The first rehearsal of the Orchestra for the Canadian National Tour of “Les Miserables” on June 14^th 1992 was surreal!

            I arrived to find the Rehearsal Hall at the Centennial Concert Hall populated by dozens of people bustling with energy and activity. I knew all of the local musicians we’d contracted. They were the best of the best. I’d had worked with all of them in one situation or another, but this was a new context for us. I was now greeting them as their “employer” rather than as a performer, so the dynamic was just a wee bit different. At least they knew who I was. The travelling musicians were another thing altogether. Over the weeks previous, my communication with these folks and with the large production team (who were also in the room) had been by phone. I had formed images of them in my head based on their voices but had no idea who was who except by the instrument they were sitting with or standing next to. None of them matched my conjured-up visuals!

            Sam was already there rushing about making sure that things were in order. We’d sent off the scores and tape dubs of the music well in advance so everyone knew what was required of them. The warm-up noise was tumultuous and excitingly theatrical! I went around and introduced myself to the new folks and they all said that it was great to finally put a face to the voice. My job was to answer any questions or concerns they might have and was generally at their disposal. It was a great start.

I was introduced to Paul Sportelli, the Musical Director, to Eric Goldstein, the Company Manager (the go-to person while the show was on the road) and to Bob Billig, the Music Supervisor for North America and the biggest of the mucky-mucks with regard to ALL aspects of the music. I felt like genuflecting but resisted. They were all very nice people and I could feel the anticipation welling up in me as we got closer to the start of the rehearsal. Sam introduced me to Bob Mills, the bass player, who was to be our main contact while they were “out”. It was Bob who would report any additional orchestra charges for the payroll and how things were going with the musicians. One important thing to remember is that this combination of human beings was very talented but, as a group, had never worked together before. It was a foundation of Sam’s ethos that the people he worked with shared the same goal of musical excellence, had respect for each other and the work. His decisions to hire the folks he did were based on either personal connections (i.e. having worked with them before), recommendations from respected associates or having watched and listened to them play. I knew that all the folks in this room had been vetted to the highest standards and were, as Sam called them, “Good Citizens”!

The clapping of Sam’s hands indicated that we were about to start and that seats were to be taken … and quiet ensued. Sam took care of a few housekeeping details and introductions were formally made. Paul stepped onto the podium. “We’ll start at the top” and, without another word, his arms went into the air, he glanced across the entire group and with a tiny lift of his baton, the torrent of the iconic first massive chords enveloped all the space in the room: “Bump-BAAHHH-bump-bah-dump; bump-BUMP-bump, bump, bah-DAH”! I could feel my throat constrict and my eyes start to well up. This was beyond real! The majestic music replaced all the air in the room and in that vacuum we were sustained by eighth and quarter notes, sharps and flats and the double forte of the stentorian brass and woodwinds. Nothing else existed in those opening moments. I could see the heads of the big-wigs go down as they critically assessed what they were hearing and, very quickly, it became apparent that this sound was exactly what it should be. I could see Sam look over at Bob Billig. Billig smiled and gave a tiny nod and we were off.

The rest of the morning’s rehearsal went very well as they played through the entire score. At a break, one of the keyboard players needed an additional speaker (we had provided everything the technical team had requested) and I had to rush home a get one of my keyboard speakers to fill in until another could be rented. The cast wasn’t in for a couple of days so listening to the orchestral balance took up the rehearsals. Nothing was missed. The music team was incredibly detailed and painfully specific but everyone was very happy with the crew we had put together. For me, his was time stolen from the Rainbow office and the next couple of days had me dashing back and forth from the office to the Concert Hall and home, keeping Sam and the musicians happy, dubbing off more tapes and copying scores for the replacement musicians and finalizing Rainbow’s Summer Workshop Program brochures. It was exhausting but incredibly fulfilling.

Payrolls seemed to become the lynchpin of my routine. Everything revolved around them for the back half of each week. Even while zapping back to Toronto for an Equity Council Meeting, on the plane and in my hotel room I was checking and rechecking my calculations and the accuracy of the Invoice breakdowns. It didn’t (and wouldn’t) stop! But neither did my other commitments.

Once back from Toronto, it was into the remount of Alan (Lund)’s “Wizard of Oz” from the previous season. It was easy for the returning cast as there was nothing new to learn and the rehearsal period had been shortened a bit. Alan wouldn’t be in until the second show (“Guys and Dolls”) and Kimberley (Timlock) was simply putting in some new hires. There was no pressure … at least not on that front. Sam just kept piling on new work, continuing details about the hiring for the other Tour cities, getting more contracts out, more dubbing and copying, more payrolls, more accommodations and flight arrangements and on and on. A new- fangled gadget was becoming a necessity and we finally broke down and bought our first Fax Machine! While we were still using FedEx and “snail mail” to get proposals and cheques out, the new machine was a godsend in its immediacy. Not a huge number of people had them but we thought that being ahead of the curve would be best. No one knew what advances were to come in the world of technology and we just toddled along. Then one afternoon at a ‘Wizard” rehearsal we got some devastating news!

I’d been sitting around (yet again) waiting for one of the ‘Wizard’s’ sporadic scenes to be put up when Jack (Timlock) arrived in the Hall. He looked shaken. He walked over to the Stage Management table, spoke with them for a moment, then turned to the cast and asked for our attention. “There’s no easy way to say this.” He took a long pause as if gathering himself. “Last night, Alan died.” There’s an unusual thing that happens when one hears news like that. In an instant, the whole world stops and all your memories of that person flash through your brain. Then, in desperation and disbelief, you try to make sense of the senseless words … “Alan died”; no warning, no inkling, no preparation, just a gut punch that emotionally doubles you up over and over again. The audible reactions start … a small “No!’ here, a quiet “What?” there and eventually – just seconds, actually – the understanding takes over and the world is altered. The grief takes hold. You reach out to others or withdraw, quickly coming to grips with the implications, trying to set the devastation and loss aside for practicalities. There is no time for this even though the memories, the questions and the insistent pain keep intruding. “The show must go on” becomes the rude but fundamental mantra that we as performers use to propel us through the time ahead.

I had done eight shows with Alan and was about to do the ninth. The loss wasn’t merely personal. It was vastly public. His legacy in Canadian Theatre and television was celebrated in the days and weeks to come. My silent eulogy was to dedicate my work in “Wizard” and the up-coming “Guys and Dolls” to his memory. And, reluctantly, painfully, we moved on.

“Les Miz” opened. It was, simply, spectacular. What else could one have expected? The production bore obvious witness to the astonishing amount of money that had been spent on the franchise. No expense was spared … literally. The fact that the story and the music swept you up and enveloped you so completely was a bonus and testament to the incredible power of Live Theatre. But for me, the magic disappeared very quickly. “Wizard” previewed (with the “Les Miz” cast in attendance), we opened to good response and, again, life moved on.

The shine seemed to come off the apple rather quickly on all fronts: the Workshop Classes started (our fifth year) just after “Wizard” went up; “Guys and Dolls” began rehearsals and I continued to deal with payrolls and housing and flights for the Touring Musicians. One thing I gradually discovered with these folk was the nicer and more accommodating you were, the more they’ll take advantage of you. That’s rather cynical to write, but I became aware that the old adage, “give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile”, was fully in play! Playing in the “Les Miz” orchestra was a “job” not a privilege for them, and a few were real pains in the ass as they went for broke in their demands. “I want a later flight and I won’t fly Air Canada!” “I don’t want to stay at that hotel.” “I don’t want to be in that part of the city.” “I don’t want to room with anyone. I need a place to myself because my girlfriend will be joining me during the run in Vancouver.” “I don’t want my guitar in cargo. Make sure it has the seat beside me in the cabin.” And on and on it went. There were nights I couldn’t sleep for trying to remember all the things I had to take care of the following day. My saving grace was in the garden I was creating at the back of my house. It was as far away from show business as I could get and, on another level, it taught me patience, fed my soul and gave me momentary peace.

For some unfathomable reason, the powers that be at Rainbow (I was not one of those powers) decided it might be a good idea to “bring in” a guest artist to play the role of ‘Sky Masterson’ in “Guys and Dolls”. They hired Jeff Conaway, best known for his role of ‘Kenickie’ in the film of “Grease” and as ‘Bobby Wheeler’ on “Taxi” years ago. It seemed as though we were diving into a Dinner Theatre mentality when that was announced, but we dutifully gathered for our first day of rehearsals, some of us still smarting that Alan wasn’t at the helm. I was playing the small role of ‘Arvide’. On very short notice, Rainbow managed to hit a home run by obtaining the services of the wonderful Kelly Robinson to direct and choreograph the show. Kelly was, and still is an incredibly generous and supportive human being and brought a wealth of theatrical experience to the process. Jeff was a nice enough person but there seemed to be an “I’m the star” mentality that surfaced every now and then with very set approaches to how his role (and everyone else’s) should be played. Kelly’s clear, caring and concise direction and inventiveness were unassailable so Jeff’s “suggestions” were usually relegated to the dust bin. He eventually calmed down, perhaps realizing that he was dealing with folks who really did have their shit together and knew what they were doing, and he was quite good in the production.

With Timlock’s imminent departure, the Producer position at Rainbow had started to consume me … as if I didn’t have enough to do! I spend what little down-time I had thinking through a lot of scenarios and had fantasized about changes I would make to the Company’s organization and approach to its playbill. I’d spoken confidentially to a number of trusted and experienced folk about my considering the application and everyone seemed to think it was a “no-brainer”. I’d even had a meeting with Kelly about him coming back to direct for me. He said that aside from seeing how people responded to me as an artist, the thing that convinced him to say yes was watching my fingers fly over the calculator at one point during our meeting as I explained how I saw the financials working for Rainbow if I was Producer. Already, word was getting out. My own self-doubt kept warring with the potential and up-side of going for the job. I became aware of support from people I didn’t even know. At rehearsals I began noticing sidelong glances from every direction and knowing smiles from the stalwarts. I had spoken to Sam about it as it would eventually affect our working relationship. All he said was “Create the vision, Richard!” I also learned that there were other folk who were thinking about applying. Over the previous months I had been jotting down a lot of notes and organizing my thoughts, and finally, taking the bull by the horns, I put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to computer keyboard) and produced an exhaustive document detailing personal observations accumulated over the past ten years working with Company, thoughts about how to move forward, about innovative proposals with rationale and, practically, comprehensive budgets for six hypothetical productions. It was a lot of paper! I submitted my formal “hat in the ring” to Jim Pappas, the President of the Rainbow Board … and waited.

I looked forward to the “Guys and Dolls” performances every night. The production was spectacular and everyone was on the mark. This served to balance my now-routine daytime hours inundated with the constant budgets and payrolls for “Les Miz”. Not one to let the grass grow under his feet, Sam was now actively (and aggressively) pursuing other projects and, of course, it was my job to flesh out the details in the form of yet more budget proposals and hiring potentials. Our phone bill was astronomical! With our obligations now including a “Les Miz” run in Hawaii and a proposal to furnish the orchestra for a “Miss Saigon” back east, the days flew by, filled to the brim with dashing here and there after the Rainbow show closed. The “Winnipeg Cares” Fundraiser took a few days to put together and was another great success, but my life seemed to have altered, both in attitude and style. The passion seemed dissipated over too many projects, but, thankfully, some much needed relief came in the form of a long-weekend jaunt to New York with Robbie.

Over the years since our first meeting, Robbie and I had become best of friends. Our frequent and involved conversations about everything under the sun were halted only by our obligations to be somewhere else. This trip only cemented our relationship. We talked non-stop on the flight. We were staying with Reid Scowen, Robbie’s Godfather. He was the Province of Quebec’s “Delegate General” to the State of New York and the accommodations for that official position were on the 37^th floor of the Museum (of Modern Art) Tower in mid-town Manhattan! We were picked up at the airport by the Delegate’s chauffer and dropped off at the condo which was decorated like an Architectural Digest layout. Dinner was prepared that evening by the in-house chef! I had died and gone to heaven … in NEW YORK!! Since Reid had to travel to Bermuda for a meeting, we had the place to ourselves for a few days … no “staff”, though. We explored the City, ate great food, saw some great theatre, but the greatest part was just talking … about the Theatre, politics, extended conversations about everything and anything. One afternoon, we took a ferry to visit Ellis Island. All the time I’d lived in New York, I’d never done that little trip out into the Harbour. As we slowly approached the tiny island where the European Immigrants arrived early in the 20^th century, we sailed very close to the Statue of Liberty. It was huge, SO huge. We just stood beside each other on the boat, staring up, feeling the emotional aura of this colossal monument, overpowering both of us as we floated past it. It wasn’t until we were on the Island that we admitted to each other how deeply that experience had touched us and how we’d not spoken a word for the ten minutes it took to sail past it. Lots of food, playing tourist, constant chatter, and being feted by Reid at the Rainbow Room were just what I had needed to refuel myself. Our little sojourn ended much too fast.

It was now time to head South to Oregon, to finally do the Sondheim show that had been cancelled the year previous and had now found a new venue. The Lakewood Center had made preparations for my work Visa through the U.S. Immigration Authority and we had supposed that that would come through without any trouble. The visa regulations in the U.S. are pretty stringent – either you have to have an “International reputation” or have documentation indicating that no one else in the country could do the job for which you’re being hired. The last one was hard to prove but the first was easier, what with my Concert work in the States and my Equity work in Canada and the U.S. Not so fast, Buster! They turned our application down! I couldn’t believe it. So I organized a campaign of sorts by contacting all the higher-ups I knew in Canadian Equity (there were a LOT of them) and, through them, American Equity in New York and Los Angeles; at the other end, the Theatre did the same with their political connections – all of whom knew who I was from my time in Portland. Fortunately, all the folks we approached were eager to help and with little time to spare, we re-applied and waited. It was a case of the Immigration bureaucracy’s lack of organization and strictly adhered-to protocol that pushed me to the brink! Round and round we went for days. Thank heavens for the fax machine. This time, we were successful and the visa was approved with just hours to spare. While the approval documents had been held up at an Immigration Office in Lincoln, Nebraska for some reason, we were assured that they would be waiting at Customs in Winnipeg on the morning (6:00AM) of my departure.

At the same time, the Rainbow application seemed to be languishing on the vine as far as I could tell. Word had spread fast and I’d even learned from folks in Toronto that they’d heard I had been offered the job! Because I was leaving town for a few months, I wanted to get it all in place. I’d spoken to a number of directors and some high profile artists about my plans for the season and asked if they would be interested in working with me. I had also been doing some serious lobbying in town and while folks were being incredibly supportive and unhesitant in their recommendations to the powers that be, they had no real say in the matter.

Of course, also at the same time, I was tied to my computer more doing budgets and contracts and producing the constant payrolls for the “Les Miz” Tour. Sam was still thinking down the road and mercilessly nagged to make sure that all the details were taken care of before I left for Portland. How was I going to get the payroll info from our on-the-road manager? How was I going to get the payroll from TD Services to the Orchestra? How was I going to do this and that… and on and on! I truly had it all under control and everyone who needed to be in the loop was in the loop! I was proud of my organization.

Finally, with clothes, office supplies and account ledgers solidly packed and ready for the time ahead, I arrived at the airport. I had to report to the Customs Office before getting on the plane. The officer went into the back room to get my documentation. He came out empty handed.  “Sorry, sir, we have no record of your visa here”. My blood went cold. I was beside myself. I showed them all the correspondence, my contract, the letters from American Equity and talked and talked until I couldn’t talk any more. I was desperate. It felt like my life was being funneled into a drinking straw! I called Kay Vega, the Producer in Portland – it was 3:30AM her time! – and told her what had just happened. I let her talk to the Customs Official. They could see I was getting pretty upset. Finally, just minutes before the plane was to depart, with a begrudging apology for the inconvenience they allowed me in with a “deferred inspection” which meant that I would have to present myself at the Immigration Office in Portland within a few days of my arrival! I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we took off!

The time in Portland was reviving! The autumn air of Oregon cleared my head and calmed me down as rehearsals began for my third shot at “Side By Side By Sondheim”. I was working with dear friends (pictured left – Margie Boule, Adair Chappell, Shawn Rogers and Sue Parks-Hilden) from “the old days” and being so familiar with the wonderful material, it was an easy and comfortable experience putting the show up. Of course, there were still payrolls to yank me back into the real world and the constant apprehension about Rainbow, but the days passed productively and we opened to great response. The downside to working in a Semi-Professional Theatre was performing only four nights a week. Once we opened, there were initially a lot of days spent watching videos in the den (I was staying at Kay’s house), but soon enough another commitment I had made began. I had agreed to direct a production of “The Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever” for the Theatre Company. That was a chore. The sporadic rehearsals with a million kids got me off kilter and just added to my turmoil.

Then Rainbow Stage called …

It began simply enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all of THAT was yet to come …

The lay of the land looked pretty good.

            Once “Wizard” was into performances at Rainbow and my days were free, I could concentrate on dealing with my new house. I’d taken possession in the Spring and, because of rehearsals and teaching and performances, had only sporadically started to deal with all the changes – walls to be removed, cosmetic renovations and decorating ideas that had been percolating in my head for months. I’d become my own contractor and, through various municipal grants and special financial assistance programs for older homes, I’d had trades and services giving me quotes and estimates but hadn’t been around enough to have all the arrangements carried out. Now I was primed, literally and figuratively, to get going. My dear friend Teresa was on hand with advice and “suggestions”. We would pour over paint chips and wallpaper samples trying to decide what should happen and where. I learned very quickly that Teresa’s attention to detail usually meant heated discussions about “quarter tints” and the exactitude of “cutting in” while painting a wall. We still laugh today about those exchanges … with her invariably being right! There were nine rooms in the house and they all had to be redecorated. There was also the chimney to fix, the hot water heater to replace, the back entry to be changed into a deck, some electrical problems to be addressed and on and on. This had very little to do with my professional life but  it was a creative outlet and the end result, which took a VERY long time, was worth the effort, ultimately meeting with my Mother’s approval on an “inspection” visit.

