the rumours had been based in nothing and the show they wanted me to direct was “Singin’ In The Rain”! I said yes immediately! Scott Drewitz was on board as choreographer, a brilliant choice because of his energy and inventiveness, and a good friend! I realized that the technical aspects of the show would be daunting, in particular the rain and creating the silent film sequence. Both would require a great deal of rehearsal time, a lot of money, organization and preparation. The casting would also have to be perfect … and the costumes and the sets and the orchestra … and we were only five months from opening! My mind went into overdrive. But that wasn’t all. They had already decided that the following summer’s show would be “42^nd Street”! And they wanted me to play ‘Julian Marsh’. Needless to say, I accepted on the spot and, to put it mildly, I WAS BACK … in spades!!

We had seven different projects going for Music Services and it seemed that since Sam’s return, all the the details thereof were washing up onto my piled-high-with-paper desk at home. There were times when I couldn’t find a needed file in the stacks that were piled on every surface and I’m a very organized person. “Fosse” was about to go into rehearsal for a Tour, we were hiring audition pianists for Tokyo’s Disneyland, “Forever Swing” in Toronto was about to start up, the orchestra for “Into The Woods” in Edmonton was still being contracted, “Oliver” was in need of a sub keyboard player and Manilow was still in prep for the Tour and some recording sessions. The calls coming into my office were constant and I was just keeping my head above water. Then Sam did something he’d never done before … he invested in one of our shows.

Over the years, we had managed to keep ourselves out of that part of the business. While we produced shows, we never used the Company’s money. Investors were always found to provide the funds to get a show up. Using the Company’s money added a risky element to our involvement. But “Forever Swing – The Big Band Musical” was personal for Sam, and I transferred $50K from our coffers to the show’s account. Swing was the music he loved most of all and over years of playing it he’d become an authority on the style and its performance. While not playing in the show, he had gathered together some of the best jazz musicians in the country for the Orchestra. He’d overseen the instrumentation and new arrangements (by the great Dave Pierce) and was now involved in the plans for the recording, the merchandising, the publicity, the production personnel and just about every other aspect of the show. It was very strange to see him wearing this new hat if only because it changed him a bit. He was edgier and more impatient than usual. He had been keeping an eagle eye on ticket sales and while previews had gone well enough with standing ovations and all, the “real” houses after opening were the big question. I could feel his anxiety whenever we talked on the phone. Time would tell.

Not to let the grass grow under my whatever, I wasted no time getting into the preparations for “Singing In The Rain”. I was feeling slightly desperate because I knew the best performers were starting to be or had already been snapped up for Fall and Winter productions across the country. The initial auditions in Winnipeg were somewhat of a bust with very few castable and that alarmed me. The principal roles were being hand-picked rather than auditioned and locking people in was an infuriatingly slow process, especially with such short notice. It took time (and some negotiating) to get the main trio set but I was very happy with Danny Austin (who had just done the role over the summer in Ontario) as ‘Don Lockwood’, Shannon Phoenix (from “Crazy”) as ‘Kathy’ and Michael Donald (from the old Rainbow days) as ‘Cosmo Brown’. Subsequent Winnipeg auditions had yielded an acceptable ensemble and some wonderful featured performers, notably Jennifer Lyon who would be playing ‘Lina Lamont’.

For some reason (which I have either forced myself to forget or never knew to begin with) the show was scheduled to open and play for a week in Brandon, a small town two plus hours outside Winnipeg. I think it was an element of Rainbow’s outreach mandate and, as part of this arrangement, we were to audition people in Brandon for walk-ons and extras in the run there, supposedly making the locals feel connected to the event. But the dismal array of folks (mostly high school kids) paraded before us over an entire day of auditions was downright depressing. There was a line stretching out the door of the auditorium when we arrived, and we settled in not expecting much. Sixty folks were seen and fifty-nine were rejected. No one had prepared! “Happy Birthday” must have been sung two dozen times and “Tomorrow” from “Annie” echoed off the walls the concrete rehearsal room over and over again. What were these people thinking? Only one lady was very prepared, had a great voice and personality and a bit of age weight (which is to say she was an Adult) and we accepted her on the spot. And, with a whimper, the show was cast.

I had held off getting emotionally attached to the idea of moving to New York for a long time. I could say I was mentally attached but had prevented myself from allowing it to infiltrate my heart. Only the details were preventing me from fully committing. When would this happen?  What do I do with the house? Do I rent it? Do I sell it? Do we get an office/apartment in New York? I certainly didn’t want to relinquish the lifestyle to which I’d become accustomed, but I was slowly resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn’t have a home there like I had here. How much were we willing to pay for a place. All of these questions had been posed a couple of years earlier when Sam had asked me to suss out a pied-a-terre there for him. How do we establish the Company there? We had a reputation of course, but there was the question of being a Canadian working for a Canadian Company in the US and all that that entailed legally. I was prepared to give up acting but what kind of status would I have down there? What to do with the car? All these unknowns gave me headaches and were not easy to ignore and they preyed on me.

I went into rehearsals for “King Lear” right after “Crazy” closed. I’d not auditioned for the show but had been cast, sight unseen, by Martha Henry on recommendations. Mind, I was playing a small part, a combination of a number of roles now being called “The Gentleman Knight” who would pop up at various points in the play, facilitating the movement of the plot. Meeting Martha for the first time on the first day of rehearsals, I was somewhat anxious. She didn’t know me from Adam and although I knew her from an idolizing distance, introducing myself was almost an apology. Her grace and charm eased my apprehension as she hugged me and said “Welcome! I’ve heard a lot about you and I’m looking forward to working with you”. She was incredibly soft spoken and simply oozed class and thoughtfulness. Her approach to all of us gathered at the Cast introductions was considerate and generous. Just the way she spoke made me want to work for her approval and do my best for her. While I was impressed with her approach – firm, concise and commanding – I felt like I wanted to protect her. From what, I had no idea, but she projected a slight vulnerability that seemed to need sheltering and care. I would have done anything for her.

Our cast was made up of a lot of Toronto stalwarts – the ever-dangerous (for me) Stephen Russell, the remarkable Teddy Atienza, David Janzen, Alex Poch-Golden and, as ‘Lear’, Paxton Whitehead. Early on in the process, I had to ask a huge favour of Martha. I had been awarded The Larry McCance Award by Actors’ Equity and had been invited to accept it in Toronto. The date would, miraculously, coincide with the Opening Night of “Forever Swing” but I was very nervous about my request for an extra day off. Since it was an Equity event she insisted that I had to attend and not to give it a second thought. “Lear” had a Saturday morning rehearsal at which Martha, much to my great surprise, made the announcement of my going off to accept the award (much applause and accolades from the cast) and I was on a plane that afternoon.

The “Swing” opening was incredible! Sam was in seventh heaven as was the audience, including my Mom who was completely swept away by the music she and my Dad had loved so much. The Big Band sound was so finely tuned and committed that one couldn’t help but get caught up in the joy of the Oldies – Glen Miller, The Dorsey Bothers, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington – and the response was over the top. At intermission, I’d gone out for a cig and returned to find that Mom had been “talking” to folks around our seats. People in our row and behind us began shaking my hand and patting me on the shoulder for such a great show. “What did you tell them?” I hissed at her after the attention had ebbed. “That you had produced the show” she said. I sank low in my seat until the lights went down for the second Act. Mom always seemed to take such great joy in announcing to anyone within earshot that I was her son and had much more to do with a production than I actually did. But it gave her pleasure so I couldn’t get too pissed off.

She was also with me the following afternoon as I accepted the Award. It was a very classy luncheon at the Elmwood Club, and everyone had on their Sunday best. Having never been to one of these events before I was in the dark about how they worked. There were a number of other awards being handed out and each was proceeded by a speech about the recipient. I had no idea that Manitoba Equity Councilor Donna Fletcher had penned an introduction to be read by friend Frank Ruffo. I was mightily humbled by what she had written and overwhelmed as the folks in the room rose to their feet applauding as I walked up to the lectern. I had prepared a small thank-you in iambic pentameter (as I’d done in the past for a couple of “Manitoba Reports” at National Council Meetings) and that went down a treat. Mom was beaming when I returned to the table. She had been an integral part of my journey and I told the audience that in my remarks. She leaned over and kissed me, and my weekend was over. Too quickly I was back in Winnipeg and hit the ground running going directly from the airport to rehearsal. No one had really noticed that I’d been away, and I slipped back into the routine without too much fuss.

I was massively aware of Paxton. I’d seen him on TV many times and was always intrigued by the rather snooty characters he carried off to perfection. I knew of his work both on stage and off at the Shaw Festival but now here he was, right in front of me every day, working diligently to get this greatest of Shakespeare’s roles into his mouth and body. His focus was absolute but calm and he was very approachable to anyone who stopped by the little cove he had made for himself tucked away in a corner surrounded by rehearsal furniture and props. He was very funny, droll (much like the characters he played in the sitcoms) and, I could tell, just a bit nervous about this huge mountain of a role he had to climb every day. It must have been exhausting but even in his mid-sixties his energy was boundless. As we progressed, he seemed grow physically bigger with each run and by the time we got into previews, he was eating scenery to beat the band. His “Blow winds and crack your cheeks” scene was frightening and spellbinding, like watching an accident happening – fearsome to look at but unable to avert your eyes. Eight times a week he pulled it out, never faltering, committed to the journey. It was rare to experience such a performance and I was grateful for the opportunity.

Unlike Paxton, “Swing” in Toronto was faltering. Sam was determined to keep it open and while our producing royalties kept flowing in, ticket sales were not doing well. Houses were at 50% and falling. Breaking even was out of the question and the show’s future looked very dim indeed. But, like a dog with a bone, Sam wasn’t about to give up!

Nietzsche said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. By the middle of my first week of rehearsals for “Damn Yankees” in Lake Oswego, Oregon, I wasn’t dead but starting to feel like the Incredible Hulk! There was an anger building up inside me that I had to fight to keep in check. It was exhausting. It started at the first “rehearsal”.

            I’ve experienced many involvements in Community Theatre as a professional actor. There have been groups whose enthusiasm, joy and commitment make up for a lack of proficiency in the craft itself. There have been groups that knock your socks off on all levels and could be easily mistaken for pros. Then there are groups which, through no real fault of their own, seem to be serving time in a penal colony, just going through the motions. On this assignment it was, for the most part, this last group in which I quickly realized I was immersed … and I was not happy. While there were eventually some outlets for my frustrations – people to whom I could kvetch and bitch – I was initially shocked more than anything else.

I had met with the Director right after my arrival to discuss the role – ‘Mr. Applegate’ aka ‘The Devil’. The “depth” of our conversation should have been a clue as to her mindset, but I ignored it. My first call was the following evening and I had thought, since we only had two weeks before opening, that they would be fitting me into the blocking, giving me a foundation on which to build. I discovered that we were starting with a music rehearsal. ‘Applegate’ has one song in the show (“Those Were The Good Old Days”). I sang through it once and that was it. Now what?  Folks had arrived sporadically as I’d been singing, and I began to pick up on their lack of enthusiasm about the experience. It seemed that the four weeks of rehearsal prior to my arrival had taken a toll. They were a rag tag group, none of whom I knew, and I began to worry that if this was how they were after four weeks, what did it bode for the next two! Some were missing and I learned that some had simply stopped coming. How, after all that time could a cast be so uninvolved and ill-prepared? They seemed like nice enough human beings, but as performers … well, I was astonished.

            The level of disorganization was beyond me. There were no renderings of designs for the costumes or sets to be seen, the rehearsal hall floor hadn’t been taped (to represent the parameters of the set) and we were to have a run-through of Act One two nights hence! In my Journal following that first night I had written: “Oh dear, oh dear! I felt for a number of moments last night that I was in a scene from “Shakespeare In Love”, one of the theatre scenes where the actors are rehearsing amid the chaos and mayhem. At one point there was a group of people chatting over on one side of the room, our Stage Manager talking with someone on the other side, the pianist with someone else in the doorway, all while a couple of us are in the middle of the very small room talking through a scene with the Director. I couldn’t believe it. There seems to be no discipline here!” I just kept taking deep breaths, telling myself to keep calm, it will work itself out. It didn’t.

            Two nights later we moved to the stage. I had been given some geography by the Stage Manager, but I think she was making it up as we went along as she’d not written anything down! The Act One run-through (gulp), which lasted four-and-a-half hours, made it clear that no one had any concept of where they were or what was happening in a scene! Our Director sat in the back of the theatre with her head buried in the script and made line corrections every now and then. I had to ask a couple of times that a scene be repeated so that folks on stage with me could at least understand who they were supposed to be looking at and reacting to. They didn’t know! The only thing that came clear that night was 1) that I knew all my lines and 2) that we (the cast) were, essentially, in a boat at sea and on our own. It was at that point that I thought I would have to step in … on the QT.

            There were basic things which, if only by osmosis, someone who had performed in shows might have picked up along the way. I shuddered to think what our Director had been teaching her High School students over the past 40 years. Perhaps because our cast was made up of adults, one might have thought that they would know not to stand in a straight line across the front of the stage to play a scene. But that certainly wasn’t the case. It was a sad state of affairs, and now, with people approaching me for help, I couldn’t just stand by and watch any more. Partially out of self-preservation I quietly let it be known that I would be available to anyone wanting to run lines or work a scene. I was inundated.

            But there were a few lines I didn’t think I could cross and kept my “coaching” limited to the scenes I was in, offering only suggestions to others who had asked for help. But a few nights later during another run-through, I couldn’t stand the disorganization any longer. From my seat in the house watching in disbelief, I let loose. A scene had just finished. The folks in the scene walked off stage without taking the furniture that had been assigned to them as the people in the next scene with their assigned furniture started coming on. There was a lot of furniture on stage, and nobody knew what to do! I stood up and yelled “Stop! Stop!” The Stage Manager wandered on and asked what was wrong. I ran on to the stage making it known that the transition had to be repeated so that folks would understand how the traffic patterns worked. I think I sort of pissed of the SM but there was no way I would let that happen again. They did it a few times until everyone knew the geography and that was that. Folks came up to me afterward and told me they had been waiting for someone to tell them what to do. At that point, I announced that I wanted to do Act One again the following night. No one objected. Not even our Director.

            I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to do any bitching to my host, who was also the Theatre’s Producer at the Theatre, but that evening my frustrations eventually surfaced. She told me that if I wanted to step in and make some alterations or do some coaching on the side, our Director probably wouldn’t even notice! I told her that I had been doing that already but now I crossed the line and had out-in-the-open sessions with some of the principals and delved into some of the ensemble scenes. It was just a matter of asking them where their emotions were coming from and letting them know that all they had to do was listen and respond … things one might actually do in real life. Amazingly, these small directions seemed to be eye openers for all of them! Unfortunately, this all might have happened too late. What we had done in the rehearsal room didn’t seem to transfer to the stage for them and I would just sit backstage, in the dark, watching and shaking my head.

