In the months following the closing of “Beau Jest” I found myself in the middle of The Great Jumble. There were warning signs to be sure, but the tsunami of plans and projects overwhelmed me, and my usually well-ordered existence descended into a swamp of confusion and miscalculations.

            At the center of it all was what had come to be my ground zero – Music Services. The company had, in a very short time, become big … VERY big. Our portfolio had grown to such an all-consuming degree that I’d arrived at the conclusion that this was now the center of my existence; it was the foundation of Me as a human being. I was about to turn fifty and this was not at all where I thought I would be at this point in my life. I was A Suit … without the suit!

            I had written Sam a long fax (we were well before the days of e-mail) detailing that, while I was deeply appreciative of the work and the pay (which had increased significantly), I was feeling the incredible weight of responsibility and it was affecting my well-being. Sam was away a great deal of the time; in fact, the fax was sent to his hotel in Hong Kong where he was continuing to organize the South East Asia “Phantom”. I told him that we needed more people working for us. I was at the point where I couldn’t handle it anymore by myself. Things were slipping through the cracks. I was eating, sleeping, dreaming and showering Music Services International. My energy was becoming scattered and frenetic.

            We spoke late one night and decided that we should start looking for someone who could get up to speed quickly, who was self-directed and who could take the pressure of minute-to-minute changes and unexpected crises. It would take six months to find that individual. In the meantime, the notion that “help was on the way” calmed me down a little bit. But we found ourselves in another crisis almost immediately, one that would have lasting implications for us and musicians across the country.

            Concurrent to this thrum was the other side of my life. I found myself floundering in any number of performing decisions. Brian Rintoul had approached me about doing a production “Cyrano” at Theatre Calgary. “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” at Prairie Theatre Exchange was still pending. I was discussing the concept for another Concert for Kids program with the Winnipeg Symphony, this one on Bela Bartok. The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Fundraiser was on the horizon and they had asked me to write and perform a Theme Song for the event. I’d auditioned for a Theatre London/Canadian Stage co-production of “A Little Night Music” and was waiting for word about that. The fifth year of producing “Winnipeg Cares” was burgeoning and The MTC Acting Company situation was still up in the air. It wasn’t easy keeping myself calm while balancing all these semi-confirmed and potential projects, but I was managing.

                Now, we have to keep in mind that Sam Lutfiyya was and always had been a Force of Nature. When he spoke, you knew that he’d thought through everything he was going to say, and the plan came out fully formed and ready to be implemented. He could charm the hips off a snake and, no matter who we had to get involved, in some form or other the idea would invariably come to fruition. There was rarely any backtracking or relinquishing of control. The aim was always that everyone involved “won”. Our reputation had, over the past eighteen months, grown incrementally and we had become the go-to contracting service for the major Producers in the country. Toward the end of “Les Miz” Sam coined a new title for our job. We would now be called “Music Coordinators”, a position just under the big honcho “Music Supervisor”. The name stuck. In fact, the title is in use to this day in the industry. However, for us, this status was not without its troubles.

            Most of our projects had started as one-offs, then evolved into smaller tours and eventually into major tours moving into uncharted territory that no one had dealt with before, especially in Canada. It should also be kept in mind that some of the Musician’s Locals had, over a great many years, become wee fiefdoms over which a small group of “old guard” held sway maintaining iron-fisted and unquestioned control over who could and could not work in their jurisdiction. This bothered Sam immensely. He didn’t think it was fair and that this position was violating Federal Labour Law. Their tacitly accepted “rules” smacked of an antiquated “closed shop” mentality. No one had challenged this before and Sam thought it was about time some barricades needed to be stormed. And that’s just what he did … dragging me along in the process!

            While there had been some small grumbles in the past, most of the smaller locals had acquiesced to our coming in as a show’s Contractors because it meant work for their musicians on a major touring production. However, for some of the bigger locals – Vancouver in particular – this was a bridge too far. Always at the center of Sam’s rationale was quality control and consistency and we had repeatedly been hired because of our track record for providing first- class players who were “good citizens” – committed and loyal musicians. We could be relied upon to deliver the goods! In fact, in preparation for Livent’s “Showboat” Tour Sam had rented an apartment in Vancouver prior to and for the duration of the six-month run of the show. Sam would be playing the percussion book. “Showboat” became our Waterloo!

The Vancouver Local decided that it wanted to amend their contract with Livent to include some very stringent regulations tied to the Orchestra Coordinator (us). They wanted to use a local contractor (“local” now meaning someone who had lived in their jurisdiction for a minimum of three years) to hire musicians, officiate the payroll and have control over the number of musicians the Producers could hire. It didn’t seem to matter what the score called for; they wanted a local quota. Fighting words! Dan Brambilla was the Chief Operating Officer and Executive VP for Livent. He was also a lawyer and a shark! He and Sam had grown friendly over the past year mainly because they liked each other’s forthrightness and commitment to the highest quality. In the contract discussions that ensued, Brambilla became so incensed at Vancouver’s high-handedness that he used the ultimate threat: that the “Showboat” Tour would be signed to the AFofM’s “Pamphlet B” contract! This was a contract for touring shows which stipulated that the Orchestra would be self-contained, which is to say that it would be a permanent group who travelled with the show. Since “Showboat” was scheduled to play in Los Angeles next and subsequent “other sites to be determined” it filled the definition of a “tour” being three or more sites.

The back and forth went on for weeks. Going on to “Pamphlet B” would mean much less work for me because the Producers would officiate the payroll themselves and deal with all the travel arrangements. But with some finessing Sam managed to bring down the temperature and tone of the “discussions” and we agreed upon a “local” contractor who would take care of the payroll. It would have seemed that “they” had “won” but the fact that Sam was Music Coordinator meant that he had total control over who would be hired to play in the pit … which was our aim all along. In hindsight it was a tempest in a tea pot but hinted at the potential problems we were to face down the road (particularly in the U.S.) and prepared us in terms of approach. But that’s another story.

The spectre of The MTC Acting Company seemed to hang over everything. It was taking forever to be set in stone and I was left hanging with other projects for which I’d been approached. One by one they began to fall by the wayside as the engagers couldn’t wait any longer for me to commit. PTE’s “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” was the first to go. Then “Cyrano” disappeared as did “A Little Night Music”. They all hurt but there was nothing I could do. I had auditioned for a TV series called “My Life As A Dog” and had been called back a number of times for a one-episode character called ‘Smedly’, a Gale Gordon-type hotel manager which I thought would be fun to play. At the last callback, I was asked if I could do an Irish accent (duh!) and was subsequently informed that I was now being considered for the role of ‘Tom Shaunnessy’, the schoolteacher, who was in all 22 episodes of the series. The next day, the Producer called and offered me the role!! I was over the moon. While I was aware that the shooting was tentatively scheduled from August to December, I kept reminding them of the still-to-be-confirmed Acting Company schedule. They insisted that they would be able to work around whatever conflicts would arise and that I should expect calls from Wardrobe for fittings in the next little while.

Finally, at long last, the Acting Company contracts were confirmed, and the next three and a half months were set. I was valiantly keeping a good thought about the film and how that was going to work out. But a wrench was quickly thrown into the mix. At our first meeting some parameters were set for the Company by Management. It all seemed just a wee bit collegiate to many of us. The vast majority of us were “locals” (in fact, only three actors from out of town) and the guidelines affected us in particular. The main stipulation was that none of us could take Theatre work outside the Company! That threw me, and a number of others, for a loop. There had been no mention of this previously and now some of us were faced with giving up projects to which we’d already committed ourselves. How was this going to work out with the TV series?

The fifth edition of “Winnipeg Cares – an AIDS Benefit” was in preparation at this point and I was juggling meetings with ‘Romeo and Juliet’ rehearsals which had just started. Each year we had tried to top the previous program. While the frantic urgency of the earlier concerts had cooled down, the Concert was now considered an anticipated and very high-end fundraising event in the city’s social calendar. We had gone for some high-profile folks (Greg Louganis and Elton John this time) but scheduling conflicts always seemed to thwart our efforts. Ballerina Evelyn Hart, Danny Kramer and Jennifer Lyon (who were starring in “Tommy” in Toronto) and violinist James Ehnes were on the ticket for this year’s show. The Symphony with Bramwell Tovey and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet were again committed as were stalwarts like Tracy Dahl and Al Simmons. It was now a matter of coordinating a whole lot of details while learning ‘Friar Lawrence’s’ lines for “R&J”.

So very reluctantly and with a heavy heart I finally had to make the decision about the TV Series. I realized there was no earthly way I would be able to do both. While the Producer’s insisted that they could accommodate me, I was getting an idea of what the Company schedule was going to be. R&J was still in the rehearsal stage and it was full bore until opening. Then, we’d be performing student matinees during the daytime and rehearsing the second show – “Our Country’s Good” – during the remaining permittable work hours into the evening. The TV Producer’s weren’t very happy about my choice, but I couldn’t see an alternative. I found myself thinking back on my decision to leave New York to come to Winnipeg all those years ago and what life might have been like had I stayed in NYC. Taking the TV series might have resulted in a major shift in focus for me, but my thoughts always came back to what I had already built in Winnipeg and why I shouldn’t jeopardize a very comfortable and secure existence. It was hard but I did it, accepted it and moved on.

There seemed to be a tentativeness about our first rehearsals of “Romeo and Juliet”. While we all knew each other very well and welcomed the three folks “from away” into the fold, the atmosphere was somewhat uneasy. Management had at the outset, stipulated a number of rules and regulations that shaded our behaviour within and outside the Company. That sense of control was just an impression I had but couldn’t shake it. During introductions at the first rehearsal, our young ‘Romeo’, James Gallanders, told us that he had a speech impediment which he had under control, but in times of stress it might make itself apparent. As I listened to him during the read-through, I noticed that when he came to a word starting with a “d” or “s” or “f” he would hesitate slightly and exert just a wee bit more physical energy to get the word started. I realized that he stuttered but was doing a remarkable job controlling it. His admission endeared him to us, and we automatically became protective of him.

Since almost all of my scenes as ‘Friar Lawrence’ were with ‘Romeo”, James and I became close, almost partners in crime, as we delved into Shakespeare’s “addict/enabler” relationship. Our Director, a member of our community, was very word oriented in her approach and just a little cerebral, focusing on the intellectual aspects of the text rather than the playing of it. As documented elsewhere in these postings, my tugging at the bit to get on our feet sooner rather than later once again had to be sublimated. I held on and made it through all the talky-talky stuff and finally got to “play”. Young James was a joy to work with. There was a lightness and effervescence to him that was most engaging. His ‘Romeo’ bounced about and threw himself on the floor with wonderful abandon and he looked you right in the eye when he spoke to you. Surprisingly, his stutter, when it came out ever so slightly with his great energetic physicalization, made the ‘Romeo’ vulnerable and charming. James loved talking about what we were doing on stage and I loved watching how considered and focused he was when working out a particular character challenge, especially considering how young he was.

The work went along very well, despite hiccups every now and then as a result of some blunt and overly academic observations from our Director. I just filed the comments away somewhere deep inside for possible further reference. We moved to the Warehouse Stage a week before opening and, as usual, that environmental change set everyone back, seemingly to the beginning of the rehearsal process. But we adjusted in short order and moved on. I had to focus on the AIDS Benefit and the upcoming night of the performance.

The one thing about the WINNIPEG CARES event that never ceased to astonish me was the unbridled devotion to the cause by the dozens upon dozens of people who provided their services free of charge! From the stagehands and staff of the Concert Hall to the Symphony Musicians, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, our evening Hosts (Jacqui Good and Bramwell Tovey this time), the Community Singers and Dancers, the high-end performers who came from out of town to be a part of the occasion as well as the people who helped from afar to get the show on the stage. The Mirvish Organization graciously allowed Jen Lyon and Danny Kramer to take the night off from performing in “Tommy” at the Royal Alex in Toronto. An arranger I’d never met named Dave Tanner at London Orchestrations in New York told me he would donate a new full symphonic arrangement of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” that Danny Kramer wanted to sing, an arrangement that would have ordinarily cost $1,500.00. Dave was the one who’d been in touch with Elton John about appearing with us but found out that he was performing in Atlanta on the night. My dear friend Norman Leyden from Portland days waived his royalties for the Irving Berlin song arrangements so I could sing them that night. The folks at Chelsea Music in Toronto got us the arrangement for Jen and I to sing “I Believe My Own Eyes” from “Tommy”. The contributions were heartwarming!

That night’s performance was another dream. It ran like glass! We started late because, as was usually the case, the box office was still selling tickets at curtain time! The Orchestra sounded stupendous with the new arrangements. The Leyden material was particularly significant for me as I had sung the Berlin songs so many times and it was somewhat nostalgic to perform them again. Surprisingly, the orchestra, usually less than complimentary about “pop” music styled for a symphony orchestra, expressed how impressed they were with arrangements … as indeed they should have been since Norman’s work was based in a symphonic sensibility and challenged the musicians in unexpected ways. Jordan Morris’s “Morning Dance Of The Jester” was spectacular. There were quiet reflective moments as well thanks to Harpist Richard Turner’s “Come Away Death” for harp, violin and viola with me reading Shakespeare’s words from off stage. It felt like it was starting to turn into “The Richard Hurst Show” when I came on once again to do the “Tommy” duet with Jen. But no one seemed to care.

The response following was effusive and complimentary. Everyone seemed to be on a high! We raised $82,000.00 that night! When added to the donations from years past, we had surpassed over a quarter million dollars for the AIDS research and awareness arms of Winnipeg’s Village Clinic. On a personal level, the greatest thing about this night was that my Mom had come into town for the event. It had been a long time since she’d heard me sing. She loved every minute of it and I was happy that we’d all risen to the occasion.

But then it was back to rehearsals. On one of our final tech days the stage wasn’t available, so the Company went to the upstairs rehearsal hall to do an “Italian” of the play. An “Italian” is a sit-down rehearsal where everyone speaks their lines as fast as they can with no “acting” or blocking. But it was decided we should go full-out; so, we were to talk as fast as we could keeping all the inflections and intentions and do the blocking as well. It was a recipe for disaster. We began. There were some titters at the start as we ran and skipped about the stage at breakneck speed, but that quickly disappeared as it became more and more difficult to maintain both the pace and the clarity. The tension started to rise by the minute. Our Director was pacing back and forth in front of us, snapping her fingers and repeating “faster” over and over again. James and I started into one of our major scenes.

I could see James’s back gradually stiffen and his shoulders started to hunch up as he got more and more tense. He was forgetting lines and began to stutter, minimally at first but more severely as we went along. I was starting to tense up myself and, in spite of the fact that I knew them well, had to call for “line” a few times. All the while, the Director continued the pacing back and forth and snapping her fingers. James was in bad shape. Finally, I just stopped and said, “If you snap your fingers at me one more time, I’m leaving this room”. Everything froze. “What?” she asked. I repeated what I’d said and started back into the scene without waiting for a response. We got to another scene with me and Juliet now. With all the stress building in the room now, I couldn’t think. The Director started on me again about acting it with speed. I said “You can have one or the other but you’re not getting both. I can’t do that”. We continued on until the scene finished and a break was called.

I rarely voiced displeasure like that. On my way outside for a smoke, I began second guessing myself. It was certainly breaking protocol and couldn’t be called appropriate behaviour but the tension and negative energy in the room was overwhelming everyone. I felt badly for having pulled a prima donna and, later in the day, apologized for my outburst. Nothing more was said about it, but the experience stayed with me for a long time. There is a fine line between being enthusiastically encouraged and aggressively pushed toward a goal and the line was crossed that day. It was an encounter that would define my approach to my craft in the years ahead.

We jumped into the shows without further incident and began playing to audiences of kids who were more like paintings than anything else. They weren’t really buying into the melodramatic style that had been overlaid on our playing but there was no turning back. We settled into a very long run and, at the same time, began rehearsals for our next production – “Our Country’s Good” – and my descent into madness.

We were on a train and it was night. Our coach was very small, antique, as one might see in a Railway Museum, painted a dark forest-green and very dimly lit. I was with Keanu and some other people from the “Hamlet” cast. Among them was Roger Honeywell, who was taking great pleasure in jumping up and down on the banquettes that lined the walls of the coach. Keanu had been stuffed into one of the overhead baggage racks and we were all aware of the fact that he didn’t have any legs below the knee. It was something everyone accepted. The only way he could get around was with a skateboard on which he steered himself using his hands.

            It was also a fact that I was Keanu’s caretaker, the one designated to get him from place to place. At some point, everyone had left the train for a rehearsal and I was left with Keanu. He had pulled himself into position on the skateboard, ready to come down from the baggage rack. A very steep ramp had been set up from the edge of the rack to the floor of the coach. But the angle was too great and he came careening down the ramp smashing into the wall opposite. He had torn a long strip from his shirt and his back was now oozing blood.

            “Oh God” I yelled! “Keanu! Are you alright?” He crawled along the floor and through a door at the end of the coach into another room and lay there moaning. There was a bathroom to the right and I ran in, grabbed a handful of paper towels and soaked them in warm water. I dashed back to where he lay with his back to me. I told him this was going to hurt and lifted his shirt to start daubing the huge bloodied scrape. He yelled and I took his face in my hands. The right side of his face was stone cold. “Keanu! Are you alright? Can you close your right eye?” In something of a haze, he said he was okay, but I could tell he wasn’t. He was a mess!

            We were back at the theatre now. I was standing outside his dressing room, knocking on the door, asking him again if he was alright. The coldness of the right side of his face concerned me a great deal. I didn’t know what to do. I thought to tell stage management, but at that moment the door opened a couple of inches. He was looking directly at my face, now full height. He said, rather distantly, “I’m fine, I’m fine” and closed the door. I knocked again, he opened it again, just the very few inches, repeated that he was alright and closed the door.

            That was where the dream ended.