            The Rainbow season ended and I had taken care of co-producing and directing the “Winnipeg Cares” AIDS Benefit (the first of many) held at the Stage which, in one night, raised an incredible $36,000.00 for The Village Clinic. I could now settle down in earnest filling my days with a steady stream of sub-contractors and suppliers with nothing to interrupt the flow until my next engagement in Portland three months hence. At least that was the plan!

            It was a Monday morning and I was already into painting the front vestibule with the warm grey that was the foundation colour for most of the house, my mind focused on what else was being dealt with that day – a new doorbell to be installed, trimming wallpaper in the gallery upstairs, and some art work to be hung – when the phone rang.

CALLER: Can I speak with Richard Hurst?

ME: Speaking.

CALLER: Hi, Richard. This is Sophie calling from Greg Wanless’s office at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ontario.

ME: Yes? (sub-text: “Oooh … work!”)

SOPHIE: We’re doing a production of “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris” and wonder if you are interested and available. (I love those words!)

ME: That sounds great. When is it?

SOPHIE: Rehearsals start on the 11^th and we open on the 28^th.

ME: The 11^th?? That’s next week!! (My mind started racing!!)

SOPHIE: Yes. I know this is short notice but we were hoping …

ME: YES! (I kept myself from yelling it.)

            It’s a wonderful thing to get a job when I don’t have to WAIT to get the job! We efficiently made all the arrangements on the phone and she said they would courier out the contract overnight. And that was that! Amazingly and very quickly, all the renovation timetable adjustments worked out perfectly. Teresa would take care of the contractors that couldn’t alter appointments and I could put the others off for a while … actually a couple of months. Even more conveniently, Equity Council was meeting in Toronto that coming weekend and I could take the train up to Gananoque the morning after the meetings in time for the first rehearsal!

            “Brel” is a show I’d directed twice in the States and I knew the material inside out. It’s a revue created by Eric Blau paying tribute to the great Belgian songwriter and performer of the show’s title. It has a cast of four – two guys and two girls – and, while the songs are set, who sings them is up for grabs. The only person involved that I knew was Kerry Dorey with whom I’d worked in “Cinderella”. He was the other man. I had no idea how they’d ended up with me as I knew absolutely no one connected with the production. I would find that out later.

            The Thousand Islands Playhouse, founded by Greg Wanless in 1982, sits on a wharf right on the banks of the St. Lawrence River halfway between Montreal and Toronto. While its season spans the summer months, they ran a bit into the Fall and we were the last show of the season, heading into the beauty of a Southern Ontario Autumn. I was in seventh heaven as I was whisked from the train station to the Theatre by a staff member and right into our first music rehearsal! Kerry was a thankfully familiar face and I was introduced to Marcia Tratt, Teresa Pitt, (sister to Mary who was also in “Cinderella” at Rainbow) Greg Wanless, our Director and John Karr, our MD. I had asked to sing my favorite song in the show -“Chanson Des Vieux Amants” – and no one objected. So anything else I had to do in the show was just fine with me! It was all great music and it felt wonderful to be reunited with the luxury of the very familiar words and music, little life stories which have stood the test of time and are still relevant and affecting to this day!

            At the break, I walked about the facility and got my bearings. Just off the lobby was a long balcony that ran the length of the theatre and looked out over the river. I walked out and leaned over the railing thinking how beautiful the surroundings were and how lucky I was to be working there. As I headed back into the theatre, I happened to look up. The underside of the wooden roof covering the balcony appeared to be moving, an undulating mass that ran the whole length of the space! I froze! SPIDERS! Thousands upon thousands of them! They had taken up residence because of the protection from the elements, the moisture at hand from the river and in particular, as I later learned, the nightly feast of moths and bugs and flying things attracted by the bright lighting for the audience who came out for intermission drinks! (You can see all the folks standing on the upper level in the photo above probably unaware (or uncaring) of the danger just a few feet over their heads!) I inched my way toward the lobby door not wanting to draw any attention or create a vibration, petrified that they would sudden drop from their webs, covering me, getting in my hair and … well, you get the idea. I viscerally hate spiders! They make my skin crawl, no matter their size. Everyone laughed back in the rehearsal hall that I had undergone the “trial by spider”. I didn’t go back out there for the rest of my time in Gananoque. I think the company has probably taken care of the colony as in later photos of the balcony there seems to be no trace of them.

            At the outset, I had been very surprised to get the call to do this show. John, our MD, told me at dinner that night in “Gan” that when he’d scouted about for someone to play the role the compliments about my work had flown thick and fast and he was sold. Nice to know how you are thought about by people you don’t even know. I never did find out if I had replaced someone, what with the offer coming so late. But it didn’t matter. Kerry and I took over a beautiful cottage on a little lagoon complete with a family of herons a short distance from the theatre and the rest of the stay was idyllic! It was a shock when Marcia developed a node and had to withdraw from the show just a few days before opening. Thankfully, the great Janet MacEwan was available and it was wonderful to hear her voice again after so many years (“Evita” in Halifax). There’s nothing quite like having a new person come into a show late in rehearsals to give a cast a jolt of energy. It worked a charm and we opened to wonderful reviews and began our trek into Brel’s magical world.

            “La Chanson Des Vieux Amants” is iconic Brel. Go on-line and listen to him sing it! Brel’s voice is heartbreaking and reminds me of that quintessential “French sound” of the cabarets and smoky clubs of the fifties and sixties in Paris where the likes of Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour worked and made people fall in love! The spectacular mezzo, Chrisse Rocarro, had sung the song in both productions of the show I’d directed down south and her performance remains in my ears to this day. It’s the French guttural ‘r’ (rather than a rolled ‘r’) that makes the delivery and style authentic. That ’r’ is not easy to control and requires a particular muscular agility to make it work. When it did work, it felt (and sounded) wonderful. I loved singing it. It’s the only song sung in French in the show. (There is one other song – “Marieke” – that is sung partially in Flemish that Chrisse would nail every show!) One night during the run, I was having a particularly good performance of song. There is a moment at the end when the vocal fades away on the word “(je) t’aime” and the piano plays the theme that doesn’t resolve itself. Everything suspends for a moment in the silence before, hopefully, applause. This night, in the wee silence, a woman’s voice in the darkness with an unmistakable French accent quietly said, “Bravo” … complete with a guttural ‘r’ … and the applause began. It was, for me, validation of my attempt at authenticity. Don’t know who she was, but I sang the song for her for the rest of the run!

Then things started to unravel. Just before leaving Winnipeg, I’d arranged to have Seanna McKenna and Miles Potter stay in my house while they were doing and show and while I was in Portland doing “Side by Side by Sondheim” immediately following “Brel”. My departure and their arrival dates had worked out perfectly and I was feeling somewhat in control of yet another period of time out-of-town. Then the Producer in Portland called to tell me that the “Sondheim” production had to be postponed … FOR A YEAR!! Oh Lord! It was just a matter of weeks before Miles and Seanna were to take over my house and I would have no place to go! Taking my heart in my hands, I called and explained my situation and they very kindly said they’d find other accommodations. They didn’t want to put me out on the street! Crisis averted.  But what was I to do for the next three months, having turned down offers in Winnipeg and elsewhere because of Portland?

I headed back home after a very successful “Brel” wondering if I could find enough work to at least address mortgage payments. Bit by bit, I managed to cobble together some band dates singing with Sam Lutfiyya’s Big Band, picked up some commercials and, again through Sam, arranged to work for St. John’s Music at a satellite store during the Christmas rush. I also got a few hours a week working in the Rainbow offices filing and copying stuff. Of course there was still the painting and decorating and renovation happening at the house. I was also asked to teach a 6-week Performance course to triple-threat kids (yikes) at one of the studios in town! But it all seemed so bitty, haphazard.  Oddly at the same time, I had the feeling that a wide open space was spreading out before me in preparation for something else to happen. What that was I had no idea.

Somewhere, during all this upheaval, Jack Timlock announced his departure from his position of Producer at Rainbow Stage!!!

I guess that hadn’t come as too great a surprise. After all the drama and attention with the two Jacks going at each other over the past year, the Board had had enough and brought up the question of renewing Jack’s contract. After discussions and fretting, Jack decided that, under the circumstances and with the apparent lack of confidence on the part of the Board, he would not renew and that was that. He would do one more season and leave. Frankly, I don’t know how one can sustain full-bore enthusiasm for an organization from which one is essentially divorced. Working with Jack in the office I got a unique perspective on the embroilment and I don’t think he was all that broken up about leaving; but, to his credit, he was still committed to getting the season in place and ready to go. I just watched.

From time to time, desperation forces one to make choices which, in hindsight, can only be attributed to temporary insanity. Two such choices presented themselves to me in quick succession. One was accepting an offer to play Santa Claus for one of the big suburban Malls! Had it really come to this?? But I justified the decision by telling myself it was $400.00 for forty-five minutes work and I could stomach it. I quickly discovered the reason for the rather large amount of money. This gig wasn’t just sitting in a chair with kids on my lap. The money was basically “danger pay” for the big arrival they’d planned for their Santa. I was to “fly” in a “sleigh” on a zip line suspended high above the roof at one end of the Mall and extending to the other end a city block away! I would “land”, make my way down to the Mall’s Main Court, and pass out candy canes to the assembled throngs. I arrived at the appointed time, got into costume and was taken up to the roof. It was 7:00 in the evening, freezing cold, and pitch-black out.

I remember getting into the rather flimsy “sleigh” which was little more than a large office chair on wheels with a painted Bristol board cut-out of a sleigh wired to it. I was then hoisted by a crane to an unnervingly great height and connected to the zip line. I heard the countdown by the team leader’s voice on a walkie-talkie that had been attached to the “sleigh” to let me know what was going on. On his “go” I was suddenly lit up by a klieg light, felt a slight push from someone on a platform behind me, and began to slide along the wire toward the stop point the vast length of the Mall away. A lot of people had assembled in the Parking Lot far below and an announcement on a megaphone had asked them all to make noise for Santa’s arrival! As soon as the light went on the great throng people began yelling and I began waving. Blinded by the light, I could see nothing, and began to pray that this would all be over soon. I could feel the sleigh picking up speed. The ride seemed to take forever but I just kept an iron grip on the arm of the chair with one hand, frantically waving with the other, and screaming “Merry Christmas” at the top of my lungs, which was an exercise in futility as I had no mic and could hardly hear myself with the frigid wind rushing past my face! It took all of twenty seconds to get to the stopping point, but it felt like hours. I jolted to a stop and the light went out.

Thankfully, waiting hands grabbed for me. I still couldn’t see anything as my eyes were now adjusting to the darkness after the blazing klieg light went out. I was hustled off the sleigh, rushed to an exit door on the roof and guided down the stairs. With the huge Santa belly, the Santa beard and hair, I couldn’t see my feet and stumbled a few times. It was all rather frantic! We finally reached the bottom of the stairwell; someone handed me a huge bag of candy canes and I was pushed through a set of doors out into the madness of the mall! When they saw me, a huge yell filled the immense space! It was like a rock star had arrived. I began to work my way to the stage surrounded by hundreds of kids and their parents who had, I was told afterward, literally stampeded into the Mall after watching me land on the roof! I had “elves” guiding me to the center of the Court and, to tell the truth, I started to enjoy all the ultra-attention after accepting the fact that for the kids, this was a really big deal. My time at the center of all that energy lasted only about twenty minutes. I was hustled off again and my place taken over by the elves and ultimately a substitute Santa. I changed out of the costume, was handed my cheque and by the time I got into Teresa’s car (she was my escort for the event) I was exhausted but strangely exhilarated. It had gone very well (or so I was told).  I’ve never played Santa again, thank you very much!

My other act of insanity followed thanks to Sam when I became a commission-based salesperson at a St. John’s Music satellite “store” in The Bay in the very Mall I’d triumphantly landed on as Santa Claus only days earlier! How the mighty had fallen! It took an entire day to “set up” the space allotted us with a display case, cash register counter, shelving and various display modules. We were in a small alcove room hidden behind the luggage department at the rear of the gigantic store. With no signage or any indication of our existence people discovered us only by accident. There were some days when no one at all found us! There was no high-end equipment to deal with here. I had been told there would be synthesizers and sound modules, equipment with which I was familiar and dinky Casio electronic keyboards, guitar picks, pitch pipes, note pads with musical notes on them, some music theory books and anything else they thought might be used as stocking stuffers. Working there became, in very short order, massively depressing! The fact that I was teaching at Ken Peter’s Dance Studio during the evenings saved my soul.  The notes in my Journal during this period are painful to read: “Is this the real world?” “I sold $11.00 worth of guitar picks today! That’s about eighty cents in commission!” “I’m falling asleep behind the counter. This job is the essence of boredom!” There were so many times I was tempted to just walk out and not come back, but I persevered. It all ended just after Christmas. While I was appreciative that Sam had got me the work, it had quickly become apparent that I didn’t have the sort of temperament required for this kind of job. I don’t know if one has to be of a particular mindset to work in retail or if one has simply to “settle” for what they can get. I noticed an irritability and discontent, not so much in the upper ranks, but in those lower down the ladder, the grunts who had to stand around biding their time, waiting for a sale to somehow validate their existence. It was tough but soon enough the holidays ended!

I left the job behind without a second thought and, without knowing it, found myself in circumstances that would set me on an unexpected path, overwhelm me, and fundamentally alter the trajectory of my life for the next nineteen years!

Empathy is a great quality to have in an actor’s toolbox. Empathy helps us understand the feelings of others and assists in identifying with a character, giving dimension to the words and actions required by the playwright. It allows us to discover routes toward inhabiting the character of a “villain” or a “hero” in circumstances that are perhaps beyond our own life-experience. Within the parameters of a play its use is objective, moderated and confined by the script. However, in life there is no script and empathy can be a blessing and a curse. It can take us by surprise and confound us, presenting dilemmas in our response to it. It was with that surprise I found myself caught, juggling appropriate personal and professional responses in a number of situations over a very short period of time.

            For almost three years, the “Shapira Saga” had been flitting about the edges of the Winnipeg artistic community. Now, in what was to be a last gasp, the drama inserted itself once again. Shapira had admitted to conspiring to “do bodily harm” to his perceived rival at Rainbow Stage, and in one more court appearance had been sentenced to another jail term, this time for 18 months. While we had become somewhat inured to all this drama, it now seemed to have a sense of finality to it. Three years is a long time to be embroiled in chaos and upheaval in one’s life and, when put that way, I began to wonder how Shapira had been managing to get through it all. My reactions at the start of this long trek had been of disappointment, anger, confusion, and for all of us it was with some disbelief that we watched this play out on television screens across the country!

            Over this time, I’d had a few conversations with Jack – documented in earlier postings – but never felt any remorse from him but rather frustration and a lot of anger. It wasn’t surprisingthat things had ended up at this point. However, in my own thinking, I was continually aware of the tragic figure he had become and it was in that context that I responded to him when we talked … not with pity but with a hesitant compassion. He’d done some bad stuff and had affected a lot of people negatively; but behind all the bitterness and belligerence I knew there must be a core deep inside fighting to find a way back to honour even as he created more turmoil for himself. Despite being the target of his vitriol in the past, this knowledge eased my own reluctance to forgive him. There comes a point when all one can do is shake one’s head in response; but at the same time I wished for a sign, some small indication that there might be a way in to ease his pain and anger. That sign never came. I saw him only once again, a few years later in a most unexpected but not surprising place.

            I was forty-six by the time I got to work with Maureen Forrester. My early musical experiences had been pretty much centered on classical music. I don’t know how that happened, how a style of music appeals or repels, but I was consumed by classical music. I would conduct orchestras in my bedroom. I would take every opportunity to hear the symphonies of the great composers and I became familiar with the artists on the inexpensive recordings I bought from Steinberg’s Supermarket with my allowance on Friday evenings. A voice that held me spellbound because of its ethereal beauty was that of Canadian contralto, Maureen Forrester, a “Montreal girl” who had become world famous as a concert artist though her performances of Mahler and Handel. My first experience hearing her sing live (documented much earlier in these posts) was when I was 15. It was in “Judas Maccabaeus” by Handel sung by The Montreal Elgar Choir, an organization I would join the following year. I sat (beside her mother actually) breathless in the balcony of St. James United Church, transfixed by the astonishing luxury of her sound. I never missed chance to hear her whether it was on television, radio or on recordings. In interviews, she had revealed herself to be “just a hometown girl” with no airs about her, very down-to-earth and unpretentious. I wanted to know her; I wanted her as a friend!

I had come close. I had worked with her son, Daniel Kash, in “Evita” in Halifax. Surreptitiously, I had watched his Mother one evening from across the room at a Canada Council reception following a performance, not daring to approach her even though Daniel had said he would introduce me. Now, I found myself cast in Manitoba Opera’s “The Daughter of the Regiment” playing the role of ‘Hortensius’ opposite … as if you hadn’t guessed … Maureen Forrester as ‘The Marquise of Berkenfield’!!          My now-good-friend Dottie Danner (this was our third show together) was our Director and staying at my apartment. David Agler was the Conductor. The glorious Tracy Dahl was playing ‘Marie’ (the “Daughter”) and Joseph Wolverton was ‘Tonio’ her love interest! It was a great cast!

            At the first rehearsal, I walked into the hall and saw my idol sitting alone looking over her score before we began. I gathered up my courage and moved over to her. Like an acolyte before a celestial being, I knelt (yes, knelt) beside her chair, told her who I was and found myself with a kind of disbelief (as had been the case many years earlier in “Camelot” with Howard Keel in Seattle) looking into the eyes of one of my idols. I launched into a gushing, unadulterated hymn to her praise. I told her I’d worked with her son (which I thought would endear me to her) and said that I was looking forward to performing with her. She was incredibly gracious and warm (just as I wanted her to be) with a motherly quality about her in which I got easily lost.  We were off to the races.

‘Horensius’ doesn’t sing all that much but has a fair amount to say. He is the ‘family retainer/butler’ to the ‘Marquise’ and spends all of his time in close proximity to her on stage. As is sometimes the case with character roles in comic opera, the interpretations can go in any direction and the sky is usually the limit, hopefully within the bounds of good taste and believability … but not always. Dottie and I decided to make him as old as dirt and with a major hearing problem requiring him to use an ear horn. That was all I needed and we were on our way. The role was to serve a surprising dual purpose as time went on.