            In the final days of rehearsal, things seemed to improve just a little. Gradually, lights seemed to turn on in people’s heads and a tentative reality settled in giving a semblance of truth to the characters and the story. I had warned a lot of my friends not to come to opening but to wait a couple of weeks for the kinks to work out before seeing the show – if they absolutely had to. Opening was, to my astonishment, acceptable … just. The cast had, if only because of the adrenalin, risen to the occasion. The audience responded well, even giving the cast a totally undeserved standing ovation at the end and there was a festive atmosphere afterward at a reception in the lobby. I avoided almost everyone, most of all our Director. I had nothing to say to her and I think she was embarrassed to say anything to me. I left it at that. Now for a seven week run!

            All during rehearsals I had been receiving videos of the Pan Am workshop sessions from Jim Nichols. They were on the verge of announcing who gets what venue and I was apparently on the top of the list to announce the baseball games at the still-being-built Ball Park. I was tugging at the bit to get back and be more of a part of the lead up to the Games. Just before we opened, I got a load of faxed material from the organizers and discovered that I had been assigned to do the In-Line Hockey announcing! WHAT? Well, that wasn’t going to work. I knew about as much of in-line hockey (whatever that was) as I did about molecular biology. I was massively disappointed and faxed Jim back that this was not what we had talked about, that I knew nothing about hockey and that he should probably look for someone else to do the job. I heard nothing back.

            As the run continued (only four shows a week) I had lots of time to visit with old friends and colleagues and took advantage of a lot of invitations. One person I’d not seen for a very long time was Jack Booch. He had directed me in “Camelot” at the Cirque Dinner Theatre in Seattle many years earlier. We had lost touch following an encounter in New York when he told me that I had “no business being here” and that I should leave town immediately. That sort of summed Jack up back then … loud, cantankerous, belligerent and downright rude. But it seemed that he had softened a tiny bit over the years and our lunch was rather pleasant … if only because Isabella (Chappell, my old Civic Theatre boss) was with us and acted as a referee from time to time. He always talked at the top of his lungs as if he were addressing everyone in the room (or, in this case, the restaurant) and I decided to egg him on just to see how obnoxious he would get. He didn’t disappoint!

            In the course of lunch we touched on something that had been on my mind since I’d arrived back in Portland. We had been discussing the state of theatre in town. A few years after I’d left town, professional companies started moving into Portland, importing performers from larger centers, and the small community-based theatres which had been around forever just couldn’t compete. Big newspaper ads and slick, expensive publicity campaigns drew away audiences and many of the old venues closed down. While a few managed to hang on, the quality of their product dipped. Performers were turning professional, leaving the community theatres with slim pickings compared to the old days when they were the only game in town. At one point Jack suggested that he and Isabella come and see my show. I told him that they should just stay away. It would only make him angry, and he’d certainly make a scene in the lobby.

            I once more found myself thinking “what would have happened had I stayed in Portland?” It had already crossed my mind in the case of New York and working as a Tour Guide at Lincoln Center. I was being groomed by Ethel Weinstein, my boss there, to move into Management. It would have been a straight ahead course and nothing – no politics, no competition – to stop me from moving up that chain. But I left for Winnipeg and didn’t look back. It was the same in Portland. Isabella had primed me to take over her job as General Manager of the Theatre. In chatting about it with other friends, we thought that what eventually happened might not have had I not moved to New York. Civic might have been saved, the School might have become the stand-alone Academy I’d been planning, community involvement and support might have improved and a malaise that had set in might have been thwarted. Its always a case of “what if” which, even now, makes me question some of the decisions I’ve made along the way. Jack, thankfully, took my advice and stayed away from the show. Isabella didn’t.

            Meanwhile, Sam continued beating bushes drumming up business for the Fall. Despite LIVENT buying the farm, we’d gone on to land a lot of regional productions and also had some larger shows on the burner. Unbeknownst to me, for months Sam had been cultivating a relationship with a Musical Director named Steve Welch. Steve was an incredibly affable guy, up, joyous and extremely smart, and just happened to be Barry Manilow’s MD. One afternoon during a hand-off phone call with Sam, he asked, “You like Barry Manilow, don’t you?” “You bet I do” I said. “Well, get ready to start working for him” he said. What? WHAT!! I loved Manilow’s music, his lyrics and his voice. My mind immediately flew back to those long-ago, boozy after-show impromptus in the Upper Bar at MTC when we would gather around the piano, me pounding out Barry’s songs as Richard Ouzounian belted out at the top of his lungs … “when will I see you aga-a-a-a-in?”. Now, here I was, on the verge of working for one of my idols!

            This was a 22-city Tour scheduled for late summer, and we were charged with getting 30 orchestra musicians for each city. Since Manilow only performed on weekends, Sam would do the advance getting the right players and a local contractor would pay them based on our budgets. At that point, I didn’t know what kind of special hell this would turn out to be. Barry Manilow or no Barry Manilow, suicidal thoughts would pop up frequently during that time. But more of that later.

            The “Yankees” run continued well enough, but I was tugging at the bit to be heading home. Friends had made their way out to the show and were always kind and generous in their comments following a performance. I didn’t believe a word. Finally Isabella came to see us. She didn’t stay around after the show because, as she wrote me in a note, she would have broken down in tears. We spoke subsequently at length, and she told me how I was “wasted in the show in a role I wasn’t right for and, in spite of all my work, I couldn’t save things”. I said I had told her so and she had to agree. Meeting up with dear friends Sue Parks and Bill Dobson at a restaurant following the show one night, from across the parking lot Sue yelled “Alright, Hurst, you owe me nineteen bucks”!

Then it was over. With minimal fanfare we closed, I said my goodbyes and, the following morning, got in the car and started home. I pushed the drive doing ten hours each day and by the time I walked back into my house, I was ready to go again. First on the list was dealing with the Pam Am situation. As it turned out I had been reassigned, this time to do the synchronized swimming and water polo competitions at the Pam Am Pool. My uniform and accreditation were apparently waiting for me at the Games Office. At the outset I had told them what my rehearsal schedule would be for “Crazy For You” and they had said there would be no problem. I arrived at the Games Office to discover that because of my schedule, they couldn’t accommodate me at any of the events! I was floored. There was an “orphan” schedule (events without staffing) that an assistant and I checked for openings, but most of them required French announcers and the few English spaces didn’t fit my schedule. I was asked if I would be using my credentials to get into any of the venues to which I’d been assigned – water or roller sports. Telling them I wouldn’t be doing that, I handed the lanyards and ID back and my Pam Am Games adventure ended, unceremoniously and with a bit of a personal whimper. One small, short-lived joy was being asked to host the “Manitoba Night” at the Games with the wonderful Al Simmons, but had to let that go as well because of a “Crazy” performance that night. I was sad not to be involved and that it had all turned out the way it did. But onward!

            Unpacking “the office” was the next thing to take care of. A lot of shows had solidified over the final weeks in Portland, and I was very quickly inundated by budgets and payrolls for up-coming shows – the Calgary Stampede, “Fosse” in Chicago, “Martin Guerre” in Minneapolis, a “JC Superstar” Tour, “Oliver” in Toronto– and it seemed like I’d never been away.

            But now, my immediate focus was on starting “Crazy For You” rehearsals, and being back in the arms of a sane, disciplined and organized theatre felt tremendous! Robbie and Scott (Drewitz, our choreographer) were at the helm and were absolute princes working together in tandem, with only the quality of the show in mind. I seemed to be comparing everything to the experience I’d just had down South and with each contrast, I felt better and better. The Cast was approaching the work with joy and a total commitment to making it all work. Playing New York impresario ‘Bela Zangler’ was a treat. I had little to do in the first Act, but the second was where I got to let loose, particularly in “What Causes That?” a comedy song in “The Drunk Scene” with Larry (Mannell) playing ‘Bobby Child’ disguised as ‘Bela’ (don’t ask). At one point during the song, sitting opposite each other, confused and pretty well stoned beyond measure, we get to “mirror” the other’s actions a la Marx Brothers. The process took a long while to work because the choreography was so very specific, and in rehearsal we would constantly crack up as we stared into each other’s eyes working the “bits” with peripheral vision. It was glorious!  Our antics turned out to get our audiences as well and it was all we could do to maintain our composure. The whole experience served to remind me how glad I was to be back in Winnipeg and on the Rainbow boards once more.

            Producing the “A Christmas Carol” CD was finally completed, and it was spectacular … if I do say so myself! Nolan (Balzer, my engineer) and I had worked out the transitions, the music, sound effects and a myriad of details over a LOT of hours in the studio over the month since my return. We quickly got to the point where we were reading each other’s mind as we listened to the playbacks and our observations rarely clashed. One afternoon, Olaf, Nolan and I sat and listened to the final product, and it was, without question, engrossing and entertaining and I felt incredibly proud of what we had done. The production values gave an additional depth to the tale. We had dimensionalized the story and the characters so that they lived and breathed in a visceral way. At points, I’d forget it was me I was hearing. Now it was a question of marketing the recording and DaCapo got right on to that. Clinton had already approached some of the bookstores in town and they had jumped at the seasonal material being available so far in advance. One bonus in all this was the fact the we had built-in customers at the Dalnavert readings. It was only a few months before those started again and the Museum had no problem adding the CD to their gift shop merchandise. We’d see how they would sell in short order.            

As things seemed to be sailing along on any number of levels, there arose again the unsureness of where I would be living in the relatively near future. Sam had been constantly beating the bushes for work in New York and shows kept being added to our list. Charlotte Merkerson, our Concert Master for a large number of the touring shows, had told Sam of a horn player in the City who had an apartment at 75^th and Columbus – a nice neigbourhood close to the center of things – and was moving to Florida. Charlotte knew that Sam’s living standards were relatively high, as were mine, so the potential quality of the “Company Apartment” wasn’t in question. What was in question was whether it was the right time to make the move. Time would tell.

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George F. Walker’s “Love and Anger” is a dark play. Sometimes its billed as a comedy and while there are certainly comedic aspects to the piece, its underlying thrum is firmly based in the noise of corporate power and politics and the broken people who play within that world, intentionally or not. Since my own “corporate” life had been somewhat stalled with the closing down of LIVENT, I was tugging at the bit to get back on the stage, away from the fraught drama of business and budgets.

The “L&A” cast was a combination of in and out-of-town folks. We were being directed by the generous and focused Alan MacInnes, now firmly ensconced as Prairie Theatre Exchange’s Artistic Director. As per tradition, the first days were spent doing the dreaded “table work” panto, but I suffered through them, biding my time till we got to the “real stuff”. The cast was incredibly pleasant from the get-go. Blair Williams and Stewart Arnott were from Toronto and Maggie Nagle, Teri Cherniak and Lisa Codrington were from Winnipeg. Maggie and Teri were good friends and I loved working with them and watching their work. Maggie was “dangerous” on stage. She was always prompted by “the moment” which was, for me, exciting to play opposite. One never knew quite what was going to happen. The fact that her character in the play was mentally unstable only served to further unleash her spontaneity. It was a great relief when we finally got out of our chairs and hit the deck, ending the dry, academic chatter about what was happening in the play. The difference between the two approaches (particularly in this play) was like night and day. Sitting about, one could not possibly have known what kind of energy we would be called upon to exert in order to fulfill the demands of the script. Once on our feet, it was overwhelming!

It goes without saying that, as is the case with every good play worth its salt, there are subtleties which underpin the characters and the story. In the case of “L&A” they are so far beneath the surface that digging them up became almost a lost cause. Just playing the superficial elements at the required physical pace of the play was exhausting, leaving us all drained by the end of each day. Alan got nervous about ignoring these subtleties, but some of them bubbled to the surface almost automatically in spite of the insane pacing needed to tell the story. My character, John “Babe” Connor, was an “incurably evil” corporate mogul. Most of the characters were easily identifiable by a word or phrase, but playing those characteristics became a titanic job. “Babe” rants and raves and sermonizes as he runs about the stage from start to finish at a “level 10”. Maintaining that energy was debilitating. Add to this a couple of extreme physical interactions and I was done in by day’s end. At one point ‘Babe’ is kidnapped and subjected to a kangaroo court trial which has been convened to try ‘Babe’s’ evil. This scene ends the Act with a hell-bent-for-leather donnybrook which, while never getting totally out of control, always left me lying on the ground gasping for air as the lights came down. Once again, I found myself having to visit my chiropractor for a number of sessions during the run and experienced more “what have you been doing to yourself!?” interrogations. Was I getting too old for all this? But that fight wasn’t the hard part for me.

            I suffer from claustrophobia. Phobias are supposedly “a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and life experience”, but I can think of no incidents in my life that could have resulted in this fear. I was never enclosed in a confined space when I was small; neither was I bullied or abused as a child … nor at any time in my life. I can remember only three times when I unexpectedly experienced the effects of this phobia – once when walking up the narrow circular stairway to the lanterna at the top of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, another when hiking through the dark tunnel to get to the top of Diamond Head in Honolulu (both of which are documented elsewhere in these pages) and a third time when going through a slot canyon in the desert outside Palm Springs. The first I had to complete, the last two I couldn’t and turned back. None of those experiences were in my head when, during a staging rehearsal, I found myself being bagged and hog-tied as part of the kidnapping. A heavy burlap sack was thrown over the upper half of my body and secured in place by a rope around my waist. “Okay, this will only last for a few seconds” I thought. I was manhandled onto an old conveyor belt which passed through a small opening stage right, travelled around backstage and through another tiny opening on stage left.

As I was set down on the belt, I could feel the vaguely familiar panic start to bubble up. The sack over my head became a very narrow well into which I was falling deeper and deeper with no means of escape. (Even as I write this, I am starting to tense up.) I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t move my arms as they were bound to my sides with the rope. I was being buried alive! I began to struggle. My legs started to move uncontrollably, and I couldn’t breathe. The fact that this was just a rehearsal for a play had quickly receded from my mind and was replaced by the fact that I was now trapped, wedged into a horizontal crevice in a cave hundreds of feet below ground. There was no reason in my thinking. I was being irrational – I knew that – but couldn’t force myself back to reality. I was struggling now, searching for a way out. I managed to get my hands free at the bottom of the sack and worked my arms up so I could shimmy the ropes and the bag up over my head. I was gasping for air as I came through the other opening with everyone standing looking at me. This all might have taken thirty seconds from beginning to end. I guess I had been making noises behind the set and no one could figure out what was wrong.