            When I woke up, I was struck by the persistence of the dream’s vivid detail and wrote it down. There was no difficulty remembering what had happened and the particulars flowed from my pen. There is a mysterious meshing of subjective and objective experience in dreams. You are at once the performer and the audience with no delineation between the two. There is no sense of understanding as the dream is happening, just a totality of perception on all levels. It wasn’t until later in the day that I began to wonder how and why this small wave had washed up on my subconscious beach and hadn’t vanished into the shoreline’s sand as dreams usually do. It affected me very deeply.

            On the surface it was obvious that the old train coach was the “Hamlet” production itself, the antique “vehicle” transporting us all. Keanu’s physical state in the dream was as I perceived him during the rehearsal and performance process – seemingly without foundation and with little to stand on. The skateboard represented how he traversed the geography of the play, with minimal control and requiring assistance at times to avoid pitfalls and collisions. In the dream I was helping him when he needed a pathway toward some secure ground on which to achieve his goal.

            But it was the dressing room door that baffled me. Could it be that, in reality, its partial opening was indicative of the man himself? While he and I had established a relationship over the course of the production, there was a point beyond which one could not go. With the support of the cast he had achieved his full stature and had flourished, but there was no further pathway into seeing who the man was. I began to think that this might apply to Hamlet himself, how his father’s death had cut him off at the knees and that merely “skateboarding through life” had kept people at a distance, never allowing them to get close enough to provide anything substantial or meaningful to him. He loses everyone in the course of the play. It saddened me to my core.

            That afternoon, he was brilliant, clear and intentional, filled with a wonderful energy. That night, his performance was very “young”. He was trying to play over being tired from the matinee but the result was a very fragile man trying to keep his wits about him. It was surprisingly affecting. He came off after the first acting yelling “Acting, acting, acting! I’m seventeen years old! I was twenty-three this afternoon, now I’m seventeen!” But he settled down for the rest of the show after I reminded him to stay in the moment. Remembering the dream tempered my approach, as if it had been a lesson for me to stop trying to do more and be more than he needed. I accepted the warning.

            We were still rehearsing “The Fruit Machine” during the day. Director Anne (Hodges), sensitive and responsive to our needs, knew how far to provoke and how to “handle” us. I was finding myself getting very frustrated with the details ‘The Psychologist’ must deal with in the play – the hooking up of the patient to the “Machine” and the turning of dials and pressing of buttons. For the longest time, I had to mime all this activity because the actual prop was still being built. But working with Arne always brought me out of my head and back into the reality we were creating for each other. Once again it was a case of things getting so very real in some of our scenes that I found myself bursting out laughing after they were over. My other character in the play was a one-eighty from the controlled, humourless scientist. His appearance was on the sidelines in a back alley, drunk, hurling loud, expletive-filled homophobic diatribes in counterpoint to poor Gene’s character as he tries to deliver a serious disclosure speech to the audience. Once I was off-book, I could let loose, yelling the abusive language of my extended speech at the top of my lungs. Arne was on the floor the first time he watched the scene and I could only think of the contrast between my daytime and nighttime performance jobs and how much I loved working in The Theatre!

            “Hamlet” progressed into its final week. Keanu had found a quality level below which he never went. He said he had trouble “facilitating” the soliloquies and was obviously still working on them. He found himself crying during one delivery of “To Be” and it was breathtaking. But he couldn’t explain how or why he’d come to that emotional point. Being too deeply in the moment does have some downsides. The house was full every night and the responses at the final curtain were massive and long. The after-show autograph sessions continued unabated. One night, Brent, the security guard who stood watch at the stage door, got himself scratched by a couple of ladies he had stopped from coming into the vestibule at 1:45am. Keanu had been signing posters and programs for two hours. And it went on night after night.

            I was now taking my laptop to the Theatre to work on MSI payrolls, grabbing unoccupied moments to complete budgets for new projects that were being added to our roster almost daily. It was distressing how that part of my life was infringing on my focus during the shows. But I had no alternative. “Phantom” in Singapore was about to begin. Sam was away for a couple of months putting the orchestra for that major contract together and I would arrive home after the show to find dozens of phone messages on my machine. My worlds were, yet again, colliding.

            As he’d become more comfortable with his infrastructure, Keanu was now taking big risks going down tracks he’d not, to his way of thinking, investigated fully enough. Sometimes these digressions worked and would result in something fresh and exciting; when they didn’t work and he had backed himself into an acting corner, he would “kill the take”. That was fatal to a performance. He would simply lose interest in anything that came after the self-created road block and on those nights he was unapproachable. Everyone was aware when that had happened and he became the “Moody Dane”, all of us having to tiptoe about and talk quietly when he was backstage.

            Just before we closed, I asked him out to lunch and I reserved a table at Amici’s, an upscale Italian restaurant just around the corner from his hotel. I arrived first and made sure that our table was out of the way in the back of the dining room. I didn’t want folks staring or wandering over while we were eating. It was a marvelous couple of hours! The first hour we talked about the play and he prodded me into giving him my insights on his performance. There were only three shows left but he was still immersed in “process”. He asked about how to keep it spontaneous every night. He said he wanted to do it for the audience as well as for the rest of the cast.  I told him that each audience was seeing it for the first time so had no comparisons. He shouldn’t be worrying about that. As for the cast, it wasn’t his responsibility to come up with something new every night just to surprise them or keep them “interested”. The challenge was to keep himself interested. As was always the case when we spoke, he nodded and I could always see him filing the thoughts away.

            We talked a bit about my working on “The Fruit Machine” and, surprisingly … and touchingly … he asked if I wanted him to run lines with me on Sunday afternoon! We never got around to that, but I certainly appreciated his offer. No one bothered us in the course of the meal. It was private and comfortable, two friends sharing some food and talking about things that mattered in the moment. That night his performance was, well, luminescent! He was fully charged and filled with honest rumination in the soliloquies. I had suggested at lunch that a final challenge might be for him to play “attitudes”, layering in Hamlet’s unspoken feelings (subtext) about the people around him, perhaps adding another dimension to those relationships. The audience would certainly see it in his subtle, almost subliminal physicalization toward the character he was playing opposite. Maybe I was just projecting, but to my eye he did it and it was wonderful! I was watching backstage with Robert Benson and he leaned over to me whispering “The anti-penultimate performance … mystical!” He was referring to the theatrical tradition that Magic surrounds the third-to-last performance of a run and, judging from the performance we all gave in response to our ‘Hamlet’ that night, it held true. “I did everything you told me” Keanu said putting his hands on my shoulders as we stood in the dressing room hallway after the show. He was very pleased with himself … and so was I!

            At final the matinee he seemed to be saving himself a bit, as if storing up energy for the last time ‘round that evening. Food was brought in from DeLuca’s between shows and we sat around in the Green Room, rather quietly, tacitly appreciating each other. At the half, Bob Benson had pulled me aside. “Hurstie, a word in your ear. Do you think The Lad would be embarrassed if we applauded him in the final call?” His question surprised me. It was coming from a well-heeled and very experienced senior artist who had seen a great many Hamlets in his career. It was obvious that he too was affected enough by Keanu’s work to make the suggestion. I said I thought it would be a wonderful expression of our feelings for him and the work he had done. And that’s just what we did.

            That night, the play’s ending found most of us with tears running down our faces as he speaks his final and, that night, particularly resonant words – “the rest is silence”. A moment later, it was over. At the end of the curtain call, taking Bob’s lead, we all stepped back, turned to face Keanu, and, much to his surprise and obvious pleasure, we applauded him. He applauded back to us and we were refilled with all the care and support that had driven this cast and it’s ‘Hamlet’ over the past months. Afterward, there was a catered reception upstairs in the Board Room and Upper Bar to which a great many people went.

For me, it was a case of slowly and sadly closing up my station and taking down the photos and notes that had accumulated around my dressing room mirror. Earlier in the day I had asked Keanu if he would sign a poster for me. Just before I was leaving he handed it back to me. He had written “Dear Richard, I humbly thank you, Sir. My love, Keanu”, a reference to a line he says to me on stage. We hugged and he said he would call. I missed him almost instantly as I walked out the door. I would miss helping him. I would miss him psychically and I would miss watching him work each night.

            There were a lot of people hanging about the stage door waiting for him, but this was a night he wasn’t coming out anytime soon. I found out later that he had signed posters and cleaned up his dressing room till 2:30am and then headed up to the party. He didn’t leave the theatre until after 4:00am.

           It was into “Fruit Machine” tech the following day. I was still a bit melancholy; but I cajoled myself into this new mindset and the still much-too-contemporary sound of the play. I forced myself away from the notion that what I was doing now was inconsequential when compared to what I had been doing over the past months. I eventually weaned myself off Shakespeare and immersed myself in the newness of Drader. The play was only an hour long but the tech was a pig, there being more sound and lighting cues than in a full-length play! I found that I had no perspective on the piece as I was never off stage and couldn’t judge how things were going because I was always in the middle of them. But opening went very well and once into the run, which was short, I was again in the hefty midst of budgets, contracts and payrolls for MSI.

            “Phantom” had settled into rehearsals in South East Asia and dealing with the details was taking an extraordinary amount of time … not that I had much else to do. They were a week into rehearsal when I got a message from Sam informing me that I had made a major error in one of my payroll calculations for the first week. I HATE making mistakes. It consumes me, eats at me and affects everything else in my life … everything! I had miscalculated the musician’s per diems. I had assumed that the weekly rate was 300 Singapore dollars. In fact, I had confused the Singapore rate with the Hong Kong rate which was 300 Hong Kong dollars PER DAY! When I heard the message my entire body went numb. The skin on my head felt like it was peeling back from my scalp and my ears started ringing. It was a palpable physical reaction to, at least in that moment, devastating news. I ran to my desk and checked my payroll readout. Indeed, I had made the error and the only thing I could think about was all our musicians not having enough money to eat or pay hotel bills. That certainly wasn’t the case but it rattled though my brain for a half hour until I started thinking rationally and began the extended process of making the corrections. That involved creating a new doubly-corrected payroll as I had already sent off the payroll for the current week. It also involved middle of the night phone calls to the Really Useful Group in Australia to explain what had happened. My relationship with Elaine Minor, the General Manager at RUG, had been built on the clarity of my calculations and explanations of money conversions – from US (for the American Producers) to Canadian Dollars (for the Canadian Musician’s pay) to Australian dollars (for the Australian Producers) to Singapore dollars (for the billing of the local Presenters). Yeah, that’s how complicated it was! In the end it was dealt with, but the frazzle lasted for days inside me. If nothing else, the time differences between here and the other side of the world were the most frustrating thing because it took hours to respond to someone when I needed to take care of something right away! My impatience (still a work in progress but improving) with the circumstances and with myself led to a lot of sleepless nights!

            I fled Winnipeg following the closing of “Fruit Machine” for a much needed rest in New York … if anyone can call NYC restful. This would be my only chance to clear my head. It was a busman’s holiday actually. We were about to take over the orchestra contracting for the Canadian Tour of Hal Prince’s “Showboat” in Vancouver and “Kiss of the Spider Woman” in Toronto and I took this chance to put faces to the voices I already had been and now would be working with in the months ahead. Both of these productions were brand new and I was struck by how clean everything was, a definite contrast to the shoddy sets and costumes of long-running Broadway shows about which no one seemed too concerned anymore. With “Showboat” and “Kiss” (both being produced by Garth Drabinsky’s Livent Inc.) everything was pristine and the casts were still original and obviously enjoying themselves on stage. Whenever I watched theatre in New York, I would always think about what I had going back in Canada. The opportunities I’d been afforded over the past ten years had been incredible and I wondered, once again, what I would be doing had I not taken Richard Ouzounian’s offer to leave NYC and come back home and work at MTC. It was a whirlwind trip topped off by one of my last Equity Council Meetings in Toronto.

            Once home, I went into overdrive with the demands of Samwork and plotting out my oncoming season. Sam had been playing with the idea of having me travel as Orchestra Manager with the “Music of the Night” Company. This was a huge concert Tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Music featuring Michael Bolton. It would mean nine weeks on the road with no chance of performing and it was difficult to extricate myself from Sam’s intentions. But I managed, insisting that with all the other shows on our plate, my absence from home base would put us in potentially precarious positions with all the demands I knew Producers and Company Managers would be making of us. He finally saw my point and we moved on.

            Meanwhile, The Manitoba Theatre Centre was in the process of creating the much anticipated (at least for the actors in town) Resident Acting Company! Its premiere season would comprise three productions (“Romeo and Juliet”, “Our Country’s Good” and “Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays”) running from autumn into the New Year. Stephen (Schipper) had asked me to touch base with him before accepting any other offers. Prairie Theatre Exchange was trying to seduce me with a play by Frank McGuiness called “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me”. It was a dense, character-driven piece of theatre for three actors playing hostages in Lebanon. I wanted to do both, but that wouldn’t be possible. Which one to pick?

The dressing room area was somewhat quiet when I arrived. There was some scurrying about as the costume department distributed undergarments now cleaned from the day before, and the stage crew was re-focusing some lights and mopping down the stage for two o’clock student matinee; it all seemed like the normal pre-show routine. But there was an additional buzz in the air. Because there were to be some cast changes, a little heightened energy was floating about.

            When I got to my dressing room, Joan Lees-Miller, our exceedingly accommodating and patient lead dresser, was organizing a variety of costumes for me to try on. Gary, the actor I was replacing, was well over six feet tall (and I wasn’t) so none of what he wore in the show was going to fit me. They had pulled some pieces that might be suitable. Before I knew it, I was in my underwear trying on a variety of shirts, doublets, leggings and hats while being assessed by the designer and the other dressers who would be helping me make my now vastly increased fast changes. Of course I still had to do my regular roles so things got complicated with timing and calculating where I would be when these additional changes were to be made. It was all theory as we stood in my dressing room. Nothing would be confirmed until we tracked my new scenes on stage.

      There were moments when I asked myself what the hell I’d gotten into! My adrenalin was kicking in and remembering where I was supposed to be and when only added to my anxiety. Stage Management was now in my dressing room talking me through the blocking of ‘Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost’ and ‘The Gravedigger’. I would get to do it on stage shortly but with all these directions being thrown at me and costume folks tugging and switching things off and on, I was getting more and more nervous. The only costume piece that couldn’t be switched out was the gigantic cloak Gary wore when the ‘Ghost’ walked the parapets and in the two scenes with ‘Hamlet’. I looked like The Little King but there was nothing to replace it. They managed to pin up the material from the inside so I wouldn’t be tripping over the excess. It would have to make do.

            “Richard Hurst, to the stage please” came over the backstage speakers. Wayne Nicklaus was taking over ‘The Player King’ role and was finishing up his staging. He had only one new scene to deal with. I had four. The first was easy. I lay on a plinth, dead, as ‘Hamlet’ talked over my body. Keanu seemed to be taking it all in stride … after all, nothing had changed for him. Then it was into the “Ghost’ scenes. The fortunate thing was that Keanu and I had gone over all this material a goodly number of times in our sessions together; and while I would be carrying the script, I wouldn’t be glued to the page; I could look at his face from time to time because I was comfortable with the words. It was all still nerve-wracking but there was no time to think about it. The ‘The Gravedigger’ scene was next and we got that done in short order thanks to the fact that I was playing opposite my best bud, Robbie. It was calming to have him near at hand, supportive and encouraging. Who knew how it was going to turn out.

            Backstage, there was now a major buzz. As the cast had arrived for the matinee they were being told of Gary’s plight and that Wayne and I were going on in his roles. The great thing about this particular cast was the camaraderie that had built up over the past weeks with Keanu as the center of our focus. Now the fellowship spread around and I got a feeling of safety and support in this unusual moment. Folks dropped by the dressing room with predictable remarks (“Ah, Hurst, now you’re in for it!”) and best wishes, but there was no turning back. I just kept going over and over the lines trying to calm myself.

           The show was held for a few minutes for some final arrangements backstage, and then the announcement was made about some replacements for that afternoon’s performance. You could hear the kids gasp when the voice relayed the information over the house speakers followed by a collective sigh of relief when they learned that it wasn’t Keanu who was out for that show. And we began.

I could feel the adrenaline coursing through me as I lay dead on the plinth as ‘Hamlet’s Father’ while Keanu spoke over me. It was torture! No matter what I did I couldn’t relax my body. I was shaking like a leaf and, despite being “dead”, my closed eyes fluttered uncontrollably. I was just thankful that the audience was far enough away so that they couldn’t see the material of the cloak vibrating over my body.

            The ‘Ghost’ dialogue scenes with ‘Hamlet’ went off alright. EVERYONE had gathered in the wings to watch and quietly applauded as I came off and dashed to the next costume change for one of my regular roles. In the Second Act it was into the ‘Gravedigger’ scene with Robbie. These comic relief characters are digging a grave for ‘Ophelia’ and hold back nothing in their thoughts about burying someone who had committed suicide. That scene turned out to be a total romp! We ate the scenery and laughed, and shamelessly “coarsed” (acting very, very broadly) our way through it. ‘Hamlet’ arrives and talks about ‘Yorick’ and my ‘Gravedigger’ goes on some more about the job of burying people. Having been primed by the laughs Robbie and I had received, I doubled down in my “interpretation” with great gusto and irreverence and got even more laughs. I don’t think poor Keanu quite knew what to make of what was going on. I think I was upstaging him severely with all the improvised “bits” I was throwing in, but I was having fun … and so was the audience. The show came down and I finally breathed a sigh of relief while enjoying all the pats on the back, secretly hoping that Gary would be out for another day.

But Gary was back at rehearsal the following day. Some of the out-of-town folk seemed to be incredulous that I’d pulled it off. Luisa Martin (playing ‘Gertrude’) mentioned that Lewis had commented to her regarding my performance that “he’s a good actor!” A few days later, he left a note on my dressing room table congratulating me on my work and saying that he hoped he would be able to work with me in the future on “something more deserving of your talent”. Yeah, well, I had that same “talent” when I auditioned for you!! At least I’d left a momentary impression.