Early in the rehearsals, Dottie found herself having some problems with one of non-singing but important cast members. This lady been out of the business for a lot of years and had lost much of her stage skills – like remembering lines – but had been cast for her age. It wasn’t working and she was replaced. There wasn’t a ruthlessness to the replacement but rather a for-the-good-of-the-production approach that seemed to resolve itself amicably. But this situation had some bearing on where we were slowly finding ourselves with my Goddess. Maureen had built her career as a concert singer and it hadn’t been until later in life that she had moved into the world of opera! While her considerable vocal skills put the great depth and emotion of a song or aria into sharp focus, moving about the stage and acting at the same time had not been a part of her training. I think it was a case of most of her roles being of the “park and bark” variety, where a kowtowing director would say “stand here and sing” and left it at that. As a result, remembering where she was supposed to be and when was not high on her list of priorities. Dottie wasn’t of that school … not by a long shot! Our Conductor was very impatient with all the “theatre” that was getting in the way of the music and it led to some tense moments between him and our theatre-based Director. Dottie “won” and blocking and character building took a lot of time. However, early on Tracy, who had worked with Maureen before, had whispered to me that I should memorize all her lines and blocking if only out of self-preservation.

Because Dottie was staying with me, I got some insight into what would otherwise be private directorial thoughts and approaches. She was concerned about her interactions with Maureen, not wanting to create tensions but finding herself frustrated with Maureen’s inability to remember blocking and line delivery (spoken) from one rehearsal to the next. She was struggling and, for my part and because I was so close to her in the production, I felt helpless. I didn’t want to intrude even though I could see her floundering, and it pained me to hold back and say nothing. Dottie and I had had conversations about solutions but it was a delicate matter. At one point, we’d talked about having Maureen carry a script with her and had even talked about giving her an earpiece so someone in Stage Management could prompt her or tell her where to go on stage. But those ideas went by the boards and we struggled on.

It was a case of tiny increments – two steps forward and then one step back – and while she knew that we were trying to give her as much leeway as we could, Opening Night was staring us in the face. I could hold back no longer and finally told her, with great respect fuelled by my sympathy that she was going through this, that I was at her disposal to run lines or to meet before rehearsals and go over the blocking with her. “You’re a love, but I think I’m alright”, she said. I could sense a bit of desperation in her, but I could also tell there was a resolve as if she had faced these challenges before and, alone, had always risen to them. But those feelings of helplessness forced me to stay close to her as subtly as possible … for support and, well, just in case.

But she managed. She persevered. We all did. At the dress, she was very much on top of her role, so much so that, when she hesitated in the delivery of a line, I prematurely jumped in and started to say the line. She put her hand over my mouth and delivered it perfectly. There were no further issues and we sailed into Opening and the Run with all our lines in place and our notes flying high! Perhaps the turmoil she had put herself (and us) through over the rehearsal weeks was just her way of working it out, but I’m not so sure it had always been that way. The newspaper critic made note of her “comforting presence and dignity combined with the feeling that she might at any time start to skateboard around the stage.” I loved her for those qualities, for her tremendous skill and, most of all, for allowing me to be a small part of her process, one that taught me to maintain the course and that it’s the performance that matters above all, no matter how you get there!

It struck me long afterward that all those struggles might have been an indication of early-onset dementia.  She was only 61 at this point. Indeed, dementia was to be a major cause of her passing eighteen years later. I look back at those days and wish I could have been of more help but sometimes, just being nearby as mute but aching support is all that’s needed. And if you think this is an unabashed love letter to her memory, you better believe it is!

“A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” was the opener of Rainbow’s season that year (1991). This was Stephen Sondheim’s first production wherein he wrote both lyrics AND music. “Forum” was based on the plays of Roman playwright Plautus and involved a very convoluted story of mistaken identities, deceptions, long lost children and general madness and hilarity. Years earlier in Portland I had joyfully experienced the exuberance and built-in energy of the piece playing ‘Hero’ (now being played by Kevin McIntyre), a young man who has fallen in love with a “courtesan” who is about to be wed to a military officer! This time I was playing the very small role of the ancient ‘Erronius’ who turns out to be the long lost Father of the courtesan and the officer. Yeah, a rollicking evening in the theatre! The major roles were played by Stan Lesk (‘Pseuodolus”) and Robbie Paterson (‘Hysterium’) with Torontonians Frank Ruffo and the legendary Jack Duffy also eating the scenery. Richard Ouzounian was our Director.

Our first rehearsal was a happy reunion with a lot of folks who had been about in past Rainbow seasons. Many of us were looking forward to being back in the artistic embrace of Richard who had directed “Cinderella” the previous year to great acclaim. As is usual at the first meeting, commonly called “Meet The Donut”, there were costume and set design presentations along with stage management’s usual admonitions and housekeeping and the election of the Equity Deputy, which ended up, once again, being me. Then Richard gave his remarks. With his usual panache and humour he sketched out the concept and approach, detailing some ideas for character portrayal and how we would work through the process. We took a short break and returned to a read-thru of the script. But something was wrong.

While we were reading, I kept noticing how Richard was losing focus. He seemed distracted and would get up from time to time and walk about the room, leaving occasionally and returning to continue this meandering. It was very unlike his normal attention to process. I watched and he seemed to calm down and I thought nothing more about it. But that changed very unexpectedly and quickly. The next twenty-four hours were intense.

Along with Jack (Timlock) I found myself witnessing, in minute detail, a dear and cherished friend’s emotional breakdown. Those unusual behaviours Richard had been exhibiting earlier in the day were the surface manifestations of a personal crisis which, over the next few hours, quickly grew out of control. With Forrester, I had really only been a fan, our “relationship” being based only in my long-held admiration and love of her voice. My response to her challenges, while heartfelt, was somewhat more objective. With Richard our relationship was based on many years of a close personal and professional connection. He was my mentor, at times my intime, my Theatre Hero and above all, Family; and now he was being assailed by forces beyond the control of any of us … and it physically hurt. It hurt because, in those moments, nothing I could say or do would ease his distress.

Richard left the show. Jack and he decided that immediate attention to the challenges he was facing was more important than a play. Once more, that Opening Night thing dictated, in a hatefully clinical way, that the show must go on, no matter the cost. I received a long letter from Richard a number of months later apologizing for what had happened. For me, there was no apology necessary, but that was a part of the recovery.  We are all often vulnerable to forces beyond our control and, while we sometimes succumb to the demons, there are places deep inside that hold on to the knowledge that those close to us will, just by their love and support, keep us from getting lost.  

The net was immediately cast to find another director. We were right at the beginning of rehearsals and not much had been done so someone new could take the reins rather easily. That “someone” ended up being Susan Cox. She hit the ground running with great energy and just a wee bit of sarcasm in her humour. She was British, had a great theatre reputation and was already very much in control, which struck me as odd as she had been hired a couple of days earlier. Our rehearsals were intense as we adjusted to each other’s process. Fortunately for me, ‘Erronius’ is a very small, although pivotal, role and I was pretty much left to my own devices after we set my one major scene. The rest of my work consisted of regular entrances as I “walked around” the Seven Hills of Rome seven times in order to get rid of the ghosts that are apparently now occupying my house which has been turned into a brothel since my departure … yeah, well, go on-line to read the whole story if you want to get unconfused. It was a case of making the cross-overs different each time. In rehearsals, it was pretty academic. In performance, it was another thing altogether.

The beginning of The Walk comes out of my first scene so it was just a case of exiting. The stage opening is about 60 feet wide and, with my tiny shuffling “old man steps”, it took FOREVER to get from one side to the other and I intended to milk it for all it was worth. A bit later, he enters again at Stage Right, stops for a moment and says “Second time around”; then, in complete silence, walks the length of the stage with all the action having stopped and those on stage watching him make the cross. But it held! There was a bit of a laugh from the house. That was all I needed. The third time, I decided to just hold up three fingers without looking at the audience. Big laugh! The fourth time I entered I started the walk, turned my head to the audience, grinned, gave them a “what’s up?” nod and they went nuts, applauding for the rest of the cross. Simple, simple, simple, timing, timing, timing! The fifth time doesn’t get completed because he is pulled back into the action of the play. Again, one of those delicious experiences that is etched so vividly onto my brain. Susan called me a “treasure” and we left it at that.

The show didn’t do well. Not many people had heard of it and audiences fell off as the run progressed. When the Producer starts handing out comps to the cast to get friends to fill the seats, well, it’s not a good sign. But there was no time to worry about that as we began “Wizard of Oz” rehearsals and the fourth year of the School began with more folks than we could accommodate. It turned out that people who knew they had no chance of being cast were auditioning for shows just to get into the workshops (which were only open to people who had auditioned). Smart, if you ask me.

Alan (Lund) was at the helm once again and I was playing ‘Professor Marvel’ and ‘The Wizard’. There is something about doing a classic that, at the same time, is perilous and uplifting. “Wizard” was, of course, a movie before it was a stage play. It is iconic and the expectations (on everyone’s part) were incredibly high. Duplicating the effects in the film on the stage is treacherously difficult and the anticipation of seeing the “tornado” or watching the Land of Oz materialize in plain sight is very high. One must rely heavily on that suspension of disbelief. But if you can suck ‘em in at those moments, you’ve got it made. Once again, Alan’s superior skill at creating the “magic” of theatre made itself obvious to all of us working on the show and, ultimately, to the audience. Once we got to the stage, we were propelled by the wonder of the story. But the production is a technical bear. The transitions from Kansas to Oz, while spectacular, took forever to finesse and Alan was once again fit to be tied that things weren’t going as quickly as he wanted. The sound was having some problems too – a perennial bugbear at Rainbow – and the number of costume changes for folks added to the confusion, tension and upheaval. Combined with the incredible heat and humidity of a Winnipeg summer, it was a fraught period. But we persevered and were rewarded with a run of huge houses and responses.

I loved playing The Wizard. Along with all the other characters, he is redeemed when the curtain is pulled back to reveal the Truth. Each night I thought back to all that had happened over those previous several months and how something that seems one way is oftentimes something altogether different. It’s our response to those circumstances that makes us human. The Wizard tells the Tin Man that “a heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others.” It actually works both ways … giving love and support and help as well as being able to receive it. Sometimes it’s hard to do, sometimes it’s easy; but, either way, it always takes us Home.

By now, I had managed to book a goodly part of my work for the up-coming season! I was off to Portland to do “Side By Side By Sondheim” (again), ‘Medea’ for MTC, “The Rothchilds” for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, a Tour singing with The Air Command Band” and a production of “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well” in Gananoque, Ontario.

But the best laid plans … well, you know the rest. How life can change in the blink of an eye!

I was now becoming aware of a dilemma that I would face for years to come; indeed, it is one I know many artists have encountered during their careers. I liked to have my seasons planned out well in advance, accepting offers of work as they came in and taking great solace in knowing where the bucks were coming from in the months to come. At this point, I had signed contracts for Rainbow’s summer season (“Anything Goes”, “Say It With Music” and “Cinderella”), MTC’s production of “Macbeth”, some Christmas Concerts with the WSO and “The Daughter of the Regiment” for the Manitoba Opera. Combined with weeks of teaching, commercial recordings, the World Curling Championship Opening and Closing Ceremonies and a bunch of one-offs, I was feeling pretty good. That was the up-side; the old adage about “a bird in the hand” springs to mind. The down-side was all the “bush birds” that suddenly started to chirp unexpectedly at the same time! I had to turn down a ‘Sir Joseph’ in “Pinafore” for Edmonton Opera, a ‘Doctor Pangloss’ in “Candide” for Hawaii Opera Theatre (that one REALLY hurt), a production of “The Dumbells” for Alan Lund at Tapestry Music Theatre in Toronto and a “Plaza Suite” at Regina’s Stage West!! There were no lessons to be learned here. It was, as they say, “the nature of the business” but I’d never really experienced it before to this degree and it was maddening! In hindsight, it was the treachery of making choices without really knowing what the choices! But I was grateful for the work, to be sure.

At Rainbow, we launched into a beautiful and classy production of “Anything Goes” directed by Alan (Lund). I was playing ‘Sir Evelyn’ opposite the wonderful Lianne Marshall as “Reno” and while I’d done the show years earlier, I was now finding the great joy that comes with playing those secondary (but far juicier) “character” roles in shows where I’d always been the romantic lead. Those “juvie” days were long gone and, truthfully, I didn’t miss them. While in performances for “AG” we were rehearsing the middle show, a grand Revue that we called “Say It With Music” (after the Irving Berlin classic) and I’d been tasked with setting the format for the show. Needless to say, Alan had a lot of input with regard to continuity and casting, but working with him was, again and as always, a great experience. I had a bit of performing responsibility in this one but, without the pressure of a through line to follow as a character, I luxuriated in doing some roles I’d not done before – ‘Tevye’ in “Fiddler” (a part I’d always wanted to play but at which had never and would never get a shot!) and ‘Bill Snibson’ in “Me and My Girl” singing “Underneath the Lamppost” and “The Lambeth Walk”. Because many of us were in performance in the evening with “A. Goes”, rehearsals were limited to five hours during the day, a situation which drove Alan nuts. But we all rose to occasion and everyone reveled in the big production numbers and smaller responsibilities with not a lot of pressure.

In the midst of all this, the School programs were, for a third year, up and running. Because of the show and rehearsal schedule, I’d handed over a lot of the set-up, organizing and grunt work to another Company member, but had committed to teaching the Musical Theatre Performance classes. As usual, anyone who was in the Company or had auditioned for the season was eligible to take part … and all the classes were packed once again. For me, these workshops became the heart of the Company. They happened in the hours before the evening performances and the energy and excitement, hustle and bustle of young folks practicing tap routines on the scene deck or the distant sound of someone rehearsing a song in a stairwell created a wonderful sense of community! I loved it!

I’m a gentle teacher … always have been, basing my approach in what I’ve gone through as a performer myself and how I want to be spoken to, directed and encouraged to get the best out of my abilities. While I studiously practiced that mantra, things sometimes get out of one’s control. Late one afternoon a large class had convened as usual in a Tower dressing room that had become our studio. A very tall young man with long red hair named Geoffrey was up to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, an odd choice for a guy with a very low voice but I let it go. I could see that he was very uncomfortable but he got through the number. He’d obviously been singing in church choirs as he had that academic quality in how he enunciated words and sang the notes, focusing on technique rather than content. As I was making comments and pointing out a few possibilities for another approach, I noticed that he seemed to be getting paler. I asked him to do it again. The intro started and he stood there for a second or two not doing anything. Then began to fall backwards, falling, like a large red tree, no bend in the knees, no staggering, no sway, just toppling straight back, smashing his head into the wall behind him leaving a huge hole in the plaster board! Everyone in the room jumped to their feet in stunned disbelief. One student, Andrea, a nurse, flew forward to administer to him. Geoffrey was out like a light and it took a few minutes before he came around. Someone had got some wet towels and everyone was chattering about what they had seen, mostly about my reaction during the fall. I remember a certain baffled objectivity overtaking me as I asked myself if what I was seeing was actually happening. I guess my face had betrayed that thought as I watched him go down. He was somewhat dazed when he came to but otherwise alright. I broke the tension by telling him that he didn’t have to do the song again. The class finished without further to-do. By the time I got down to my dressing room word had spread about the incident and I was called “Killer” for the rest of the evening because I was so hard on the students in my class. We found out the following day that the kid was diabetic and hadn’t eaten any food before the class.

 “Cinderella” brought Richard Ouzounian back to Winnipeg, a special thrill for those of us who had worked with him during his MTC years. This show was right up his alley, lots of production, a bit of romance and, if I do say so myself, some brilliant off-the-wall casting. Stan Lesk and I were cast as the Ugly Stepsisters. Stan was ‘Joy’ and I played ‘Portia’, the “prettier” of the two stepsisters (still a running gag between us!). The role was another lesson in “approach” for me. It would have been easy to merely send up the role, to “eat scenery” and camp the night away, but I decided to take the bull by the horns and at least give the “lady” some basis in reality. But it became obvious early on that Richard was going for broke with “the girls”! While we built dimensionalized characters grounded in a need for attention and their refusal to relinquish the upper hand, there was, in truth, nothing that subtle about them. In one of their songs, “The Stepsister’s Lament”, they question why they can’t “get the guy”, blaming ‘Cinderella’ for their predicament. While “rap” had been around for a while, it had pretty well maintained a lane of its own in Pop Culture. Richard decided that it might be interesting to crossover a little bit and to perform the “Lament” as a “rap”. The lyrics (now spoken rather than sun sung) fit neatly into the somewhat aggressive delivery and, even with the normal orchestral accompaniment, it worked perfectly. Our first public outing corroborated the wisdom of the choice and the number brought the house down every night because it was so unexpected … and pretty great as well!

It was not, however, always easy going. Our adjustment into costumes, the make-up and hair and the SHOES took a long time. With the extreme heat on stage, the heavy brocade dresses we wore were almost the death of us. Combined with the huge wigs, heavy face paint (which we eventually got down to an hour to apply) and those damned shoes, each outing was a chore! The only thing that kept us going-for-it was the knowledge that the audience was eating us up, and the hooting and hollering following the “Lament” and in the bows was worth the effort … and there was a LOT of effort. Shaving my chest hair weekly became a dreaded event. With the dress being low-cut there was no avoiding the exercise and Stan would help with shaving the top of my back, much to his chagrin. Sitting backstage in the incredible heat with no time to remove the dress and get back into it resulted in the go-to pose in the picture here, one that got cameras clicking in short order. I perhaps give the impression that there was nothing redeemable about the experience, but there was. After settling in to the preparation routine, I found that the length of time it took to put on the make-up centered me. As I’ve written before in these pages, “doing” comedy is serious business! With a character as off-the-wall as ‘Portia’, there was always an internal battle to keep her controlled and centered in reality. With each performance it got easier but I never took it for granted. The summer sailed on with sold out houses (who doesn’t like a fairy tale musical) and a sense of accomplishment by everyone involved.