The cool air – and the fact that I could breathe it – calmed me down a bit and I told folks that we were going to have to come up with some kind of alternative to what we had just done … if they wanted me to be alive when I came through the stage left opening. We ended up cutting a slit along one of the bag’s seams that I could stick my face through after the conveyor belt took me off stage and that worked. Knowing I was going to be able to breathe eased my anxiety and the issue was dealt with. That my mind had gone into crisis mode almost immediately shocked me. It was a visceral response over which I had no control, and I certainly didn’t like the feeling of being helpless like that.

The next time we got to that part of the play, Stage Management stopped to make sure that I was going to be alright with the slit they’d made. The actors who were tying me up now knew to keep the rope above my elbows so I could adjust the sack and find my way to air. It all sounds like a tempest in a teapot, but the depth of my panic was overwhelming and very real. What was only in my mind turned into something physical which only fed what was in the mind. It was a vicious circle that spiraled way past control and into a kind of madness. I had never been in a position to experience that feeling again … and hope I never will be – unless I’m dead.

The show was great! The audiences, small though they were, loved it, and so did the critics. We toddled along enjoying each other and while there were some “improvements” that slipped in for one reason or another and had to be dealt with, we came through it all relatively unscathed and I remember the experience fondly (for the most part) as an excellent piece of theatre work. Long live George F. Walker!

It was hard to believe that some business and artistic decisions being made thousands of miles away by people I really didn’t know were affecting my daily life in a major way. The on-going fight between Producer Cameron MacIntosh and American Actors Equity about the use of non-American performers (i.e., the original London cast) in their production of “Oklahoma” had come to a head, and the production’s planned sit in New York was cancelled. Trevor Nunn, the show’s Director, had gone to New York to plead the Producer’s case, telling Equity that the Brit cast would be replaced with Yanks three months after the opening. But that was a no-go for Equity, and it was gone. I was miffed. It had been a huge feather in our caps and had opened our New York door even further. But Sam didn’t seem too concerned. That was probably one of his best qualities. In spite of his micromanaging from time to time, he was always of a mind that everything would work out … and it usually did. One just had to move on, persevere, and we would be looking at positive times once again. I held my breath.

In order to get to officially saying “Yes” to Rainbow’s “Crazy For You” for the upcoming summer (see “Greasepaint – Part 48”) there were a few hoops I had to jump through first. It was strange to be back in the Rainbow Stage environment. After so many years “away”, I felt a bit edgy walking into the MTC Rehearsal Hall to audition for ‘Bela Zangler’. While there were friends sitting behind the table, it was still a little irksome that I had to go through this charade. While Robbie (Paterson, who was directing) had told me that he wasn’t going to do the show without me, the fact that I had to present myself after all these folks had been seeing me on stage month after month in Winnipeg … well, it rankled. I knew them and they knew me, so what was the problem? Larry Mannell from Toronto had already been hired to play ‘Bobby Childs’ and had come into town for the day. I ended up considering it an opportunity to get to know Larry better and for us to do some “bits” together. True to form, Robbie turned the experience into anything but an audition. Larry and I had some great fun with each other, sounded super singing together and made the folks in the room laugh out loud at our antics. Essentially, it was all a fait accompli but “appearances had to be kept up” – a “rule” I’ve never been able to get my head around, even back in the old days in Portland where it was maddeningly prevalent. Now I was greatly looking forward to starting down this road back at Rainbow with new management under Ken Peter and a fresh vision.

Before heading off to Oregon to do “Damn Yankees”, I fit in a few days doing Musical Theatre Adjudications at the Winnipeg Music Festival and a few more recording my “Christmas Carol” reading on CD. My friends, Olaf and Clinton at DaCapo Productions, had approached me about doing some studio days to make a fully produced recording of the performance and I’d jumped at the chance. I’ve never had any difficulty recording commercials or narrations – they had a particular purpose. But the distance between performing something “live” on stage and making a recording of it is vast. In live performance, the material is in the mind and mouth, and in front of an audience it flows without a problem. Doing the same material in a studio is like you’ve never done it before. There is that microphone hanging in front of you sucking away the energy, the clarity, the spontaneity. The fact that you have the script – which, in this case, I’d subliminally committed most of to memory over many years – on a music stand right in front of you means nothing. Perhaps it’s the antiseptic studio atmosphere in which to recreate an audience experience for yourself, or a tension from the painful awareness that what you say now will not immediately disappear into time and space but be set down forever. Who knows.

It took three days to get the fifty-minute reading recorded. Nolan Balzer was my engineer and a sweetheart of a guy. We started recording right away and I thought it went pretty well. But Nolan was listening with different ears. When it’s only a disembodied voice you’re hearing out of some speakers, one picks up on nuances … or lack thereof. After the first uninterrupted read-through (which was set down for posterity) we began again … in earnest. The stopping and starting was, initially, alright, but it went on and on and on and started to get demoralizing – a breath sound here, a swallow there, an indistinctness here, a vocal stumble (a “furble”) there, a needless pause here, a tempo thing there … it started to drain me, and we had to stop as my mistakes increased. Something that had been so easy and fun sitting in the chair in the attic at Dalnavert had now become a rubble-strewn mountain to climb. But I guess when you’re putting something down for posterity, it has to be perfect and that’s what a very objective (and, at times, obsessive) Nolan was striving for. The final day was a relief as we dealt with bits and pieces. I had listened to some playbacks but there were still all the “production values” (the sound effects, the music, the ghost echoes, the transitions) to be added, the “magic” that gave the recording life. At that, Nolan was a master. There were no deadlines and since this was a test piece for him as an engineer/producer at the studio, he worked tirelessly for a very long time. I wouldn’t hear the final product until I got back from doing “Damn Yankees” in Oregon.

Kayla and I escorted another Guided Tour back to New York and with our routine firmly set – me in front of the group and she bringing up the rear – it was smooth sailing all the way. Thankfully, the group wasn’t as large as it had been the year previous, so it became a lot more intimate. There were nine elderly women who, for some reason, latched on to me and started calling themselves “Richard’s Harem”. There were some “younger girls” who were very feisty and got the most out of their free time. In fact, on our last morning there, they got to the NBC studios at 30 Rock at 4:00AM to be “in front of the windows” for “The Today Show” with hopes of getting to be on-camera and meet some of the stars! It was all beyond me, but they accomplished both goals and the trip, for them, was a life altering experience! The new walking tour of the Upper West Side was a big hit (especially with a much smaller group) as was another Lincoln Center Tour and a Tour to Ellis Island. One night we went to see “Footloose” starring Winnipegger Jeremy Kushnier. Following the show we surprised our charges by telling them that Jeremy would be pleased to meet with them and take us on a backstage tour. They were over the moon about that! He even did a Q&A for a while and had photos taken with us. It was another great Tour but, because of my schedule which became more and more jammed, it the last we were to do for a quite a while.

One other thing I had to take care of before leaving was my “placement interview” for The Pam Am Games. After the last ridiculous experience at the Volunteer Orientation, I approached the new appointment with a degree of trepidation. But this meeting was with the Event Production Coordinator for the Games. It was for an Announcer position and the incredibly affable Jim Nicol explained to me the mind-bendingly-detailed scenario that goes on “behind the scenes” at these major sporting dos. The printed breakdowns consisted of down-to-the-second timings for every aspect of an event, and I sat bug-eyed at how complicated it all seemed. After showing me the long list of workshops and seminars that Announcers were supposed to attend before the Games began, I was quick to point out to him that I was away until late in the summer. He didn’t seem too concerned about that indicating that there would be videos of the sessions and they would be sent to me shortly after they happened. He would arrange to have me announce a couple of Goldeyes games (our local baseball team) as “test” events. Combined with the dress rehearsal and information “parties” for each event, it all seemed incredibly daunting, but he seemed quite confident that I could deal with it. I got the impression that my “reputation” had preceded me, and he told me that he was comfortable with my background and ability. He had actually turned down four people that morning. I would have an assistant and a music coordinator working for me. I would be missing a lot of prep, but Jim was excited about my being on the team … and so was I! What a thing!!

I loved driving long distances in my Jeep Cherokee. I’d had a mechanic install a stand for my new laptop which was now decked out with a GPS system, and had done all the programing for the long trip to Portland. The morning of my departure I pushed the “start program” on the computer keyboard and out came the little robotic female voice (who I called “Agnes”) saying, “Take Route 120 South to Perimeter Highway”. I was thrilled at the thought of having a companion who would navigate for the next three days! The trip was flawless. Aside from the experience of some white-knuckle driving through a sudden blizzard in Wyoming, it was only the we-own-the-highway-trucks that elevated my anxiety as they barreled past with no regard for anyone else. Then it was through Utah and Idaho and finally into Oregon.

At the motels (I enjoy staying in motels on the highway!) I would retrieve messages from my office machine at home. There were some tiny emergencies I had to deal with by phone, but these were minor intrusions I wouldn’t allow to mar my trip. While there’s a sense of freedom on the road, I started to get more excited and focused as the highway signs for Portland began to appear. As I moved off the I-84 and onto the 205 I was suddenly in a big washing machine. With four lanes of freeway and on-ramps every 500 feet, speeding cars came whizzing into the madness, squeezing into lanes on the already crowded road. The serenity of my trip was pretty well over, and soon I was in the serene Portland suburb of Lake Oswego at my old stomping grounds, the Lakewood Center. After some hugs and welcome kisses by staff and friends, I was into a costume fitting and back in the arms and aromas of my favorite place on earth – a theatre!

One thing I noticed right off the bat was a deference people seemed to be paying me. I’d not been around Lake Oswego for quite a while, but it seemed that my relative successes elsewhere in the world impressed folks. I couldn’t figure that out. I told them that I didn’t want any fuss made but I think that fell on deaf ears. Their special treatment was stressing me out and I hoped all the hoopla would stop soon. The other thing I had to adjust to – again – was the fact that most rehearsals were in the evening. Since this was a “non-professional” Company, folks worked during the day and had only evenings and weekends free. They had been rehearsing for four weeks prior to my arrival and we were to start tech rehearsals in two weeks’ time. I was to be fit into the already-sort-of-set blocking. I had all my lines and songs down pretty well and the trek began.

Our Director was a high school drama teacher I had known slightly when I lived in Portland. We’d worked together on one show years back and she had been a mainstay as a Guest Director at Lakewood for a long time. I’d not been directed by her before, and quickly discovered that we had different ideas about approach to the craft and … well, there is no “and”. It wasn’t pretty!

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            There are times when things align themselves in a rehearsal period which make the oft-sought-after perfection much easier to achieve. “Cabaret” at The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario was one of those alignments! Going into our first preview we were justifiably proud of what we had accomplished over the previous three and a half weeks. The Cast, Orchestra, the Creative Staff and Crew had worked like a well-oiled machine, and the anticipation of putting our work in front of an audience filled us all with a combination of excitement and the ever-present dread. What if they didn’t like it? How could that be possible? No element of our show had been overlooked. There wasn’t a weak link in the Cast. Even the orchestra, decked out in a variety of lady’s clothing, had “bought into” the spirit of the concept and were playing it for all they were worth. Tim French’s choreography was astonishing, and the dancers loved doing it. Nikki and I had entered into our character’s relationship with a degree of commitment and honesty that constantly fueled us and filled the stage, and our first house told us in no uncertain terms at the curtain that preview night that we were, as Michael (Shamata) had put it at the note session that afternoon, the “heart of the show”. It was a supremely satisfying feeling.

            Each preview audience sprang to its feet at the end of each performance and had primed us for Opening. We didn’t disappoint them … nor they us! The compliments flew fast and furious at the reception afterward. We were besieged by Board members and City Officials and donors to the theatre. Even my house hosts and their friends, for whom I’d arranged tickets, told me that they were “entertained, involved and touched” by the production. Michael had been very aware of the turmoil I had gone through to get to where he wanted ‘Schultz’ to be, and on opening night gifted me with a photo of Nikki and I in one of our scenes. He had inscribed the picture with a note that read “Thank you for taking him into the world of difficult choices. The payoff is enormous. It is a beautiful performance.” That meant everything to me as we prepared for the run, buoyed and confident. But that euphoria lasted for only a few hours. The review in the London paper the following morning was an absolute pan! Nothing about our production was left unscathed. He concluded his reporting (he wasn’t an arts writer) by suggesting that people stay home and rent the video instead! The uproar in the days that followed was amazing! Letters to the Editor made it clear that the newspaper should be chastised for allowing such drivel to be published and that the article did a great disservice to the encouragement and support of Live Performance in the Community. I had thought of writing as well, but decided against it. We knew we were good, and I let it go at that! We settled into the run.

            If only because a number of audience members had mentioned it to me, I became very aware of what I was doing when not in the center of the action. There are a few stretches when ‘Schultz’ is in the distant background but still listening to what is being said by other characters in the central focus. This was especially the case during the huge Engagement Party thrown for ‘Schultz’ and ‘Schneider’. The fun and festivities spiral downward to a very dark place when a group of young fascists arrive and make their feelings about a Jew marrying a non-Jew painfully apparent. Try though he might through his cajoling and joking as a means of distraction, ‘Schultz’ is powerless to stop the ensuing chaos and slowly backs away, mortified and frightened. It was those “apart” moments that folks in the audience told me they had been glued to. I was sorry I found that out because I subsequently became much too self-conscious about what I was doing and began editing myself in order not to pull focus. That self-editing probably wasn’t a good choice, and it took me a while to let my minimalizing go and play ‘Schultz’s’ real reactions. But despite “critics” and self-doubt we continued on, still feeling very proud of the work and I looked forward to the Winnipeg audiences seeing our production.

            As usual, I was yanked back into my other world as soon as we opened. “Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake” (in case there was any confusion as to whose production this was) had just opened in New York and had been “wowing” audiences, particularly the high-end symphonic players in the Orchestra, (or “The Band” as Sam insisted on calling it). This great response had set off a chain reaction up the ladder to Producer Cameron MacIntosh, who had a number of other shows lined up for New York sits (“Oklahoma”, “Oliver”, “Putting It Together”). Knowing of this very positive internal buzz, Sam was pumped and in there like a dirty shirt making pitches for more work with the really Big Boys. For me, it would be another case of those perpetual payrolls and budgets demanding more and more time; but for the moment, “Swan Lake” was to provide me with a major challenge in the next while, one that brought me very close to saying “I give up” and walking away from it all!

            Once back home I happily settled into familiar surroundings with all my “things” at hand. We took a week to re-mount “Cabaret” on the MTC stage and quickly adjusted to a very different sound and the illusion of a LOT more space in which to perform. While the set was, naturally, the same size as in London, the vastness of the MTC house gave us the sense that some of the intimacy had been lost, but we overcame that and opened to rapturous response by audience and critics alike. The curtain call had been re-staged to give us a bit more time to get on (it was a greater distance from off-stage to center-stage) and take our turn in the spotlight. On Opening Night when Nikki and I walked out the house went nuts (sorry, no other way to put it) and I could hear some kind of chant start up in the far reaches of the orchestra section. It sounded like they were yelling “Urf, Urf, Urf” over and over again, like the old Arsenio Hall Show audience. We took our bow and stepped back into line. I asked Nikki what they were chanting, and she said “Hurst!”. They were acknowledging a home boy (I was the only Winnipegger in the Cast) and I got quite emotional on the spot.