As we continued on with the student performances Keanu got more and more secure and started to relax a bit. But the “to be or not to be” speech still seemed to be challenging him. The blocking had put him in a very confined area, caught on a platform with no space to move. His delivery was erratic to say the least and would be a watching-brief for the entire run of the show. The final preview (with an adult audience this time) went off without a hitch – a standing ovation at the end – and I was on the cusp of returning to normal daytime life.

During these final rehearsals, I was still spending much of my time away from the theatre doing “Samwork” (as I had come to call it). Regional shows were burgeoning and Livent’s production of “Joseph/Dreamcoat” was about to embark on a lengthy U.S. Tour. We had also landed the Southeast Asia Tour of “Phantom” and I was about to start rehearsals for a play called “The Fruit Machine” for Theatre Projects. So in addition to all the payrolls and budgets I was trying to spend some time learning lines. It was an embarrassment of riches all round.

The opening was somewhat surreal. Our performance was uneven mainly because Keanu was, understandably, nervous – a condition betrayed by the astonishingly ripping pace at which he took all his soliloquies – and that affected the cast. The house was packed with mucky-mucks, VIPs and theatre critics from around the world … literally – The London Times, The Manchester Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Canadian papers galore, People Magazine, USA Today – so the pressure was not small. As the evening progressed, I could see him getting tired. From my position down stage left just behind the proscenium where I watched every show, I saw him rally and fade, buoyed only by the fight scene and with the end of the performance in sight.

The lobbies were packed afterward, more than I’ve ever seen at an MTC opening. TV cameras, radio and print reporters were in every nook and cranny, interviewing anyone they could commandeer and the noise was intense. As we arrived upstairs from the lower depths, we were besieged by friends and fans wanting to “offer” their opinions and assessments, some positive, some cranky, some disdainful. I tried to avoid the naysayers but was caught up in their babbling “reviews” of my shoes and my tights! But those folks were balanced by the adorers and fans that had obviously enjoyed themselves. Keanu wanted to be any place else in the world but managed to be gracious and accommodating to the folks who thronged to him asking for autographs and photos. It had been a long rehearsal process and getting back into normal daily life was something I looked forward to.

Our first Saturday matinee defined the indicators for the rest of the run. There were a lot of “if’s” that would colour the performances. If Keanu looked into my eyes and touched me a lot during “speak the speech” he was at ease and we were on solid ground. If he stuck to the blocking, we knew he was in control. But it became apparent early on that he was his own worst enemy. He would chastise himself mercilessly if he hadn’t met his own standards and it was this brooding self-recrimination that pervaded the atmosphere. There didn’t seem to be anyway to help him other than metaphysically offering assistance through our collective support and good thoughts. When he was in control, it was beautiful to watch and listen to. When he wasn’t, it was very dark out.

The day off was Sunday and Keanu called wanting to do an “Italian” with me if I was up for it. The first hour was spent working the lines. He said he wanted to be letter-perfect. He talked as fast as he could and I made small, infrequent corrections as he referred to his Arden for punctuation or jumps. I was amazed how easily the words came out of his mouth and how quickly. That was a purely technical aspect of his performance… having the lines down pat. But what was going on behind the lines seemed scattershot. When we got to the “To be or not to be” speech, I stopped him and, with some trepidation, asked if I could ask him a question about this. I expressed my deep respect for his work and then suggested that perhaps externalizing some of what ‘Hamlet’ was feeling at that moment might be a route to go, especially in this “aria” that everyone was waiting to hear. He reiterated the fact that he felt trapped by the blocking. I insisted that I didn’t want to cross any directorial boundaries but he said “No man, I need to hear this stuff. I’ve not gotten any direction on that and I need the input.” We talked for the next two hours.

I’m no great Shakespearian scholar, but just based on ‘Hamlet’s’ words and what I saw Keanu experiencing, I dared to talk about what was happening “in the moment” and the “why” of what he was saying. In the final scenes where everyone is dead or dying around him, Shakespeare has taken us to the brink of ‘Hamlet’s’ understanding of his place in the world, albeit much too late; and tragically, as he is about to die, he is unable to apply any of that newly found clarity and understanding to his life. I suggested that he (Keanu) backtrack this through-line to find places where those incremental discoveries could become “actionable”, moments when he could physically externalize those “a-ha” thoughts. He seemed to respond to this suggestion. Since his infrastructure was well in place, making small emotional adjustments along the way to accommodate this approach might move him forward with greater intention and flesh out the dynamics of his performance. I looked forward to seeing how it would “play out” in the time ahead.

The great thing about those three hours was that I saw a bit of the real Keanu Reeves. The more he talked, the more he relaxed. The more he relaxed, the more the walls came down. At one point, he delivered one of ‘Hamlet’s’ speeches as ‘Siddartha’ in “Little Buddha” using the light, slightly sing-song-y guttural East Indian accent he had affected for the character in the film and we laughed and laughed. The evening was a joyful and rewarding experience and ultimately produced some astonishing results over the course of the run.

The contrast between performing in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in the evenings and rehearsing local playwright Brian Drader’s new play, “The Fruit Machine”, during the day was stark. “The Fruit Machine” is a play about the RCMP’s 1960’s effort to identify gay people who, they thought, might be blackmailed while working in the Canadian Civil Service. I was playing “The Psychologist”. It was being directed by the generous and laid back Anne Hodges and I was, once again, back on the boards with Arne McPherson and Gene Pyrz. It’s a dark piece but with much to latch on to. Brian’s work is current and very accessible but we began, alas, with three days of dreaded table work, truncated, thankfully, by the fact that Gene and I had to leave early for “Hamlet” matinees; which is not to diminish the joy of rehearsing a very good play with a great director. It was just that, as usual, all the talking seemed to get in the way … but again, that’s just me.  The play was scheduled to premiere as “Hamlet” was winding down.

Back at MTC, we moved along. There were sublime performances and some not so much. Stationed at my little perch, I made mental notes, but mostly enjoyed watching Keanu work. Robbie and I would talk in the car agreeing that, if nothing else, watching him work was an education in what could be accomplished on stage by sheer stick-to-itiveness and pure gumption! I was constantly amazed at his bravery. Actors have a tendency to “freeze” a performance after opening. The director has signed off on the show and the other actors are depending on one doing certain things in certain ways. Not Keanu! He was still exploring. To make changes and plumb new depths on the fly with a role like “Hamlet” is simply courageous. Actors would approach me every night at my perch. Louisa Martin would ask me what “the verdict” was so she could prepare herself for her scenes with him. Sometimes I’d say “he seems off tonight” or “he’s sad tonight” or “he’s playing it very young and vulnerable” to which she’d respond “uh-oh” or “great” or “heaven help me”. It was the same thing with Liisa Repo-Martell playing ‘Ophelia’ wondering how aggressive ‘Hamlet’ was going to be in their scene together. Roger Honeywell and Richard Hughes playing ‘Rosencrantz’ and ‘Guildenstern’ had a hard job. Keanu would move about in the soliloquy prior to their entrance and never end up in the same place from night to night. They would sidle up to me and ask me where he was. From my position I could see most of the stage except for down stage left and would give them a clue as to his whereabouts. One night I told them I had no idea where he was. They entered calling “My Lord? My Lord?” searching for a good fifteen seconds before discovering him curled up under a staircase. The scene proceeded once he was extricated.

To watch him go for something new each night was very exciting. He kept everyone slightly on edge which resulted in spontaneity and electricity at each performance. At his insistence, I continued to offer little suggestions and watched as he’d incorporate them into the role. At one point, I suggested that rather than start with the words in the “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” speech, it might be an idea to start with a physical action, drawing the audience in to him visually. Rather than planting himself down center and striking a “pose” to “deliver” the speech, what would happen if he slowly moved upstage toward the throne, looking at his hands as he went, bringing them up close to his face, investigating them like he was stoned, then begin to speak in response to what he was experiencing totally in the moment. I sat in my little spot, shaking my head in amazement as I watched him do it.

As a run goes on, the production evolves. Small moments, neither seen nor generally heard by the audience, develop and become a subtle part of the action giving ambience to a scene. Relationships become relied upon to propel one from one beat to the next. Robbie and I found ourselves next to one another in the final moments of the play. It should be noted that one of our production’s elements that received major mention from all the critics was the fight scene at the end of the play. It was very intense and very real! B.H. Barry’s choreography contained some wonderfully sophisticated swordplay and a lot of visual surprises. Andrew (Akman) and Keanu had honed their considerable skills to a fine degree and their disciplined abandon was on display at every show. The fight goes on for a very long time with fits and starts to allow for confessions and surprising discoveries to be voiced. Everyone is on stage waiting to see who bests who. ‘Gertrude’ is lying dead from drinking poison; ‘Claudius’ has been run through by ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Laertes’, with his poisoned sword, and ‘Hamlet’, lost in their fury, go at each other. In one fierce exchange, both lose their weapons and end up picking up the other’s sword. ‘Hamlet’ now has the poisoned sword. The rest of us are watching as they circle each other. At one performance, Keanu, backing up and readying himself for another attack, came into the area where Robbie and I were standing. He pulled his sword back to strike at ‘Laertes’ and as he did so, happened to swipe the tip of the sword across my leg. I recoiled in surprise because it was obvious he’d done it and I couldn’t hide the fact. The action and the focus of the audience very quickly moved away from our side of the stage.

In horror I turned to Robbie. “He hit me!’ I whispered, still in the energy of the moment. Robbie commiserated in the spirit of our exchange and we returned our attention to the fight. Sometimes, things come over you that you know you probably shouldn’t respond to but you can’t help yourself. In this case I was about to create a paradox between the world of the “real” and the world of the “play”. A moment went by. I put my hand on Robbie’s shoulder and, in character with my other hand on my stomach, whispered “I don’t feel so good”. Robbie looked at me quickly realizing we were crossing a line, his eyes got wide and he lost it. He had to turn upstage. I was already facing upstage but I kept the conceit going.

Robbie was immediately jolted away from me in the movement of the crowd to the other side of the stage. I stayed where I was. More of the fight went by but I was going to go for one more exchange in our game. I managed to catch his eye and, as I did, I put my hand to my stomach once more and bent over slightly as if I was in pain. Robbie lost it again. I was done and felt pretty proud of myself. No one else saw it or referred to it. It’s an episode to which we still refer … and we still laugh!

One of the most amazing parts of this experience had little to do with me … or anyone else in the cast except Keanu. As time went on, and as was expected, we became aware of the growing number of fans waiting at the stage door following each evening’s performance. It had happened during the student matinees but not during the run matinees. No one left the building between shows on Wednesdays and Saturdays, there being so little break time. In fact, the rigours of the production for Keanu were so great that management had made oxygen tanks available for The Lad just in case he needed to clear his head and replenish himself. He was always fine after the evening show knowing that he wouldn’t have to do it again. But he also knew that he was about to be besieged once he got outside. It was a frenzy! They were lined up down the block. After the run’s first week, the theatre reset the little security guard desk and he would sit there and sign his name to programs, posters, books and video tapes until everyone had been satisfied. Some nights he was there till one or two in the morning. We would ask him if he wanted to come out with us but he would always smile wistfully and say that he needed to pay attention to the folks waiting for him at the door. With folks having come from so far away and having purchased multiple subscriptions to see him night after night, he felt a responsibility to make himself available to them. Among the masses was a pair of young women who had come from Japan. They had each bought eight subscriptions packages and we became friends with them. Night after night they’d be at the front of the line and after getting Keanu’s signature yet once again, would talk with us in their broken English, bowing and laughing and obviously enjoying their experience. Their names were Yumi and Keiko and the photo here shows Roger Honeywell and me with Yumi. They loved all the attention we shed upon them. Word had gotten out about this late-night-signing-phenomenon and the press covered the event a couple of times.

My days were exhausting what with Samwork, rehearsing the other show and doing “Hamlet” at night. I would flop into bed at end of the day and sleep the sleep of the dead.

Then one night, I had a dream.

As soon as we walked into the building I could sense something was different. I’d met up with our Director, Lewis Baumander, on the walk to the theatre and we had chatted about how remarkably calm he felt despite all the attention and furor that was fast building up around our production. He said everything was ready and he was chomping at the bit to get started. The first noticeable change was the uniformed Security Guard sitting at a small desk in the tiny vestibule just inside the building’s back door. He was checking off people’s names as they arrived and issuing the security ID tags now required for all subsequent entry into the facility.

            Upstairs, the office area, usually buzzing on the first day of rehearsals, was eerily quiet. I opened the door of the walkway to the Rehearsal Hall and was greeted with a dull rumble coming from the room still twenty yards away. The first half hour or so on the first day of rehearsals at MTC was an informal social affair called “Meet The Donut”.  It usually comprised the cast and some production folks having a cup of coffee while awaiting the call-to-order and subsequent introductions in a small circle, the Director’s remarks and the design presentations. Depending on the size of the cast there were usually about twenty or twenty-five folks gathered. As I got closer to the Hall the rumble grew louder. I walked in I was stopped in my tracks! There must have been a hundred people (22 being cast members) standing about laughing and talking, animated and very excited! ALL the Secretaries and Assistants from the Admin offices, Accountants, Communications and Fundraising people, ALL the Tech Staff, ALL the Production Heads as well as painters, prop masters and carpenters, custodians, front- of-house and box office staff and even the cast from another production at the theatre, had gathered and were moving about, helping themselves from the urns of coffee and the contents of dozens of boxes from Tim Horton Donuts spread out on long tables! It was overwhelmingly festive!

            I took my coat off and was greeted by the friendly faces of folks I’d not seen since the Ouzounian days – the effusive Bob Benson and trickster of an up-stager Stephen Russell – and I introduced myself to a few people I’d not met but knew by sight. I roamed about trying to get the lay of the land and hugged with the large number of locals also in the show. I saw Keanu standing alone, staring down through the large window which over looked the scene shop a floor below. Hesitantly, I walked over and introduced myself, telling him that I was the guy who would be at his disposal whenever he needed to run lines. He seemed pleased with that. I noticed how incredibly shy he was. I could sense him wanting to be invisible, trying, in vain, to abjure the psychic attention laser-focused on him. (“It really IS Keanu Reeves!”) As I moved away after our small chat I was instantly replaced by other folks lining up to welcome him. A few even had the guts to ask for autographs! I felt sorry for him already. This was the beginning of the continuous onslaught that would follow him until he left town two months later!

            It took a very long time for the folk ringing the entire room – and the MTC Rehearsal Hall is a very big space – to introduce themselves and tell what their connection was to the show. After the Director’s and designer’s remarks, the room was cleared of all non-essentials and hangers-on and we began the first read-through. It took three hours with no stops, little “acting”, slightly rushed and very low-keyed. No one was trying to impress anyone else but one could feel the usual “sussing-out” bubbling beneath the surface during the reading. The whole of “Hamlet” takes about five hours to perform, but Lewis, out of an awareness of some specific budget constraints and a prairie audience’s mid-winter patience, had cut the play mercilessly, much, I found out a short time later, to Keanu’s chagrin. We would do it again after lunch.

         With only an hour break, the foodery of choice was the up-scale-ish Concert Hall cafeteria (Café 100) across the street. Much to our surprise, Keanu accepted the invitation to join a group of us headed over for a quick bite. We got there before him and a group of young girls at a table nearby came bubbling over asking if we were in the Cast of the show and what was “he” like. I told them he wouldn’t be coming over just to get rid of them and they went back to their table. A moment later “he” ambled in, head down and unassuming. He got his food and sat down in the seat we’d saved for him. I could see the girls getting very emotional, tearfully grabbing on to each other and, for the next forty minutes, staring at him but keeping their distance … unlike the middle-aged businessmen sitting a few tables away who, on their way out, came over as a group and surrounded Keanu asking for autographs. He was very gracious and generous in standing as he talked with them and subtly guiding them to an empty table away from us in order to sign their scraps of paper. This was practiced behaviour, this understanding that such intrusions not infringe upon anyone but himself. Rather amazing, I thought.

            As we were all leaving, the young girls made their move and dashed over to him. They chatted for a minute and got their autographs. I was bring up the rear and had noticed one of the girls go over to the busboy and get a bag from him. I caught up with her and was told that they had got Keanu’s knife and fork and a half eaten dinner role from his plate. I shook my head and headed back to rehearsal.

            The afternoon’s table read was being done full out. People were acting in their chairs and I realized that Keanu was marvelous! He knew the script extremely well and was already giving a defined portrayal with an accuracy, clarity and understanding that was engrossing. He had done a great amount of homework, had made considered choices and, with this deeply-seated passion and energy now fully on display, had tacitly challenged everyone else in the cast to rise to his level.

            There were more revelations on the second day … and all subsequent days. It was interesting to see him on his feet. There were no long periods of “table work”, that sitting-about-and-talking-till-the-cows-came-home business that I detest. I think he had requested that we be on the floor right away and I could see why. It was an energy thing for him. In blocking sessions he would jump in the air and shake himself, constantly moving and thinking. He had a lot to say about everything going on around him and was totally focused on what was happening with his character in every context. It was marvelous to watch! Robbie (Paterson) and I would talk with him while waiting about and our small-talk always had to do with the play … nothing else, just the play.

            That evening, I went back down to the theatre and waited for Keanu to finish a wig fitting. He had told me in the afternoon that he might want to run lines so I was at his disposal. When he came out of the wig room, he said he wanted a bit more time for things to settle in before getting into the lines, so we just sat in the Green Room and talked for a bit. He was finding it a challenge adjusting to the newly adapted script he’d been sent a short time before rehearsals began. He had spent a lot of time learning the entire role and was having a great difficulty remembering where the cuts happened; a deleted word or phrase here and there, whole scenes, parts of scenes, re-ordering of some exchanges … the adjustments were driving him crazy. While he wanted to divest himself of anything extraneous (he had just told the hair folks that the “Jesus wig” they had made for him “wasn’t going to work”), he felt that the play had lost a great deal of the poetry, reducing it to little more than a Victorian Revenge Tragedy. That was something he would have lasting trouble dealing with.