            The real world injected itself into our paradise from time to time. The Shapira thread would break out in regular unravelings. His admission of intent to do Timlock bodily harm made headlines again and yet another trial was set for the Fall. Chimes Dinner Theatre was also experiencing some upheaval … or at least, Timlock was. While house sizes were resulting in satisfying royalty cheques for me, the financial strains on Jack were taking a toll. I thought it was a case of him trying to do too much that was having a very negative effect on him. The combination of the Dinner Theatre, Rainbow and project after project (Industrials, convention entertainments) was beating him down. It was no surprise therefore when, toward the end of the summer, he gave notice to the cast that “Peg ‘90” would be closing at the end of the September, a month earlier than planned. Chimes Dinner Theatre had lasted just short of three years and, while the closing was sad, for me it had provided an intense learning experience I don’t think I would have had elsewhere. For that, I will always be grateful!

My experience performing Shakespeare dated back to my University days. In the intervening years I’d taken on a long list of characters both large and small and had always thought my approach to be slightly old-school-academic and, depending on the size of the role, challenging; but I’d always risen to the occasion by trusting my instincts and the musicality of the language. That comfort zone was about to be obliterated. Miles Potter was (and is) a well-established director, kind and generous, always making the point of any particular play accessible and gratifying for performers and audiences alike. One always understood his perspective. So it was with some alarm that I discovered that his approach to MTC’s production of “Macbeth” was to be, at least for me, not at all what I was used to. At the outset, the dreaded “table work” clued me into a very naturalistic style, very intimate, filmic and devoid of the sound I was comfortable producing when dealing with Shakespeare. Most of the cast was from Toronto, complete with the usual macho BS from the men that I’d abhorred in other productions and who, it seemed, were all jostling for position in the ranks. I learned quickly that all the out-of-towners were on the same style page and that I’d better get on board in short order if I was to get through this. I’d been cast as ‘Generic Thane’ but my major role was as the ‘Scottish Doctor’ in a number of scenes and in particular the ‘Sleepwalking’ scene with the great Seanna McKenna (Miles’ wife) playing ‘Lady Macbeth’. While we’d been working well together in rehearsals, I began to suspect that she had been tasked (by Miles) with bringing me out of my somewhat stiff and mid-Atlantic-accented portrayal of the character, to cajole me into using a more contemporary style in the role. It took me a bit of time to catch on.

While it was relatively easy to lose the “English” accent, the staging sessions were something else altogether. The character was somewhat enigmatic. He comes from nowhere and disappears later never to be seen again. With Seanna as his moment-to-moment surrogate I found myself getting more and more excited by what they had cooked up for me (and dear Evie Anderson as ‘The Nurse, who had trained at the Bristol Old Vic and was attached to the “traditional” approach as well) to deal with.  I called it the “American Plan”, based in getting rid of all the “accoutrements” and not “acting”. It was always and only text, text, text, repeating the “Sleepwalking” scene to “find out” what it “was about”. Seanna had her part down in spades and was doing a lot of “acting” in order to “sleepwalk”. It seemed that Miles had no pre-conceptions so our rehearsals were all very organic, low-keyed and unpretentious. Seanna was crafty. Miles said I should be ready for anything (their conspiracy now becoming obvious) and I could see a wee smile and glint in her eyes, like “watch out”. At one point in her delirium, ‘Lady M’ demands that Macbeth (who she thinks I am) “Come!” and take her hand so they can go to bed. I stood there (as the ‘Doctor’), watching, transfixed by the ‘Lady’ lost in her dream. But Seanna held out her hand, frantically motioning for me to “come” to her. So I apprehensively walked over and took her hand. In the great scheme of things, it was nothing … but it was everything. It was a powerful moment that Miles loved because of its honesty and, because of that honesty and spontaneity, the scene jumped to another level. It was exhausting trying to figure out what Seanna was going to do next and for the run of the show, Evie and I never knew what to expect. Indeed, at one performance, she “gave” Evie the role of ‘Macbeth’, motioning for HER to “come” rather than me, freaking Evie out in the process. Taking risks like that depends on trust and I entered into each experience always wondering where it would take us. It was always exciting and just a wee bit dangerous! (A whole cast and I was to experience the same excitement and danger a few years later in a production of “Hamlet” with Keanu Reeves as the Dane … but that’s a whole lot of story for another time!) It changed my approach to just about everything down the road.

There was a lot of tension in the air as we moved to the stage and started to add the details in the form of costume and the weird make-up designs we’d been given. Miles, while concentrating on the technical problems, was still adamant about “SEEING who you are”. Where that demand became most important was in the Thanes scenes, where each of us had created alliances or enmity with ‘Macbeth’. It was important that the audience see those relationships. That “action” was incredibly nuanced – a look here, a glance there, a stiffening of the back in response to something being said. Those subtleties in the sub-subplots gave a life and energy to all the crowd scenes, drawing us (and the audience) deeper into the world we had created. Combined with the music, the magical lighting and set, the production was a glory to behold. The huge final battle scene is still imprinted in my memory; the music, blatantly and majestically religious, growing and growing in its intensity as ‘MacDuff’ mercilessly hacks away at ‘Macbeth” with his broadsword, reducing to “human” again after he’d grown into a monster over the course of the play. It was an overwhelming sequence. By the time we officially opened, everything was in place and feeling genuine.

There was still a bit of that “Toronto The Good” attitude toward the local performers by the guys from the “center of Canada”. With no good way to combat it, it was a presence that hung around the Green Room like a haze. However, I got in a jab as we moved toward the end of the run. Over the weeks leading up to opening, I had been out on weekends with a real estate agent looking for a house to buy. It had been slow slogging but, after dozens of viewings, I’d narrowed it down and finally come to the point of making an offer on a 1,900 square foot, three-story house in Wolseley, the heart of the “granola belt” in Winnipeg. It was an exciting day and I couldn’t wait to tell the folks at the theatre that evening.

“I bought a house today!” I announced to the gathered throng in the Green Room. Some had known of my quest, but a lot hadn’t. “Congratulations!” “That’s great!” they responded. One of the Toronto guys had the guts to ask how much I’d paid. “Sixty-two nine” I said proudly. There was a moment of stunned silence. “Wait! WHAT?” “Seriously?” “That’s a down-payment in Toronto!!”“What is it, an outhouse?” Lots of laughter. “No, it’s nineteen hundred square feet over three floors!” “You lie!!” “Not true” came the rumblings. “Guess that’s what you get when you live here in the Outback!” I said and walked out of the room smiling to myself as all the incredulity kept bouncing off the walls. But they actually got the last laugh.

As the show had settled in, some of those Toronto guys started a little pre-show show called “Thane For A Day”. They would get on the Tannoy and “interview” a different cast member each evening for a few minutes just after the half.  One of the requirements was to sing a few bars of a song with the word “thane” replacing another word, like “Thane is a many splendored thing” or “Thane is busting out all over!” I had been going on for a couple of weeks and always provided a few laughs before getting “Shakespeare-ious”. The guys were brutal in the questions they asked but always with a very wide sense of humour that everyone listening (in their dressing rooms) seemed to get off on. Unexpectedly one evening toward the end of the run, I got dragged out and onto the mic.

The Four Interview Guys: “Good evening and welcome to “Thane For A Day”. Tonight our guest is Generic Thane Number Seven AND, AND (they all yelled together with thick accents) The Scottish Doctor-r-r-r, Richard Hurst!!” Yay, yay, applause. I could hear all the reactions coming from the dressing rooms lining the hallway just outside the door to the Stage.  “Well, hello Richard!”

Me: I was feeling very apprehensive and just a bit frightened. “Hi”.

Guys: “So, congratulations on your new house!”

Me: “Thanks.”

Guys: “Nineteen hundred square feet, huh! That’s pretty big for a small guy like you!” Laughter in the hallway. “And only sixty-two nine! That kind of space would cost double in Toronto.”

Me: Feeling a bit more comfortable. “Well, maybe you should move to Winnipeg.”

Guys: “Oh, that’s not going to happen. But listen, we also understand that you’re off to Hawaii after the show closes. That must be nice!”

Me: “Yeah, it is, Y’know, get away from the cold and snow for a few weeks.”

Guys: “So we’re wondering where you’re getting all the money for this stuff. After all, a new house and trips to Hawaii …”

Me: “Um … er … I … um …”

Guys: “How can you afford that? Is Equity giving you some cuts on the side for being Vice President?” “Oooohs” were heard from the dressing rooms.

Me: “What?”

Guys: “Are there some kickbacks going on with Association, huh, huh?”

Me: “Um … er … I … um …” Lord, what was this turning into?

Guys: “Well, that’s not very concise, is it? Not very eloquent either coming from the National Equity Vice-President, is it? Guess we’ll never know the real story, folks!”

Me: “Um …”

Guys: “We know Richard has a great voice so now, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time for the “Thane Song!” Applause and hoots from the dressing rooms. “Off you go then, Doctor.”

Me: “Um … I don’t have a song.”

Guys: “WHAT? But this is Thane For A Day and you’re supposed to sing a song! Right, folks?” Yells of “yeah” and “sing a song” echoed down the hallway.

Me: “Um …”

Guys: “So, No song, then?”

Me: “Er …”

Guys: “Well, our time’s up for this evening. Thanks for listening! Let’s give Richard the send off he deserves!” And with that they started booing as they pushed me back into the hallway now lined with other cast members who had made their way to the stage entrance door. But there was a lot of laughter as well with people patting me on the back as, slightly humiliated, I slunk back to my dressing room to finish my make-up. Unfortunately, my “assailants” were also my dressing roommates. They came in like a little herd of otters, breathless with laughter, falling over themselves and excited to see me.

“Bastards”, I said under my breath!

“All in fun, Dick, all in fun.”  More laughter and applause as shouts of “We love you, Richard” came floating over the room partitions. I just shook my head and carried on with my makeup.

At least I had my house and the months ahead would be focused on balancing work and renovations … a combination which, while rewarding, took its toll.

NEXT: The Last of Jack and A National Treasure.

Prairie Theatre Exchange began life as the “Manitoba Theatre Workshop” in the early 70’s having started, a decade earlier, as a theatre school initiated by the Manitoba Theatre Center. There! That’s PTE’s history in a very small nutshell. By 1981 it had acquired its present name and quickly became a bastion of theatre focused on telling Canadian stories by Canadian playwrights. In 1989 it moved from the historic Grain Exchange Building on Princess Street (pictured left) to new digs (pictured right). There had always been, at least to me, something slightly “granola-ish” about PTE’s environment and playbills. It felt homey and somewhat hippy-ish and up to this point, I had only seen theatre in the old building, never having had the opportunity to perform there for one reason or another. Seeming to belie its origins and mandate, they were now moving into a gigantic shopping mall on Portage Avenue and I got my first chance to be in one of their shows.

            “Village of Idiots” is a play by John Lazarus based on “Yiddish folk wit and wisdom” – think “Fiddler on the Roof” without the music … or the drama for that matter – and centered on the daily life of the citizens of the old Russian village of Chelm (pronounced with a back-of-the-throat “ch”). As one review put it, “(the characters) operate by a logic so dizzy it’s a wonder they don’t spin off the stage”. Example: “Why are you pulling that rope?” “Have you ever tried pushing one?” Bah-dum-ba! Our rehearsals took place in the old building, the new space still a ways from being completed. The floors creaked. The doors squeaked. Sorry for the “Oklahoma” reference, but they did! The labyrinth of hallways, the smell of old paper and aged wood that hung in air of the huge rehearsal room gave our environment an otherworldly feel, as if we were working somewhere in Europe in an ancient and venerable theatre space.

            The rehearsals were wild. Our director, the always generous and considerate Kim McCaw, had paced the production like a series of vaudeville-like sketches and it was a constant challenge not to lapse into complete silliness. In this play there is a very fine line between silliness and honest comedy and that sense of balance was always put to the test. Gags would get out of control going one or two steps too far and the “bit” became the focus rather than its place in the story. The temptation to go for the “obvious” and “send up” (make fun of) the material had to be resisted and we were always reminded that playing the truth of the characters was our goal … one not always achieved. While I admit to being guilty of breaking up a time or two because of some discovery about a moment in a scene during early rehearsals (the noodles-on-my head episode in “How The Other Half Loves” documented earlier in these pages comes to mind) there were too many times during “Village” rehearsals when folks would get overly amused by their own or someone else’s work, and their tendency to dissolve would drive me nuts. I know my short-comings. I tend to get imperious and curmudgeonly at times, impatient and anxious, and those reactions might be based in my own insecurities. But the foundation is always the work and the incredible of amount of thought and energy it takes to get something happening that is believable and real. So drifting away from that purpose usually sets me off and I get pissy. At least, that’s my excuse. Fortunately, and “bit” by “bit”, things were brought into proper perspective and we finally left the old theatre and moved into the new space which was still being worked on. It was a jolt! The echo-y noise of the mall was a constant reminder of where we weren’t! It was a major trek from the third floor theatre to the outside world for some fresh air. But the Food Court was certainly a bonus at meal breaks. We found ourselves making some major physical adjustments to the blocking (not to mention psyche adjustments to our surroundings) while contending with the pervasive and on-going construction noise and upheaval all around us. Plaster dust, which hung in the air thick and white, caused throats to seize up. But, as performers are prone to do, we ploughed on.

I find something deliciously organic about rehearsing. By “organic” I mean the visceral intuition fueled by one’s technique or approach to forming a character. Robbie (Paterson) and I had long conversations about this during breaks. How much of the creation and development of a character is informed by internal or external influences? While I considered my approach over the years to have been mainly external, our talks started me thinking again about the “how” of acting. Needless to say, I always reveled in my pre-rehearsal work which gave me most of the parameters while learning the lines; but getting those first bits of information from a designer about the set and costumes usually served to confirm my initial thoughts about who I was in the world I was about to inhabit. For me, a character was fleshed out and fueled by the environment, the physicalization, the vocal idiosyncrasies, the costumes and make-up, while Robbie found that internal explorations propelled him. As time has gone on I‘ve landed on a combination of the two, but I’ve found myself still under the spell of the outside-the-character elements. It’s an on-going and exhilarating challenge each time I approach a role.

We were a large cast for a PTE show – a total of ten mostly from Winnipeg although there were a few Torontonians brought in – and had bonded as “family” almost immediately. The quirky “Chelmniks” began to live in us as we moved toward Previews. Despite the fact that an Occupancy Permit shouldn’t have been issued for the first showing (the Theatre Lobby was still under construction), the City waived the requirement because of all the municipal and provincial government officials attending. The first purpose-built theatre in Winnipeg in decades was a really big deal!  We played our first preview to a packed media/invitees audience. The response was a bit more tentative than we had anticipated but as far as we were concerned we were still rehearsing. John Lazarus (the playwright) was there and came up to Robbie and me afterward and told us that our naturalistic performances were the way he wanted to see his play done. Nice! Once open, it actually took a while for the subscription audiences to warm to the piece. PTE audiences had, over the years, grown used to topics that were “pertinent” and maybe a bit edgy, involving the “prairie experience”. “Village” was a bit semi-commercial “in-your-face-slapstick”, a big departure from their regular fare and we were constantly aware of their hesitancy to get involved. That response made us hesitant too and there were nights during the run when our self-consciousness compounded the awkwardness. However, the reviews had been great (“Heartwarming Housewarming” said one) and once the subscription audiences ran out and the “civilians” started buying tickets, we began to enjoy ourselves and the run settled into fun and laughter. This was the start of a years-long relationship with PTE that found me in several astonishing and indelible productions.

During the latter part of “Village” rehearsals, I became somewhat pre-occupied with writing another show for Jack Timlock and Chimes Dinner Theatre. It was to be a book show and I had three months to get 15 songs written. This process was to be somewhat more challenging because I wasn’t writing satirical one-off material as I had for “Peg”. There was a storyline to be followed with songs either advancing the plot or giving insights into the characters and what they were experiencing. Or at least that was the plan. We had concocted a vague outline concerning the marriage of two young people with difference cultural backgrounds (Jewish and Irish-Catholic) and the complications that arose as the families tried to get to know and understand each other. The problem was that Jack had no clue how to write a play! “How hard can it be to write a show?” he said. I was amazed at that statement as he had had first-hand experience watching what I had gone through during the workshops of “Now You’re Talkin’”. He was a crackerjack as a Production Manager but had never really been connected with the actual creative process and it became apparent very quickly that he seemed to have little practical understanding of the intricacies of writing a through-line and dialogue! I was writing songs based on the bare-bones outline and not an actual script and he was writing a script based on my songs! And very slowly at that! It drove the cast (Stan Lesk, Karen McDonald, Linnea Pearson, Andrew Stelmack, Joanne Parker-Gibson and Robbie Paterson) and director (Kimberley, again) to distraction and resulted in a lot of frustration, not least of which was Jack’s own. The pressure to produce something, anything, of substance weighed heavily on him and things frayed a goodly amount the closer they got to opening.

            I don’t write “we got to opening” because shortly after rehearsals began (and all of my songs had been done) I had to zap off to do another ‘Frosch’ in “Fledermaus” for the Edmonton Opera. It seemed like an escape more than anything else and, while I was getting reports (and complaints) from various folk about the rehearsals, I took some solace in the safe embrace of Dottie Danner’s direction and the musical direction of the wonderful, affable and hilariously funny Tim (Timothy) Vernon. (In conversations, we discovered that we had been chalet mates at the Banff School in 1962!) I actually remember very little about the production, however. ‘Frosch’ is only in the third Act and I had a lot of time on my hands so not a lot was registering. Our cast was adequate and ‘Frosch’s’ usual hijinks were set in place in short order. I had arranged a couple of days off in the midst of opera rehearsals to head back to Winnipeg to see the final dress and opening of “Eloped”.

            As I watched the dress rehearsal, I was actually amazed at the progress the cast had made and at how well they had settled in to Jack’s disjointed script, making the best they could of it. The opening night’s packed house ate it up. Even I, surprisingly, enjoyed the production. I write “surprisingly” because I’d not expected to be as at ease with the way the script and my songs had melded together to form a cohesive whole. Although the reviews were “mixed” the houses maintained and I was into another four months of collecting royalties. I couldn’t complain about that! I headed back to Edmonton, finished the “Fledermaus” run and returned home.