The run was 90% sold before we even arrived in town, and that was a bonus confirming how great a show we had put together. A few nights before we closed, Nikki and I were standing backstage just before heading on for our “Married” scene. It was my favourite fifteen minutes on stage, so close and heartfelt and doing it with such a fine actress made it incredibly real, touching and satisfying. Standing beside each other in the dark, she leaned over to me and whispered, “I’m going to miss this so much”. “You’re not going to start getting weepy now, are you?” I whispered back. She laughed and said, “Not yet”. I was going to miss her most of all. This feeling of connection permeated the Company, and it was like that right to the sad ending of this incredible show!  

Meanwhile, back in my other life I was becoming increasingly aware of what was, unbeknownst to me, a routine procedure with Broadway shows. For any production, the first few weeks after opening are free of changes on any level. This gives the performers time to settle in without distractions or alterations and creates a stress-free environment, time for everything to settle in. But after the honeymoon, the settling ends, and “business” takes over. Even to this day I can’t find a route to understanding why this particular phenomenon takes place, but it did (and does) and brought me to the brink – subbing! Subbing, simply put, is when one musician in the pit takes over for another, something like an understudy. The reasons for these substitutes vary, some reasonably, others not so much. “Swan Lake” had a thirty-four piece orchestra, a large group for any Broadway pit. We were using a reduction of the huge Tchaikovsky score and needed very proficient musicians. We had the best players and, as mentioned above, the producers were over the moon with the quality of our “band” … at the outset.

When the subbing began, it was only a couple of players here and there … a trickle, so to speak. I could deal with that. I was still creating the weekly payroll at home and sending it back with the Invoice to our pit contractor (Brian Greene) in order for cheques to be made out by the on-site Company Manager and given directly to the musicians. It took a bit of work, but I thanked heaven for the spreadsheet program when it came to the new calculation formulae. For example, the Concertmaster needed a number of performances off for another commitment, so a Violin Section player had to move up into his chair. The Concertmaster’s pay rate was higher (50%) than that of the Section Player, so an adjustment had to be made – giving the Section Player their usual rate plus the difference in the Concertmaster’s fee for the number of performances he was out. The Section Player would then receive the additional money on his payroll and the Concertmaster would have those fees deducted. Additionally, there was another musician who had to take over the Section Player’s chair – usually someone from “outside” which added a new name to the Roster. The strings were relatively easy as they were all paid at the same rate, but when it came to the woodwind subbing it got crazy! These folks were playing multiple instruments and each instrument had a “doubling” percentage associated with it. In this orchestra reduction some musicians were playing up to four different instruments! The complexity of the subbing calculations for these players was worthy of a forensic analyst!

And then the floodgates opened! Figuring out a couple of subs I was alright. For four or five I was getting tense. When it reached ten, I was sweating. When it reached 23, I lost it! That’s twenty-three subs in an orchestra of 34! There were performances when Musical Director David Frame hardly recognized anyone in the pit! It had come to a point of subs subbing for subs … people we’d never heard of (the person subbing out had to find their own sub) and getting payroll information – addresses, Social Security numbers, etc. – required a Private Investigator! It was mentally and emotionally debilitating, and despite the helpful spreadsheets, the complex calculations were getting extremely messy. Subs would come in on a moment’s notice and no one would be told about the new player in advance. New York musicians considered subbing something of a birthright and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it – not the Producers, not the Union and certainly not the Contractor. I was beside myself, fearful of making a mistake (and I did … a number of times) and losing control! I told Sam it was getting out of hand and, true to form, he stepped into the fray. He had talks with his friends at Musicians Local 802 and, explaining that this practice was adversely affecting the quality of the music about which the higher-ups had been so pleased, managed to institute a limit on the number of subs permitted for any particular performance.

Slowly and methodically, I managed to train Brian to do the calculations himself after some tense and protracted explanations, and he started to excel at the job. I was released from the torture. I would meet up with him when I was in New York just to solidify the learning a bit and make sure that he was getting comfortable with the mayhem that was happening daily. While not to the extreme of New York, it was somewhat the same in Chicago with “Ragtime” (subs were called “walkers” there) but the great Tim Burke had a bead on the situation, and, thankfully, I didn’t have to do much training in that case.

It was about now that Sam got it in his head that it might be the right time for me to become a Company Manager! A production’s Company Manager does everything … and I mean everything … to keep a show up and running smoothly! It’s a huge job and incredibly demanding. One of our shows – “Swing – the Big Band Musical” – was supposed to be heading out on the road for a months-long tour and my penchant for organization and dealing with crises in the moment had Sam thinking that taking over the show might be something I’d be interested in doing. My spur-of-the-moment reaction was “Yup, I’ll do that” but, after taking a breath, I began thinking about the stress and tension I could hear in the voices of CM’s whenever I spoke with them on the phone about an orchestra problem. Combined with being on the road with no performing possibilities, I started to hope and pray that the show wouldn’t tour. It didn’t. I breathed a sigh of relief and started confirming the season ahead.

I had said “Yes” to a Spring production of “Damn Yankees” in Portland, “Yes” to a Prairie Theatre Exchange production of George F. Walker’s “Love and Anger”, “Yes” to doing Narration for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s “Dracula”, “Yes” to another year (the tenth) of Dalnavert’s “A Christmas Carol” readings, and a BIG “Yes” to a newly-reorganized Rainbow Stage’s production of “Crazy For You” – my first in many years! Because of conflicts, I had to say “No” to MTC’s “Ethan Claymore’s Christmas” and, very sadly, a “No” to Keith Brion for a Concert with the Harrisburg (PA) POPS. This last one was a biggie. Brion had made a name for himself “playing” John Phillip Sousa for POPS Orchestras in the US (“The New Sousa Band”). He had heard me with Norman (Leyden) during one of my Symphony engagements and had called a number of times wanting to hire me to travel with him singing “songs of the period” during his Sousa concerts. It was a big, big bummer letting that one go!

Did another quick jaunt to New York. This was mostly business, but I managed to fit in a lot of shows. Having just finished “Cabaret” I was interested in seeing the production of it at Studio 54, now a Broadway Theatre. Roundabout Theatre Company had bought it and “Cabaret” was their first show in the newly refurbished theatre. It was a glorious space and I had managed to score a chair at an upper orchestra table and ordered a sandwich, soda and brownie for dinner before the show. It cost me $13.50US dollars which is about $27.00 Canadian dollars today! I only mention this because the food was as bad as the show! It had opened a few months earlier and Alan Cumming was still doing the ‘Emcee’ role. I think I was maybe a bit overly sentimental about my recent experience and I got more and more depressed as the performance went on. There was a glibness about the production, as if they were sending it up. Everyone was doing that big, brash, play-it-out-front delivery that I’d come to expect (and hate) in New York performers and the staging had no heart. Ron Rifkin in “my” role went for comedy and aggression and seemed a caricature of the little fruit stand owner. I left at intermission because I couldn’t stand it anymore. We had scheduled this production as one of the shows for the New York Tour Kayla and I were doing in the Spring, but I made a mental note to have it removed from the list when I got back home.

Spent a bit of time with Jeremy Kushnier who was starring as ‘Ren’ in “Footloose”, and we marveled at his journey from his young boy roles at Rainbow Stage to the lead in a Broadway blockbuster! When he found out that we were bringing a tour group to New York, he got very excited and said that he would arrange for a Q&A session with him after the performance. That was a bonus! Saw “Corpus Christi”, Terrence McNally’s controversial new play about a gay Jesus-like character (‘Joshua’) which the Catholic Church was picketing. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. We had to go through metal detectors at the door of the theatre, but it was all forgotten once inside and watching the rather emotionally uninvolving piece of theatre. I’m pretty sure none of the fundamentalists marching outside had seen it because I couldn’t understand what they were upset about. Another tempest in a teapot. “Footloose” and Jeremy were great! “Swan Lake” was astonishing. A new show by Jason Robert Brown called “Parade” with Brent (Carver) was remarkable. And a few Off-Broadway shows rounded out the week’s playbill.

I took some time to myself to do some preparation for our Escorted Tour. Since there were going to be some return travelers I didn’t want to do the same Walking Tour that we’d done before, so I headed uptown to map out a new tour of the Upper West Side. This was where all the mansions had been built in the late part of the 19^th century – the Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Astor homes – and some were still standing. This was where “The Dakota Apartments” had been built – which everyone knows from “Rosemary’s Baby”. I’d not spent a lot of time in this part of the city when I lived there and was amazed at how big these places were. I’d found a book that had floor plans for some of the apartments, suites comprising up to twenty-seven rooms complete with servant quarters. I got excited about exploring this history of luxury living in old New York and spent a few more days walking and planning the route.

Sam had arrived in town. We’d never been there at the same time, and I couldn’t quite get my head around sitting in a NY Deli opposite him with his stacks of paper discussing what had recently become, for us, a desperate situation with one of our major employers – Livent. While public details were slim, the Company Managers had kept us informed minute by minute. We had three major tours out with them (two “Showboats” and a “Ragtime”), another about to go to contract (“Peter Pan”) and we were responsible for a LOT of musicians.  Sam was edgy as we speculated on what it would mean for us should we lose half our income – we were pulling down about almost $5K US per week from those shows – and he started talking about getting rid of the Vancouver condo, moving back to Winnipeg and just doing our regional productions. He even talked about he and I taking salary cuts (!!) and tightening our belts. But at this point nothing was decided … until it was. Before I left town, Livent had filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy, closed both tours of “Showboat”, routed “Peter Pan” to Neverland and sent dozens of employees scurrying to look for other jobs! The fate of “Ragtime” was still up in the air!

Needless to say, this development sent Sam scurrying as well. He doubled his efforts with engagers and re-reconfirmed our connections with MacIntosh and Wasser for the down-the-road picture. We connected with PACE Theatricals and another company called “Theatre Networks” for other work, but nothing was secured. It was a good thing that he had established a very amicable relationship with those powers-that-be at the American Federation of Musicians because a “Showboat” musician was considering suing us for reneging on a contract. Sam got feisty again and pulled the head of the Union into the fray and managed to smooth things over. I headed back home and the safety of my desk and computer and a week of “A Christmas Carol” readings before heading into rehearsals of “Love And Anger”.

But there remained the ordeal of waiting for the settling of the dust on Livent. It would be a long time coming!

It was finally time to head to New York on the long-planned-for Theatre Tour. I could feel the mix of excitement and apprehension overtake me as I taxied out to the Winnipeg Airport to meet up with most of the 30 people who had decided to risk a week in the Big Apple with Kayla Gordon and myself escorting the group. There were some non-Winnipeg folks who would meet up with us at the hotel in New York. All the details were spelled out in the travel packets everyone had received, so there was little left to do but get on the plane and take off. That was the easy part. The rest was like herding cats!

            New York’s weather was completely accommodating when we arrived at LaGuardia, and we experienced only minimal confusion in finding our Tour Bus to take us into the City. The Metro Hotel (now The Kixby) on 35^th Street was slightly away from the craziness of Times Square, but very “boutique-y” and nicely decorated. We assembled that evening in the private dining room for orientation and our first meal together. My Mom and her friend Susan along with two good friends from Portland, Ronda Gates, and Sharon Knorr, had flown in from points East and West and now sat beside me as we laid out the itinerary for the days ahead. The coming and going of folks during dinner had me slightly concerned, but everyone seemed “up” for the time ahead. The rest of the evening was “off” for folks to do their own thing and “explore”, and I wondered how many people would actually turn up at the bus the next morning for the first event – the Circle Island Boat Tour.

            We “lost” no one overnight and everyone was on their best behavior on the boat. With so much to look at from the water and with a great guide pointing out landmarks as we floated by, folks got their bearings with some history thrown in. In the past, I’d taken visiting friends on this 3-hour cruise, and even though I’d not lived there for a while, I still found myself feeling proud of The City. The afternoon was classed as “free time” and allowed me to do some MSI work (which followed me wherever I went). Then it was off to “Chicago” (the musical) for the evening. It was about this time that things started to get a little bit dicey. An elderly lady named Ruth began complaining … about everything … literally everything! It was too hot, it was too cold, there was too much walking to get to places, she didn’t like her room, she didn’t know where to find a drug store, why were there so many people on the sidewalks, when was she supposed to be at the theatre, how was she supposed to get there, she couldn’t find a good restaurant for lunch … and on and on and on. She drove Kayla and me NUTS!! Of course, you want folks to have a good time, but after a couple of days trying to be accommodating and helpful, we both wanted her to fall into one of the rivers (she could take her choice) and never be heard from again. But, being nice Canadian Folk, we usually managed to mollify her … for the most part.

            Up to this point we had kept everyone on a strict timetable because our bus was taking us to the various events. The third day started with my Walking Tour of the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side had been one of my haunts when I lived in NYC back in the 70’s. The maze of little streets and the history in every block fascinated me, viscerally consumed me. I think perhaps I’d lived there in a past life; being in that environment always felt comfortable and familiar. And it was at this point that the herding cats thing came into play. My experience being a Tour Guide at Lincoln Center had been a very positive one. I loved doing it. But that was always in a very controlled space with folks who had bought tickets specifically for the Tour. With no distractions, they looked where I wanted them to look and had no trouble hearing what I was saying in the carpeted lobbies and theatres. Keeping 30 people together on the streets of New York was something quite different! The start of the tour was in front of Gramercy Park, just a few blocks from the Hotel and amazingly, everyone, even Ruth, managed to find their way there. It was a beautiful day and as we proceeded Kayla just naturally fell into keeping some order at the rear of the mob as I led them forward. But Ruth would manage to stray from time to time and hold everything up while we went to find her, the group collectively pointing in the direction she’d gone. I found that getting folks to stand close together to hear me talking was also difficult. Thirty people in a clump take up a lot of sidewalk room and while New Yorkers are sort of accommodating … well, we got some dirty looks every now and then. We also found that tourists not on our Tour would subtly join the group, sidling in to hear what I was saying! That was confusing. I realized that talking fast and loud kept my charges focused, and moving at a quick pace rather than sauntering got us efficiently along the crowded “Avenues”. The smaller cross-town “Streets” were easier at deal with. But we did lose a few people. Whether I was boring them or whether we had actually lost them in the process, I never did find out. It was, for me, essentially a performance … with no rehearsal. Grasping for descriptive adjectives and remembering dates was a challenge, but despite that my remaining charges told me they had enjoyed it. I was glad when it was over.