            Up to this point in his career, Keanu had established himself as an “off-beat” screen actor. From “Little Buddha” and “Dangerous Liaisons” to “My Own Private Idaho” and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, he was becoming known for taking roles that wouldn’t put him in a particular category. His most recent film, “Speed”, had given him Big Box-Office Star status. As I found out later, he had subsequently turned down “Heat” with Pacino and DiNiro to do “Hamlet”. It was obvious that his professional choices were based in a personal truth he was unwilling to compromise. I gave him great props for that. Integrity!

            As we progressed, Keanu seemed to be on top of everything. Our Fight Master was B.H. Barry from England. He was with us for only a week, so the focus switched from the “acting” to the swordplay of the final scene’s duel between ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Laertes’ (Andrew Akman). The Macho poured out all over the place. We were watchers now, physically responding to one character or the other. There were folks who respected Barry’s skill and expertise and there were folks who thought they knew better and subtly tested limits. This sort of surprised me because B.H. Barry was one of the world’s best (Fight Director for The Royal Shakespeare Company) and he knew what he was doing. Most of us were tasked with standing about so our perspectives were slightly skewed; but I could hear small comments emanating from the ranks about how “he should have done this” or “he should have done that” … this despite the fact that what we were watching had been choreographed and worked on to a gnat’s eyebrow down in the lobby earlier in the day. Everyone’s a critic! We trekked on.

            During rehearsals I was spending my evenings at Dalnavert Museum doing the seventh year of my readings of “A Christmas Carol”. For some reason this project seemed to perk Keanu’s interest and we got into some insightful conversations over lunch about Dickens and the play-worthiness of his work. The past couple of years had seen audience demand for the readings grow greatly resulting in the Museum adding performances. We had started with one show and were now up to five nights, usually sold out by mid-October. It was somewhat exhausting, rehearsing all day, rushing home for some food then bussing to the venue. The reading was only an hour long so I was usually home by about nine o’clock. But being the center of attention at night was a huge contrast to playing small-existences-that-matter-little during the day. At one point in a Journal entry I wrote: “With only a couple of lines here and there to hold on to, there seems little point in it all. I find myself thinking that I’m beyond doing these one-liners anymore. It might seem egotistical to think I’m above doing small parts, but, truth be told, there is nothing challenging or rewarding about being set dressing, even if it is for Keanu Reeves! I’m a stranger in my own land in this production.”

            I found myself being added to more and more scenes as a warm body and tried to come up with ways of getting out of them. One legitimate excuse had to do with costume changes. As I finished up as a “watcher” in one scene, I had literally 12 seconds to change into one of my “name” characters in the next. This occurred frequently over the course of the play and I pointed out the problem to Lewis; he usually responded with “I’ll take care of it”. He never did and, in run-throughs, would discover that the reason I’d not made it on stage to deliver my lines was because I was still changing. Twelve seconds go by extremely fast even with numerous dressers desperately pulling and tugging off one set of leggings and laces and putting on another. I kept my mouth shut until it became obvious that it wasn’t working. Thankfully, I was taken out of a number of crowd scenes as a result.

The first full run-through lasted almost four hours with intermission. That did not bode well!

            We headed into a break for the Holidays and before we left, Keanu asked if we could work on lines during the couple of days surrounding Christmas. He arrived at 2:00 on Christmas Eve Day. There were moments when I had to shake myself at the sight of Keanu Reeves sitting on my living room couch in front of the fireplace sipping grapefruit juice. Our session was focused and illuminating. There was no worry about him having the lines down; but he was at sea when it came to the arc of the character. He talked about the fact that the cuts tended to throw him from time to time and I could see him computing the jumps in his head as we worked through the play. He’d had a few bad days of depression but was working his way through that. Then he mentioned the challenge he was experiencing working on stage. In film you get a scene “in the can” and move on to something else. Filming is not always done in sequence so you struggle to hold on to the details of the character’s evolution (the arc). A number of different takes are filmed with variations on emotional details; then, making choices from those takes, an Editor in the editing room is relied upon to create the continuity from one scene to the next. Maintaining ‘Hamlet’s’ through-line was very hard for him, a situation not helped by some of Shakespeare’s emotional transitions now being cut.

            One other thing that was causing him some difficulty was the space we were in. Robbie and I had talked about this in the car a number of times. The confinement of a camera’s lens was a control he’d come to rely on … hit your mark and don’t go out of frame. Now, with no physical constraints and the not-fully-realized blocking, he found himself wandering arbitrarily. I suggested that perhaps the old “less is more” trope might be something to consider when he found himself at sea trying to “fill the lens” which was now forty feet wide! But in the days that followed, those suggestions might have overwhelmed him. He would do a great scene, physically concise and clear on all levels and it would make you marvel at his awareness of the moment he was playing. The next time, it would be completely different, far away from what one thought he’d set for himself … and for the actors around him. Not committing to a choice resulted in some insecurity. There was no editor picking the best take. This ambivalence would lead to some strange problems for the cast during the run, problems that I would come to be unofficially relied upon to solve.

            The tech rehearsals leading up to the student previews were long and very complicated. Our Stage Manager, Janet Remy, was miraculous keeping almost everything in order. She had a million cues to call and was under intense pressure from all productions departments, but was always cheerily accommodating.  However, one thing she couldn’t control was the length of the play. Despite valiant attempts of more cutting and scene pacing and set change reconfigurations, the performance time couldn’t be brought down to the promised three hours without compromising the play’s integrity … and our star’s sanity … all of which meant a conflict with the production’s budget and stage crew overtime. Three hours was the call limit for the crew; beyond that, overtime kicked in. Reluctantly, Management bit the bullet and everything was fine. As well it should have been because the Theatre was about to make a MINT on this production!

            In announcing the season months earlier, the Company had made a very clever decision. No single tickets would be sold for “Hamlet”! In order to see the play, a Season Subscription would have to be purchased. It was a risk to be sure. Certainly Keanu Reeves in “Hamlet” would be a big draw, but instituting this restriction would either fail miserably or be a bonanza. It was a BONANZA!!  Keanu Fans from all over the world bought up season subscriptions like they were going out of style. From all over Canada, from Japan, the US, Europe and Australia, orders poured in. And not just for single subscriptions. They were buying seven, eight, ten subscription packages just to see their idol night after night! The gamble had paid off.

            As we ploughed through the final rehearsals, the production tightened up and settled into a focused and accessible telling of the story. There were moments of wonderful brilliance in Keanu’s performance. He had such an incredible magnetism that shone through but not on a consistent basis. He was still exploring and working to set the pathway for the character. Some performances were good, some were, well … bad. I would stand in the wings every run mesmerized by his immediacy. I could see the wheels turning, unnoticeable to most, but, knowing what he was going through, now very obvious to me.

            After the show, Robbie and I would drive him back to his apartment building. Usually we would chatter about anything but the play. On this particular night, there was silence. The drive was only about seven or eight minutes long. He got out of the car and I switched from the back seat to the front. He mumbled “good night” and hurried into the building. As we drove away Robbie told me that Keanu had been crying in his seat. It struck my heart. There was something about him that made us want to protect and encourage him. His distant vulnerability was so compelling, or at least that’s how Robbie and I – and a number of others – saw it. I wrote him a note that night letting him know that we were all with him, supporting and honouring his work. He never said anything about the note, but there were small glances when offstage that acknowledged it, as if he was saying “I’m okay” and “thank you”.

Things got more comfortable as we went along, but I became aware of a pivotal moment that occurred every night just before Keanu and I entered together for the “speak the speech” scene. It all depended on how fast he travelled behind the set from one side of the stage to the other after the histrionics of the Nunnery scene. If he made it quickly and had a moment to breathe before going back on, the rest of the play would be in control. If he didn’t have that moment, he would bring the emotional stress and upheaval of the previous scene on stage with him, and it was anyone’s guess where he would take us all for the rest of the performance. It became an adventure that was to play out at every show!

            Our first preview audience was a packed house (800 souls) of high school students. There was an air of excitement backstage. Everyone was up for this. It was like opening night, but we had to keep reminding ourselves that we were still in rehearsal for another week, albeit with full houses of kids waiting to see their idol! The very good speech made before that first show (and all subsequent student performances) put everyone on their best behaviour. It was amazing how they sat, leaning forward, rapt, for the entire three and a half hours. All had gone smoothly until close to the end when Keanu went up on a line in an exchange with ‘Horatio’ and the kids laughed. He tried to get back on track but couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say. He stopped, turned to the house and, with a little grin, said “I don’t know what comes next!” The house exploded in a wall of laughter and hoots and applause for a good thirty seconds, all the pent up enthusiasm and love for the guy pouring out from these young people he’d just guided through a difficult piece of classical theatre. Back on track, we ended what was a very good performance.

            Early the following morning, I was preparing for a meeting with Sam at the house. It was yet another hand-off of a pile of work to be done while he was travelling in the States for a week. Just before he arrived, I got a call from Stage Management at the Theatre. Gary Reineke, an actor who was playing a number of larger roles, was in the hospital with a chicken bone stuck in his throat and was going into surgery. Could I do the ‘Ghost of Hamlet’s Father’ and the ‘Gravedigger’ for the afternoon student preview? No question! I was shaking as I left a note on the front door for Sam and dashed to the theatre!

Jill Dowson was a petite woman and I could see how fragile she was. There were a dozen of us in the room but it was dead silent. She got up from the couch and started toward me. Unsure of how to approach the situation I began moving to her. As we met, and to my great surprise, she fell into my chest and began to sob, obviously overwhelmed by what she’d just seen in the theatre. The top of her head only came up to my chin. After a moment, she pushed away, hit my chest with her open palm, fell into me again and sobbed some more. Incapable of making my voice work, I just held her, slightly embarrassed, glancing at the others in the room for some indication of what I should do. It was massively affecting. She looked up at me, tears running down her face, and said “He wasn’t an asshole, you know. He wasn’t an asshole” referring to her husband whom I had just portrayed on stage. “I know, I know” I choked out and stupidly thanked her for being there. She gained some control as Bruce guided her away to be introduced to Arne and Cheryl. I didn’t listen to what she said to them. I just stared at her, trying to imagine what she must be going through. She apologized for being “so emotional”, thanked us for being “so good” and we went downstairs for notes. It was all more than a little surreal.

            The following day, there was an evening news documentary about the subject of our show which included a segment with Robert Cross, the constable at the center of the shooting and the part that Arne was playing. I had taped it. After rehearsal that night, Arne and Cheryl came back to the house to watch it with me. Cross was now living in Denver and breaking his silence for the first time since the Inquiry five years earlier. It was obvious during the interview that the man wasn’t well, alternating between teary outbursts and nervous laughter indicating the effects the incident continued to have on him. The doc included part of the first scene from our play. The synchronicity was incredible, all these elements rushing together at the same time just a couple of days before our opening! Even though it was very late, we decided to go up to the area in the North End where the shooting had taken place. We drove around a bit and finally found it. It was desperately cold as we walked up onto the dike we recognized from the TV footage. There wasn’t much said. We were all in our own heads, trying to imagine the moment of encounter, the argument, the struggle on the ground, the gun going off. We now had a physical context. It was good research … and very depressing.

            The opening was close to perfection. In the course of the previews we had stopped “playing” the scenes and were now fully encased in the trajectories and intersections of our characters. There seemed to be an ease to it all, as folks remarked afterward. There was no escaping the tension for anybody in the room. One could feel them listening very hard, leaning forward in their seats. Bill Harrar’s dialogue anchored us firmly in our reality and it was glorious. Right after the performance I had to do a CBC interview. My head was still on stage and it was difficult not to get defensive as the interviewer kept trying to lead me down a political path regarding the Inquiry, asking if my opinions had changed during the rehearsal process. It always amazes me that even an experienced reporter still manages to come up with the most innocuous and vapid questions. “The Inquiry happened FIVE years ago, sweetheart! The issues then are STILL the issues NOW! How do you THINK my opinions have changed?!” I yelled inside my head. I should have said it out loud. I managed to avoid getting too controversial and was happy to escape to the party when we wrapped it up.

            There were a number of political figures standing about in the lobby including some of the folk who were intrinsically involved with the Inquiry, notably lawyers Harvey and Marty Pollock. I didn’t have the guts to go up to them. The compliments were fast and furious and made us feel we’d accomplished something. As was the case with opening night of “Live With It”, I left about midnight, stepping back into the real world, the frigid night air and a bit of a blizzard hitting me in the face as I waited for the bus home.

            In the days that followed, the critical notices poured in with varying degrees of play and performance analysis. It seemed that none of the writers could avoid the cultural implications of our venture, and during the audience “Talk Back” sessions after the Thursday night shows, emotions would spill out in the discussions dragging us back into the upheaval created five years earlier. There was a lot of back-and-forth about whether “Truth” was being presented on stage and if the use of conjecture to flesh out the motives and rationales of the characters was justifiable. For me, those exchanges only served to reaffirm the power of Theatre and how, well after the fact, an examination of the human condition could still be important and provoke such responses. I left the sessions feeling full and satisfied that we had done our jobs for the playwright … and the audience.

It is worth noting that Jill Dowson returned to see another performance, this time with her son, Mark, in tow. It was another tearful meeting afterward. Mark stood by stoically as his Mother hugged and hugged me telling me that, seeing it again, she had noticed so many things she’d not seen the first time. She told me that many of my gestures were so much like her husband’s … the way I took off my glasses or put my hand to my mouth in thought. I don’t know where those gestures came from but they had always felt natural as I was doing them. I was happy that my reality aligned with hers.

The production limped to an end with houses getting smaller and smaller. I don’t know what I expected of the run; perhaps there would be sold out performances with our patrons marching out into the streets demanding political action to challenge the cultural norms with which we’d become much too comfortable. But, of course, none of that happened. We closed with a single-show run-out to Portage La Prairie, a small, depressing, in-the-depths-of-winter town just outside Winnipeg. Why that had been scheduled I have no idea. It was an academic performance in a space half the size of what we were used to, and a sad anti-climax to the whole experience. “InQuest” was delivered into Time and Space now.

            There was no down time as I immediately headed into a couple of weeks of workshopping yet another new play, this one possibly-maybe-perhaps being produced by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre somewhere down the road. WJT Producer Kayla Gordon had organized the workshop through the Manitoba Association of Playwrights. One never knew if these best-of-intentions projects would ever result in anything concrete, but we’d try our best to make things work stoically ploughing through draft after draft of a new piece. Sometimes it was just spinning wheels; sometimes there was an exciting glimpse of hope and possibility in the material. This workshop started out differently. Joel Greenberg (an old friend from University days in Montreal) had created a loose script/outline-of-sorts for a play centered around the politics of Canada’s rejection of a ship filled with European Jewish refugees following the Second World War.  For some reason, Joel had “withdrawn” from the project and a Toronto playwright named Jason Sherman was to be using Joel’s material as the take-off point for something new. Kim McCaw was the Director and Dramaturge.

At the initial reading of Joel’s script, the cast made the observation that the piece centered too much on the politics and not enough on the people involved. We (as actors) wanted to know more about the political and civilian characters as human beings and how they were affected by the circumstances in which they found themselves. Because none of us were familiar with his work, Jason came in the next day with one of his own scripts (“Three in the Head, Two in the Back”) in order for us to get a sense of his writing style. His play was very challenging to read. The repetition of words, very fast but at the same time hesitant and disjunctive, reminded me of “Mamet-speak”, seemingly very conversational, lots of interruptions and overlaps, difficult to control, but utterly exhilarating once one found the rhythms. The reading was also to get a sense of the format Kim wanted to go for, scenes switching back and forth in time and place, from stylized recounting to actual documented conversations, edgy and real. Having just come out of the ultra-emotion of the “Inquest” process, my mind was up for this kind of unsettled creative upheaval and I found myself thriving on it.

            Watching Jason work was astonishing to me. Based on our comments and observations following a reading session, he would go off to his hotel room and, overnight, write small scenes of only a few pages using a word or a phrase someone said that had caught his attention. He would distill, intensify and expand those tiny inspirations into clear, logical and focused exchanges between two or three or four characters. He did that day after day, always mindful of the dramatic elements and the relationships of the characters. At the same time he managed to juxtapose the politics and humanity against each other in short episodes creating the remarkable subliminal effect of seemingly disparate characters in different times and places having conversations with each other! I was playing Frederick Blair, the Director of Canadian Immigration Services at the time, who was solidly against allowing Jewish immigrants into Canada following the war. I was also playing a fictitious character named ‘Landau’, a Jewish refugee who, upon applying for immigrant status, has been told he must give up his religion. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum! Moving between these two characters, very quickly in some cases, produced, for me, an internal battle in the playing that allowed the elements of ‘Landau’s’ humanity and ‘Blair’s’ political pragmatism to subtly inform each other. Keeping one personality “in check” while playing the other was very difficult, but it produced a personal tension and a conflicted depth to my characters … and it was utterly glorious to perform!

As soon as Jason arrived on any particular morning, he would be besieged by the actors for copies of his pages, all of us anxious to see what he had come up with overnight. He never disappointed. The words he wrote for us to say were luxurious and marvelously insightful, always defined, unambiguous and immensely satisfying to speak. Sometimes a scene didn’t work or seemed extraneous for one reason or another. Without compunction, Jason tossed it. This happened over and over again. If it didn’t serve the storytelling, it was gone. His commitment to the process was profound. As time went on, we’d each amassed a very large pile of paper (photo above – I still have it all) but had finally produced an hour-long series of scenes (the top script) that hung together cohesively and was something we could put before an audience as a “maybe-First-Act”. It had always been part of the plan that a “presentation” of whatever material was ready be held at Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg’s North End. We rehearsed the draft on our feet for a couple of days creating some simple blocking and digging up some basic props, and got more excited and comfortable with each run. On the final day of the workshop we left the studio and headed out to see who would turn up to view our work.