Then things got messy!

            A seemingly small hiccup threatened to kibosh the show and, indeed, Chimes itself. Jack had been very lax in dealing with Actors’ Equity and its financial regulations. Posting the bond had always been a stumbling block for Jack. “Why should I have to pay Equity two weeks salary for everyone before the show has even gone into rehearsal” he would rail! He’d also been remiss in submitting the required RRSP (Retirement Plan) payments for performers from previous Chimes productions and while Equity had given him some leeway with regard to the arrears, it was now coming to a head and they were threatening to issue a “withdrawal of services” order for the actors”, essentially closing the show! As Councilor for the region I found myself in the middle of all this and after some back and forth with Equity, conferences with Robbie (who was the show’s Deputy) and some heart-to-heart conversations with Jack, complete with threats and tears (his, not mine), we managed to come to an understanding on both sides. He got the money together and paid the bonds and past due bills. It was baffling to me why he was raising such a stink. He certainly toed the line when it came to Equity in his job as Rainbow Producer, making sure that all bills were paid and regulations adhered to. It struck me how folks without a Board of Directors or Executive Committees to maintain fiscal order invariably start to form a “they’re all-against-me” mindset, thinking everyone is stopping them from making a buck. That seemed to be Shapira’s mental evolution and ultimate downfall and now I was seeing it taking hold with Timlock. This time it worked out, tenuously, and things progressed into the summer.

            As “Eloped” established itself we decided to follow up last summer’s money maker, “Peg ‘O My Heart”, with “Peg ‘O My Heart ‘90”. Once again, I launched into song-writing mode with Jack sporadically providing ideas and less sporadically providing the transition sketches he’d promised months earlier. Approached this task thinking it would be different from the last two writing experiences with him was a fool’s errand. I should have known better. Using some of the “hits” from the previous edition meant that I had less new material to write but it was still a slog. The ideas weren’t coming as easily and I was getting bogged down in what felt to be forced humour and just-acceptable craft. That was bothersome and I commiserated with new-found friend and the MD of the new review, Teresa Lee. Her insights and observations about the process were safe havens for me and I trusted that this new and objective voice would provide me with the incentive I needed to keep on an even keel during the weeks to come. (Indeed, to this day, ”T” remains a bulwark in my life, still providing those considered insights and astute observations that have consistently and gratefully graced my journey forward.) As I continued writing, I was also learning lines for a closing week stand-in for Stan Lesk in “Eloped”. While I knew the songs pretty well (duh) I was having a bit of a struggle getting Jack’s words to work for me. The cast had grown used to them but I was becoming more aware of how bad they really were. But I ploughed through and, despite Rick McNair’s nagging words, managed to “get a performance too fast” thanking the heavens that I could cram more into my head in a short period of time and ultimately come out the other side none the worse for wear. It was great working with my friends on stage now as simply a performer.

            “’Peg ‘90” rehearsals were now in their final stages and when I dropped in, as I did from time to time, I would notice little blips on my radar. Things seemed tense when I would arrive at the theatre with some new material to be worked on by the cast (Torontonians Sharon Matthews and Tim Murphy with Winnipeggers Curtis Moore, Jennifer Lyon, and Alex Bodnar). There is invariably physical disarray in the theatre space when one show is closing and another is getting ready to open – sets being taken down and new ones put up, tables and chairs strewn with costumes and theatrical detritus that have found their way to the seating area. That was to be expected.  But there was a darkness in the room, a black mood that seemed to permeate the air. I watched smallish blow ups about minor things – a drum machine not working properly, a costume that wasn’t finished or script pages that weren’t ready – get bigger … and louder. Oddly, Kimberley, usually helpful and creative, had gradually transitioned into taking little responsibility for what was happening, abstaining from making decisions, lashing out at the cast and our stage manager (the incredibly calm and collected “Tangoman”, Joseph Bain), and setting a tone that was neither helpful nor productive. “It’s not brain surgery” she would say in frustration with a problem she considered unimportant, to which I would counter, “No, it’s your reputation!” which would send deeper into darkness. Admittedly that might not have been the best approach and I would later apologize, but I was getting tense myself and could see the cast becoming mutinous as she continued to lash out at them. A few days earlier I had been banned from giving the cast notes after correcting two of the performers on a couple of lyrics. She made it clear that “it was only through (her) that the cast would be addressed”! What? WHAT? Where was this coming from?!

            Slowly, I began to realize that the source of this malaise was Jack. I can’t imagine the pressure he was under at the time. Maintaining an even keel with Rainbow’s season preparations in full swing, keeping Chimes going, dealing with the Equity turmoil, fending off reporters as another Shapira article came out and trying to write the script and falling dreadfully behind couldn’t have been easy. On top of this, he, like Shapira, suffered from sleep apnea and was not getting proper rest. He was venting his growing frustrations at anyone in sight and would come into rehearsals combative and angry. On the afternoon of opening night it came to a head.

The cast had been going through some bits and suddenly Kimberley started screaming “What’s that? What’s that?”  A few days earlier Teresa and I had changed a keyboard registration so Alex could hear his accompaniment better while singing one of his songs. It had been rehearsed this way for days, but Kimberley was now going off the deep end because she’d not been told about it in spite of the fact that she’d been listening to the new sound all along. With the whole cast watching, Jack jumped up from his seat and yelled that he was going to fire Teresa! Up to that point I had stayed mute but I couldn’t take it anymore.

            “No you won’t”, I said, in total control as I got up and walked over to him. This was pure confrontation on my part but I was feeling very ready for a fight.

            “I can do whatever I like”, he boomed. “It’s my money and I can do whatever I want!” I was aware of everyone watching, but I’d had it. I looked him square in the eye.

            “You want to have this out now?”

            Rick Mucha, Jack’s partner, was sitting at the table sewing something and without looking up from his work said “Not here”, sensing the set-to about to start.

            “Let’s take this outside”, I said.

I felt like we were about to take our jackets off and start a fist fight. The “outside” was the lobby of the Westin. Jack grabbed his cigarettes. The lobby was filled with guests so we walked into the Velvet Glove. I could feel him shaking as we sat down at a rear table in the nearly empty restaurant. I was totally calm and focused because I knew I was in the right.

            “What the hell is going in there?” I said. “It wasn’t like this last year! What is happening?” My reasonable tone seemed to take him off guard and he calmed down a bit. “The cast is so belligerent and defensive whenever they’re given a note. What has happened to put them in that mood? Is it Kimberley and her insecurities? Is the inexperience of the cast? Is it the lateness of the material?” I took none of the blame on any of these counts because I’d been away for most of the rehearsal period and was actually not made to feel very welcome when I’d returned.

            He looked down at the table agreeing with everything I’d asked. He admitted that he’d been partly to blame for the atmosphere because so much was coming down on him. Unfortunately, just as we were getting down to some meaningful talk, Rick interrupted us telling Jack that he was needed back in the theatre. Things had eased between us and we were both feeling somewhat better. Back in the room, I could see that Teresa was ready to kill Kimberley after the attack about the keyboard registration. I told Teresa to be gentle and I went over and gave Kimberley a hug as if to say everything was alright. It might have a bit superficial but served to ease the tension that was still palpable. God! Show business wasn’t supposed to be this hard!!

            The opening, amazingly, went pretty well. The cast seemed to be flying by the seat of their collective pants after the skirmishes that afternoon, but the excitement gave them the energy to overcome whatever glitches they were experiencing during the performance. After the show, the cast gathered in the house and was jovial about the gaffs and missed lines, but there was also a sense of relief that the first one was over. While there was to be a note session the following day, the tension had dissipated and, like any group of people who had together experienced a traumatic event, the tensions were forgotten. But not all was forgiven … at least not for me. The chaos and upheaval had coloured my feelings about Jack. I had to seriously consider putting myself through this again. It probably wouldn’t have happened with a more experienced cast and a more secure director. As it turned out, all those ruminations were moot. “Peg ‘90” was to be the last Chimes production.

I launched myself into the New Year (1989, for those of you keeping score) with a frenzy that surprised even me. “Falstaff” was winding down but the days were filled with commercial recording sessions, teaching Musical Theatre Performance for the Manitoba Conservatory and MTC’s Youth Theatre, serving as President of my Co-op Board (a position I’d tried to relinquish but, like Al Pacino in “The Godfather” I kept getting pulled back in). I was doing concert run-outs on days off, and, to top everything off, had been commissioned to write a “School Song” for Vincent Massey High School, a duty I took very seriously and spent a great deal of time on while learning a huge new computer music program that took forever to wrestle to my orchestrating needs. It was exhausting!

            My involvement with Actors Equity began to increase. When not dashing back to Toronto for meetings (which became more fraught as the Association faced a leadership crisis that went on for months), I had a telephone glued to my ear in my apartment for Executive Committee conference calls that went on for hours. I eventually smartened up and bought a set of stereo headphones to make the interminable calls a bit more palatable. I sat on Arts Council juries and found myself wondering where people came up with some of the off-the-wall ideas that were presented to us. Out of dozens of funding requests the panels were invariably confined by fiscal limitations and the emotional toll of having to turn down viable projects shook us every time. And then, as if passing through the wall of a hurricane into the eye, I was suspended in the calm, away from the maelstrom that had surrounded me for months, and I began rehearsals for “I Do, I Do”.

            The long-planned Chimes Dinner Theatre had finally opened quietly and inauspiciously a few months earlier at the high-end Westin Hotel in downtown Winnipeg. Originally a conference room, under Jack Timlock’s guidance and design, the large space had been transformed into an elegant and fully-fledged performance venue seating 150 diners. The kitchen was the same as that for The Velvet Glove Dining Room adjacent to the theatre and, as was the case with all of the Westin’s eateries, produced very high quality food. The Theatre’s first two productions were low-keyed and somewhat slipshod. Our production was to be first class all the way. However, the initial organization and preparation left something to be desired. Contrary to Timlock’s laudable attention to detail at Rainbow Stage, Chimes seemed to be treated as a distant second cousin, due mainly to lack of production staff.

“I Do, I Do” is a musical by Schmidt and Jones based on Jan de Hartog’s play “The Fourposter” and follows the lives of a husband and wife (‘Michael’ and ‘Agnes’) as they face the ups and downs of married life over a period of fifty years. In a two-hander there is no place to hide. It is an intense exercise in focus, self preservation and collaboration. Our rehearsal period was only two weeks with the Director (Kimberly Timlock, Jack’s sister) not arriving until six days before opening! So, with the extremely capable Celoris Miller as our Musical Director, Vivianna (“Viv”) Zarrillo and I were thrust into learning songs and lines in a kind of limbo in an empty rehearsal space without any guidance. It was stressful and led to the dilemma of “do we get on our feet and stage this number by ourselves?” or “do we sit and wait for Kimberly to arrive?” Against my better judgment, we waited. The inactivity led to some tensions but, by the time she did arrive, the songs and lines were well-practiced and we got it up in a couple of days. That was the easy part. Learning to play the saxophone (very badly) for one of the numbers was a challenge to say the least. I eventually got to the point where just making a sound was a victory. Combined with the constant costume changes (some of them in nanoseconds), the frustration of the much-too-slow addition of countless props and set pieces, we were basket cases by the time the first (and only) preview arrived. But, as is always the case, we survived.

One other element I found myself contending with was an inherent gender bias in the script. Since the story spanned a fifty year period starting in the late nineteenth century, social attitudes and cultural norms were very much on display. My leading lady was a secure, strong woman who knew her mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it. My character’s innate pompous chauvinism at the beginning of the play, while fun to play, tended to get personal responses from Viv prompting a number of “exchanges” between us in real life. That baffled me. The words we had to say to each other in the play were the playwright’s, not our own. But I could see and feel Viv’s resistance to giving in to ‘Agnes’s’ frailties. I found a subtle aggressiveness in rehearsal that gave her character an edge that belied the male and female roles of the times which, when viewed from a modern perspective, provided some of the comedy in the piece, her subservience being laughable now.  All this started me thinking about the women in my own life.

I had always been surrounded by strong women. My mother and grandmother were very intelligent and nurturing women who worked in business most of their lives, navigating a male-dominated society which, at times, clung to old traditions of “the little lady” and “a woman’s place is in the home”. I remember my mother telling me about attending International Business Symposiums as the Chief Facilitator but also as the only woman in a Board Room filled with male executives who would condescend to her position of power, smirking in side-long glances at each other with undisguised distain. She would go back to her hotel room and weep in frustration and anger. At this point in time, I can still feel my hackles rising just reading of such an attitude toward my mother, but she persisted in her approach of dialogue and consensus building eventually guiding everyone to an equitable conclusion. But those efforts took fortitude and perseverance.

It now struck me that Viv was perhaps experiencing much the same thing in our play, having a difficult time separating our on-stage and real life relationships. Here again, I took some solace that it was ‘Michael’ talking and not Richard when we were rehearsing but, at the same time, I was very aware of the delicate line that Viv was experiencing about the two of “us”. Compounding this for both of us was the pressure of the up-coming opening, our insecurities about certain scenes, and maintaining the emotional balance of the characters and their situations. When it worked, which it did most of the time, it was euphoric; when it didn’t, it was hell. I sympathized with her turmoil and was as accommodating as I could be remembering my mother’s private responses to being diminished by men and my own situations in which, as a performer playing a character, I had no control. As we got more comfortable with all that was being thrown at us and the work, things calmed and by the time we got to opening, we were settled and confident.

The preview and opening were resounding successes. Jack was massively pleased and, before we opened, our run was extended by two weeks. Our audiences were sometimes big and sometimes small but always responsive. There was really no other way they could be. The piece is provocative in light of the political correctness of the day and vocal responses from the occasional audience member tended to surprise us on stage. There were nights when the ladies would hoot and jeer at me for “my” chauvinism and other nights when the men would cheer for me. One night, as ‘Michael’ alone on stage muses about whether or not to wear his night cap to bed, out of the dark came a loud, slightly inebriated male voice yelling “Go for it!” I could hear Viv guffaw just off stage along with the audience and it was all I could do to maintain. As we progressed through the run getting more and more comfortable, the challenge was in keeping focus. As the words and actions became second nature, I would find myself editorializing, stepping out of character for a moment and assessing what I was doing and how I was doing it. It was somewhat otherworldly as I watched ‘Michael’ respond and react thinking “well, that wasn’t very good” or “not bad, Hurst, not bad”. I had to jolt myself out of that dangerous objectivity and get back to business. It still strikes me as odd how performers have to work so incredibly hard to be “natural” on stage when, in Life, “being” comes so naturally … if that makes any sense. The challenge in balancing the juxtaposition of the two realities remains mysterious to me and is probably what I love most about this craft. In a two-hander it’s in constant play.

Jack Timlock was becoming the center of my Universe. Just after we opened he asked if I would be interested in writing a revue for the next Chimes offering. A Revue! That sounded easier than writing a book show so I agreed and applied for and received a “living grant” from the Arts Council. We also began talking about the Rainbow Classes for the summer. Since they had been such a success the year previous it was a no-brainer to offer them again. What I would be interested in playing in the proposed productions (“Peter Pan” and “Carousel”) for that year was another discussion. Alan Lund was coming back as our Director/Choreographer. All was well with the world!

Writing twenty songs with no theme on which to hang them was my first obstacle. What was the show to be about? Timlock was not being helpful. He had too many other things to deal with. “You signed the contract; you’re getting four percent of the gross; the rest is up to you”, he said. Something topical, political, satirical? Something local, something irreverent, a combination of everything? I didn’t take long to be inspired. A few days of reading the local newspapers gave me some ideas and the original “’Peg O’ My Heart” (there were two of them) was born. I decided it was to be loosely centered on a group of tourists who were grounded in Winnipeg for a few hours because of airplane mechanical difficulties and were offered a tour of the city to keep them occupied. Yeah, feeble, but it was all I had to go on for the moment. I would walk to the evening performances of “I Do” reciting my lines on the way and then concentrated on ideas for songs. I was coming up with a song every two days and, with a couple of months before starting rehearsals, I felt confident I could get my arbitrary number of songs written.

The songs stood by themselves; that is, they didn’t have to relate to each other or fit into a story line except under the umbrella of the overall theme which was, of course, Winnipeg. Decide on a topic – shopping malls, politicians, various areas in town, multiculturalism, cross border shopping, etc. – and write a song. As they solidified I would play them for folks and the response would usually be laughter … exactly what I wanted! Two songs, “Transcona” and “Lost Under Portage and Main”, would get great reactions and spurred me on to find the “hooks’, the unexpected word or phrase that was the point of the song. Each song was a little self-contained puzzle to be solved.

With the topic set, then came the form – maybe a set-up verse launching into a repeated chorus with variations; then the musical style which often ended up being a part of the “hook” – music that was a contrast to what was being said; once that was settled, the music and lyric usually came, for me, at the same time – not one before the other; the inner workings were dictated by the scan of the lyric – how many beats in a bar, where the syllabic stresses were to make aural sense of the words, the rhyme scheme and, always at the foundation, the constant question being “what am I trying to say”. There really wasn’t an “order” to the approach. It all seemed to happen organically. Some took no time at all while others took a while and were probably the most challenging academically. But, amazingly, they all worked out.

The cast (Jayne Paterson, Patti Jamieson, Jennifer Lyon, Tim Murphy and Alex Mustakas) was great! They launched into the material I was producing on a daily basis with incredible gusto making it their own – after all, they were the first to do these songs – rising to the occasion with their own spins. There were aggravating moments during rehearsals when folks decided they should offer “improvements” on my lyrics. Even stage management thought they would get in on the game re-writing my songs or offering new verses they thought were funny. Those infringements would send me up the wall and it all got nipped in the bud in short order. Timlock’s contribution of a few “sketches” to act as transitions between some songs was tentatively welcomed but the downside was that he took forever to complete them and would send the cast into tailspins learning lines as we got closer to opening. But, as it always does, things came together under Kimberley’s direction.