We had arranged another Tour the following day and I was excited about this one. It was at my old stomping grounds at Lincoln Center. Since our group was rather large we had to split into two tours, and each had the best Guides at LC – Maria and Peggy. Peggy had actually got me my job there and I joined the group with her. Her spiel hadn’t changed over the years, and she was just as funny and informative as ever, slightly irreverent, and blasé in a New York kind of way, all at the same time. It made me want to do those tours again! The rest of our time rushed by. As we went along I had been making detailed notes about what worked and what didn’t, what folks responded to or not, and presented a report to our organizers at Carlson once home. They’d already heard from our charges that we were “born escorts” and, on the spot, we were booked for another Tour the following year. Time to start planning again!

            Returning home was always a bit of culture shock. After the chaos and energy of New York, Winnipeg seemed just a bit dull, a little too quiet, but I settled in at my desk and was soon on the phone with Sam. I was jolted back into new shows about to go on the road, budgets and payrolls to prepare and the news that we were now going to become TWO companies! One would handle the orchestra contracting (Music Services) and the other (Lutvick Productions) would deal with only the Dean Regan shows (“Patsy”, “Red Rock Diner”, “Hotel Porter”, et al.) including a new one called “Swing!” which Dean was in the process of writing. I was now to head out to Vancouver to help him create the transition fibre for that show. And just to keep the pot fully aboil, I found myself auditioning for “Cabaret”, an up-coming co-pro between MTC and The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

            I’d not met Michael Shamata before. He was the AD at The Grand and a very eloquent, knowledgeable, and tall gentleman. There seemed to be a sense of excitement and breathlessness about him, constantly surprised by the moment and anxiously anticipating the next. I wanted to work with him. His reputation had preceded him as a caring and detailed director. Tim French, the choreographer, was also on hand, but Don Horsburgh, the show’s Musical Director and a friend through MSI, had other commitments. I was up for ‘Herr Shultz’ and, since I’d played him twice before, thought I had it down. The audition went well, but, as usual, one can never tell what “they” thought, and I was in wait-mode for a while. MSI had also been hired as the orchestra contractors so being on-site for payroll and stewarding would be an additional responsibility for me … should I get the part. Hiring this band had to be a careful choice for Sam. In the show, the “all-girl band” is on-stage, so choosing the right guys meant considering their “citizenship” in a new light. As well as being excellent players, they had to be easy-going, out-going, and “up” for just about anything by way of “performance”. Sam’s choices were spot on!

            Now, where one door opens, it was usually the case that a whole bunch of other doors open at the same time! In this case, one door was a PTE production called “Speak” by Greg Nelson, wherein I would play a Christian politician who spends most of the time in histrionics and speaking in tongues! That sounded really interesting! The other was Mark Harelik’s “The Immigrant” for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. But these choices were moot because a few days after the audition I got the call from London, and I was on for ‘Shultz’. This was to be a long contract starting with late August rehearsals and performances in early Fall in London then moving on to Winnipeg in November! I was delighted to be doing the role again. I didn’t know who else was in the cast, but I hoped that I would have a good ‘Fraulein Schneider’ to play opposite. I wasn’t disappointed! But there were a few things to deal with before all that happened.

As I mentioned a few posts back, the Toronto Symphony had signed me on to do six performances of Bramwell Tovey’s “For A Fistful Of Guilders” for their “Last Night of the Proms” Series. I’d never performed in Toronto, so for me this was a big deal. And, with the Symphony at Roy Thompson Hall (above) …  even bigger! While I don’t want to say the TSO is cheap, they refused to negotiate for a hotel room across from the Hall as part of my contract, so I ended up staying at Mom’s condo, a blessing in disguise because I got to spend a lot of time with her, family, and some new people in her life. Being in Toronto also allowed me to touch base with folks I’d not seen for quite a while. Nick “Mr. Cheesie” Rice had been a constant and considerate friend and it was great to visit with him in his natural environment. I was also a blessing to share some time with Richard Ouzounian. Our relationship had been sporadic over the years since he’d left Winnipeg; but his rapid rise to celebrity (and some notoriety) in Ontario working for CBC and TVO and as a theatre critic and commentator was newsworthy and kept me aware of his life journey. It was the first time we’d really ever been “ourselves” with each other, not as an actor and a director or employer-employee. We talked about our lives and the challenges and just regular-folk stuff. I fell in love all over again with his wry humour and irreverence and it was deeply satisfying to be back together, if only for a few hours.

The concerts went extremely well. The fact that I’d done “Fistful” a number of times before kept my nerves in check, despite the fact that the house was packed and it was, after all, the TSO! The audience (which had a lot of kids in it) loved the piece, and my job was done. Bramwell was in top form. His “stand up” (which had become the norm for his hosting of the POPS concerts back home) got the house revved up, one might say “incited”, for their participation. He was incredibly funny with his droll British delivery and each show turned into a party! By the time our run finished I’d seen a lot of folks, including dear Rainbow alum Brian Gow, who was now married with children (how time flies) and living in St. Catherine’s. We planned to spend some time when I was back in London in a few weeks!

I hit the ground running in Winnipeg. I’d managed to score a few days on couple of films, one being directed by the incredibly kind and generous Kiefer Sutherland called “A Woman Wanted” starring Holly Hunter. Then it was back to NYC on MSI business (talk about jet setting!). I was to make the connection with line producer Allan Williams at the Alan Wasser Office (a major Broadway Producer) about our involvement in a Broadway limited-run of Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake”, the highly controversial all-male version of the ballet. We got it! Sam was over the moon at the news, but for me, it was another case of “add it to the list and on to the next one” … which made me realize that I was getting kind of jaded about this job.

Then, after a small jaunt to Vancouver to help Dean with that connective tissue for “Swing” (which was all really a case of doing “stuff” that I could have just as easily done at home), I packed up the car and set off for London and the adventure of another “Cabaret”!

I love, love, love driving long distances! It had been a while since my last major trek but this time my Jeep was decked out with a lot of technology. Primitive though it was by today’s standards, I’d purchased a “Global Positioning System Receiver” (GPS) along with a new laptop and, hooked up with the destination co-ordinates entered into the program, at exactly 5:10 AM on a Friday, I hit the road. Watching the late August sun come up over the Prairies thrilled me. The windows were down with a warm breeze circulating in the cab and the robotic female “Map and Go” voice was telling me which turns to take to get me out onto the Trans Canada. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and the time went by rather quickly. I’d packed sandwiches and Diet Pepsi so there was little need to stop except for gas, and after a night in a highway motel (always a gamble) I was back on the road taking the shorter route crossing into Michigan for a few hours. It wasn’t long before the big green overhead signs were telling that London was just ahead.

The house I was staying in was magnificent. My hosts, Brian and Peter, were used to putting up performers from the Grand and their welcome was very chatty, warm, and friendly. My room for the weeks ahead was very large and beautifully appointed (Brian owned an interior design shop in London) and they’d even set up another room beside it as an office for all my computer stuff. I was up early the following morning to get my bearings in town, have the car cleaned, buy some groceries, find the ‘Y’, and got to know my hosts a bit better over dining that evening.

The “Cabaret” cast was all new to me (Nicola Lipman, Milo Shandel, Jane Johnson, Jeff Hyslop, Laurie Paton, Bruce Davies). Although I knew some of them by name, we’d not worked together before. There didn’t seem to be any of the surreptitious assessment that happens with a cast at the first read-thru. The atmosphere was very friendly and calm, probably because Michael (Shamata) was exceedingly gracious and gentle in his approach to us and the process. I quickly connected with our Musical Director Don Horsburgh. There was no official score reduction from the usual twenty-five-piece pit orchestra down to the six musicians we were using for this production, and Sam needed to know if he wanted anything to help in creating the new musical arrangements. He certainly had his work cut out for him, but turned out to be a miracle worker … and a great human being. Very little fazed Don, and he was always respectful and helpful if anyone was having a problem. That bode well for down-the-road.

Rehearsals were, of course, my main focus, but there were also some other projects of my own that were causing me stress. I had been hired to play ‘Applegate’ in a production of “Damn Yankees” in Oregon the following season and the Immigration process was getting very messy and complicated because some folks weren’t “taking care of business”. This would be a headache for weeks to come.

That I’d directed “Cabaret” and played ‘Schultz’ a couple of times had its pros and cons! I had the character well-placed in my head and heart – his look, his sound, the physicalization, his motivations and emotional qualities – and that package had served me well. I had given a passing thought to those Opera singers who arrive at rehearsal and tell the director “I do it this way, and move here on this line, etc.”. Sometimes that can work in a pinch … or if a Director has no new ideas and is relying on an artist to “do his/her thing” … which is usually what the audience is buying tickets to see and hear. But, of course, I wasn’t one of those performers! It turned out that Michael had other ideas. And therein lay the cons.

I consider myself to be pretty amenable as a performer. I take direction with little fuss (most of the time – except when a director is dead wrong) and can usually adjust easily. But ‘Schultz’ was deeply embedded in me. I was unabashedly in love with my characterization. I don’t know how it evolved but I do know that somewhere along the line my ‘Schultz’ had turned into a kind of S.K. Sakall. (If you don’t know who he is, Google him and you’ll recognize him immediately … IF you’re of a certain age.). Sakall (who was also known as “Cuddles”) always played the slightly confused, befuddled uncle or sidekick, funny in a self-deprecating way … and that last thing is probably where I hung my interpretation of ‘Schultz’. That “don’t rock the boat, don’t cause trouble, ignore what’s really going on and make yourself invisible” attitude had all worked to give me a foundation. Michael thought there was another approach. Through gentle, sensitive and, most of all, incredibly patient guidance, he led me to new discoveries. My ‘Schultz’ became a dignified man who didn’t know how to deal with what was going on around him. That was his conflict but also his action. This approach was fulfilling and satisfying dramatically, and I found an additional anchor in Nicola Lipman’s beautiful ‘Fraulein Schneider’. This grounded and compassionate lady accepted all my little idiosyncrasies and inner turmoil as I trudged my way toward this portrayal of ‘Schultz’.

The work was very difficult as we went along. I would frantically bounce about in my head trying to adjust and calm myself when I couldn’t find the newly created and very narrow track for a moment. It felt like “Our Country’s Good” all over again and that fraught journey to “finding” ‘Harry Brewer’. But as had been the case back then, the visceral intensity of using my craft was, in itself, the reward!

We moved on to John Ferguson’s astonishing and wonderfully theatrical set, an Escher-like maze of dozens of stairways and levels; when combined with the dreamlike atmosphere of his lighting design, our cocoon was complete. We were held and embraced in another world, at times confusing, at times comforting, at times dangerous, but always specific and focused. We headed to the opening, very excited and very ready.

Meanwhile, Music Services continued to gouge out a portion of my day. So many projects demanded a great deal of attention, mostly those budgets and payrolls. Our relationship with Wasser Office in New York and the “Bourne Swan Lake” solidified further and Sam was making some major inroads toward the down-the-road picture. I was just waiting for the phone call from him asking me “how fast can you pack up and move to New York?” That thought was frightening and exhilarating at the same time. The picture of living in New York again was very firmly in my head, but I kept pushing it into the deep background, thinking that I would cross that bridge if I ever came to it. In fact, I was actually on the bridge. Putting it out into the Universe as a question – “should I prepare myself for this change?” – the answer always came back a resounding “YES!”

As soon as the “Wave” cast was off “stage” and the applause had died down, the room erupted in a frenzy of activity! Family and friends rushed to the players with arms outstretched as people arose from their chairs and moved into the center of the room, excitedly chattering, and milling about. I stood on the side lines for a moment taking it all in. The euphoria washed over me as I saw Olaf, face flushed, smiling, dashing toward me from the other side of the room. He enveloped me in a bear hug, and I responded, feeling all the joy and happiness that had propelled us to this point in the creation of what had just happened. He kept saying “Thank you” over and over again. “It’s all you” I replied … and it was. I was a bit overwhelmed. He looked at me and it was enough. As he moved away, I could hear the noise in the room getting louder. People were shaking my hand and offering compliments. Then Rorie approached with great purpose and intent. Even in his most effusive moments, Rorie was ultra-low-keyed and laconic. Now, shifting his weight from one foot to the other was the equivalent of him jumping up and down! His eyes widened as he itemized the reactions of the attending playwrights who, uncharacteristically, had praised the work and the presentation!

            The night of the second presentation was no different from the first except that the crowd was larger. It seems word had spread in the intervening twenty-four hours. There was no second night slump as this was actually “closing” night. Steven (Schipper) was there, as was Rick McNair representing the Canada Council. I had moved Steven to a spot well away from the huge loudspeakers at the side of the room and could see his feet tapping out the rhythms during the performance, eagle-eyed, concentrating very hard, and listening intently. He was on his feet the moment the show ended, applauding for all he was worth. He even turned and applauded me! The activity following was much the same as the night before. Only this time, uncharacteristically, Rorie rushed at me, grabbed me by the arm, moved in close and whispered in my ear “Steven wants to DO this!”. I just about fell over! He (Steven) had been swept away by the experience and was over the moon about the material and what it had to say. I went over to Olaf who was still at the piano and told him what Rorie had said, and he had the same reaction. A few moments later, I saw Steven grab Olaf and pull him out of the Hall toward his office. My job was done.

            It turned out that Steven wanted to talk further that night, but Olaf said he was on too much of a high and couldn’t think straight, that the next day would probably be better. As it turned out, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre was also interesting in producing it as was Manitoba Theatre for Young People. But Steven wasn’t wasting any time. They met the following morning along with Laurie Lam, MTC’s development officer, and the die was cast. MTC wanted to open the following season with “The Wave”! Olaf had his work cut out for him. Strangely, as I was learning all this information, I felt no proprietary angst. It had crossed my mind that I might find it difficult to let it go, but I didn’t. In the course of the days that followed Olaf approached me about becoming part of a “team” to create another piece. There were no ideas at that point, but that would change before too long. To give you some idea of where this eventually all went, the photo above is from the Dutch production of “The Wave”!

            All too quickly, it was back into the world of Music Services after the whirlwind of the Workshop! We were contracting Karen Kain’s Farewell Tour with the National Ballet, “Martin Guerre” in Toronto, “Joseph” in Vancouver, the “Showboat” Tour hitting Calgary and Edmonton; I was into budgets for a “Peter Pan” in Vancouver, a “Victor/Victoria” in Toronto and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet all over the place! There was tension from time to time. With no warning, I found myself being ordered by Livent’s Production Department to prepare 14 Orchestra budgets for the two “Showboat” U.S. companies! I didn’t work for them! This led to some heated exchanges. Thank heavens for the even-keeled Sharon Harris in our Vancouver office who would ease the tension with some phone calls and information. I was being treated like a secretary by some Livent underlings and that was a bridge much too far. I let Sam know that this was not working for me and he was in touch with the bosses. Things calmed down a little … for the time being.