I’ve always had a strange feeling entering a synagogue. There is a part of me that responds in a deeply visceral way, as if I had found sanctuary and was somehow “coming home”. Perhaps it takes me back to my University days and singing in the band in which I was the only gentile. MarkGoldmanJohnnyBacklerHarold PrussinandMichaelLebner left an indelible mark on me, so much so that their names come into my head as a single word half a century later! Performing and travelling with the guys and spending time with their families and girlfriends filled me with a sense of tradition and closeness. I’d be invited to Friday night dinners. They would always start with beautiful Sherry Rubenstein (Michael’s girlfriend) lighting the candles and saying the Shabbat prayer. The quiet and mystery in those moments stay with me to this day. Because of those experiences, I had actually considered converting to Judaism back then. So my arrival at the synagogue only intensified the importance of what we were about to share with whatever audience turned up. We spent a bit of time adjusting our blocking to the space in the afternoon, headed out for some dinner and returned in time for the half-hour.

The presentation was to be in the basement “salon” where we’d rehearsed that afternoon and which held about two hundred people. By the time we returned the room was already packed and had been for some time. I went out for a cig and noticed that there was a lineup of cars for blocks down Mattheson Avenue waiting to get into the synagogue’s parking lot. There had been no advertizing … this was all by word of mouth! At five to eight the decision was made to move the reading upstairs to the much larger gymnasium rather than turn away what seemed to be a very large number of people. The 200 people already seated downstairs were asked to fold up their chairs and take them upstairs.  Picture two hundred people in their 60’s and 70’s schlepping folding chairs, overcoats, hats and purses up two sets of stairs! It took forever! Of course, once the gym had been designated as the new space, the “latecomers” were directed in there; thus the folks who had arrived very early for “good seats” and who were still trekking up from downstairs were now in the back of the house! There was no end of complaints over that! We ended up with almost 400 people squeezed into the hastily set up gym.

Kayla was over the moon. She had never expected this kind of response. The presentation went extremely well and the reaction was exceedingly positive. The audience was completely involved in a story that was very familiar to them. Jason’s clear and authentic characterizations were a joy to play. As the villain of the piece (‘Frederick Blair’) I got no mercy from the house. At one point Blair makes the head of the Canadian Jewish Congress decide on the spot which 500 on a list of 1000 Jewish orphans would be allowed into the country. In the silence following his demand, a voice in the audience yelled “you bastard!” They were rapt and you could hear a pin drop from the beginning to the ending when my ‘Landau’ sings the “Shema prayer”. I could see people wiping away tears. It was a profound night of theatre for all of us, but it would be two and a half years before we got to play it again.

I had long since been cast in a role for the MTC Production of “Hamlet”. Well, it wasn’t actually a role, but rather the possibility of a number of roles, designated in the contract as “As Cast”. Being “As Cast” was the potential kiss of death. It was, and still is contractual bullshit for “we’ll hire you but can’t tell you what role or roles you’re going to play because we haven’t decided yet but you have to agree to this now otherwise forget it!” Once signed, the contract bound you to whatever they wanted you to do. You could end up carrying a spear across the stage or as background in a crowd scene with nothing to say. I decided to swallow my pride and signed the contract. After a bit of wrangling it was decided that I would play two small roles – ‘Voltimand’ and ‘Lucianus’. Okay, not roles that stand out or spring to mind when one thinks of the characters in “Hamlet”, but they had some good stuff to say and there would be no great pressure coming down on me. As much as I wanted something bigger this would be fine … I had something else in mind. The start of rehearsals was a few weeks away. In the meantime there were other things to take care of.

Music Services remained a constant source of trial and tribulation for me. As Sam was off drumming up more and more work for the company, I remained mired in the day-to-day details that needed intense focus. The touring and regional productions we had going on at the time were a never-ending source of frustration. “Phantom” was about to take off on a nine-month (!) tour of South East Asia. On a particular Friday afternoon, one of its Tour Managers called me from Hawaii (where some of the orchestra was settled in for a two-week stint) informing me that all the Immigration Forms for the Musicians travelling to Singapore (the Tour’s entry point) had to be in to her office by the following Tuesday!! WHAT?? The final roster hadn’t even been decided by Sam and the Music Supervisor, Jeffrey Huard! Sam was on the road and only sporadically available. Huard was never available. This was NUTS! I simply decided to throw it all back into LIVENT’s disorganized bailiwick, yelling at the Tour Manager that they had created this mess, there was nothing I could do about it, and they would have to clean it up from their end. As it turned out, they (we) were given a two week extension by the Immigration authorities and, between me, LIVENT and our Orchestra Manager on the road, we solved the problem. But this just summed up the kind of bother that landed daily on my desk! Never a dull moment!

I fit in a short teaching schedule at Ken Peter’s Dance Studio; did some narration sessions for CBC; confirmed “Beau Jest” for the Jewish Theatre later in the season; discovered that MTC was thinking about starting a Rep Company for the following season and put in my two cents worth on that; booked the “ Christmas Carol” reading for its seventh year at Dalnavert; finally (and graciously) extricated myself from the National Equity Council after ten years; and found myself once again enfolded in the arms of the Winnipeg Symphony, this time playing George Frederick Handel … for adults. Since the successful Brahms concert earlier in the year, there had been extended discussions with the WSO about my approaching the Manitoba Arts Council for a Senior Artist Grant to develop the “Composer Concerts” format. MAC had been very excited about the idea. We had discussed it to the point where Bramwell (Tovey) and I would actually be marketed by the WSO to other Symphony Orchestras in North America. The grant would be for me to travel to do the research and then, with Bramwell, develop the scripts for the concerts. To this day, I am sad that nothing ever came of this project. It was original and had limitless possibilities. A program for both Adults and Young People inserting accessibility to classical music through educational entertainment (“edutainment”) into a Symphony Orchestra’s season was ripe fruit just waiting to be plucked. But, as they say, “best laid plans …”

Since my roles in “Hamlet” were so small, I decided that I needed more to do and, taking my heart in my hands, I had approached the director, Louis Baumander, to ask if I might volunteer as Keanu Reeves’ “repetiteur”.  While not infringing upon a Director’s bailiwick, a “repetiteur” is a tutor or coach who acts as a sounding board or offers observations as a performer goes through rehearsals or learning sessions. While I was no huge Shakespearean expert, I thought I had enough stage experience and smarts to offer some help if in no other area than learning lines and being at his disposal when he needed someone to sit on book for him. The vast majority of his career had been playing in front of the camera. This would be a departure for him and while he had done some stage work early on, I thought I could assist in easing him back into a theatre approach and regimen. It was really pushy of me but, the night before the first rehearsal, Louis got in touch and told me that Keanu was grateful to have someone do this for him and that he would “avail himself of my services”. Wow! I was beside myself!

At 10:00am on December 12^th, 1994, we began work on The Keanu Reeves “Hamlet”.

To this day, I still don’t understand the sequence of events that led me to the small role of ‘Welch’, the baseball team owner in the production of “Damn Yankees” at Rainbow Stage. After a summer “off” from Rainbow, I’d been asked to audition for their summer playbill (which also included “Brigadoon”). I had reluctantly acquiesced and, subsequently (and indecorously), was informed that there was “nothing for me” in either show. That really pissed me off. The productions were being directed by a dance studio owner from Alberta.

To my way of thinking, a theatre company should never be run by businessmen, but the “Past President’s Board” was now in its second year of overseeing the organization. Having been rejected, I let it go and, along with accepting a summer job singing the National Anthem nightly for the new Winnipeg Goldeyes Baseball Team, focused on preparing for the fall season – a hefty line-up for me at that point. So it was a great surprise to get a call from one of the Rainbow “suits” close to the start of “Damn Yankees” rehearsals offering me the tiny, non-singing ‘Welch’ role. I don’t really know what had transpired to prompt this late offer being made. Even though it sounded somewhat shady, I accepted … with a LOT of conditions – including program title page billing and a shitload of money. Out of desperation I suppose, they accepted. (A Sidebar: I got fired from singing “O Canada” at the Goldeyes games! The inequality of a line in the anthem – “True patriot love in all our sons command” – had always bothered. One night at the ballpark, I changed “sons” to “hearts” as I was singing. A few days later a writer in the “Letters To The Editor” section of the Free Press called me out for changing “the words”.  While it peeved me a bit, I was also flattered in that the writer had noted that I “sang the American National Anthem flawlessly”. Apparently a few other “complaints” had come into the Team’s offices and I was let go. This was the summer of 1994. The lyrics of the Anthem were officially changed on January 31^st, 2018. “Sons” was changed to “us”. The wheels of change move very slowly. Guess I was ahead of my time!)

            For Rainbow’s previous season (the first for the new Board after the chaos of the Shapira Scandal) they had quickly thrown together a Winnipeg sure-fire box office draw with “Fiddler On The Roof”. They made money on the show but, with no one at the artistic helm, were now floundering in their preparations for this season. “Brigadoon” had opened to a cool reception and now “Yankees” tickets were not selling (despite some cracker jack performances from Robbie (Paterson) as ‘Young Joe’ and Brenda Gorlick as ‘Lola’). They were quickly learning that it is not a slam-dunk to merely schedule shows then head back to their corporate offices letting someone (anyone) else put it all together. After a fraught rehearsal period with the wiry, very off-putting in-your-face director muddling through mounting the monster show using “Louder!” as his main direction to the performers, we settled into the run. I did my work and tried to stay as far away as possible from the intrigue that started soon after we opened. Picturing Al Pacino in “Godfather III” railing about being “pulled back in” to the “organization”, I found myself in a similar situation during an unexpected call from one of the Board members telling me that they “didn’t know if we were going to be able to meet payroll this week and probably next week as well” and “what should we do?” What? WHAT?  First, why the hell were they telling me this and, second, how could they have the nerve to approach me asking for some kind of solution to their problem? He even asked me what size the house had been the night before (it had been half full)! Why didn’t he have that information himself? It just signaled how out of control things were.

            The Rainbow 40^th Anniversary Party had taken place a week earlier out at the Stage. Jack Shapira had made an unexpected and, for many, unwanted appearance. I had learned via a grapevine that the Board was now thinking of hiring an actual Producer for the following season. I assumed they were becoming painfully aware of the pitfalls of running a theatre company from their corporate desks. Fortunately, there were a couple of men in this group who, at least for me, represented the possibility of a path back to sanity and some much needed organization. One was Campbell McIntyre whom I’d known since the “early days”. He was a stalwart of Rainbow, gracious and nicely laid back but astute in the ways of theatre production.  The other was Ken Peter, an established Dance Studio owner, who had been associated with Rainbow for years but with whom I’d not had a lot of contact. Between the two of them, I thought there might be a chance for a brighter future for Rainbow. And that’s exactly what came to pass, but it would take some time.

            “Yankees” whimpered to a close and I sped into putting together the line up for the fourth year of the “Winnipeg Cares AIDS Benefit Concert”. We managed to raise $64K bringing our four-year total to almost a quarter million dollars for the AIDS resource services we were funding in the Community. Music Services still occupied a major chunk of time and was getting bigger and bigger. With “Phantom” on the road (and about to head to Southeast Asia) and the orchestras of various regional productions also requiring my payroll skills, Sam (Lutfiyya) continued to add major projects to our roster. The new Hal Prince production of “Showboat” had just ended its Toronto sit and we had been given the contract for the orchestra of Vancouver run. We were maneuvering to get its U.S. Tour, a contract that would last for two years. “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” and its burgeoning licensing deals led us to opening up “Lutent Inc.” the arm of the business which would deal only with the projects (mostly “jukebox” musicals) that Dean Regan was generating … and there were a number of them. “Go big or go home” seemed to be the catch-phrase of the day and I was still mired in the thick of it!

            A year earlier, I had “played” Ludwig van Beethoven (at left) in a major publicity campaign for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s new season. The photo session had been great fun and working with Bramwell Tovey (the Orchestra’s Conductor) had revealed a kindred theatrical spirit. He was very funny in his dry British way and our snappy repartee during the shoot started us talking about maybe doing the same sort of thing on stage during a concert. Our chatter resulted in a series of conversations with Symphony staff about appearing as a composer for their Young People’s Concert Series. We eventually decided that bringing Johannes Brahms “back to life” might have some value.

I had been creating the script over the course of the summer and had incorporated some music selections that would be familiar and accessible for a younger audience, some by Brahms and some by his contemporaries. Brahms had been known as a very spontaneous character and, in conversations with friends, would take them off guard by suddenly changing the subject. It was just this quality that I thought could propel some exchanges between me and Bramwell on stage. I had evolved the composer’s rumpled character with the help of costuming, make-up and wig and a thick German accent. ‘Herr Brahms’ would begin the concert thinking he’s addressing a congress of music scholars and would launch into a diatribe (in German) about the current state of music. Bramwell, at his podium by this time, was to come over to tell me that our audience is made up of children prompting a series of ad lib exchanges. ‘Brahms’ is also about to leave on a trip and has brought a large trunk and a lot of clothes with him to pack during the performance. The obligatory set of extra-large-sized boxer shorts with big red lips all over them was to make an appearance as well. None of this was played out during rehearsals as Bramwell wanted to get through the music examples we were to discuss. It really was going to be a “wing-it” situation. I felt comfortable enough in the character and the situation we’d set up, so I wasn’t worried about it … too much.

When I came down from my dressing room just before the afternoon performance, the orchestra musicians socializing in the backstage lobby gasped. Apparently the disguise was astonishing. I looked like his photograph (above)! I’m only sorry we never got any pics of me as old Johannes. The concert was spectacular. The opening in German got a wonderful reaction (particularly from the orchestra, who had heard none of what we were about to do) and gave way to a narration that was elementary enough for the young people. ‘Brahms’ had been suffering from a cold and had tied a large hot water bottle around his backside. “Is anyone else warm in here?” he asks as he turns and takes off his large frock coat revealing the reason for his feeling hot. The kids went nuts. With assistance from some talented young solo musicians we helped our audience to understand various musical themes used by Haydn and Beethoven and how they related to each other. The packing the clothes bit was a hit as I held up the outrageous underwear. It got a huge laugh and an even bigger one when I ad-libbed to Bramwell “these are yours?” The exchanges between us had the adults in the house (AND the musicians) howling. The concert ends with Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” as he sits in the middle of the orchestra luxuriating in his music, conducting here and there and basking in the incredible sound. It was all supremely satisfying!

Backstage after a lot of bows, Bramwell came rushing over. “Richard! Richard! That was so wonderful! Thank you for letting us play real music!” referencing the fact that these Kids Concerts usually featured pop music and very little of the classical rep. As an adjunct to my preparation, I had also managed to perfect Brahms’ signature. I was lead out to the lobby and mobbed for the next half hour signing programs (as Brahms) and reveling in young kids being over the moon about the music! It reminded me of the days so many years ago in Montreal at the MSO’s Saturday morning Young Peoples Concerts, and how we young folk had the same reactions to that kind of music. Full circle! But it was on to other things now.

            Early one morning in the spring of 1988 on a sidewalk in Winnipeg’s North End, a native community leader named J.J. Harper had been shot to death during a confrontation and subsequent scuffle with a Winnipeg Police officer. The initial stop by the police had turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The internal investigation immediately following the shooting had been badly botched on a number of levels and the episode had resulted in “The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry”, a court case that consumed Canada for months. Now, years later, the story entered my life in a major way.

Earlier in the year, I had heard about a play to be produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange about the incident. It was written by local playwright Bill Harrar and, at the time, was called “Shooting JJ”. The play centered on Ken Dowson (pictured left), the Police Inspector in charge of the internal investigation after the shooting, and how some of the pertinent information regarding the incident had been lost, altered or suppressed. After making more inquiries, I discovered that Nancy Drake was to direct. I guess she considered me a serious contender for the ‘Dowson’ role because she asked to meet. We went through the play (which was now called “inQuest”) in preparation for some auditions in a short while.           

The piece was intense! The first Act centers on the night of the shooting and the second Act is conjecture about the time leading up to Dowson’s scheduled appearance before the Inquiry a few months later. I spent every spare moment reading the play over and over again and doing research into the man. By now (five years later) the Inquiry had long since produced its findings and the transcripts of the proceedings provided the foundation for the first part of the play. I found myself emotionally overwrought at times as I worked my way through the second Act and Bill’s dramatization of the evolution of Dowson’s emotional state in a compressed time line.  I couldn’t wait to get into rehearsals … IF I actually had the role.  It took Nancy forever to decide. I read a number of times with the young and very talented Arne MacPherson reading the role of ‘Constable’ (Robert Cross). After what seemed an eternity, we were both offered the roles.

            As had been the case with Ross in “Live With It”, I thought it would be advantageous to meet with Arne as much as possible prior to rehearsals to cement our relationship and to delve into the journeys of these two characters. These prolonged sessions produced profound insights and once we began rehearsals we were, as with Ross and I, way ahead of the game.

There is nothing like starting rehearsals for a newly-minted play. There are no preconceptions, no “ways” to play a role, nothing against which to measure approaches or portrayals. There is also a sense of urgency and tension mixed with excitement and anticipation. The added elements in this case were the potentially explosive subject matter and the controversy that was sure to surround the production.

One thing I should mention for context is that on the morning he was to appear before the Justice Inquiry, Ken Dowson committed suicide. The reason he killed himself has never been fully explained. While the play doesn’t make conjecture, ‘Dowson’s’ compulsions about details and precision are on display from the outset. I had learned that he was a perfectionist, a very organized, law-and-order officer who had trained at Quantico, Virginia at the FBI Academy and had been in police work for 19 years. This layering-in was helpful to me. I also learned that Dowson’s wife, Jill, had been shocked to learn that I was playing the part of her husband because I looked like him. The pressure was piling up!