The audiences ate it UP! The previews started the word-of-mouth ball rolling and it never let up. It was the show to see in town that summer. Politicians, local celebs, media personalities anyone who was mentioned in the songs flocked to the show! Even Bill Norrie came and luxuriated in “Billy, My Boy”, a song about the challenges he faced as Mayor of the city and lapped up the responses of the crowds during and after the show! Houses were huge nightly and for me hearing that kind of laughter from such large crowds was the reward … along with the weekly royalty cheques that kept on coming all summer long!

Then, the day before we opened, out of the blue a Free Press’s headline took everyone by surprise! While I knew there had been some grumblings (and indeed, I’d been party to conversations with MTC Board members who wondered why people weren’t coming to the theatre – the playbill for the season was drab, unexciting and unknown) I had no inkling this would be the result of the displeasure. Past seasons had squeaked by and everyone had kept their heads. But I guess this wasn’t one of those times. Associate Steven Schipper was appointed the new AD and life went on, albeit apprehensively as we waited to find out the direction in which Steven would be taking the premiere venue (for both audiences and artists) in town. It was the beginning of a new era, one that, with Steven at the helm, was to last for almost 30 years!

Not missing a breath, I careened into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” at Rainbow Stage. It seemed like everything was suspended for a while. Leaving the chaos of writing and creating “’Peg” and being enfolded in the beauty and magic of Rogers and Hammerstein’s music and story was a cloud on which I floated for the next six weeks under the masterful guidance of Alan Lund.  While my role (‘Enoch Snow’) wasn’t huge, it gave me a chance to play yet another pompous chauvinist (why did I always get these roles?) with some wonderful songs to sing opposite dear Lilianne Stilwell (playing ‘Carrie’). John Devorski and Sheila Brand headed the production as ‘Billy’ and ‘Julie’ with the superb Liane Marshall as ‘Nettie’. It was, however, another eye opener for me as I would watch from the wings becoming more and more aware of the choice-of-show dilemma facing producing entities these days … the question of outdated cultural norms like racial inequality or baked-in misogyny, issues that weren’t quite as controversial when some shows were written but were now. To be fair, R&H were well aware of what they were commenting on, like in “South Pacific” containing the song “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”, a thinly disguised rebuke of bigotry. While producers have to weigh the potential of creating controversy, performers also have to come to grips with what they were saying and singing about. While revenge or reclamation or retribution invariably brought antagonists to accountability, it was sometimes the difficulty of “playing” the elements of story and character that we deemed cringe worthy today. I saw Julie’s victimization nightly and it broke my heart when the spirit of ‘Billy Bigelow’ returns to earth and realizes what effect his behaviour has had on his daughter and how, without ever knowing him, she forgives him. There is a baseness that might be overlooked or excused through tears in the moment, but its effects remain in our minds long afterward.

Jammed in between all this was the premiere of Vincent Massey High School’s School Song. A professor of music from University of Manitoba had orchestrated the song for Concert Band and the Choir had been well rehearsed. It’s first playing had elicited cheers and tears from the teachers who had gathered for the in-house rehearsal, the only performance I could attend because of evening shows. It really did sound wonderful: “We will stand together/In the light of the coming day./For we are young and the future’s ours/With our hearts to lead the way”. There was also preparation to do for the Summer Workshop Classes and it was back to administration for a bit to get that in order. We had reduced the number of classes offered and increased the number of spots available. They were filled before we started! And as “Carousel” hit the boards we were off to the races once more.

The summer heat was oppressive! Being under the stage lights brought back memories of “Fiddler” performances wearing wool coats and sweating under layers of clothing as we left Anatevka. Wearing a thick fisherman’s wool turtleneck sweater during “Carousel” was almost more than I could stand. Singing “When The Children Are Asleep” as rivulets of sweat ran down my face and back is still a vivid memory and there was no escape. Retreating to the slightly cooler dark backstage area with fans churning up dust and a bit of a breeze did little to ease the discomfort. Outdoor summer theatre certainly does have its drawbacks. But the audiences ate us up and that was the reward … sort of.

The classes before the evening performances were marvelous! With a full roster of teachers and students (62 of them!), there was again a sense of community and family, all committed to learning the craft and improving already considerable skills in some cases. Some kids blew me away! Sixteen year old Jamie McLennan, with whom I’ve since reconnected and is now an established teacher and performer himself, was, back in those days, an astonishing young vocalist with an incredible vocal quality well beyond his years. It was kids like this that made the whole teaching experience so worthwhile. And not to let the grass grow under my own feet, we began a late-night cabaret series at Chimes Dinner Theatre following our shows at Rainbow. On Friday nights, members of the “Carousel” cast would present hour-long midnight shows of their own creation and even for that time of the day, they were incredibly well attended, both by “civilians” and other casts around town. With a stop-off for a bite to eat and chatter at the local Country Kitchen after those performances we were usually heading home as the light of the new day started to fill the sky. It was all very “romantic” – in the theatrical sense – an incredibly productive and fulfilling time!

“Carousel” closed and we headed into “Peter Pan’ which was very high-end and spectacular children’s theatre. Playing ‘Smee’ opposite Michael Rawley’s ‘Captain Hook’ was a primer in “eat-the-scenery/shtick” acting and we both sent it to the heights … shamelessly. We had to keep ourselves amused somehow as the script was incredibly juvenile. But Alan (Lund) let us get away with murder because he saw how hard we were trying to make the silliness of the script work, much to the delight of the cast members who would fill the room when we were rehearsing our bits! It wasn’t great “theatre” but rampant ticket sales were already confirming the choice of this show was the right one for the end of summer.

But the tech runs were terrible. With the huge set changes not moving fast enough and the flying not being cued properly, Alan, true to form during tech rehearsals, was beside himself. We’d all experienced his tirades and now, combined with some performances not where he want them, he was fit to be tied!

One evening I was called to the backstage phone. It was Timlock.

“Tell Alan and John (Shopka, our Production Manager) that I’m going to be late”, he said. He sounded somewhat upset.

“What’s wrong? Where are you?” I asked, knowing that Alan, in his present state of mind, needed Jack to rant at and would want more than the vague message Timlock was asking me to relay.

“I’m with the police.”

“What!!? Why? What did you do!?” My mind was doing flip-ups now.

“I didn’t do anything. Shapira has been arrested.”

“For what?”

“Conspiring to commit bodily harm”, he said. I connected the dots very quickly.

As if I didn’t already know the answer and all its implications, I asked, “On WHO??”

“Me”, he said. I could feel my knees begin to shake. I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t go into any huge explanation. I’ll get there as soon as I can” and we hung up.

I walked out onto the stage as Alan was delivering more tirades in every direction. The cast had been assembled and I sort of melded into the background trying to decide how much of Jack’s message I should deliver. As Stage Management started to give some notes to tech, I sidled up to Alan and told him about the call. A moment later, Jack walked in, spoke to Alan for moment and then addressed the cast and crew letting them know what had happened. I guess he had to tell them something – why I couldn’t really figure out – and I could see Alan getting ready to blow again, this news just serving to tip him further over an edge on which he’d been teetering all night. Jack ended his speech and we stood there in stunned silence. Alan quickly gathered his script and jacket and stormed out of the theatre. We could hear doors banging and being slammed as he headed to the parking lot. Stage Management dismissed us. A day off would do everyone a world of good.

The Free Press headline the following day pretty well summed it up. While on day parole, Shapira had initiated “a hit” on Timlock with another ex-inmate. The man with whom he had plotted the assault had gone to the police and informed on him. The Police had had Shapira under surveillance for the past couple of weeks and he had been arrested that evening by plainclothesmen. Lord! Where was all this going to end up?

Sometimes, Life is a Movie!!

I was sitting on the toilet. Yeah, well, sorry for putting that image in your head but that’s the way this story begins. As is usually the case when responding to nature’s call, one’s mind wanders. So do one’s eyes. This time, they happened to rest upon the label on the back of my Joe Boxer underwear now stretched across my knees. It struck me how some little Chinese lady in a factory thousands of miles away from where I now sat had been bent over her sewing machine attaching this little white rectangle covered with, to her, the undecipherable English language characters. One after another, mindlessly, she positioned the label, pressed the foot pedal and, in a matter of seconds, had added another eighth of a cent to her meager paycheque. I began to read the upside down words on the label: the washing instructions lines, the “Made in China” line at the bottom, and another line I had never noticed before – not that I’d spent that much time reading the labels on the back of my underwear. The line consisted of two words all in caps: CHANGE DAILY. On the surface, it was an acceptable enough instruction considering the garment to which it was attached. I was being given an order to be unquestioningly obeyed. All it missed was an exclamation point. The meaning of the words began to morph, as if I was looking at one of those picture puzzles where, if you concentrated on one part of it, it was the image of a witch, but if you altered your focus by a millimeter it was a beautiful lady looking in a mirror. “CHANGE DAILY”. What did that actually mean?

            A number of months earlier I had been called in to meet with MTC’s A.D. Rick McNair to talk about my potential involvement in possible upcoming productions. The final playbill STILL hadn’t been decided for the season and it was driving people crazy, especially those in the Publicity Department. For some reason, Rick had got it in his head that maybe it was time to squeeze Shakespeare’s two massive “Henry IV” plays into a single evening. The “new” play was to be called “Falstaff” and he’d enlisted University of Manitoba English Professor Vic Cowie to do the adaptation. With no script yet in existence, he gave me some generic Shakespeare to read, asked for a few alterations in my delivery to which I acquiesced and then we started chatting. “You know what Directors say about you, right?” Now what the hell was this?? “You get a performance very fast and don’t progress in a role”, he said. I was completely blindsided by this rather glib “assessment” of my work at MTC over the previous year – a total of two shows in each of which I’d had a total of five or six lines! But I went with it. I listened to him pontificate about how actors should “take time” to develop a role and allow a character to “live” in you. The more he talked the more I fumed internally. I considered the wisdom of bringing up his directorial inadequacies but held my tongue and we left it with him saying that he’d be in touch with casting in the next few weeks. It was the middle of September and rehearsals were to begin in two months. There was still no script.

            There is an inherent fragility to Process and Performing, a delicate balance between relinquishing the rehearsal world of learning lines and blocking, and entering into performance mode. There is a continual intellectual assessment of “what’s the next line/where am I supposed to go” which, hopefully, transitions into releasing the emotional state of being within the character. Sometimes that magical crossover comes fast, sometimes it doesn’t. But there’s always the persistent question of “when will it happen?”, “when will I release the script confident that I know the character’s words?” “You get a performance too fast” echoed in my head for weeks after my McNair meeting. I found myself revisiting all my work and asking myself how fast I achieved my goals. It was maddening and depressing and I tended to make excuses to myself for not being “slower”. When one is responsible for lines like “Good morning”, “Indeed it is” and “I’ll be back soon” there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to slow down for. I started to blame the directors (actually, aside from McNair, there hadn’t been any others I’d worked for) for not giving me guidance if I’d not been giving them what they wanted. I was determined to CHANGE DAILY, hell bent that in this next project I was going to “go slow” … that is, if there was anything to “go slow” for. It turned out that there was.

            Since there was no sign of the adaptation, I decided to get into the weeds of the original “Henry IV: Parts One and Two”. Finally, I was been given the role of “Worcester”, a substantial part and one of the “bad guys” who gets executed at the end. He has a lot to say and I slogged through both plays trying to intuit what might be cut or rewritten. I started focusing on “Worcester’s” through-line. I was apparently to have one more role but who it would be was still (and would be until just before rehearsals began) up in the air. I read commentaries and analyses of the plays and how my character fit in. I read different editions searching for differences. I even bought a new (then) Cecily Berry book called “The Actor and His Text” (yeah “His” which back then was considered “acceptable”) and plumbed the depths of her approach to speaking Shakespeare. I immersed myself determined to seek out every nuance. It was a fool’s errand.

            The cast names started to circulate. The major roles were being played by Toronto/Stratford “big boys” – Stephen Russell, Danny Buccos, Jerry Etienne, Eric McCormack, Paul Jollicoeur and Barry McGregor (who was playing ‘Falstaff’ and was not hired until three weeks before rehearsals began!) – and the remainder going to locals. I discovered that I was also playing the small role of ‘Mowbray’ who appears for a line here and there in the second half of the piece.

Once we received the edited script, all my preparations went out the window. The combining of the two massive plays had reduced the history to its nubbins and any depth in our characters (except the main three – ‘Hotspur’, ‘Prince Hal’ and ‘Falstaff’) had bit the dust. Making a coherent arc for ‘Worcester’ was shunted to the side and I bore down attempting to find something to hang on to. Along with a lot of stage fights, I managed to eke out a semblance of the original dimension to my role and with the constant mantra of CHANGE DAILY echoing in my head, progressed, albeit very slowly, toward something that was satisfying to me, and, seemingly, to McNair. I watched the intricacies of my “play-mate’s” approaches with new eyes and, while I found the lack of a cohesive performance style to be somewhat off-putting, we ploughed through and things felt into place.

During rehearsals, I’d arranged for an additional day off so I could head out to Toronto for the first meeting of the newly elected Equity Council. This was my third term on Council. It was a bit of a jolt to be back into the “business” of the Theatre, but seeing old friends who had been re-elected was a bonus. On the second day of the meeting (during which I caught a massive cold), elections were held to determine who would be the Executive. My demonstrated passion for the organization along with a bit of lobbying resulted in my being awarded the job of Internal Vice-President, a position that dealt with the inner workings and National membership of Equity. I was elated at being entrusted with the responsibility and already had a lot of ideas to put into action. I returned to Winnipeg (suffering from decompression and blocked ears in the process) to find that word had already circulated about my new position in the Association’s hierarchy. I was now being referred to as “the Dan Quayle of Canadian Equity” much to everyone’s delight.

(Oh, and just to keep you up to date … not to be left out in the cold, Jack Shapira had managed to insert himself into the upcoming holiday festivities by making another headline in the daily news! This time he’d managed to secret a couple of knives into his cell “for protection” and was now being moved to another prison for further observation! Ironically, at the same time, he was granted day parole having served a third of his sentence. I couldn’t figure that one out, but he was on the streets again – at least during the day – and, as it turned out, was hatching another plan that would initiate the climax of this saga! More to come!)

Unfortunately, I had arranged for another few hours off to accommodate a rehearsal for a Christmas concert I was doing with the Winnipeg Symphony. I say “unfortunately” because the cold had dug in and my clogged ears still hadn’t popped from the flight home. Now I was to sing in front of the orchestra feeling like hell. The headliner for this concert was Frank Mills, he of “Music Box Dancer” fame (and little … actually nothing, else) under the musical direction of the affable Erik Friedenberg, a band director from Calgary. He had little experience conducting Symphony Orchestras (one doesn’t “count in” – “a-1, a-2, a-1, 2, 3” – a symphony orchestra. He did!) . The somewhat cynical musicians spared no effort in an attempt to show who was “boss”, but Erik soldiered on, much to everyone’s surprise. The arrangements had been written for a higher baritone, and the keys were at my breaking point. Combined with my persistent cold the rehearsals were frightening experiences. “O Holy Night” seemed to be my nemesis. In the rehearsals I sang the first half of the song easily enough but with a key change in this arrangement I was now in my vocal stratosphere, especially the second to last line – “oh night de-VINE” – where I had to hit and hold a high ‘G’, the note that everyone was waiting for. First time in rehearsal – big fail! For the next run-throughs I didn’t go for the money note. I had no idea what I was going to happen in performance!

The “Silent Night” presented me with another problem that had been on my mind for a long time – years, in fact. I was to lead the audience in this one and had been prone to do it the traditional way. But I kept thinking about the CHANGE DAILY admonition that had crept into most of my thinking of late. Everyone knows the words to the carol but rarely, if ever, actually thinks about what they are singing: “Silent night (breath), Holy night (breath), All is calm (breath), All is bright (breath), Round yon Virgin (breath), Mother and child (breath), etc. The first three phrases can stand alone but once you get to “all is bright’ the meaning of the line gets completely lost because of the breaths everyone is used to taken. The line is a complete thought -“all is bright ‘round yon Virgin Mother and child” – with NO breaths. In rehearsal I decided I to try this new phrasing. A big breath and I launched in and got through it, breathing before the parenthetical observation “holy infant so tender and mild”. The orchestra obliviously sawed away but I could feel Eric looking over at me. I caught his eye and he smiled and nodded. He’d heard what I did. Small victory! What would happen on the night?

I was somewhat nervous. The cold had opened up a bit and I warmed up in the dressing room not wanting to push things too hard. “We Three Kings” with the audience was a warm up for me and then into “Silent Night”. Made it! I felt fully self-satisfied for allowing myself to make the change. After a few more carols and readings, it was into “O Holy Night” as the second to last number of the evening. With the Symphony, the huge choir and the energy of the audience I was pumped. “Oh, Night, de-VINE”! The high G soared beyond anything I could have imagined. It was pure and clear and solid and emotional and when I finished the audience went bananas! There’s no other way to describe it. They wouldn’t stop applauding. I took a couple of bows and stepped behind the music stand getting ready to lead them in “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” but they kept going! Frank Mills, about to thank the audience for coming, was applauding with them and motioned me out to take another bow. I was slightly embarrassed by now but took a quick one and it was into the last carol. Not staying safely in one’s lane and throwing caution to the wind seemed to have paid off.

The following day, there was a review in the paper. While the compliments were piled high for my work by Free Press critic Neil Harris, I was surprised and pleased with one of his comments “…he has a true baritone voice and sings with great understanding and musicality. Without distorting the fine old carols and using some rather unorthodox breathing pauses, he really did make them sound new”. It was that “unorthodox breathing pauses” line that let me know that, at least for Neil, my phrasing changes were noticed and appreciated! I was determined to continue experimenting if only for my own satisfaction.