            Almost as soon as “The Wave” had ended, I was into rehearsals for the musical adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s “Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang” at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People. Robbie was at the helm this time, having played ‘Mr. Fish’ ten years earlier while I directed. Now I was playing ‘Mr. Fish’ (complete with a spandex-y muscle shirt which managed to keep my gut under control – partially pictured above) and the responsibility wasn’t all that onerous. I could have some fun playing opposite Jan Skene as ‘Mistress Fowl’. We were “the bad guys”! The rest of the adult cast was filled with major fun folk – Gene Pyrz, Harry Nelken, Wayne Nicklas … the “over-the-hillers” as one newspaper article put it. Our first rehearsal day began with the usual “Meet and Greet” assembly. The room was filled with Theatre and Production Staff and the Cast, part of which was made up of an inordinately large number of children. Their parents were also in attendance. I was close to last to introduce myself. I stood up, said my name and what I was playing then proclaimed that I hated kids. There was silence for a moment then everyone started laughing. But I’d put it out there and as far as I was concerned, I’d set boundaries for the time ahead.

Rehearsals went well. Because of my “dictum” the little ones avoided me at all costs, however, over time that changed. Beau Sweatman, who was playing ‘Jacob’, was especially hard to avoid as I had a number of scenes with him. He was an incredibly good little actor and a cute kid, and try though I might not to, I succumbed rather quickly to his innate charm. Beau and I ended each day with confirming hugs. The other kids took note and began to think that perhaps I wasn’t quite the grump I’d advertised. As they became less fearful, they learned which buttons they could push to get a rise out me, much to everyone’s delight … and maybe mine a little bit too!

Robbie had set the tone for the process. He was incredibly patient and sensitive to everyone’s needs. He treated all the kids like his own, calling them “honey” and being very fatherly. “Look at me, look at me” was a phrase he used whenever he wanted to get their focus, one that I’d heard him use with his own kids at home. This sense of Family was a great part of this experience. The not-so-great part was what I was being put through physically on this show, especially with the small kids – lifting them, throwing them about and acting like a carousel as they hung on my outstretched arms! It was having a very negative effect on my back and shoulders and legs and I went off to my chiropractor for some relief. After a few attempts at some adjustments, she had to call her husband in to help her do a push/pull maneuver on my collar bone! “What have you been doing to yourself?!!” she yelled at me! Thankfully, we ended up changing some of the choreography in the show. I didn’t used to have that problem, but quickly concluded that my Gene Kelly days were probably over. We were doing ten shows a week and they were taking a toll and I vowed that shows with kids were a thing of my past. Yeah, well, that didn’t work out.

            After nine sold out performances of the “Christmas Carol” readings at Dalnavert, it was into “Brel” at PTE. Allan MacInnes was directing. The cast was great – Jennifer Lyon (who had been making a name for herself back East in “Tommy”), Dimitri Chepovetsky (from “Picasso”) and Quebec chanteuse Sylvie Peron – and we all got along pretty well. This was the fifth production I’d done of the show and I was very comfortable with the solos I had to do, I found that the group numbers were sounding old. The original vocal arrangements were getting creaky and antique-y, so I was very happy when our guitarist, Greg Lowe, came up with some new arrangements giving the ensemble numbers a close harmony “Manhattan Transfer” sound – hard to sing but extremely satisfying when we got it right.

There was no escaping or hiding in this show, vocally or visually. While I’d played in PTE’s quasi-thrust performance space many times, it had now been re-configured into an in-the-round stage for “Brel” and took some getting used to. One always had to be aware to play on the diagonal – there was no “front” of the stage – and that added another complexity to the staging. Rehearsals were exciting and although the tech was extremely complicated, we all maintained if only because we were very happy. Allan had been generous and supportive during the process. We opened to blazing reports and notices. The look of the show was dazzling apparently – we couldn’t see it, but we could sense it. The lighting defined the space, cocooning us on the individual numbers and giving the “big production feel” on the group numbers. As had always been the case when I’d performed the show I could hear the voices of my old cohorts from the first Portland productions so many years earlier. Richard Storm’s beautiful tenor was still in my head whenever “Fanette” was sung and Chrisse Roccaro’s achingly glorious mezzo on “Marieke” will forever be the standard when it comes to that song! “Brel” maintained its position as the “hot” ticket in town for the entire run.

One night mid-run, I was in the throes of singing “Amsterdam”, that gut wrencher that had almost taken me out during the audition but which I’d molded at bit during rehearsals into a comfortable delivery. I was at the very end, belting out the final high G’s. I looked out into the middle distance before me. The steep stadium-style seating in PTE’s theatre puts the audience very close, and in certain positions the faces of the people sitting four rows up are level with yours. For a moment I focused on who was in front of me and there, sitting beside each other and staring right into my eyes, were Evelyn Hart and Brent Carver!! The recognition jolted me, and I resisted the instinct to recoil. I was only glad I’d not seen them before now. I instantly found myself mentally tracking the previous three minutes … had I hit all the right notes, had I “inhabited” the character, had I created the right atmosphere? There was applause, the lighting changed, and we went right into another number. But their faces were still in my head and I did my best to ignore that section of the audience for the rest of the show! Brent Carver was a Canadian Theatre God to me! Our paths had crossed briefly at UBC in Vancouver in the 70’s when he was a very young “scene changer” (along with Goldie Semple!) for an Ouzounian adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing” in which I was playing ‘Don John’. I’d watched his amazing career trajectory over the years and had recently been stunned by his performance in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” in New York. So to see these two Canadian Treasures standing in the Green Room afterward made my heart race. I hugged Ev because I knew her pretty well and as I let her go Brent stepped in where she had been, and I found his arms around me. What could I say? His eyes were filled with something ethereal but at the same time something immediate and so present. There were compliments, a bit of stammering on my part and laughter, and then they were gone. It was the highlight of that run for me. We closed “Brel” with the same enthusiasm and joy as we had opened.

            By now, the second (but actually the first) edition of Kayla and Richard’s New York City Tour for that spring (’98) was sold out! Our previous offering a year earlier hadn’t elicited sufficient response to make it financially viable for Carlson Travel, but this time … well, it seemed we would be shepherding 30 people, including my Mother (!) and some friends from Portland, hither and yon around the Big Apple for a week in May! I was looking forward to it already, but there were a few projects to deal with before taking off.

            Earlier in the year, Winnipeg had been awarded the 1999 PanAm Games and the organizers were now in the throes of acquiring volunteers for hundreds of positions during the two-week event. I had filled out an application and sent it in with the thought of being a part of the excitement and energy and of doing my part as City Ambassador. I didn’t think I fit in to the run-of-the-mill category of jobs like “grounds maintenance”, “venue runner” or “ticket taker”, but I would supposedly find out what I might be right for at an “assessment”.  At the first mass meeting, a group of way too ultra-high-energy young ladies dressed in the peachy-orange polyester jumpsuits (which were to be our volunteer uniforms) told the throng how “great” this experience was going to be and “how much fun” we were going to have! I half-expected them to make us stand and learn a dance routine! We watched a glitzy video about what would be expected of us and were then individually directed to cubicles to meet our “assessor” who, in my case, was one of the bippy young girls who’d been yelling at us for the past forty minutes. She proceeded to ask me the same questions I had answered on my application – which she was looking at on the desk in front of her! 

She asked me what I did for a living (I could see my handwritten answer on the paper in front of her) and I told her that I was an actor. “Have I seen you in anything?”, she asked. I said I had been in “Hamlet”, but I didn’t get the impression that she was a theatre type. Actually, I don’t think she was really listening to anything I said but just checking that the answers I spoke were the same as those I’d written down. By now I was taking all this with a grain of salt and what had been scheduled as an hour-long interview was over in fifteen minutes, ending with a smile, a tilt of the head and a “we’ll be in touch”. In talking with my friend George Einerson a few days later about the Juvenile Diabetes Gala for that Fall, I happened to mention that I’d “auditioned” for the PanAm Games. I told him what had happened and since he was connected to the Media Center for the Games, he told me that he would look into getting me “on board” through the Center doing what I told him I really wanted to do – house announcing for the baseball games at the new Stadium. He asked me if I would be interested in doing the same thing for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. “You bet”, I said. And then I waited.

In the meantime, an interesting project began. It was called “The History Project” and had been initiated by Steven (Schipper) at MTC. Those of us who had been invited to be a part of its creation – myself, Robbie, Ross McMillan, Julia Arkos, Sharon Bajer, and Ian Ross – had entered into the experience without any firm understanding of what was to happen; even after the first day of this “workshop” were still in the dark. Steven kept calling it an “entertainment” but what that meant at this point was still up for grabs. Over the first week, we listened to a number of speakers giving talks on various aspects of Manitoba’s historical record. Out of that we identified a number of areas about which we might write – Hudson Bay Company, Louis Riel, Native Canadians, geographical changes, etc. – and were to approach these topics from a “non-academic” point of view.

            Coming up with my first “something interesting to say” was no easy task. I wanted it to be out-of-the-norm so I got on my keyboards and computer and created a “Land-Before-Time Soundscape”, a five-minute “aural impression” of the old, unwritten history of Manitoba. It sounded great on my big studio speakers but left something to be desired when I played back on the tiny recorder speaker. But it went down alright with the group, Steven commenting that he felt like he was at the Planetarium. But there was still no concrete direction for the pieces we were creating. At one point I thought Louis Riel might be an interesting take-off point for a monologue about the two years he spent in an insane asylum. But Steven needed time to think … and so did we. “Go away and write” he would say. Without any deadline, but being paid each week, it seemed there was no pressure. The hope was that inspiration might strike at any moment. And for me, it did.

            One afternoon, after parking the car a few blocks from my newest haunt, the Library, I happened to pass a Native man sitting on a raised planting bed in front of an office building. As I went by, he held out his hand asking for spare change. Like every other time and like everyone else, I ignored him and kept walking. But as I crossed the street toward the Library it struck me that he might have a story to tell and I decided that if he were still there on my way back to the car, I would sit down and talk with him. He was, and I did.

            Despite it being a sweltering day he was wearing a fur-lined coat and a toque. I told him my name and what I was doing and said that I would give him five dollars if he would spend 15 minutes talking with me. His eyes kept rolling back in his head and I could see that he was high on something, but he managed to slur out “okay” and we were off. I gave him a cigarette and he told me his story. His name was Glen, and he was from Northern Manitoba. He’d come down to Winnipeg a long while back to look for work but hadn’t found much and was now spending most of his time on the street. Prompted by my questions (and cigarettes) he spoke very slowly, getting more lucid as time went on. He spoke simply and plainly and while nothing out-of-the ordinary had happened to him, he still managed to captivate me. While I had no connection to him, here he was, open, trusting and almost anxious to let me know him. As he talked, I took notes (he told me he loved my handwriting) and after 30 minutes we stopped. I discovered that I only had a tenner in my wallet and gave it to him. I watched him wander off down a lane almost certainly on his way to buy some booze even though I’d made him promise he’d get some food with the money.

Back in my car, I found myself energized, almost hyper, exhilarated in a strange way. My encounter with Glen, though unproductive on one level, had created an unidentifiable joy inside me. My house felt different when I walked in. Perhaps I was bringing an altered “me” into the space … but altered by what? I chose to think that, superficially, my ego was stroking itself for creating and addressing a challenge; but, fundamentally, inside, there had come a profound awareness that simply put, when you actually look, actually see, there is nothing that separates us from each other!  It was clear that I had brought a part of Glen home with me that afternoon. This had been an accidental Life Lesson … and that’s what was different about my house.

I had no trouble writing the ‘Glen Monologue’ but was slightly nervous presenting it the following day at the table. I was affecting the accent of a stoned Native and wondered what Ian Ross, who is Native, was thinking of my portrayal. How politically incorrect was I being taking Glen’s perspective and speaking with his voice. At the end, there was silence at the table. I looked over at Ian. He was nodding his head. “That was real and familiar to me” he said.

While it wasn’t used in the final presentation of the 37 pieces that Steven had us recite/present on the final day, the whole experience had been incredibly satisfying. I learned how difficult it was to write unless you honestly had something to say. I learned how hard it was to maintain a quality level without the input of others. My Pre-History scene about a bickering man and a woman crossing the Bering Land Bridge 12,000 years ago seemingly drawing comparisons to a contemporary car trip along with another monologue by an Irish Immigrant woman talking to an unseen friend about how Winnipeg was getting bigger and bigger since the turn of the century made it into the roster of pieces for further consideration. It would take two years before variations on our work became “The Complete History of Manitoba From The Beginning of Time to The Present In Forty-Five Minutes”. Over the subsequent years, would be seen and enjoyed by thousands of Manitobans!

Somewhere along the way, Kayla Gordon (Winnipeg Jewish Theatre) and I decided it might be an idea to approach one of the travel companies in Winnipeg to see if they might be interested in organizing a Theatre Tour to New York hosted by, well, us! They were! The folks at Carlson Travel were hot for the idea. I dashed off to the NYC on some more MSI business and to get the lay of the land for suitable hotels and to plot out a walking tour as one of the group activities. I had also suggested that we approach Heath Lamberts (who was performing as ‘King Sextimus’ in “Once Upon A Mattress” in New York) to talk to the group about working on Broadway. I would try to meet up with him and see what he had to say about the idea.

It had only been a few months since I’d last been there, but a new gaggle of shows had opened and, once again, tickets were at my disposal for a number of them. Bill Irwin was doing “Scapino”, Kiri Te Kanawa was singing in “Marriage of Figaro” at the Met (folks had not forgotten me from all those years ago working for Lincoln Center Tours), Dixie Carter was playing Maria Callas in “Master Class” and, through more connections, I scored a third row seat to “Rent”! They were all spectacular for various reasons, but the most unusual experience was seeing “Rent”. It was a Sunday matinee and albeit loud and energic, it wasn’t the show that astonished me. It was the young people in the audience. The production had been running for almost a year and had developed a rabid cult following. Two hours before a performance, there was a lottery for twenty dollar tickets for the 34 seats in the first two rows of the Orchestra Section and for Standing Room. Groupies had taken to camping out through the night in sleeping bags in front of the theatre for a chance at one of the precious tickets. As I settled into my seat and the lights went down, the two rows in front of me erupted and turned into a double-deep wall of humanity! These kids yelled, they screamed, they sang, they jumped up and down and, for stodgy old me, it was incredibly off-putting. I was caught in the middle of this frenzy and didn’t know how to deal with it. The others way back in standing room doing exactly the same thing. I could barely see what was happening on stage and there were a number of moments when I was sorely tempted to get up and leave. But how many people could say that they’d experienced this phenomenon, so I stayed put, shoulders hunched, and suffered through the whole show. In overheard conversations at intermission, I learned that some kids had seen the show 20 or 25 times! Once was more than enough for me!