            During the early part of the rehearsal process we spent time talking with an officer who had been Inspector of Police at the time of the shooting. He had worked with both Dowson and Cross and was helpfully candid and insightful about the workings of the Department as well as the two men. We watched videotapes of the Justice Inquiry and were taken by Cross’s state of mind even months after the shooting. It was pitiful and shocking to watch and something that Arne was about to head into playing. We both steeled ourselves as we descended into the personal hells of these two men.

Over the past couple of years I’d gradually found myself pining to escape the stark actuality of the payrolls and spreadsheets which were consuming the better part of my days. As I sat in front of my computer screen, I longed for the vagueness of someone else’s emotional trials, an escape I could find only in rehearsing for or performing in a show. Now, that feeling had shifted a full one-eighty. The clarity and impersonal-ness of those numbers and formulae became a refuge from the relentless intensity of inhabiting the skin of a man in the process of disintegration. The playing was incredibly hard and debilitating. I was experiencing an overwhelming sense of responsibility to somehow honour the man and his circumstances but I would lie awake, unwillingly reliving the day’s work, and end up going to my desk in the middle of the night and doing payrolls just to distract myself from thinking about the inevitable return to those emotionally charged rehearsals. That went on for a long time.

Intellectually, objectively, the psychological and emotional complexities of this man were all understandable. Putting them into “action” was something no one could help me to achieve. The playing had to come from dark places and over the weeks of rehearsal, I began to poke at areas within myself, finding places from which to extricate little bits of what I imagined to be the right responses within the scenes. The construction of the play was masterful in its roadmap toward the conclusion. I discovered that Dowson’s vulnerability lay within his relinquishing of the limitations he had imposed upon himself as a perfectionist, as an idealist. As he/I did that, the barriers began to melt away, releasing us into the long-held-in emotions and fearful contradictions that had been suppressed during the investigation.

Toward the end of the play, in painfully intense 15-page scene in a hospital, ‘Dowson’ watches ‘Cross’ mentally and emotionally disintegrate, haunted because he has killed another human being. In late rehearsals, tears started to come as we played the scene, unbidden and flowing, partially out of the dialogue exchanges and, for me, partially out of watching my friend Arne falling apart right before my eyes. It was a case of no longer keeping secrets – both as the characters and as actors – and the result was cathartic. In the scene’s last moments, as ‘Dowson’ is leaving the room, ‘Cross’ asks him to “take the Indian with you” . It was all I could do to hold it together. ‘Dowson’ says “I will” and we head into the final scene.     

There are no words in the final moments. ‘Dowson’ has left the hospital, still holding it in. Time is compressed. The lights change to a soft nighttime glow. There is the sound of crickets as he walks across the open stage and stops, looking up, smelling the night air. I felt a tear start down my cheek. I shook my head slightly and slowly walked off stage. There is a dimming of the light. The sound of the crickets stops. There is a moment of silence … and then, a gunshot. A moment more and the lights fade to black as the play ends.

The first time we ran through the second act, with the lights and the sound, in costume and everything as it would be in performance, it was overpowering. It had all accumulated and I was doing my damndest to hold it together but it was very difficult. I slowly walked off stage, the gun shot went off and I just dissolved. I fell into a chair and began to sob uncontrollably. The release was so utterly complete that I couldn’t bring myself back from it. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Nancy. She didn’t say anything but just stood there for a moment until I pulled myself together and we headed into the note session.

Each night before I go on stage, I have a moment in the wings when I center myself. It’s a physical arm-extending collection of energy around me, pulling it in, forcing it into my body and relaxing as it fills me. During “InQuest” I couldn’t bring myself to do that centering. Instead, I used the dread that filled me every night as I stood in the dark; I knew that with my first step onto the stage and into the light I was embarking on a journey that would leave me a little less whole as a human being and would try me mightily as an actor.

For a few nights before the opening, we were doing small-audience previews. These were tiny invited groups of four or five people. Having folks watching, listening and responding was what we needed at this point. Just the sound of them breathing or clearing throats or jostling about in the dark kept us subliminally aware of our dynamics and clarity and pacing. Sometimes after these performances, Bruce Duggan, the communications director at the theatre, would ask if we would mind saying hello to a sponsor or a special guest in the lobby. It was always interesting to get feedback because just about everyone had some kind of connection to what they had just seen. One night, we were waiting for notes to begin when Bruce came in and told us there were some folks upstairs in the Board Room to meet us. Up we went once more. Bruce led the way in. There were six people there clustered about a small attractive lady sitting in a chair. People were sometimes a bit emotional after the show and I could see this lady had been crying. Her eyes were red and she stood up to greet us. I stepped forward as Bruce introduced her.

“Richard, this is Jill Dowson”.

I stopped breathing and couldn’t speak.

            As posted a few BLOGS back, a play called “Live With It” had come into my life during the Spring of ’92 in a reading session for the Manitoba Association of Playwrights (MAP). It was written by a young woman named Elise Moore, and by “young” I mean 16 years old! The play was inspired by John Lahr’s “Prick Up Your Ears”, a book centering on the relationship between English playwright Joe Orton and his lover, Ken Halliwell. (A sidebar: I find myself amazed by the evolution of the references to the individuals in a gay male relationship; my “friend” became, very hesitantly, “boyfriend”, then “lover”, then “partner” then “life-partner” and now, incredulously ,“husband”! How time changes us.) Yvette Nolan had led that first workshop and I’d been taken by her process, inclusive and focused, always with the playwright’s intensions at the core of the discussions. And there were a lot of discussions. What amazed me most (and I constantly said so) was that someone so young would a) care about the contentious relationship of two gay men and its endless turmoil and b) have the right words to express the feelings and upheaval in that relationship. Elise was very shy, very quiet; in fact, she hardly said a word in the course of all the workshops in the months that followed. What she did was listen. She listened to Yvette. She listened to the actors. She took notes. Then she went away and made changes addressing all the issues that came up in the course of the discussions. There was no resistance, no acrimony; just listening. That impressed me if only because she was obviously eager to make her work better, but, at the same time never lost sight of her own vision and intentions. In that first workshop Gene Pyrz played ‘Joe Orton’ and I played ‘Ken Halliwell’. The project seemed to go dormant after that first workshop (although Elise was still working on her own) and I’d sort of forgotten about it as other projects crowded in.

Over the next eighteen months, the piece floated in and out of my schedule with numerous incarnations and revisions being read and workshopped by various directors and dramaturges and potential producers. Apart from Rory Runnels, the head of MAP, I seemed to be the one constant from the outset. Even the ‘Joes’ changed. And then Harry entered the picture.

            Harry Rintoul ran Manitoba Theatre Projects. He was a wiry little man, intense and explosive, with a pent-up energy that would come rushing out at the most unexpected times. He was, to me, just a bit frightening. At some point in the workshopping process, Harry decided that “Live With It” was a potential play for a down-the-road season with his Company and he became a driving force in spurring the project forward. There were a frustrating series of encounters following each workshop with hints of my further involvement dangled like a carrot in front of me but never resulting in any firm commitment. I had become passionately attached to the deeply compelling and now more developed work and I really wanted the ‘Halliwell’ role. Being in on its genesis gave me, at least to my mind, a leg up on being a part of the first production, but it seemed always just out of reach. After months of this frustration I finally told Harry I wasn’t interested any longer and withdrew from consideration. It wasn’t a ploy on my part. I’d just had enough of the back and forth and decided to move on.

            “Just one more”, said Rory, in an attempt to get me back on board. It was now mid-September of ’93. Reluctantly I said yes, but that this would be the last time. Rick Skene was hired to lead the workshop. I enjoyed Rick. He was easy-going, wonderfully sarcastic and glib, but always seemed to ask the right questions of Elise at the right time. Ross McMillan, a local actor and playwright I didn’t know very well, was reading ‘Joe’. By now, I had a pretty good bead on ‘Ken’ and his arc. While details had altered a great deal over the course of the play’s development, the focus was the same – the turbulent relationship between the two men and its gruesomely tragic outcome. Ross was wonderful to play opposite. He was focused and purposeful. The last reading in the workshop felt like the world had disappeared and it was just Ross and I rushing toward Doom. It was completely fulfilling and satisfying. Rory, Harry and Rick pulled me aside after it was over and officially offered me the part. I breathed a sigh of relief. The pay was a pittance and I would have to shave my head, but it was mine! I didn’t know who was going to play ‘Joe’. I headed off for a couple of shows out of town and returned for another “Christmas Carol” at MTC. I spent a couple of weeks in Hawaii learning lines in the sun. Sam work still thrummed unavoidably in the background, but the New Year was looking very busy.

            The play was scheduled for a February premiere and after the small bump of Harry and Rick trying to decide who should play ‘Joe’, Ross was, thankfully, finally hired and that was that. At yet another “final” workshop in early December, everything had been set in stone. Since there was so much to learn and because the depth of the relationship was at the core of the piece, Ross and I decided it would be worth our while to meet when I got back to learn lines together. More importantly, it would give us a chance to learn more about each other personally and our ways of working, to be as comfortable as possible with each other just to save time during the rehearsal process. There were now six weeks before rehearsals began and we took full advantage of the time. For me, it was very easy. Having had the luxury of all the workshops gave me a sense of security and I found myself feeling very calm. It seemed so right to be doing this show.

            As we went into rehearsals there seemed to be a great deal of excitement circulating in the community about the project. The opening was already sold out! First order of business was to get a photo taken for the poster. Ken Halliwell was bald. He wore a wig in life and looked pretty attractive in it. But since I’d not shaved my head at that point, we went for the “wig” look. They tried to make my own hair look as much like a wig as possible. Big fail on that to my eye; however that’s what we went with.

            Over the months since the last workshop, Elise had been making “improvements” to the script in spite of the fact that we’d all agreed on her final draft. We had started blocking right away and, assuming the script was as we had left it, were surprised by the additions. It didn’t take long for them to be excised – they didn’t add anything to the script – and things moved along very quickly after that. Ross and I were off-book for the most part. The many hours we’d spent together had given us a solid blueprint for the trek. We KNEW these characters intimately and had actually become protective of them. Rick was, for want of a better word, a bit of a jock. While his demeanor was jocular (no pun intended) and affable, his directorial approach was, at the outset, somewhat mechanical. The emotional intricacies of the two men seemed secondary to “putting the show up” and while understandable (we only had two weeks to opening!) Ross and I found it somewhat frustrating as time went on. There were a great many questions we needed answered to solidify our journey and they weren’t being addressed. Out of self-preservation, we dug in and created our own answers. That seemed to work.

There were some wrangles about the urgency of getting the four chairs, which acted as “the bed”, replaced by the actual bed around which much of the action centered. And there was also the realization that perhaps we had done too much work on our own. I think I’ve learned over time that a director doesn’t have the intimate details of the characters as “down” as the performers playing them. The director’s view is, out of necessity, more universal, but leads to frustrations when questions aren’t satisfactorily answered. “Where did we leave off?” would be Rick’s starting point at the start of the day and we would force ourselves through more hours of blocking all the while tugging at the bit to plumb the depths of the relationship further. Amazingly, we had our first run-through on the fourth day of rehearsals – which was a good thing because we only had nine more working days before opening!

Ross and I could feel when something worked. It was unspoken (as these things usually are) and a small look at each other would confirm it for us. We ached to have the house lights turned off allowing us to enter into this world without being aware of the watchers. We became slightly resentful of the growing directorial “intrusion” into these lives we were inhabiting and couldn’t understand why he just wouldn’t let us get on with it. I guess that’s the danger of a two-hander. Eventually the director/actors “ménage a trois” becomes a two-against-one complexity. However, as time went on, Rick, perhaps sensing the potential for discord, began to ask important questions that made Ross and I stop and assess what we were really thinking. Does ‘Joe’ have any redeeming qualities? Is ‘Ken’ truly insane? The discussions were exhausting and yielded little that was actionable but served to make Ross and me tighter with each other as performers. Scenes were grew more intense, especially the kissing scenes. Ross is straight and kissing another man was not a normal thing for him. From a tentative and slightly embarrassed beginning, the kisses got longer and longer. When our lips parted, we eventually stopped looking at each other as Ross and Richard but as ‘Joe’ and ‘Ken’. It was magical to be so far into the characters.

Shaving my head was a new experience. I’d shaved my chest a couple of times for shows, but the head was something else. With Rick standing by, the hairdresser buzzed the hair down to my scalp then lathered me up and, with a straight razor (which made me very nervous) made me bald! I watched Rick’s face as I sat facing away from the mirror and his reactions were very funny – amazement, skepticism, some fear, all of which were put on to get a rise out of me … and they did. When the hairdresser finally turned me around to look at myself I was surprised more than anything else. As the picture will attest, the look wasn’t all that bad. There was an edgy, slightly alien aura about me, but the shape of my head wasn’t unpleasant to the eye. I started to wonder how folks would react as they saw me for the first time. Ultimately, I needn’t have worried. Most were pleased at the change, some laughed, but no one, thankfully, was repulsed. The one thing I was was cold! It was mid-February and I hadn’t thought to bring a hat with me, so I froze on the way back home that day. I kept putting my hand up and rubbing my dome, trying to adjust to the feeling. I looked at myself for a long time in the bathroom mirror, trying to understand this new Richard. I could “live with it” for the time being.

Rehearsals continued. ‘Ken’ is on a rolling boil for most of the play. His angst and hyper-emotional state propel him forward, uncontrolled, belligerent, aggressive; but at times, in my playing, it all seemed one-note, always turned up to ten. Trying to find different dynamics was very difficult. It led to some tension in the room if only because I was in a constant state of agitation both as the character and myself, desperate for some emotional landing pad on which to rest, if only for a moment. It was exhausting. My friend Teresa (Lee) was a brick during the last days of rehearsal. She would come over late in the evening and take me through the lines, ask questions and offer objective suggestions, all of which served to ground me.

We moved into the final day of tech and, eventually, to the last scene about which both Ross and I were very apprehensive. Although we had talked about being naked on stage, neither of us had had that experience. There was no frame of reference for exposing oneself in front of other people. In the play, the characters spiral downward into their self-made hell culminating in the release of the long-built-up antagonism and hatred of each other as ‘Ken’ bludgeons ‘Joe’ to death with a hammer and then kills himself. In the dimly lit moments that follow, they take off their clothes and, unfettered, hold each other, both finally at peace. That afternoon, Rick cleared the room of folks except for the stage manager and the lighting technician in the booth for the last scene to take place. The lighting had focused down to a very dim spot by this point. At its edge, we were shadows. We were so deeply into the playing that there was no thinking about it. We had mimed the undressing up to that point; now, with buttons, belts, zippers, the physical mechanics were automatic. I remember, as I took off my underwear, that there was something freeing about it, a relinquishing of artifice, natural in death, in the intensity of their redemption. We moved toward each other and sat at the end of the bed. The lights slowly faded to black as I curled up in a fetal position, his arm encircling my head in his lap, my face looking up at him. In the dark, Stage Management brought out robes for us and that was it. The house lights came up and we sat in silence for a very long time. There was no “How did that feel?” by anyone, least of all Ross and I. I don’t think anyone knew what to say. I remember tears welling up in my eyes at one point in the quiet. The experience had been profound. Rick finally said “Okay, let’s take a break. You guys put on some clothes and we’ll meet in the Green Room for notes”. The only thing I said to Ross in the dressing room was “That was heavy-duty”. He agreed. It was powerful and humbling beyond description. The nudity was never actually talked about in the runs before opening. Much earlier in rehearsals it had crossed my mind that people I knew well would be seeing me naked, making “assessments”, and I wondered if this would change their attitudes toward me. After we did it that day, the thought became unimportant.

Opening was surreal. The response was rapturous. The audience was effusive in its praise afterward. Reg Skene (Rick’s Dad, Theatre Professor at the University of Winnipeg, and a Free Press Theatre critic) told me that he had been “longing to see me do something like this” and got very emotional. Some said I looked “beautiful” with my head shaved. One never knows if the words people say on opening night are sincere. From their unanimity, I got the sense that folks were genuinely affected by the piece and our performances. All the emotion and energy of the evening suddenly crashed into me. I bid everyone good night and, still clinging to the utterly visceral satisfaction of the three hours just passed, headed out into the reality of the February night chill and home on the bus.

There were a lot of praising phone calls in the days that followed. The Free Press critic who had reviewed the show (Kevin Prokosh) called my performance “a revelation after years of semi-challenging character roles”. I guess the song-and-dance-man image was fading a bit and I was now “legitimate”! The run was very short. In fact the whole project, from beginning of rehearsals to closing night, was less than a month. Word had spread and we were sold out most nights. The power of the play always took the audiences by surprise. For me, the acting experience itself was something that touched me very deeply. The fact that I could reach inside each night, bring this man back to life and affect an audience was the greatest reward. I wanted more of that! The compliments never stopped and my “cred’ went up a great deal. The “more of that” was only a few months away!

As usual, my other life quickly consumed me with contracts and budgets and the travel arrangements for musicians in Regional Theatre productions across the country.  As well, “Phantom” was about to head off to Southeast Asia on its Tour. Thankfully, with the advent of spreadsheet programs (remember, this is 1994!), my worry about making mathematical errors was eased because this miracle of computer technology did all the work for me! I just had to enter a few salary and pension numbers in a formula grid I’d created and, with the push of a button, the payroll was done!

At about the time “Live With It’ closed, the Manitoba Theatre Centre announced that Keanu Reeves would be playing ‘Hamlet’ in their next season. KEANU REEVES!!?? I was a huge fan (this was long before “The Matrix” films) and my brain went into overdrive trying to figure out how I could be involved in this project. That would be an ongoing quest for a little while.

With the success of “Live With It” I’d suddenly become a hot commodity. Rory at MAP talked to me about developing a one-man show based on the life of Lorenz Hart, Richard Rogers’ great lyricist. Harry had approached me about a show called “Whale Watching Weather” for Theatre Projects. But this was all talk. Not to let any grass grow under my feet, I immediately went into rehearsals for the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre/MTC co-production of “Diary of Anne Frank” playing the role of ‘Mr. Dussel’. Kim McCaw was directing. All did not go as planned.