My sojourn in symphonyland was short lived. I did two more performances of the Christmas Concert and it was back to the blood and gore of Shakespeare. I took some time to corner our “playwright”, Vic Cowie, to get more insight into his adaptation, specifically with respect to my character. It had been relatively easy to get the words off the page. Shakespeare is great for that because, simply put, he makes plain his intentions through the rhythm – iambic pentameter – that confines you to ten syllables per line (in verse plays) with stresses on every other syllable. You know you’ve made a mistake if it doesn’t “scan” exactly. But I was still concerned about the humanity of my villain character. I wasn’t getting any help from our director and Vic was very accommodating, telling me that rather than go for the obvious bad-guy approach, to think of him as desperate for his own survival, “desperate” being the operative word. It opened up a huge vista beyond the words-on-the-page approach I’d been mired in and just added to the CHANGE DAILY regimen I’d adopted. There are a number of large hell-bent battles in the play and they became the fall-back rehearsal position when McNair needed time to deal with the tech problems or couldn’t think of anything else to do with us. It was miraculous that there weren’t more injuries than there were (Stephen Russell getting the point of a spear in the roof of his mouth and me getting a broadsword whack on the knuckle of my right thumb which hurt and bled like hell  – I still bear the scar) but it only served to bring the cast closer together.

The piece took for EVER to perform! Our first run through lasted four hours (memories of “Nicholas Nickleby” years earlier)! What did one expect? Lashing two major history plays together was bound to result in a very long evening in the theatre. Cuts were made in profusion and I was just glad that most of what I had to do was plot-based and couldn’t be done away with. There was a bit of mayhem the following day in the run-through when Eric (playing Hal pictured at left with Vic Cowie and me) had stood waiting for a line which, unbeknownst to him, had been axed. The tension rose as he went off on McNair about the “kamikaze cutting” at the note session. As each rehearsal passed so did huge sections of the play. The cuts were merciless and depressing and, not surprisingly, did nothing for the cast’s enthusiasm and energy. It is at one’s peril that a “Slashing-The-Bard” approach is undertaken … as Keanu Reeves discovered in our production of “Hamlet” a few years later. But that’s a saga for another time.

It was now a shrugged-shoulder attitude that permeated the show. Our first Preview audience applauded politely at the end of the now three-hour-long slog and silently filed out. This did not bode well, especially for the matinee audiences which were usually made up of little blue-haired ladies and unruly bussed-in school kids. Three hours of dry Shakespeare in the middle of a Manitoba winter was something not a lot of people were up for. We found out later that almost a hundred people had left at intermission! And that was to be the norm for the run.

We opened well enough. A frenetic kind of energy got us through. Our ‘Falstaff’ went up a few times, but Barry (McGregor) seemed to cover those moments with such aplomb and bravado that an audience would never notice. We, however, were sometimes taken aback at what came out of his mouth. It sounded good, but made no sense whatsoever. At the party afterward, folks were complimentary enough but subdued. As I was leaving, McNair came up and latched on to me with a big hug and we walked for a few steps. “So, did I get a performance too fast?’ I asked him in my most affable voice. I think this took him by surprise. I decided I had nothing to lose by telling him about the hell his comment had put me through, how it had taken me weeks to get on an even keel with regard to my confidence. That was when he started to get uncomfortable and began to hem and haw, switching his weight back and forth, so I let it go, feeling a bit embarrassed for embarrassing him like that. At least I got my point across.

The production ambled along. Small houses continued with droves of people leaving at intermission. We kept ourselves naughtily amused on-stage by playing subtle little jokes on each other. Stephen Russell was a master at them. In one of our scenes, he would, an inch at a time, gradually move himself up stage of me so that I would have to turn my back to the audience in order to talk to him. There was nothing I could do about it and he knew it. It was always a challenge to play that scene with him never knowing what he was going to do to me. But there were other times when, just by coming up with a new inflection or unexpected approach, he inspired and provoked me to “meet” him on stage. In those moments performing transcends merely saying the lines and becomes creation through joyous energy. CHANGE DAILY! I loved working with him!

But as time went on I could feel the tugging-at-the-bit by the out-of-towners. There was a speeding up of lines that made itself apparent in the running times for the show and at the bows, when we intuitively made them as quick as possible in order to spare the remaining audience members the ordeal of keeping the tepid applause going until we all left the stage. But by now, my mind was on other things. I was about to go into a production of “I Do, I Do” at Chimes Dinner Theatre, Timlock’s new venture at the Westin Hotel and was getting my head into a better mindset. Doing a smaller role in a large cast show fosters a degree of complacency. Being one of two people in a show puts a major pressure on the time leading up to rehearsals. My confidence quotient was about to be put to a major test. Amid teaching Musical Theatre Performance classes about town, continuing with commercial recording sessions and spending endless hours on Equity Council Conference Calls, I hunkered down and threw myself into learning a huge number of lines and songs. Surprisingly, began to feel better about myself, that I could overcome the self-doubt that had plagued me for the previous months.

            My mother’s advice to “Be a good boy and act intelligently” had been my fundamental approach to life for many years. I now had another one. CHANGE DAILY was the silent affirmation that became my bedrock. One never knows what you’ll find in your underwear!

            Over the yearsI’d taken part in any number of Fundraisers and Benefits for theatres, churches and various service organizations needing help in topping up their coffers or celebrating a special occasion. Some were minimally organized, put together by well-meaning but clueless volunteers; more often than not they were maddeningly haphazard, thrown-together affairs with a catch-as-catch-can array of “acts”, folks doing their “party pieces” to varying degrees of success. Missing-the-mark-performances were usually forgiven because, after all, it was “for a good cause”. Sometimes I was one of many, but occasionally I was the “headliner” and treated with a degree of deference. But there was always a sense of shoddiness about them and I usually left feeling slightly unsatisfied or, in some cases, just a wee bit embarrassed.

            The Edmonton Opera’s 25^th Anniversary Gala was in another league altogether! There were clues. To begin with, it was an impressive Artist Roster! Richard Margison, Mark Pedrotti and Louis Quilico were the men; Joanne Kolomeyjec, Jean Stillwell, Heather Thompson, Judith Forst and Carol Neblett were the ladies. David Agler was the conductor and the Edmonton Opera Chorus and Edmonton Symphony Orchestra rounded out the performers. I was to “play” the Host, ‘H.R.H. Prince Orlofsky’.

            My next clue as to the tenor of this event was being met at the airport by a town car and whisked off to the hotel where I would be staying on and off for the next few days. (I would have to fly back to Manitoba in the middle of the Gala preparations to do a long-arranged concert in the hinterlands for one night and then fly back to Edmonton.) As I was organizing myself in the hotel room there was a delivery of an immense basket of fruit. Clue number Two! I was again picked up and taken to the EOA offices to meet with General Director Robert Hallam and Artistic Director of the Company Irving (Guttman) for a script meeting. I’d met and enjoyed Rob a few months earlier doing “Pirates”. He was a meticulous, dapper man with a slightly preppy air about him, incredibly organized and business-like. His input into the script I’d written was very detailed and he insisted on outlining a minute-by-minute breakdown of how the evening was to unfold, being very specific about what he did and didn’t want in the intros and patter.  For the next two hours, Irving and I sat in an office and altered the script to meet Rob’s requirements. Irving wasn’t very much help; after all he was used to staging a show, not writing it. He seemed somewhat preoccupied and couldn’t remember from one minute to the next what we had just changed; but we ploughed through and came up with something that pleased Rob.

            I walked the short distance back to the hotel in the beautiful Northern Alberta Fall afternoon. I kept thinking how my life had come to this point, how satisfied I was that I had acquired some “cred” in this business and was now being trusted with guiding the performance to come. While away, a huge arrangement of orchids had been delivered to my room along with “swag” from the Opera including comps to the event, perfume, buttons, pins, stickers, a sweatshirt and apron emblazoned with the Gala logo and a detailed schedule of the event and the time leading up to it. Clue Number Three! There was also a hefty cheque from the Company covering the fee for the CBC broadcast of the event. This was unexpected and another indication of the classy tone of the event. Usually one had to wait forever for a CBC payment when they were involved but the EOA had taken care of it in advance. AND there was another envelope filled with cash … twenty twenty-dollar bills! It was our per diem! Richard Margison told me later that when he’d opened the envelope he thought he’d received Carol Neblett’s per diem by mistake.

            The first rehearsal was a reunion of sorts. Having made friends with them a few months earlier, the Chorus folk welcomed me back with open arms, so I felt very much at home and rather comfortable. There was nothing to prove and I just jumped in and did my thing. I pranced and danced and gestured my way through the script much to everyone’s delight and managed to bring everything down a peg or two. There is a tendency, I fear, to get far too stiff and formal during these affairs and I felt that “MY party” (after all, it WAS my party – as the ‘Prince’) should be fun. I did my best to take the edge off the rigid quality that was permeating the proceedings. While the Chorus folk got off on my antics some of the “stars” were surprised at how antic I was. I had worked and become friends with Heather Thompson before so felt free to be a bit glib in my introduction of her. When I announced that she had first performed with EOA in 1967 (21 years earlier – which unintentionally spoke to the lady’s age) she screamed out a huge “OH MY GOD!!!” from the wings! That broke everyone up … including myself. Needless to say, on the night, I covered my mouth when I mentioned the year. I was somewhat irreverent in my intros and no one was immune. At a break, David Agler, the conductor, came up to me and asked me how I could deal with the Divas that way. “They’re just people”, I said. I think that set him back a bit but he smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

            There are degrees of “diva-ness”. In our group for this Gala, there were some really Down Home Divas, artists who have no pretense or airs about them. Judy, Joanne and Jean were approachable girl-next-door types who would guffaw and carry-on with the best of them. Heather was, to me, a Glamour Diva who wore her considerable talent and her beauty easily … it was just who she was and thought nothing more of it than that. Carol Neblett was another type of diva altogether. I don’t know if she considered doing this show in “the boonies” beneath her but I got the impression that she expected a certain degree of deference from all who came within her sphere. I wasn’t about to kowtow to anyone. Irving and I had come up with an entrance for her that started with her laughing off stage, entering and having a little chatter with me at down center. Well, she didn’t like that idea at all and had a few quiet words with Irving, rather insistent quiet words, I observed, off to one side. The entrance was changed and the “intro” became an “extro”, back announced, so to speak. I think she expected the audience would just naturally recognize her and erupt into applause when she came on stage. I wasn’t too sure of that but it wasn’t my concern at the moment. The Chorus would be arranged at tables about the stage to lead the applause and the audience would catch on and join in … theoretically. At points during the rehearsal Carol would come up to me and re-explain why she wanted the entrance to be the way she insisted it be. “Oh course. Whatever you want, dear” was my diplomatic response. Irving asked me to tone the ‘Prince’ down a wee bit (I was having too much fun, I guess), Rob was pleased and that was it.

            Early the following morning, I caught a plane back to Winnipeg and after checking my mail at home and picking up my tux we (Ross Houston and I) drove out into the hinterlands for the evening presentation of “Schubert Alley”. It was fortunate that we had the radio on as it was only by hearing a mention of our performance on the local CBC station that we learned the venue (AND TOWN!) had been changed! We drove another half hour to the next town and let our manager know our displeasure at not being kept informed! It was a bit of a jolt being in a converted movie theatre and singing Musical Theatre after the previous evening’s fare and venue, but our show was well-received and uncomplicated. Drove back to Winnipeg that night, grabbed a few hours of sleep and then it was back to Edmonton in the morning. I was once again whisked off to the hotel to change into suitable garb for the Gala Brunch. In the car, Office Assistant Trish told me that the rehearsal I’d missed the night before had not been all light and love. A lot of tension had filled the air with everyone becoming more and more anxious as they addressed spacing problems, the lighting, the costumes, the sound, the cueing all with the Chorus Master reading in for me. It was after midnight before they got out apparently. Now, with everyone (including me still vibrating from the flight) slightly frazzled, it was off to the Gala Brunch with Board Members, Artists and Opera Staff at the home of a multi-millionaire. EOA certainly was not guilty of letting its talent lie dormant for a minute in all this.

            I don’t get easily impressed. But the Sandy McTavish Mansion on a cliff overlooking the Saskatchewan River Valley had me gobsmacked!  Sandy’s “wife” (none of us thought they were married for some reason) had been told that she would be hosting “a diva”. As soon as Carol walked through the door, our hostess began gushing! She was manic and a little crazed.  “I was told I was going to meet a Diva! I’ve never met one before!” she screamed. Everyone smiled pleasantly but I could see our group catching each other’s eyes and scanning the ceiling as we stifled our laughter.

            All of us were overwhelmed by the enormity and grandeur of the place. We were ushered into what was called “the pool (as in “table”, not “swimming”) room”. The ceilings were over thirty feet high and the entire space was filled with every kind of tropical plant, hanging in pots from the ceiling, on the floor in huge pots, rubber plants bigger than I have ever seen before, palmettos and floral beds that lined the pathways with tables set for six dotted through the undergrowth. It was like a resort hotel! Apparently this was where royalty spent down-time when they came to Alberta.

            Something odd happens to performing artists when they are taken out of their natural habitats (theatres, bars or restaurants at meal breaks) and put into formal social settings. This was one of those occasions. Everyone suddenly becomes very stiff and proper, acting as if they were in a Sheridan Restoration play and quite unlike themselves with polite smiles pasted on their faces. Fortunately, I was sitting with Heather and Judy, Rob’s wife Sydney, the President of the Board and David Agler, our conductor. Between Judy and Heather and me, we managed to keep things light and chatty (until, unfortunately, we got onto the topic of “Free Trade”). Two hours of that was more than enough and, once the wonderful food had been eaten and our still gushing hostess thanked us all for coming, we all headed back to hotel to rest up for the performance.

            I had the stage to myself for a half hour before things started. Wireless mics were somewhat new back in those days and it was a weird sensation to hear my voice echoing through the empty concert hall. I went through all my intros to dispel my nervousness and I’m glad I did. While practicing I introduced “Heather Thompson” as “Heather Paterson”, a close friend from Winnipeg! That would have been disastrous! I’d classed ‘Orlofsky” up a bit and prepared myself for a bit of “winging it” with some of the conversations I was to have with some of the artists. Louis Quilico worried me because he was prone to say just about anything … he was a great story-teller and would go on forever about “the old days”. The evening finally started with a Lobby reception at 7:30. At 8:00 the “Performance” began and was to be followed by a ‘Presentation’ to the main sponsors in the first balcony attended by the “premier ticket holders” and then a “Midnight Supper” on the stage starting at 11:00. It was going to be a long night!

            Just before the show some publicity photos of ME (!) were taken by the Edmonton newspapers. Why me I have no idea especially considering all the Opera stars at hand, but that’s who ended up on the masthead in the paper the following day (see above). Perhaps it was a wise diplomatic move on the part of Management. After all, who could they have possibly chosen among all those Divas without incurring certain degrees of resentment! There was no anxiety or pacing backstage before the show. Everyone was in a good mood. They stood about and laughed and chatted at dressing room doors looking glamorous and attractive. Carol was the personification of the “Diva” in a shimmering white gown and her blond hair. The Chorus folks, who had been beautifully costumed in ball gowns and tuxedos, were artfully arranged about the stage at tables with glasses of champagne. While the Overture played before the curtain rose I wandered about joking and wisecracking with them just to get everyone in a festive mood. The curtain went up as they sang a toast to the host (ME!) and the first half flowed like silk. After Judy Forst sang her aria, I escorted her off stage as Carol made her entrance. It was a good thing the Chorus folk started to applaud when she came on as I don’t think anyone in the audience knew who she was. But she sang and, justifiably, the house went wild. I came on from the wings applauding as she took bow after bow both to the audience and the chorus. As I came closer to her, she started walking toward me. I thought she had changed her mind about chatting but she extended her hand which I took, did one of the deepest curtsies I’ve ever seen, rose, stepped closer to me, kissed me on both cheeks and was gone as the audience applauded wildly once more. Classy with just a hint of “See? My way was better!”

            Louis was next. I introduced him and he entered and stood at the top of the staircase. He hemmed and haa-ed in seeming confusion but finally came down to the terrace level. I found out later that my stand-in the night before had gone UP the stairs to him to talk. He went on incoherently about his relationship to his son (Gino) and their performing together. After his aria, Richard Margison got in some digs when I suggested that he and I should sing the duet from “The Pearl Fishers”, and Mark Pedrotti got some laughs when I told him that I’d auditioned once for ‘Figaro’ in “Barber” but didn’t get the part to which he responded telling me “that was a close shave”. Yeah, Opera humour!

            My on-stage job was pretty well done by then. Rob and Irving came out and thanked the audience and the Chorus sang “Va Pensiero” from  Verdi’s “Nabucco”, a glorious piece of music in which I, as ‘The Prince” sat and luxuriated. The evening ended with the whole cast doing the “Champagne Chorus” from “Fledermaus” as balloons fell from the ceiling on the audience and everyone on-stage took very awkward bows. I was then whisked (lots of “whisking” going on over the past few days!) up to the balcony STILL as ‘The Prince’ to host the Sponsor presentation and then back down to the stage to host the dinner, welcoming, in a receiving line with Opera officials and my “attendants” (read “Opera Staff”), the preemie guests to the stage and thanking them for coming and to make themselves at home. The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t sure where the line between reality and Theatre was drawn. The program had indicated that the whole affair was being hosted by “H.R.H. Prince Orlofsky” (my actual name being listed further down in the program as a “Special Guest”. To my amazement, the dinner guests were responding to me as “The Prince” with bows and curtsies. But I continued to play the part. I spent part of the dinner going from table to table asking if everything was to their liking. Some folks actually stood as I interrupted their meals to say all was wonderful. To this I don’t know if they were aware of what was really going on!

            Backstage I stopped to bid farewell to the cast. Carol, after all her fussing and to-do, was especially effusive about the evening and Judy expressed a hope that we might “work” together again. Mark asked me if I was doing ‘Orlofsky’ in EOA’s “Fledermaus” the following season (I wasn’t – it had already been cast) and with a huge thanks to Rob and Irving I was off into the night. The next morning I was greeted with my face on the masthead of the Edmonton Journal and a glowing review of the evening. If nothing else, that would set the audience straight on what they had experienced the night before.

            It was an exhausting few days, but ultimately deeply satisfying! To served to remind me again that thanks to passionate and committed artists, even in the dry, bottom- line-oriented business aspect of the arts, somehow, a tenuous Magic always manages to insert itself and, if only for a few hours now and then, lifts us all above the banalities and hum-drummery of everyday life. And, my friends, is a very good thing!