            After the show, I dashed the few blocks over to the Broadhurst Theatre to be behind the rope at the Stage Door when Heath came out after his “Mattress” performance. I yelled out his name as he passed by me. His mouth opened wide when he saw me and proceeded to drag me into the theatre and his dressing room where we had a great chat for a few minutes and made a date for lunch a couple of days later. We met at Sardi’s and spent two hours regaling each other with our exploits since last sharing a stage. He said that talking to the tour group sounded like a great plan and I promised to keep him informed.

            Aside from the small workshop in the interim, it had been two years since the genesis of “None Is To Many”. The initial workshops and presentation had been a deeply affecting experience for all of us and now it was being presented by Winnipeg Jewish Theatre at the MTC Warehouse Theatre, fully produced, for a three-week run. I’d worked with almost all of our cast before though not all had been in the original presentation. Nick Rice (“Diary of Anne Frank”) and Les Carlson (“Nicholas Nickleby”) had been added to our number. Teri Cherniak and Harry Nelkin were back. The only new person was Alon Nashman from Toronto who was playing ‘Saul Hayes’ of the Jewish Congress and with whom I (as ‘Frederick Blair’) had a major scene that lasted almost a quarter of the play. Jason (Sherman) was with us again, ready and raring to go with new material that surprised and confused us veterans. The original script had focused on the plight of the Landau Family as they navigated the emotional turmoil of immigrating to Canada. Now the focus had shifted massively to the inner Political dynamics of the “Immigrant Problem”. Our first day of rehearsal was spent deleting old script pages and scenes, replacing them with the new material. It wasn’t until the second day that we got around to doing a read-thru. The difference between the old and new scripts was like night and day. Over the days that followed, new characters would appear fully incorporated into the story only to disappear hours later, never to be seen again. While I had a sentimental attachment to the old script, it was obvious that Jason and Kim (McCaw, our director once again) had chosen the Politics as the emotional fibre of the story rather than splitting it with the Landau Family, as had been the case in the original. The result was riveting, tense and much more provocative.

            The rehearsals were wonderful. It was a great thing to be part of the generosity, energy and humour that filled the hall. For me, it was a case of feeling less like an actor than a collaborator if only because Kim and Jason were initially so open to input and observations. I noted in my Journal at the time that “At one point, Margaret (Brook, our Stage Manager) said to me that I seemed to be so happy. I told her that it was because ‘Blair’ was such a great role and while it was nice to be taken seriously as an actor, it was even nicer to take oneself seriously.” I had a sense of security in my work if only because I had been there at the beginning and had been allowed a hand in creating my character. It turned out to be one of the best experiences I’d ever had in the theatre.

            Once we were into the student previews everything seemed to fall into place. The young people reacted with varying degrees of quiet awe and disbelief. Working opposite Alon was utterly astonishing for me. We were so completely focused and connected to each other, never wavering and always present. He pulled me into his plight, I pulled him into mine, and it was thrilling craft. At one point in a talk-back following a performance, a young girl asked, “Why is Mr. Blair such a poo-poo head?” The question made us all laugh and indicated that even to high-schoolers, the point was coming across.

But we were not without some turmoil during those previews. The daily performing of the play for the kids revealed, for the cast, tiny cracks in continuity as the rewrites kept coming. Those adjustments from one day to the next were sometimes emotionally massive and, in the playing, often hard to justify. As had been the case in the past when working with new and evolving material, I found myself getting very protective of the character I was playing. Developing a road map of the emotional terrain I have to go through is the “behind-the-scenes” work nobody sees or knows about – nor should they. But the amount of internal juggling, psychic repositioning, and labyrinthine-logic maneuvering one has to navigate is exhausting. As one gets more and more comfortable with the geography of a role, sudden external changes are very difficult to deal with. The old admonition to me by Rick McNair many years ago that I “get a performance too fast” always comes back to haunt me. How pliable or amenable should one be the closer one gets to exposing a portrayal to the public? When Jason got dug in about his changes, he was immovable, and there were a few points when I got seriously bent out of shape and told him what wasn’t working for me. Perhaps a wrong move, but despite my chuffing at the changes, Kim and Jason were adamant that it was working “out front” and opening night seemed to bear that out.

During previews, the show had been shortened to an intermission-less hour and twenty minutes, and I would come off stage at the end thinking, ‘Okay, now let’s do Act Two’; but the audience response was incredibly good, and we were off to the races. I had written a card to Jason earlier on opening day apologizing for going off on him as I had, and I let him know how I cherished his genius and generosity. While I was of two minds about giving it to him, I did, and discovered at the party afterward that he had been quite moved by what I’d written. We kissed and made up and sailed into the run.

As the run went on, one thing became apparent very quickly. The Sunday subscription audiences for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre were made up almost entirely of Seniors. As had been the case with that single performance two years earlier at the Synagogue, these folks came out in serious numbers. They knew the story, some of them having experienced it themselves, and those matinee performances were very tense. As the story progressed, we could sense a growing animosity in the air, an aura that seemed to suggest that these folks were really pissed off with what we were doing. They had been wronged all those years ago, and now that long-held resentment was seeping out, permeating the theatre. It affected our performances and even though we knew the anger wasn’t being directed at us personally, we were the messengers, and our message wasn’t a good one. Those feelings on Sundays persisted through the run.

MSI kept getting bigger and bigger. We had added so many projects to our roster, the largest of which at that point was taking over the US Tour of Livent’s “Showboat”. That had been a major coup! John Monaco, a long-established, old-school New York Orchestra Contractor, had been up for the job but Sam had lobbied hard, and the producers had gone with us. Our reputation was spreading – maybe a bit too quickly. I began to see where all this might be headed, and it wouldn’t be pretty. It wasn’t … but that’s a down-the-road story.

After some fee dickering, I finally booked the Toronto Symphony Orchestra contract for six performances of Tovey’s “A Fistful of Guilders” a year down the road, and then reluctantly suffered through an audition for “South Pacific” at Rainbow Stage. That drought continued. But where one door closed a number of others opened. I accepted an offer to do the Manitoba Theatre for Young People’s production of “Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang”, this time as a performer (rather than Director) playing ‘Mr. Fish’ and had signed on with Rorie Runnels (MAP) for an extended workshop of a fledgling musical called “The Wave” written by a local musician I didn’t know, Olaf Pyttlik. The lay of the land was getting very positive.

There are times when things sneak up on you, taking you by surprise when you have no expectations, and which result in some affirmation that perhaps you’ve been doing the right thing all along. Allan McInnis had been AD at Prairie Theatre Exchange for a year and while we’d met and chatted a few times, there had been no opportunity to work with him. However, in late summer, he approached me asking if I would be interested in auditioning for a production of “Jacques Brel”. Presenting musicals was pretty well unheard of for PTE. They had always been issue-focused, Canadian topic oriented and the antithesis of commercial-based theatre. But now, a commercial musical (albeit a small one) was to be mounted on their stage! Smart move if you ask me. Of course, every other singer in town had been asked to audition, but I had some hopes if only because I was very familiar with the material and felt that I might have a bit of a leg up in that department. There were some conflicts that I would have to make go away should I get the job, but I would deal with that later.

Auditions are usually hell for any performer. There is always something subtly demeaning about them. Steeling yourself for this ordeal gives way to the Shaking Knees Syndrome once in the room, and thoughts of rejection hang in the air above you There’s an attempt on the part of the people-behind-the-table to give you the feeling that you’re not being judged, but you are being judged … and in the worst possible way. There is an assault on your soul and spirit when you stand before those folks, some even friends, now devoid of compassion, merely eyes and ears jotting down notes on paper. At the end they smile and say thank you very much and you leave. Your subsequent assessment is based on little signs and signals, possibly imagined, possibly not, and you feel no better now than you did when you’d entered the room.

With the “Brel” auditions, I was fortunate. I’d done the show many times before, both as a director and performer and knew the material inside out. I’d worked up “Jackie” and “Chanson des Vieux Amants”. Entering the room, Allan was most cordial. Greg Lowe, a local guitarist and a friend, was also there in some musical capacity. The only person I didn’t know was the Musical Director, Lisa St. Clair from Toronto. After some banalities, I launched into “Jackie”. Its an up tempo number and I thought I’d done alright. Allan asked that I do it again and suggested that I imagine myself to be alone at the end of a smokey bar singing it to myself. The result was that I put the energy in a different place and opened up a set of new ideas I could play in the moment. It felt great!

I did “Chanson”, a favorite, and it went great as well. Then Allan asked Lisa if she wanted to hear anything else. She said, “Let’s try a little of “Amsterdam”. Oh crap! This song is a gut-buster, intricately wrought and fraught to the nth degree. “Don’t worry”, she said, “we won’t go as far as the “G’s”, the last notes of the song which are repeated and repeated forever. I asked for the words because I needed something physically to hold on to. “Don’t worry about how you sound, just go for the words”, Allan said. Good advice actually, and the same words I would have used with students when I was coaching. I started. We kept going … and going … verse after verse. I got more and more into it and, like a doe caught in headlights, I could see the ‘G’s’ approaching. We weren’t stopping! The singer, once the Narrator, has now become the drunken sailor of whom he sings. He’s become more emboldened, agitated, crazed as he barrels to the end of the song, accusing the city of being the source of all his troubles. And now here came the ‘G’s, overwhelming me with no means of escape, gutturally impaling the room, full throttle at the very top of my range … “In the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterda-a-A-A-Am”.

I could see little stars dancing before my eyes and felt light-headed when I finished. Thank God I was sitting down because I would have fallen over otherwise. Everyone seemed pleased, nodding and smiling. “Great, great”, they all said. I got up a bit wobbly, thanked them for their time and asked when some decisions might be made. Allan said it would probably be about a month before everything was settled. That month wait time would cause me some problems as other things were already coming up for consideration, but there was nothing I could do about it. I left feeling that I’d done my best under the circumstances.

he next morning, Allan called and offered me the show! I was amazed after being told the decision would take so long and told him so. He said that everyone in the room thought they weren’t going to hear anyone better and that was it. He’d not cast anyone else, and I resisted the temptation to ask who was being considered. There had been a number of super performers waiting to sing as I left, but I would have to wait. A couple of weeks later we went into the two-week Workshop for “The Wave”.

I’d had a couple of meetings with Olaf at Rorie’s request earlier in the spring. Olaf was an incredibly affable, energetic young man and had invited me out to Concord College where he taught music to listen to the score of the show this show he’d written. The storyline is based on a true incident in which a high school history teacher named Ron Jones had created a “Class” experiment to demonstrate how Nazism grew in Germany in the ‘30s. Olaf’s recording studio at the school was truly impressive; high-tech in every way and geared out with racks and racks professional sound equipment, computer screens, the whole nine yards. He played me all the music he’d completed up to that point. There is no simple way to describe the feelings I had listening to this man’s music. The passion and creative care were obvious in the quality of the recording, but it was the music itself that blew me away. While I had quibbles with some of the lyric writing (Olaf didn’t seem to have any problem with the “pop rhymes” that made the purist in me cringe), I couldn’t deny the musical craftsmanship. Every one of the songs had a purpose and fit into the progression of the story which Olaf told me as we went along. I was emotionally overwhelmed by the end of our session and immediately got in touch with Rorie to say this project had to be workshopped. The sooner, the better!

Over the two weeks, the cast and musicians assembled from Olaf’s friends and music students worked their butts off. These were not theatre folk. There was no ego, no preconceptions, no angst, no tantrums, just pure devotion and commitment to the work and getting the piece ready for two presentations. I found myself falling in love with his collection of young people and we grew to be a Family over the Workshop period. I was “Dad”. Few were familiar with rehearsal process and protocols and I found myself being profoundly patient because of their refreshing innocence and enthusiasm. They would rejoice like little kids when something we did worked. It was a completely uplifting experience.

The talent was phenomenal! Where had these folks been hiding? The voices were so pure, so secure, so professional. I found it hard to believe that most of them weren’t established recording artists. Kevin Aichele’s voice blew me away! Nolan Balzer was stunning! Neil Keep, Shannon Novak, Sharalee Zacharias, all incredible! The kids in the ensemble sounded like they’d been doing this material for forever (actually, they had)! The musicians in the band were with us from the outset and ready to do whatever was necessary to make things work. I was feeling totally blessed to have stumbled into this totally unique experience. We had a mutual admiration society going and the respect for each other only fueled the closeness of the group.

As we got closer to the presentations, Rorie invited all the theatre Directors in town and the kids had invited friends and family as well. The “shows” were to be held in the large Rehearsal Hall at MTC mainly to avoid the craziness that had happened at the Synagogue for the “None Is Too Many” presentation. We had broken up the nights to comfortably accommodate the Directors but hadn’t counted on the kids inviting so many people. We’d set up chairs for about fifty people on the long wall of the hall. The first night found a long line of people stretching down the stairs and out onto the street before we opened the doors. It was all we could do to find seats for the folks who were “supposed” to be there – the theatre Directors. Eventually, the room was packed beyond belief with folks jammed into every nook and cranny, standing against the walls and sitting on tables, the floor. The space had unintentionally turned into theatre-in-the-round and the cast was cocooned by their friends. As the evening progressed, it was obvious that this was a pretty spectacular piece of theatre. Even though I’d constantly reminded everyone (including myself) that there was no pressure, that this was just a presentation and not a production, it was turning out to be something beyond expectation. The response was ecstatic and grew as the evening wore on. At the end it was pandemonium. I’d prepared a small “curtain” call, but the audience just kept yelling and clapping, and I finally had to say, “thank you” and lead the cast out of the playing area.

I didn’t know how they would top that evening’s work, but there was one more to go and then this project would be history.

Well, that’s not quite what happened!

If you want a taste of “The Wave” go to “YouTube”, type “Olaf Pyttlik The Wave” in the Search box and tracks from the CD will come up on screen.

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!

I never really understood the title of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play “Our Country’s Good”. Did it mean that our country is a “good” country” Did it mean for the “good” (benefit) of our country? Or did it mean the “good” people of our country? It was like looking at one of those ambiguous double-image pictures … you see it one way until you see it another. And perhaps that was the playwright’s intent. This sprawling episodic play, which takes place in an Australian penal colony in the 1780’s, is partially about perception and, for me, was an adventure in control and upheaval. As a diversion, the Officers and Convicts of the colony are putting on a play (“The Recruiting Officer” by Farquhar). It was Wertenbaker’s aim to show “the redemptive power of theatre”. Prior to starting the read-through of our play, dear Anne Hodges, our director, decided it would be a good idea to read the full Farquhar piece just to get an idea of what the characters as “actors” were dealing with. It might have been a hit in the 18^th century, but we could only manage to get through the first two scenes before threatening rehearsal hall mayhem, mainly because we wanted to start working on our play. Nothing redemptive going on there!