There are probably few people alive who don’t know the story of Anne Frank and her Family hiding in a tiny secret attic space in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of Holland. The play is incredibly affecting. There were points during rehearsals when we had to force ourselves to stay “in” the piece because to step “out” for even a moment would result in being overwhelmed by emotion. We all supported each other and were a close-knit group.

One morning I got a call at home asking if I could come in to the Rehearsal Hall earlier than scheduled. Our ‘Mr. Frank’, Earl Kline, had suffered a stroke at home the evening before! Everyone was devastated as we gathered. Earl was a funny, sweet man, perfectly cast as the generous and compassionate ‘Mr. Frank’. We were understandably low-keyed as we waited for more news on his condition from the Health Sciences Center. He had been listed in “serious condition” but was improving. We ran through the first Act and were told that another actor from Vancouver would be flying in the following day to take over the role. As the day progressed, we couldn’t concentrate and were let go in the late afternoon. Just after dinner, I got a call from Kim telling me that Earl had died! He had been awake and in great spirits and there were no signs that anything was wrong. He was gone! News spreads very fast in this business and I began getting phone calls from all over the county. After a while, I just let them go to the machine. Watching TV seemed frivolous so I started ironing shirts, trying to distract myself. I picked up a few of the messages and called a few folks back but nothing seemed to penetrate the sadness. I dreaded rehearsal the following day.

Ron Halder, the new ‘Mr. Frank’ (he had played the role recently), had arrived and, obviously understanding our plight, was very sensitive in this difficult situation. We took him through the first act blocking and made slight adjustments and called it a day. The rest of the rehearsal period went very smoothly. We rallied around Ron which eased us all forward to the opening. The play left us exhausted every night in the run. Death and high emotion seemed to be my lot in my theatrical life of late. I needed something different!

I set up an audition for “Hamlet”. Amazingly to me, I was asked to audition for Rainbow’s season of “Brigadoon” and “Damn Yankees”. I’d also committed to doing the first workshop of a new play by Bill Harrar for Prairie Theatre Exchange. I found, because of scheduling conflicts, I had to make a choice between a production of Norm Foster’s “Ethan Claremore’s Christmas” and James Sherman’s comedy ‘Beau Geste.  Considering the past few months, I chose the latter.

With the drama and upheaval of the past eighteen months thankfully in the rearview mirror, the Summer and Fall of 1993 were fraught-free but frantic. While the steady thrum of Music Services International underpinned my existence, I threw myself into a multitude of personal projects. At various points along the way I wondered if I’d taken on too much and I felt on the verge of complete shut-down. But the joy of performing Lerner and Lowe for the Edmonton Opera was a momentary panacea to the constant demands of the contracts and payrolls and budgets that always, always, started my days. Even away from the calculator and the stacks of paper that occupied all available surfaces in my hotel room, I found myself thinking about a salary formula or some legalese in a musician’s agreement as I sat in the rehearsal hall waiting to make an entrance, little administrative tendrils that would worm their way into the “rain in Spain”. They became the pervasive accompaniment to everything I did.

         This was my third time round with “My Fair Lady” and my first Rainbow-less summer in 10 years. It was an odd feeling as we moved the show onto the immense stage of the Northern Jubilee Auditorium to start the tech rehearsals, “odd” because Calgary has the identical hall (the “Southern Jube”) where I’d been adjudicating only a few weeks earlier. I had to keep reminding myself where I was. Nothing is small in opera.

As can be seen in the photo, we were dwarfed by the sets (the books on the shelves were half as big as we were!) and while it was grand and luxurious it lacked intimacy. However, the production was pretty spectacular. The cast had a lot of friends in it and I had worked with the Chorus folk before. American soprano Lee Merrill was ‘Eliza’, Welsh baritone Eric Roberts was “Higgins’ and Patrick A‘Hearn was ‘Freddie’. Opera conductor Justin Brown was our MD.

It was wonderful to watch all those slightly staid opera singers doing contemporary Musical Theatre and to see the chorus breaking loose in “Get Me To The Church On Time”, so far away from the “formal” sounds they were used to producing and letting go with Kelly Robinson’s wild and wonderful choreography. I wasn’t missing Rainbow.

            Once back home, still lugging about the typewriter and calculator, I settled in again at my office desk, preparing for the ‘Phantom’ Honolulu Tour and trying to maintain order with the growing number of projects Sam continued to pile on me daily. Also in the mix now were two major commitments I’d made.

One was to again produce the “Winnipeg Cares” AIDS Benefit. Trying to come up with a new approach was a trial. We knew what worked for Winnipeg audiences and wondered if we should depart from the “formula”. We decided that, in addition to the proven favorites, something more emotionally relevant to the tragedy of the continuing AIDS pandemic was needed. In addition to the six NAMES Project Memorial Quilt panels (at that time numbering more than forty-eight thousand) being loaned to us, a piece of music that had been written in 1990 by the American composer John Corigliano, was added to the program. “Of Rage and Remembrance” is based on the third movement of his First Symphony and is a memorial to the friends he had lost to AIDS over the years. Conducted by Earl Stafford, it features a male choral component during which names of those lost are spoken with orchestral underscoring. The thought was that those moments would be made personal by the people performing the work.  Finding a chorus of 30-40 men was not easy. Alan Blanchette was a local baritone involved with a lot of choral groups and church choirs, and I put him in charge of getting the singers. Many accepted the assignment at the outset; but, depressingly, when some of them learned what the piece was about and what they would be singing, they dropped out. Their decisions spoke volumes as to attitudes still associated with AIDS.

            The rehearsals were deeply moving. The 32 men we ended up with met the challenge of the very difficult music and, over the weeks of preparations, came to embody the spirit and depth of the piece and of our concert. Many of the singers and Symphony musicians provided names of friends they had lost (as did I) and our tribute was personal and heartfelt.

            There were some bumps here and there in final rehearsals with some folks demanding that they be in the first Act or that they didn’t want to follow a certain performer … all to be expected and, in my best diplomatic style, I managed to placate the “divas” and dispel any tension. Evelyn Hart danced. The spectacular “Rusalka” danced. The Symphony Mozart-ed. Tracy Dahl sang with Bramwell Tovey. Al Simmons made everyone laugh. Randy Bachman rocked. Gwen Hoebig violin-ed. Everyone was happy. The production was astonishing! I stood backstage during the show and marveled at the stunning talent that had donated their time for the cause.  For a small respite, the following morning at the crack of dawn I left for New York with Robbie (Paterson).

            I had been asked to audition for a New York production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe”.  The audition had been arranged by good friend Dottie Danner who was directing the production and scheduled late on the morning we arrived. “The Nightmare Song” is sung by the ‘Lord Chancellor’ and, as its title might indicate, is a horror! It is a typical G&S “patter song” but on steroids. Usually there is a Chorus that interjects from time to time if only to give the “old man” a chance to get a breath. Not this one. It starts and doesn’t stop for four minutes! Nothing is repeated; there are no little orchestral interludes and, to add to the trial, W.S. Gilbert, in a display of lyrical fireworks, crams a syllable on every beat and, for presumed comic effect, trips up the ear with stresses on the wrong syll-A-bles! The tempo is extremely fast and relentless!

I arrived at the large, dingy, dark hall that was our meeting place and, after hugging Dottie, was introduced to the Producer, a somewhat dour and distant person who gave the distinct impression that he was doing Dottie a favour. Not a good sign. The pianist was sitting at an upright tucked very far away in a corner and, with no preamble, the Producer asked me to begin. A little recitativo section sets up the song (“love, unrequited, robs me of my rest”) accompanied by keyboard continuo. Once that’s finished we’re into the patter.

The pianist started off at a rip I didn’t think was possible to come from a musician’s hands. Why I didn’t stop him and say “whoa, that’s way too fast” is beyond me, but I launched in – at his tempo. The beginning was sort of alright. I could rattle off the first two verses in my sleep. But then it starts getting complicated with a lot a parenthetical thoughts which, at the “normal” tempo, are difficult to navigate and make sense of for the audience. I could feel the sweat starting to form on my brow – it was a humid early September in NYC. There is a momentary stop in the song as the ‘LC’ reacts to all he’s just spewed out, takes a breath, and the tempo gets even faster for the recap. At that point, I knew this had not gone well, so I went for broke and just yelled the last verse, now hoarse and drenched to the bone. It ended and I felt like I was going to faint. The Producer said “thank you” and walked out of the room. I apologized to Dottie and left. Guess I wasn’t going to be working in New York any time soon! I don’t know what I expected. New York was still willing to swallow you up and spit you out. I put it all out of my mind and it was on to the fun stuff.

            This trip with Robbie was special for a few reasons and that was mostly to do with the productions we saw. We were staying with “Uncle Reed” once more so all the Quebec Embassy amenities were at our disposal including the chauffeur at the airport. There were also some perks working for Sam as he had arranged, though our now burgeoning NYC connections, tickets for “Crazy For You” (which, a few years down the road and unbeknownst to us at the time, Robbie would direct and I would perform in for Rainbow Stage … but that’s a story for another time).

While I think I had subliminally noticed it on previous Broadway visits, on this trip I became very aware of a performance “technique” which, to this day, drives me up the proverbial wall. Harry Groener was playing ‘Bobby Child’, the main character. The show had been running for a while and had become somewhat tired and the performances a bit lackluster. But the music and dancing were spectacular. A few scenes in I became aware of how “presentational” Groener’s style was. He would be talking to another character and, suddenly would turn out to the audience to deliver a set-up for a funny line, as if to say, “look at me folks … I’m acting and I’m about to deliver the punch line!” He would get a little smirk on his face; his eyes would glance up to the balcony, look around and when the joke was spoken take visible pride in the laugh. I noticed it with a few of the other characters as well, this breaking of the fourth wall doing a stand-up sort of presentation. Perhaps it was a New York/Broadway thing but it was very off-putting … just bad, self-indulgent theatre, if you ask me. The strange thing is that I usually see it in musicals and rarely in plays.

            While we were riding up a large packed elevator to the top of the Empire State Building to do another tourist thing, I could feel a couple staring at me. “Aren’t you Richard Hurst?” they suddenly blurted out. It took me utterly by surprise. “Um, yes” I said. “We’re from Winnipeg and we love your work” they gushed. I could see all the heads in the elevator turn toward me. “Oh, thanks” I replied as I felt my face start to heat up. “We’ve seen you in a lot of shows. Are you doing anything this season?” They wanted to engage in a conversation! “Uh, a few things” I managed as, thankfully, the elevator doors opened at the top of the building and we stepped on to the landing. “Have a good day” I said as Robbie and I escaped the episode and fell over ourselves laughing. There were still people looking in our direction trying to figure out if I was anyone famous. Well, maybe in Winnipeg a little. We laughed about it for a while.

            “Fool Moon” is an “entertainment” created by Bill Irwin and David Shiner, two fabulous physical mime comedians. We had seats down front on the side and before the show began, a stage manager approached Robbie asking if he would be willing to be a part of a skit concerning a camera. Without any in-depth explanation, Robbie was given the prop camera and asked to play along when the “bit” started. I think it ended up with “our” film being exposed and the camera being destroyed in the process of the skit, but the audience was convulsed by the antics that ensued, as was I. The back of my head hurt from laughing so hard. A great evening of brilliant craft and, this time, playing to the house was what it was all about.

            Luckily, we managed to get standing room space for “Angels in America – Part One”. Transfixed is the only way to describe the experience for both of us. Ron Leibman was playing the role of ‘Roy Cohn’ and the barrage of words and imagery and emotion was unrelenting. The fact that we were standing at the back of the orchestra section was irrelevant. We were enveloped by the story and the performances. We saw “Tommy” … mostly for Robbie … another spectacular production, very loud and visually stunning. We got tickets for “Beau Jest”, a play by James Sherman, which, again unbeknownst to me, I would appear in a few years later in Winnipeg. Did a Circle Line Boat Tour around the island, ate Nathan’s hot dogs and watched some of the Labor Day Parade. I love travelling with Robbie because we talk … non-stop … about everything … and he’s just so easy-going. But, once again, it was back to the real world and into the thick of the second project to which I’d agreed.

The Pantages Playhouse Theatre opened in 1914 as a major vaudeville venue, part of the Pantages 86-theatre chain, and was used for every kind of local and touring production until the Centennial Concert Hall was built in 1967. Over the years, it had seen the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jeanette MacDonald and George Burns and Gracie Allen. In 1983 it was designated a National Historic Site. Surrounded by pawn shops and bric-a-brac stores the city had decided to clean up the area in a major way. All the stores on Main Street were torn down and the Theatre was given a substantial renovation that took almost a year to complete. I had been hired to create a show to celebrate the theatre’s history and the re-opening of the space.

Preparations had been in the works for months. The committee had given me free rein as to the style and character of the show. Since its advent was as a vaudeville house, I decided that we should take our cue from this variety format and assemble local artists to represent the various performance styles through the years of the Theatre’s history. It was an opportunity to showcase some of the great “non-professional” artists in town. Some acts were ready-made; there were a couple of actors who frequently appeared as ‘Laurel and Hardy’ for community organizations; another who played ‘Charlie Chaplin’ for parties and fundraisers; I coerced my friend Debbie Maslowsy and her brother Jerry into doing some ‘Burns and Allan’ radio routines; I persuaded singers Joan Stephens and Chris Enns to portray Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy singing “Indian Love Call” (“When I’m Calling You’”) – he onstage, she in the balcony. There were a variety of comedians, dancers, choirs and musicians to fill out the evening. I was the host.

There was a bit of wrangling, however. The vast majority of the evening had been predicated on acoustic performances, which is to say, sans amplification. For a goodly number of years, enhancement (microphones and amplifiers) were not used in the theatre. It was a trial getting people to divest themselves of those sound crutches. But I got around it a little bit by persuading some of the acts do their bits as a radio broadcast with a stand-up “radio” mic acting as minimal “sonic enhancement”. That worked fine. The usually surly stage crew was incredibly patient. Our stage management team took everything in stride leading up the final dress and, almost uncharacteristically, was incredibly encouraging and willing to make concessions for extra time demands.

The evening was dazzling. While ticket sales had initially been worrisome, on the night it was a packed house – 1,200 people in a festive mood. There had been an outdoor pre-performance event in the warm, late summer evening, with a pipe band, an antique car parade and some of the performers busking and entertaining the arriving patrons on the brand new plaza in front of the theatre. The new lobby was beyond anyone’s expectation. A few speeches by the civic leaders were made and everyone filed into the house for the show. There was an air of celebration and excitement backstage. Our entertainers were raring to go especially now that they knew how big the house was. I walked out on to the stage with the audience still chattering and getting settled as I started my introduction.

“Louder” yelled someone from the back of the house. It threw me for a split second and I laughed out loud. I got a bit louder and the audience realized this was the way it was going to be and went completely silent. “This is how it used to be, folks. We’re turning back the clock to experience the authentic connection between us up here and you out there.” They bought into it for the rest of the night and the fact that they really could hear was confirmed by the laughs that came in waves during the comedy acts. Some of the performers decided they were going to indulge themselves with this rare opportunity to play for such a huge crowd and went on a bit longer than scheduled, but no one seemed to mind. “The hook, the hook” kept coming to my mind as I stood backstage urging folks on with windmill arms. The Finale with everyone on stage was beautiful and very touching as we all sang “No Business Like Show Business”. You could feel the history of the building enfolding us. With my best John Barrymore impression, I spoke Shakespeare’s “Our revels now are ended” from “The Tempest” in closing. The response was tsunamic and the crush in the lobby afterward with compliments flying all over the place was reward enough for all of us. “Let’s do it again next year” was a request I heard over and over again. Oh yeah? I didn’t think so!

I put on my Equity VP hat for another Cross Country Check-In with Jeff Braunstein, took a breath, and headed back West for a “Pirates” with Calgary Opera led, once again, by Kelly Robinson. Took another breath and, after a Toronto Council meeting, I was back in the Peg with “A Christmas Carol”, this time, a “musical” adaptation by Canadian dramatist Mavor Moore. I’m sorry. I know he’s a pioneer, an “icon” and a “national treasure” in some circles, but I could find, over the course of this experience, little positive to say about this iteration of Charles Dickens’s classic, particularly the songs. My Journal from those rehearsals days turns up some “observations” which I shan’t go into here. For me, the saving graces were having Robbie, also in the show, at hand for commiseration, and working with “Teddy” Atienza who played ‘Scrooge’. He was a spritely imp of a man, very funny and the antithesis of the character he was playing. One of my roles (the other being ‘Fezziwig’) was the ‘Ghost of Christmas Present’. To give the impression of this larger-than-life character, it was decided that I be costumed in an immense brocaded coat, a huge beard and wig and, encasing my feet, foot-high “cothurni” or elevating footwear. Because of their weight, it looked as if was walking in slow motion … which I was! I had a seven-foot staff rigged with “magical” effects – sparks and flames and the like – operated by pressing various buttons on its shank. Getting through rehearsals was a test of courage and balance because I never knew if the “magic” was going to work or if I was about to take a fall because of the lifts. If I went down, there was no way to get back up without physical assistance. It was a problem that lurked in my head as we headed into the final rehearsals on stage. I only went over once in tech. It was a helpless feeling to keel over like that with nothing to break my fall and I vowed to myself that it would never happen again.