            After a small trip to Portland, I settled in to a Winnipeg Winter and prepared myself for the onslaught of work for MTC and Rainbow that would carry me through another year. And then … yet again … there was Jack Shapira!!

I approached the first day of the “Now You’re Talkin’” Workshop with no small degree of trepidation. The lead-up week had been a whirlwind of activity. Thankfully, Stage Management had started working and had taken some of the organization and set-up pressure off my plate. The Timeline I’d drawn up weeks earlier had been adhered to and, on that level, I felt at ease. But I was nervous about the process itself. The cast of 13 had been contracted and were ready to go. Since the project had been confirmed so late in the season we had to scramble a bit to find folks who were suitable AND still available, but between bringing folks in from Toronto and signing on some local folk, we had our contingent. Alan Lund was, much to my pleasure, our Director. Bob McMullin was our Musical Director and Arranger, and David Warrack was being brought in as the “Creative Consultant”.

            As all this moved closer to reality I had found myself thinking about all the “ifs” that had taken place to get me here: if, eighteen months ago, Leslee Silverman had not off-handedly asked if I was interested in writing a show for her; if, all those years ago, Jack Shapira had not felt the need to start pilfering money from his Company; if, just a short while ago, MTC had not initiated a “loyalty clause” for its employees; if Jack Timlock had not quit his job as Production Manager at MTC and started working for Rainbow; if the relationship between me and my Dad had been different; if all those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be about to walk into a roomful of people who, for the next two weeks, would be focused on saying the words and singing the music that had come out of my head! It was serendipitous to the max!!

            The evening before we started, Pat Dawson from Toronto, who would be playing ‘Elaine’, had come to my apartment to listen to the music she was to spend the next while singing. She told me that when she had accepted the contract she had no idea what she was getting into. I’d always had reservations about the script. To me it was the weak element in all of this. Despite the fact that I’d written them, the words people were to say sounded even to my ear, stilted and unnatural; but Pat seemed to think it would work out just fine. She told me she had been nervous about what the music would be like. When she heard the demo tape that evening all her fears, as she put it, “evaporated”. “This is real music” she said. I felt a bit less apprehensive with that statement hanging in the air.

            The following afternoon, we began. My stomach was in knots. As I approached the big rehearsal studio on the fourth floor of Artspace I felt sick and uneasy. That would be my state for the next two weeks. The elevator ride up would bring on the feeling of nausea and it was only after an hour or so that it would disappear. Stage Management had made the space very comfortable and efficient and while the whole cast wouldn’t be with us until the following evening, the Equity cast was there and being social when I walked into the room. I felt a little bit jealous of them. They only had to learn some songs and some lines and it was just another job to them. On the other hand, I had a pile of things to worry about not the least of which was all those songs and lines being exactly right and real. Alan and David wouldn’t arrive for a few days, so I was basically in charge, familiar territory that served to distract and calm me down a wee bit. We launched into a sing-through of the music.

            My ear had grown very accustomed to the demo tapes and the sound of Andrew, Nancy, Andorlie and me singing the songs. I must admit to having a startled reaction to these “new” voices. I could feel my back muscles and glutes tighten as a note or phrase wasn’t sung right or a chord was played incorrectly. My orchestrations had been music program computer-generated and were lush and large. Hearing a lone acoustic piano playing exactly the notes I had written down on the page was a jolt. But what else did I expect? These folks hadn’t lived with the material for the year previous and I couldn’t fault them for not knowing how it was “supposed to sound”. I quickly came to the realization that we were dealing with a skeleton and that the flesh would be added in the days to come. The great thing about this first meeting was that they liked the material … they really liked it!

            Two of the out-of-town cast members (Robin Blake and Tim Seabrook) were staying at my apartment and that evening we spent hours discussing the script. They challenged me about storyline and character relationships and to my amazement I found myself reveling in my attempts to defend what I had written. I discovered that my ego wasn’t getting bruised. I wasn’t being defensive but instead, began to internally assess the material I had given them. Judging from our exchanges, some clarification was required. Those conversations lay the groundwork for my approach to the whole experience.

            The next afternoon was taken up with more music and some of Bob’s arrangements. I could hear what wasn’t working and knew there would be a lot of changes in the time to come. This was to be a process for me more than anyone else and I had to get it into my head that I was going to be called upon to make major alterations, deletions and additions. I thought I was ready. In the evening we skipped the music and concentrated on the script. The cast applauded at the end of the reading. There were no challenges, no questions. It was now just a matter of getting the right words down on paper and laying a foundation for everyone’s awareness of what was to happen in the days ahead. That was the first night I’d not been up at 3:00am setting down changes to a scene that had started to wander through my head or trying to clarify the intention of some lyrics.

            I’d not seen Alan since the summer. We’d spoken on the phone a couple of times after my show had been chosen for the Workshop and he had a few questions, specifically about the ending; but he’d said that we could deal with all that when he got to town. Now, here he was. He was brought up to speed quickly with regard to the schedule and he and I and Kevin Bowers, our stage manager, sat for the afternoon and went through the show. He reiterated how much he liked the music and that became my emotional fall-back point of reference for dealing with the script. If he liked the music, I could deal with his qualms about the book. I had re-worked the ending a bit since our conversations and he told me that I was going in the right direction. I could see that all his recommendations were sound and right; his background and expertise in what an audience would keep up with would serve the piece well as we went along. First hurdle jumped!

            But there was a lot of tension at the evening rehearsal for some reason. I was running the read-through and reading all the stage directions, of which, and much to Alan’s chagrin, there were far too many. I had crammed the spoken lines in between staging and attitude suggestions. “I can’t find the actor’s words with all these directions!” he would say over and over again. The spontaneity of the evening before seemed to have evaporated and people were beginning to “perform”. That would be a problem down the road too … the “workshop approach” versus the “performance approach”. And I was tense too! With all the paper and music laid out in front of me I had, apparently, a very noticeable scowl on my face. At one point Jack Timlock, our Producer, came over and whispered in my ear that I should “lighten up”. People had noticed me “thinking” as they put it and had commented on it. To me, this was serious work. Perhaps I was being too serious.

            The hardest part was making decisions! I didn’t want to make decisions. I wanted to be led, guided toward choices, to be given easy options. I needed Alan to know that he was in charge and that I was just an instrument working for the betterment of the show. Timlock made the analogy of a tailor making a suit for a customer; Alan was the tailor doing the cutting and sewing but I, as the customer, was to choose the material and what kind of lapel and cuff I wanted. It calmed me down and actually made some sense. Alan joined our conversation and it was probably good for him to hear this analogy too because I don’t think he was quite clear on how we were to going to proceed either. That made a huge difference!

            I discovered that once “we” decided (and it was a group effort including the actors) what needed to be said in a scene it took me only minutes to come up with a few more lines or lyrics to clarify the intentions. Alan would then stage the number and the dialogue to see what we had. He was hell-bent on getting the form established, creating the structure on which to hang the content. Time, as always, was the enemy. Sitting and talking and analyzing bogged things down – something I’ve always felt even with established material – and while some might think it worked for a “straight play”, a musical required an “on your feet” approach, getting it, in Alan’s words,  “punched into shape”. We had only a few days before David Warrack arrived and needed to get something ready for him to see. It was a bit of mayhem but very productive.

            The phone rang. “Rii-iichard, its Irrrr-ving” Oh, mercy, what now? With the density of the workshop the outside world had disappeared completely and my mind was laser-focused on the process and all its inherent turmoil. I had been asked to host Edmonton Opera’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gala happening in a few weeks and Irving was now on to me asking how the script for the evening was coming along. I was to host as ‘Count Orlovsky’ from “Fledermaus”, introducing the singers and musical numbers chosen for the celebration. I told him I had been working on it (which wasn’t true) and would send it off to him that afternoon. Hanging up, I dashed to my computer and, in an hour, had created a loose script that would suffice for the moment. I was quite pleased with myself if only because I’d managed to compartmentalize for a few minutes and switch off the workshop mode. I dropped the “script” into the mailbox on the way to rehearsal.

            Back at  the studio, the tension was getting worse. Because we were facing the Warrack deadline, Alan moved further into a production mindset. It was as if Opening Night loomed before him and he was starting to panic. The evening before David’s arrival we were in the thick of staging. Alan was constantly snapping his fingers at Stage Management giving them the lighting cues as if they were the most important element. Our frazzled pianist had his head buried in the music most of the time and would miss a cue from the Musical Director for a number to start. This would drive Alan NUTS! On top of that, our lead performer, whose experience was primarily as an opera singer (I don’t know why he was cast … well, I do know actually, but it doesn’t matter anymore), was having great difficulty with the emotional dialogue exchanges with ALL the other actors and was unable to give Alan the depth required to make that dialogue real. Alan didn’t know how to persuade him to be vulnerable and open up. I forced myself to stay out of the directing aspect of the process and while I could have given the actor some hints, I remained in my seat. As all this tension built, the fire alarm in the building went off! Could this get any worse?

            We dutifully filed down to the Lobby. Alan was fuming now. “All this wasted time!” “Dammit to hell!!” He paced back and forth getting more and more angry. It had been a false alarm. By the time we were back in the rehearsal hall he was fit to be tied. (I found out later in the evening that one of our cast had been having a cigarette in the stairwell and had set off the smoke alarm. I didn’t say anything.) In the hurried exit, Bob, the Musical Director, had the presence of mind to grab all the music from the piano and his podium but had mixed it all up in the process. It took forever for him to sort it out. Now he was frazzled as well and I had to step in to cue the pianist for the little transition stings that Bob still hadn’t retrieved from his jumbled score. Somehow, we managed to limp through the rest of the evening.

            David Warrack was a well-established composer and Musical Director from Toronto. He had produced any number of shows and had studied with Lehman Engle, a titan in the world of Musical Theatre who was later known for his mentoring of young lyricists and composers, all of which, for me, was credit enough. He struck me as slightly aloof and our introduction was somewhat perfunctory. He sat at a table a distance away from us as we began the run-through of the first Act for him. I’d thought it had gone rather smoothly for only a couple of days work. Not knowing the protocol in these situations, I hung around for a bit after the run and hesitantly asked him if he had any suggestions. What a stupid question! He launched into what I took to be a rather aggressive commentary on what he had seen, a barrage of “you should cut this”, “that needs to be changed”, “this doesn’t make any sense” and “what does this mean?” At one point, he went over to the piano and started hammering out a rather turbulent jazz-waltz tempo which he thought should be the way one of the songs should be done instead of the way I’d written it. That immediately got my hackles up. But I listened. After all, this sort of input was what he had been brought to town for. I didn’t understand until later in the week that I certainly had the option of simply saying “No” and that would have been the end of it. At that point, however, I was feeling a bit defensive … actually a LOT defensive. We broke for dinner and I went home and stomped about my apartment trying to rationalize the things he’d said, trying to get my head around what I considered to be an assault. How was I going to deal with this for the rest of the week? I needn’t have worried.

            That evening, we ran through the show. To my eye, again, it wasn’t too bad. There was still work to be done of course, but we were on a path that had fewer and fewer bumps. The cast was released and for the next two hours, Alan and I sat with David and went through the show. He’d taken pages and pages of notes during the afternoon. In my stomping break at the apartment, I had decided that I was going to be open to whatever he had to say and I took out a fresh pad and started to write as he spoke. It was an excellent session. I think he realized how aggressive he’d been in our afternoon encounter and was now being considerate and affable in presenting his thoughts. He talked about things that could be implemented right away and other things that might be put into action somewhere down the road, like additions to songs that might give the characters some more dimension or advance a plot point a bit more. He surprised me at one point by telling me that I was an excellent craftsman when it came to “making the rhymes” as he put it. He was a purist, a trait that had been instilled in him by Engle. He called me on rhyming “clothes” and “toes”, a “pop” rhyme to be sure, and I was impressed that he’d caught it. That cemented our relationship and my respect for him!

            In the course of that conversation, I was charged with writing two new songs that would replace monologues and give greater insight into the internal thinking of two characters (‘Elaine’ and ‘Matt’), and an Ensemble number that would end the Act and bring ‘Don’s’ conflicts to a climax. ‘Matt’s’ song was a snap. It was called “Dad Look Around”, a glib assault on his Father’s conservative views. I dashed that off on our free day along with the new song for ‘Elaine’. She is lost in the middle of the acrimony between her husband and son and, at the start of the second Act, sits at home singing to her husband’s voice on the radio asking “Where Do I Go From Here?” This was my favorite song to date and bringing the material in the following day, I discovered that they served their functions very well. The problem lay with the Ensemble piece I had to come up with.

Writing within parameters is easier than writing without them. Fortunately, David and Alan had set specific character details for me to address and the words (and music) came without too much stress. Writing to create an “effect” was not easy. What a character says can be given greater meaning in how it is delivered, especially in musical terms. I arrived back in the rehearsal hall with some ideas about combining snippets of songs we’d already heard juxtaposing them against each other in a mélange of sound and emotional confusion. It was called “The Conflict” and happened in ‘Don’s’ head. In the sequence, all the caller’s voices are jumbled together, his son and wife making demands of him raising to a crescendo until he screams for them to “Stop!” and launches into, for want of a better word, an aria called “Do We Really Care”. The cast became my guinea pigs as I pieced together a little of one number with a little of another. The pianist was my accomplice as we had them sing various incarnations of the idea. It was exciting work, building parts as we went along, adding bits of text, changing chord sequences to create a dream-like mood. To my ear it was wonderful!

            To Alan’s ear it was something else altogether. He was very much of two minds about so many people on stage singing so many different words all at the same time. He thought that we would lose the audience if they couldn’t understand what is being said. But by this point in the show they’ve heard all this before and I thought they would know the intent of the juxtapositions. Perhaps it was my Opera background but to me it was wonderfully dramatic. We broke for dinner and a large contingent headed out to a nearby restaurant. Hungry, I went with them but brought the new music jottings with me. It was this hour that stands out in my head as the essence of the whole experience. There I was, crammed into the corner of a banquette with a bowl of poutine and a Diet Pepsi, the music and script spread out before me, trying to block out the noise of folks surrounding me talking and laughing, frantically writing down, in some formal way, what we had cobbled together that afternoon, bracketing the music and text, writing new chord structures for the transitions, adding a few new lyrics to push the intentions forward. For a moment, I left my body and was looking down on the scene. It was like I was in one of those old “my-Dad-has-a-barn-let’s-put-on-a-show” movies where the composer is desperately trying to write a new song in the midst of people loudly rehearsing lines, production assistants dashing about, designers running in and out with costume sketches for  approval and stage hands yelling back and forth at each other. But this was REAL, and it felt so complete and encompassing and utterly satisfying!

            We headed back to the rehearsal hall to a first-time sing-through with the band. It was a strange sound to my ears. The combination of piano, bass and drums along with a trumpet, a trombone and a guitar sounded somewhat sparse and exposed, far from the lush orchestral soundscape I’d created on my computer. But everyone dove in with gusto and the addition of this new musical element served to buoy the cast. Alan was antsy as we worked through the arrangements despite his obvious desire to get into more staging. I stood as far away as I could get in the room and, with my head down, listened with the strangest feeling of detachment, as if it wasn’t my music and words being sung. It was an incredible objective feeling which surprised me but felt good at the same time. We tackled the staging of the Finale of the Act and changed notes in a few places and a few lines to address Alan’s demand that everything be understandable. It was wonderful considering I had written it down only an hour previous! The cast was incredibly accommodating and energized. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. There was nothing more for me to produce, no more rhymes or music or concept. It was pretty much over for me.

            The following morning, we moved into the performance space at the RWB Studios. The acoustics in the room were spectacular. The crew had set up the “scenery”, such as it was, and we began the run. At a break, Alan and David came over. “Richard!” they said as they sat down on either side of me. Oh, Lands, what was THIS!! “You want me to re-write the second Act, right?” says I. It was simpler than that. They wanted to do away with the intermission! The first Act was 47 minutes and the second only 30. They thought a break would diffuse the tension we had built after Don’s breakdown in “The Conflict”. But it would also necessitate ‘Elaine’s’ new song (which I loved!) being cut. In my head a small argument took place as I quickly assessed the implications to her story and the flow of the show. I really couldn’t find a reason not to acquiesce and the intermission (along with the newly completed song) was gone! We broke the news to the cast and they seemed to agree that continuing the action was the way to go. We did a few adjustments with the orchestra and waited for the afternoon presentation!

            There were about 40 people at the invited “showing”. Most of them were from the various theatres around town, producers and directors and such. I was disappointed that Leslee, who had started this ball rolling eighteen months earlier, wasn’t available. It also surprised me that there was no representation from the Board of Rainbow Stage. But I let that all go as I stood up to give a bit of a speech about what we had done for the past eleven days, what they were going to see and to invite them to an informal discussion following the performance. And we began. I didn’t get a sense of nervousness from the cast. I think the morning run had dissipated a bit of the cast’s energy but it all went very well. There were laughs where there were supposed to be laughs and applause all the way through but I found myself ignoring the audience. I wasn’t sitting there waiting for them to react. I had long since conditioned myself to the “workshop mentality” and took everything in stride.

            The response following was incredibly positive, especially about the music. “Everyone is a playwright” and folks had comments and suggestions about development in that regard. It was also suggested that the piece had been too “production oriented”, that the text was getting lost in the “performance context”. Alan pointed out that a musical is a different breed from a straight play, that an “idea” is addressed differently in a straight play. The input was all very constructive and helpful. David talked about the process and that developing a musical was a very complicated and fraught journey for everyone involved. He thanked the company for maintaining under times of duress and then said that he “took (his) hat off to Richard Hurst for his incredible bravery and courage” and that I had set the tone at the outset with my caring and being so much at ease in the process. Little did they know!

            And that was it. I had been an exhausting two weeks, satisfying beyond measure! I found that in saying goodbye to Alan and David I was happy that I was working in a world that supported and encouraged a neophyte such as myself. The foundation was respect for the process and each other. It wouldn’t be the last time I would find myself struggling to maintain those qualities!

            But there was no time to rest on any laurels. It was back into the world of Opera, Divas and Big Singing! And a little more Shapira thrown in just to spice things up!