In “OCG” I had two roles. One was a character named ‘Jemmy Campbell’, an older Captain in the Royal Marines who’s best-by date was well past. He’s an incoherent drunk, lost in his own world, who makes “noises” and mumbles away in the background. Time to eat a little scenery, be some comic relief and, needless to say, I rose to the occasion at every opportunity … at least to begin with! My other character, ‘Midshipman Harry Brewer’, was a man on the edge of sanity who has been ordered to find a hangman to execute three convicts charged with stealing food. Initially I found myself taking refuge in ‘Jemmy’s’ antics if only out of self-preservation – ‘Harry’ was a bitch of a role to play! Because of the episodic nature of the play, the scenes were, for want of a better word, bitty, only short glimpses of action in various places. Character and emotional transitions were mind bending. At the end of one scene, I’d be staggering about drunk as ‘Jemmy’ and then, five seconds later, in a state of mental disintegration and seeing ghosts as ‘Harry’. Heading into the play we knew these switches were going to be difficult for all of us and ‘Harry’ frightened me. Badly!

Anne was gentle and generous to all of us, very sensitive as we slogged our way through this labyrinth. She was careful in her approach, trying to make sense of the emotional upheavals, like landmines scattered throughout our playing field, about to explode at any moment. Over the rehearsal period she and I had many conversations about where ‘Harry’s’ triggers were coming from, but we could come up with little for me to hold on to as an actor. It was this personal “nothing to hold on to” that seemed, amazingly, to give me something to hold on to. I relinquished the logic and found the “hook” for ‘Harry’ … but not without some terrifying moments.

            In the midst of all this I was about to turn 50 and the plans for a party, suggested back in the summer by Rory Runnels as a Fundraiser for the Manitoba Association of Playwrights, were taking shape. Maggie Nagle, Robbie (Paterson) and several others were organizing it and had even produced a flyer advertising the “event”. To me it seemed to be going far beyond what Rory had initially suggested. The flyer hailed the evening as “a comedy and musical salute to Richard Hurst” and I was now to sing some of my favorite songs in the last part of the festivities. They had even coerced my Mother into coming out from Toronto and speaking. Other than that, I had no idea what they were up to. Robbie assured me that it was all being done “out of love” but what did this all bode?

            By now “Romeo and Juliet” was winding down. We were into the few scheduled evening performances at the end of the run and finally playing to adults, a happy departure from the daytime experiences with the student audiences! On the last morning with the kids someone threw a stink bomb onto the stage during an early scene and the rest of that show was cancelled. That sort of summed up the run with kids – trying and seemingly not worth the effort. We had also started working sporadically on the third show of the season, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays”, another play for young people but much more accessible than “R&J”. It was the antithesis of “OCG” and so hard to get into. My mind was elsewhere.

            Wertenbaker provides the actors with almost nothing in the form of backstories. Based only on what was being said in the moment, we had to create histories to somehow anchor the characters to this point in their lives. There was no doubt that the months-long trip from England to Australia had affected them. With no frames of reference, they were strangers in a strange land and ‘Harry’ was having a very hard time adjusting. The guilt he felt over the executions he’d ordered was preying on him. Combined with the jealousy he felt about a perceived relationship between his “girlfriend” ‘Duckling’ and another officer, he was coming apart. There were sporadic outbursts and rants that came out of nowhere in earlier scenes. But in a scene called “Harry Brewer Sees The Dead”, he confronts the executed men during a crazed four-minute monologue.

            The mechanics of the scene were easy. Learn the lines, learn the blocking, and do the scene. But the complexity of arguing with “yourself” as three different characters was stupefying. It wasn’t so much in the delivery of the voices as it was in where the voices were coming from inside ‘Harry’. Making it real and not theatrical became all-consuming for me. We’d seen ‘Harry’s’ arc in his two previous scenes where he has somewhat managed to control himself, but these were only glimpses of where he was heading. The monologue scene is on a beach. He has been drinking heavily and the “appearance” of the “ghosts” takes him completely by surprise. Over the rehearsal period I would allow myself to move closer to an emotional precipice as I began suspending my own disbelief. The fact that I was safely among friends made it a bit easier to do, but it was scary. ‘Jemmy’ kept interrupting with his scenes and, in contrast to my initial response to him as a “safe harbour”, I now resented him and his nonsense as ‘Harry’ kept thrashing about in my head wanting to get out.

            Should I give over? Should I take my own personal step into ‘Harry’s’ hell? I would lie awake at night wondering what it was like to “go crazy’, seducing myself to relinquish all control; but the fear of not knowing where that would take me always pulled me back and I would fall asleep, exhausted. With each rehearsal I got more and more comfortable with the mechanics until it all became second nature – externally. I didn’t have to think about the technique anymore and all the lines were secure. That was when I let ‘Harry’ in. Late in the process at a run-through, he took over, staggering into the scene. Alone on stage “we” could take all the time we needed.  It began with a slight buzz just behind my eyes and a tightening in my shoulders. There was a vibration in the pit of my stomach. I sensed the first ghost before I saw it, to my left, a magnet pulling me toward him. I looked over and began talking in his voice as he looked back at me, hovering, telling me what it felt like to be hanged. Back and forth we went until the second ghost appeared to my right spewing his venom. Richard was now confused, but ‘Harry’ was defiant and defensive as he screamed at his accusers. Over and over again they attacked us and, pitifully, we would attempt to explain that executing them wasn’t our fault, that we were only following orders. It took forever to slowly pull ourselves out of this battle and ‘Harry’ began to call for help. “Duckling! Duckling!” he shouted. Her arrival on stage, a real person with eyes, pulled us back from the brink and, as the script demanded, we made love on the ground and the scene ended.

            I couldn’t assimilate what had happened when I got off stage. I was waking up from a dream. Our twinning was like having two brains, one speaking the words, the other controlling the movements. There was one more scene for ‘Jemmy’ (damn him to hell!) before the final appearance of ‘Harry’. “The Science of Hanging” scene gives ‘Harry’ very little to say as he stands by watching Liz, a female convict, getting measured for the rope to be used in her hanging. Gene Pyrz was playing the executioner and talked constantly. ‘Harry’ is standing apart, visibly shaking as the craziness in his head continues to play out. I knew I could let go at this point because Gene would call me back “into” the scene by yelling “Mr. Brewer, she won’t stand up! Mr. Brewer!” I rush down to the girl, yank her to her feet screaming “Get up, you bitch!” and am once again overwhelmed by the voices which have forced their way out into the open in another three-way argument. Back and forth it goes, getting louder and louder as ‘Harry’ tries to beat them back. Then, he freezes, suddenly realizing that he’s gone blind. “I can’t see! I can’t see! I ….”, he screams. There was a “PING” in my head, like a violin string breaking, and a high ringing sound. ‘Harry’s’ eyes widen, he sways, his legs give out and he drops to the ground … dead!

            It took all my strength to get up and off the stage in the black out. I could feel my heart beating very fast. I was done for the show and found a place to sit down until the curtain call. My mind was racing, assessing what had happened, and the only thing I could grab on to was how much I loved ‘Harry’. I calmed myself, wrapping my arms about my chest, bending over and taking deep breaths. How was I going to make that happen again!!

            “Mr. A’s” had just started rehearsal as the “Richard Hurst Night” approached. At one point, Robbie had asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I had jokingly said “Keanu Reeves”. I found out later that he had taken me seriously! He had made dozens of phone calls and had even spoken to Keanu’s personal manager to make it happen. But Keanu was in Australia with his band (“Dogstar”) doing a warm-up for Bon Jovi. So, it wasn’t for Robbie’s lack of trying that Keanu wouldn’t be with us. Robbie had told me to be ready to be embarrassed by the outpouring of affection that was going to be put forward!

            “Our Country’s Good” opened. This was really the first time the general public had seen The Acting Company. Everyone had managed to maintain although there was still some tension floating about. I don’t think that, at the outset, we realized how difficult a play this was, and our apprehension had been compounded by the fact that our three-week rehearsal period had been spread over seven weeks! Everyone had challenges in different ways, and it was mainly due to Anne’s calm and focus that we got it on stage. In one of the previews, I got lost in a scene with Arne and went up on a line. I simply got stuck and couldn’t extricate myself. ‘Harry’ hung over everything for me and wasn’t letting me breathe. That was the key – breathing, as Nancy Drake constantly reminded me – and, as it usually happens, I settled down and the show settled in. I actually missed the intensity of the rehearsals. My vow to “keep working at it” as we played evaporated in very short order. The luxury and fear of that experimentation was only a memory as the conditioning took over and allowed all of us to sail through what had once been incredibly difficult. And when I say “all of us” I mean ‘Harry’ too. He began to meld into my mechanics and even started using my technique and gradually, sadly almost, he receded into the distance. We never connected in the same way again, try though I might. I found myself on my own for the rest of the run.

            They had changed the title on the marquee outside the Warehouse Theatre. “Our Country’s Good” had been changed to “Our Richard’s Good by Mainly Manitoba”! (“Mainly Manitoba” was the name of the monthly column I had written for years for the Equity Newsletter.) I’m sorry I never got a picture of that. The lobby was filled with about a hundred people when Teresa, my Mom and I walked in. It was all very festive, but I was a tad apprehensive and just a little embarrassed by all the attention. There had been all kinds of instructions we were to follow, specifically with regard to where we were to sit in the theatre. I quickly discovered that a spotlight had been focused on my seat which made me even more uncomfortable, but that quickly disappeared as the “show” started.

            Robbie and Nancy (Drake) were the hosts for the evening, dressed identically in grey slacks and blue blazers, looking for all the world like TV newscast anchors. I had to stand and be introduced as the reason for this gathering. I think I knew almost everyone in the house, and I was humbled by the applause. Sharon Bajer started by singing a song about a sailor while handing me a cup of espresso. Then a very glamourous lady slowly came down the ramp onto the stage. She was dressed a la Marilyn Monroe, skintight dress, long blonde hair coming down the side of her face. As she got closer to the front of the stage, I could finally make out the person. It was Arne, who proceeded to sing a breathy and sexy “Happy Birthday” to me just as Marilyn had once sung it to President Kennedy! I just about had a convulsion. He actually looked pretty good and brought down the house! Chris Pearce was up next with some serious and extremely generous remarks about my fundraising efforts, Equity representation and my contributions to the Community. He asked me up onto the stage to receive a little token of esteem from my friends. I opened the wrapped present to discover a package of Depends! A small and not so subtle a reminder that I was moving on in years and shouldn’t get above myself! Even I laughed at that!

            Darling Tracy Dahl’s glorious voice filled with room with a Gilbert and Sullivan aria from “Pirates” hearkening back to our long-ago Manitoba Opera touring days. Donna Fletcher sang “I Sing Opera”, a song I’d written for her some years back which I’d never seen her perform. I found out a bit later that Tracy had approached her wondering if she (Tracy) could get a copy of the music. Donna was not pleased about the request because I had written it “for her”. I stayed out of it.

            The highlight of the evening for me was totally unexpected. Robbie was not a Barry Manilow fan by any means. I loved Barry Manilow. Robbie walked on stage to a familiar intro and began to sing “I Can’t Smile Without You” to me. My heart melted. He had been enduring Manilow’s voice on the tape deck in his car for weeks, getting all the inflections right and even making all the key modulations. I was done in by his historical sacrifice! Then Mom got up. It was supposed to have been a surprise, but Robbie had told me about it, so I was somewhat prepared … but not completely. It was surreal seeing my Mother standing on the stage where I was performing every night and delivering an incredibly touching speech about “my son” and his development as a human being and artist. She sounded so natural and intimate and loving. “And there were always flowers”, she said, talking about the fact that I sent a bouquet of gladioli to her to mark every special occasion and holiday. She talked about how she and my Dad would sneak up to my bedroom door when I was very young, open it just a crack and watch me “conducting” the symphony orchestra booming out from the record player speakers. Embarrassing, but true. For days after the event, people who’d been in attendance would come up to me and tell me how “cool” my Mother was. It was a deeply touching tribute, and I was so happy she’d been there.

            It was my turn to do a few songs with the ever reliable Celoris (Miller) at the piano (she’d played for all the singers). I sang for about twenty minutes. Got choked up a bit during Maltby and Shire’s “If I Sing” because it was a memory of my Dad and seriously affected Mom. I ended with Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle” which got Tracy crying because of more olden days memories. Altogether too many tears for such a night, but it was a grand and humbling event, and I was seriously affected by every minute of it!

Mom left the following day (I’d see her in a few weeks in Hawaii) and we were back to the grind. “Mr. A’s” was getting ready to go into tech. Tommy Anniko at CBC Radio had asked me to audition to host a new late-night classical music program called “That Time Of Night”. The Symphony was burgeoning with “Mr.  Bartok” upcoming and the Edmonton Symphony wanted me for some concerts, but I had to block all that out and switch gears as the strangeness of ‘Mr. Passerby’ took over my life in “Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays”.

‘Mr. Passerby’ was an opera singer whose voice has been stolen by the evil ‘Mr. Accousticus’ and is now using a “second-hand voice” to communicate and sing. He was a minor-ish character with not a great deal to do but I made the most of it. The greatest part in all this was making the cast crack up as I experimented with different voices for the character. I settled on a pinched, back-of-the–throat sound, which was very tiring to maintain, but Stephen (Schipper, our Director) liked it, so it was a go. It was hell to sing with, however. Even though the guy has lost his voice he keeps trying to sing “Early One Morning” (his theme song) at every opportunity, a running gag, very silly and, I guess, funny. The complications arise as the young star of the show (our ‘Juliet’, Danielle Wilson) and her dog (Arne!) have to find ‘Mr. Passerby’s’ voice (and many other sounds that have been stolen by ‘Mr. A’) somewhere in his huge mansion.

The search is controlled by the audience which, at various points in the play, tells the actors which path to take. Naturally, there is no way to predict what the crowd is going to say so all possibilities (86 of them!!!) had to be dealt with in the rehearsals. The “amazing” part of it all was that nobody had a melt-down during the very stressful teching of the show. There are a lot of moving parts in this play, especially in the mansion with trap doors and secret passages, and a huge hot air balloon that has to transport a character off stage! There were no tempers, nobody let down and we all had fun. It was probably due to the fact that “OCG” had closed and we were “free” of the drama. Once into the run (a combination of daytime and evening shows) the reminder that the season was coming to an end for most of us was a bit sad. We’d been going non-stop since August and the experience had brought us closer as a pseudo-family, upsets and all. The adult and kid audiences rose to every possible occasion to noisily chime in when the Narrators asked them which way the characters were to go. With shrieks and laughter, they maintained their involvement at every show.

By now, I was combining nights off in the Theatre with nights on at Dalnavert doing the 9^th year (I think) of “Christmas Carol’ readings and chomping at the bit to head out to Hawaii for the annual sojourn with Mom.