Since the previous years had gone so well, Steven (Schipper, our director) asked if I would give the Scholarship Fundraising speech at intermission dressed as the genial ‘Fezziwig’. With the ‘Ghost’ appearing immediately after the break I had to dash backstage for what constituted a very fast and complicated change from ‘Fezziwig’ to the ‘Ghost’ – wigs, beard, makeup, the whole megillah … and the shoes! By the time I walked back onstage, I was out of breath and somewhat uncentered. I had adjusted to this state during the Previews, but on opening night, with the nerves and energy coursing through us all, I was frazzled and slightly distracted. None of the ‘magic’ worked which pissed me off and made my lack of focus even worse. In making a long, slow cross to stage left and I could feel the hem of the long coat suddenly catch under the shoe. As I took the next step the rest of the hem couldn’t go anywhere and I started to “walk up” the coat. “I’m going down”, I thought to myself. I was about two feet from a leg which masked an entrance and, with the help of the staff, I managed to take one more step grabbing on to the curtain with my free hand. I could feel the entire world take in and hold its breath. This was now Man versus Gravity. The weight of the coat, hopelessly caught under my feet, kept pulling me downward and doubling me over. With all the strength I could muster and realizing that this was now being watched as a sporting event, I held on for all I was worth and pulled myself to an upright position getting back on to solid ground, adjusting the coat, continuing on with the final lines of the scene and making my exit … to huge applause! People backstage still had their hands over their faces when I came off and a chair was brought quickly for me to sit down and remove the offending shoes.

After the performance, Steven rushed up and threw his arms around me. “Thank you for saving the show” he whispered in my ear. “I thought sure you were going down”. “So did I”, I said, trying to sound brave.  The run continued on and sputtered to an end. I thought at one point that this was what hell must be like … doing two of these shows a day for eternity. It rarely (at least for me) happens that one feels trapped in a production, but this was one of those times. “A Christmas Carol” was quickly relegated to the well-thank-God-that’s-over pile and I was about to enter into one of the seminal theatrical experiences of my life.

The truth of the matter is that I had come to feel ambivalent about adjudicating Music “Festivals”. I had done many of them over the years and always ended up feeling rather unfulfilled. They were depressing experiences for me. It wasn’t the participants that left me with those feelings. In fact, I was heartened at the number of young folks getting involved in Musical Theatre performance. It was the teachers with whom I had problems; and the “Festival” moniker was misleading on so many levels. These events were, simply put, competitions pitting performer against performer and by agreeing to adjudicate, I was, sadly, contributing to my own disquiet. I eventually discovered that I could also get into trouble for voicing these concerns.

            Following the Winnipeg Festival, I had accepted a two-week engagement to adjudicate the Kiwanis Music Festival in Calgary. This was a HUGE event, two weeks of morning, afternoon and evening sessions with hundreds of young and older performers in (for me) the Theatre/Speech and Musical Theatre divisions. Calgary has a lot of Dance Studios and I knew I would be in for some … well, I’ll get to that. On the surface it sounded alright; I just had to prepare myself for long days and inventive ways of offering basically the same observations over and over again. There were a lot of other adjudicators and we usually found ourselves eating together in our hotel’s dining room, comparing notes and approaches for the barrage of young performers who were paraded before us daily. I became good friends with Selena James who was taking care of the “legit” singers. She was very funny, made me laugh as we talked about our day’s work and experiences and kept me sane with her advice to focus on the good things, in short supply though they may be.

            The thing about adjudicating is that you just sit there, captive behind a table, taking notes, calculating a “mark” then quickly moving on to the next one. You become a machine. You have a “secretary” who organizes the paper you’re generating and who keeps things in order as you focus on how to make your thinking clear enough in the mad-dash scribbling you’re doing on an individual’s “Assessment” page. It isn’t until the end of a class/session that you get to stand up and offer some individual notes and make some general comments. This is a tense time because all the teachers and parents are sitting in front of you (usually grouped in little cliques) comparing their assessments with yours. You can feel group hackles go up if your thoughts don’t mesh with theirs. And the marks are anticipated with bated breath. Announcing the winner of a class is a scary proposition. Though not fully aware of the existing “politics” you can certainly sense it, and one feels somewhat grateful that you can leave town after the Festival is done!

            On the up side, there is always some wonderful talent which, if only for a moment, serves to remind you why you love the Performing Arts. But there are the other moments when you want to cut your wrists, or the wrists of the person you’re watching! And the thing is, again, I don’t blame the performers. I blame the “teachers”! It’s not always the case but I could usually see the difference between someone taught by a caring teacher and someone who has been shuffled through a “plant” and come out the other side as a product. How an adult can have reached the point in their “teaching” experience when they take a young person, strip away humanity and artistry, and create a robotic duplicate of a film or recording personality is, well,  beyond my understanding.  It was after a huge (35!) class of “Juniors” during the second week that I’d had my fill and, in my comments at the end of the class, I went for broke!

           The session took place in the Jubilee Auditorium, an immense Concert Hall seating 2,600 people. I couldn’t figure out why the organization had chosen such a huge venue (I’d performed there a few times) for these presentations. Having 8 and 9 year olds come out on to that gargantuan stage to try to “fill” the room was doing them a great disservice. They would be lost in the space. It wasn’t until I arrived to find the Orchestra level filled with hundreds of people that I understood. Moms and Dads, brothers and sisters, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, friends, teachers, studio hangers-on, not to mention the other students not performing made up the very large and boisterous audience. Multiply the 35 kids by all their supporters and there was no other Festival venue that would hold them. I was in a row way down front and cordoned off from the hoard so, for me, it felt a bit more intimate. At least I could see faces and hear words. And it started.

            Some of the kids were scared to death … walking out into that gigantic space must have been dreadfully frightening. Despite whatever training and conditioning they’d been through, I could see and feel their nerves as their piano introduction began. Some surprised me with well-defined characters and approaches, but the vast majority made me inwardly shake my head and my glutes tense up. There were kids dressed as cats, a Pinocchio or two, a couple of “merry maids” and some youngsters dressed in formal wear – tuxes and gowns! It became very clear that performances had been rehearsed to death and, at some point along the way, had, for the kids, turned into mindless out-of-body experiences. All we saw were wee automatons going through the motions, saying the words and singing the notes and very little else. Watching a youngster forcing out dance movements on every word of a song or going through graphic motions (“I” was indicated by pointing at the eye, “love’ became pointing at the heart and “you” by gesturing to the audience) made my skin crawl and was embarrassing. The audience was ecstatic after each presentation and you could hear the little cliques cheer and yell as their tiny hero finished.

            The class finally ended and after a few minutes conferring with the secretary, I collected my notes and headed down to the floor in front of the stage. There was no mic so I had to talk very loudly and slowly … which was counter intuitive to what I had to say, especially to the kids who, fortunately,  had been brought down to the front rows of the auditorium. I didn’t do individual assessments – which would have taken forever – but rather a group commentary pointing out a few examples. I told them that I honoured them for getting up on that huge stage to begin with. I asked them if they had been nervous and they all nodded and said yes. I told them that getting up and doing what they did was hard. It was even hard for adults. But I said that making sure you’re prepared and know your material was the key to a good presentation. “BUT” I said “one important thing in performing is to know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing! Does anyone know where you get that information?” There was a bit of silence. A small voice said “From the video?” The audience broke up.

            I could feel my skin tightening and the heat rushing to my head. I gave it a moment, sighed, and weakly smiled at them. “Well, that might be one choice. But you might want to think about what the people who wrote the song gave you as clues. What do the words mean and how does the music make you feel?” It was me being as diplomatic as possible. I let them think about that for a moment. My voice got louder as I wanted to make my points to the audience spread out through the hall. Essentially I told them that “the solution to the challenge of leading young people toward thinking for themselves is not found in dressing up in costume and being pushed out in front of an audience. It’s not addressed by telling them to ‘do this or do that’ but rather by provoking them to consider for themselves what they’re saying and why they’re saying it. Imitating someone else’s performance doesn’t really involve creative thinking. It takes a long time to bring a young mind around to fending for itself, but the eventual product is an honest one and based on personal discovery in a very complicated process.” There was a smattering of applause. I thanked the kids for being there and I left it at that. I felt worn out and frail but I had said what needed to be said and headed out for some fresh air. A few people stopped me as I was walking out of the auditorium and thanked me for the comments. A couple of teachers introduced themselves as local members of “NATS” (National Association of Teachers of Singing) and asked if I would be available to do some workshops for them at some point in the future. I enthusiastically said I would (I eventually did) and that buoyed me somewhat.

The afternoon was spent doing some final “Dramatic Arts” sessions which required a lot of concentration. There was some poetry presented, some monologues and scenes. There were even a few entries done in French for which, thankfully, I’d been given the material in advance. Classical French Poetry is not my strong suit but I muddled through. The difference between these presentations and the Musical Theatre performances was marked. For some reason we seem to move away from reality when singing is involved. That reality has to be clarified and heightened to help suspend the disbelief for an audience. It requires an artist to become even more committed to the honesty of the performance when making (and maintaining) transitions from the spoken word to singing. But then, that’s just me. That evening gave me hope however, as I was dealing with Intermediate and Senior Musical Theatre performers. The contrast to the morning’s event was glaring. These were serious young adults who had apparently escaped the studio confines and were mostly students of voice teachers and coaches who had, in collaboration, approached the material with great care and consideration. We were all totally captivated by the presentations and I left the event uplifted.

The next (and final) afternoon, just before going into a session, Donna, the Head of the Festival took me aside in a hallway. “I don’t know how to say this” she said. “Some of the teachers from yesterday morning’s class were upset at some of the things you said. They felt you were attacking their teaching methods”. “Well” I said, “I guess to a degree I was.” “They want an apology from you” she said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! “They want it to be made publically.” I could see she was very uncomfortable as she went on to say that the Festival had a great stake in its involvement with these studios and that the teachers were adamant that I say something to appease them. “I feel badly about this” she said. I eased her pain and told her I’d come up with something.

That evening was a “Gala Farewell Session” for the Senior Musical Theatre performers at which I would reveal the marks indicating who would be going on to the Provincial and National Finals in their categories. There was a full house in a secondary auditorium, thankfully more intimate than “The Jube”. I jotted down some notes, this time sitting in the audience, and, at the end, took the opportunity to do a couple of small lecture-dems with some of the students, short coaching sessions giving a glimpse of how I would approach a young singer/performer using the music they’d already sung that evening. I felt fully alive as we broke down the material and I offered some suggestions. These young people were astonishing. They had all risen to the occasion and had made it obvious why they should be heading to bigger contests. Some brought me close to tears by their clarity and commitment to the material and the audience understood how special this was. I finished up with them indicating that I was proud to have been witness to their work. Then I started in with the “apology”. “I understand that some people might have taken umbrage (I actually used that word) at what I said during a session yesterday morning”. I proceeded to explain (again) how both working in the performing arts and teaching them should always be centered on the quest for and achievement of truth and excellence no matter what our age. “However, in my zeal to get that point across, I may have been a bit less diplomatic than I could have been and I apologize to anyone who may have been offended”.

The fact that I used the word “apologize” was as far as I was prepared to go. I was neither going to absolve them of their responsibility for the dreadful performances I’d seen that morning nor was I going to condone their teaching methods. As one, the audience rose and applauded. I got the distinct impression that the response was not so much for my apology as it was for me personally and what I’d said about my commitment to the process. This impression was borne out following the session when people came up to me and thanked me for the things I’d said about the craft and what it meant to me. There was one very distinguished-looking East Indian gentleman who rather sheepishly approached. He was the father of one of the young ladies who had performed. “I am embarrassed that you were required to give that apology and I offer my apology that you had been put in that position. People should check their egos at the door. If you were in Bombay, you would be worshipped.” It was, for me, vindication enough. Donna reiterated what some of the teachers had mentioned earlier – that NATS wanted me for some teacher workshops – handed me my cheque, thanked me for my expertise, and I was out of there, desperate to get back home to find out what was going on. I’ve not adjudicated another “Festival” since.

That second group that had thrown its hat into the Rainbow ring (a group called “THAT” which stood for “The Historically Aware Theatre” … a name I couldn’t figure out) had, a week earlier, been in touch to offer me the Producer job should they get the nod from City Hall to take over the running of the Stage. By the time I returned, the “Past Presidents” had won the bid and, finally, any hope I’d dimly held vanished utterly. At least I knew now and moved ahead. I was back in the thick of Music Services work and Sam unloaded on me. While I had kept the ‘Les Miz” payrolls on track in Calgary, Sam had waited for my return to involve me in the projects that had piled up during my absence. We had been awarded the Contractor position for “Phantom of the Opera” which was about to start a National Tour, first stop, Winnipeg. Having been through the massive preparation process with “Les Miz” I thought this would pretty much follow the same formula. At least I knew what to expect. The Producer for “Phantom” was the Livent Corporation, a much bigger and supposedly more organized group than the Mirvishes. It was run by Toronto-based entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky and he would figure prominently in my life for the next six years. For now, he was just a rather pushy guy who called from time to time (“Richard, its Garth” reminding me very much of Irving Guttman’s phone salutations when he called, but much more clipped and authoritarian) demanding to know where Sam was and when I was getting him the revised budget for the “Phantom” Orchestra. He scared me slightly because he was the “Big Boss”, very demanding, all business, and there was never anything “social” about his calls … although he did soften eventually when he realized that I knew what I was doing. But at that point, I was just an underling he had to put up with because I had the numbers. I was deferential and compliant and treated him with great respect … which I guess I’d convinced myself that he deserved.

“Phantom” Orchestra rehearsals went well enough but, as had come to pass with the Mirvishes, it was again a case of too many cooks stirring the broth. While they had produced quality work in Toronto this was Livent’s first big Tour and I got the feeling that they didn’t want to relinquish any “power” to anyone outside the organization. Wrangling the music numbers was my job and, as diplomatically as possible, I told them to let us (MSI) take care of the orchestra details for them as outlined in our contract. Now, there is a big difference between “the Presenter” and “the Producer”. The Presenter is the organization or individual who “buys” the show for local presentation. The Producer” (in this case, Livent) is the entity responsible for package the Presenter buys. Above it all sat Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Really Useful Group” who licenses his work to the Producers. It was becoming apparent that the delineation of responsibilities had not been defined enough between the bottom two entities and was resulting in more cooks coming into the kitchen and creating havoc specifically with our – my – very neatly organized framework for receiving the payments and producing the payrolls. By the time we opened, all had been wrestled into place. But it took much too much energy and LOTS of talking.

Now that we were getting more established as music contractors, Sam decided that our meetings, which always happened at my dining room table, were taking up too much time – usually a minimum of two to three hours as he offloaded and explained details. He told me he wanted to me to learn how to use a Dictaphone. I told him in no uncertain terms that he could find someone else for my job if that was going to be our relationship. After building the business with him over the past year, I was not going to be reduced to his secretary. I was doing WAY too much to be just a note-taker. I had essentially evolved into the CFO and if he wanted a secretary, he could hire one, but it wasn’t going to be me. We never talked about it again. And he eventually did hire a secretary.

It was about this time that we opened the second Company – Lutfiyya Enterprises, Ltd (“Lutent”) – to deal exclusively with overseeing and coordinating the many “A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline” productions that were now happening all over the place. An American group called Mainstage Management Ltd. had started working for us in the U.S. and was putting together a large Bus and Truck Tour of “Patsy”. Bus and Truck Tours were on the lowest rung of touring shows, but they were a relatively inexpensive and efficient way of moving a show around, hitting the lesser markets away from major cities. The small cast and five musicians and some production personnel travelled on a bus. The two separate sets and set-up crews were in two trucks which leapfrogged each other, setting up in one city on the schedule while the production was playing in another. It was in constant motion and very tiring for the personnel. “Sits” were only a few days long, sometimes only a night in the smaller towns, but despite the grueling work, the quality was kept has high as possible. These tours kept show revenues going long after major city demand had dried up. We didn’t do a lot of those tours but, for a while, they kept the coffers full. For “Patsy”, the “American back roads and hinterlands” were prime real estate.

As if the orchestra contracting wasn’t enough, the intricacies of licensing the music for the show with our international partners took a different set of mental skills and the stress continued to build.  As well as dealing with the rights from the Cline Estate, we now were also coordinating the payment of music royalties to the publishing houses for all the songs in “Patsy”! And there were a lot of them written by all kinds of composers and lyricists! Sometimes a single song’s license was held by more than one publisher and the calculation of their percentage of the percentage of the total royalties was incredibly complicated and nerve wracking, especially when the “favoured nations” clause was in a contract – meaning that none of the publishers on a song could get more than any other publisher! I don’t think I ever got it all right on the first try.

It was getting harder and harder to balance the amount of work I was doing for both companies and all the other projects I had going on for myself. The ceremonies for the Pantages Theatre re-opening required a lot of meetings and planning. They told me I wasn’t working fast enough! (I held my tongue.) The “Winnipeg Cares” Gala was also on my docket once more. It was getting to be a bigger and bigger event. That year we had approached Elizabeth Taylor (she had date conflicts) and were offered some precious sections of “The AIDS Quilt”. The Quilt was a very big deal and had to be “curated” [handled and organized] by the Winnipeg Art Gallery. I was again hosting and performing for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Fundraiser. An observation in my Journal indicated that “Lord, this is getting out of hand”, but I sucked it up – because I had to – and carried on. It was a very busy time.

With so much going on, I felt a bit guilty about leaving Winnipeg to do ‘Pickering’ in Edmonton Opera’s production of “My Fair Lady” (my Rainbow replacement) being directed by the great Kelly Robinson. In fact there was a slight twinge of not wanting to go because I’d finally managed to comfortably adjust everything in my life to the pace that I now had under control. I was meeting various deadlines and timeframes and found that the whirlwind of activity actually produced a surprising amount of energy by itself. Despite my kvetching at times (to myself), it was all invigorating and exciting. Everything was in total order when I left on a bright Sunday morning in mid-June. My suitcase was filled with office supplies, my accounting and payroll ledgers, deposit books, FedEx envelopes, company stationery, phone/fax numbers and addresses of way too many people … and a few clothes. ‘Eliza Doolittle’ and friends would fill most of my waking hours for the next month!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then the “Shadow Board” appeared!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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