Being a Tourist and hearing more stories-July 14

Thursday July 14

This day turned into a bit of a tourist/family day in NYC. By pure coincidence one of my twin daughters, Taylor, was in NY for her college orientation at Hofstra. While she was in Long Island at school my husband Phil came up to the city so we could do a morning of sight seeing.  We took a quick trip out to the Statue of Liberty and made an even shorter stop at Ellis Island. 

My lunch date for Thursday had been set up for weeks and was one of those great opportunities to connect with a theatre professional.  This past February I had directed a production of Starmites.  We had the show adjudicated by the Educational Theatre Association for the International Thespian Festival.  In March we found out we’re taking the show to the U of Nebraska to perform.

I had received several messages from Barry Keating, the author, wishing us well on our show. During the remount of the production in mid June, to ready the show for Nebraska, I had contacted Barry to help out with a royalty dispute with Samuel French.  He sent me advice and offered to help out however needed. 

After returning from the ITS Festival my students were so touched by the video Barry made for them (and sent to festival for them to see just before their show opened) they sat down and made a beautiful scrapbook for him detailing “The Road to Nebraska.” The kids spent a week printing out photos, designing pages, using quotes from the show and labeling all of the cast, crew, staff and chaperones who helped get the show on the road.  It was my job to carry the scrapbook to New York and give it to Barry.

Our lunch was full of conversation and sharing.  What a treat to hear the history of a production from the first germ of an idea, through the writing process, to casting, off Broadway, Tony nominations and to the writing of the additional versions created in recent years-all told by the author himself.  I was able to ask him anything-his inspirations, why he made a particular choice, his creative process and so much more. Basically, no question was off limits.  I’ve through my friendship with Barry Keating that authors are very attached to their work.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. I’m often sad to see a particular show close, but I am primarily a director, producer and theatre educator. I don’t write plays and have never wanted to, but the attachment Barry Keating has to his work was remarkable to me.  He follows many of the Starmites productions around the country and he is genuinely interested in how our production went, the choices made and how the kids reacted to the material.

Barry was also a wealth of information about the New York theatre scene during the last thirty-five years. He has had directed several productions, including the rock opera that launched Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album and Penn & Teller’s first stage show. He has been very involved with puppetry and has done extensive work with Jim Henson’s Muppets. He is very involved in the Theatre World Awards, an award for newcomers to the Off and Broadway stages, as well as being on their board of directors.

Barry also offered to come to Claremont HS and do some workshops with my students in the future. One of my favorite pictures (of the 1200+ I took in NY) is of Barry looking at the scrapbook my students made for him.

Immediately after my lunch I hustled over to Times Square for a meeting with Michael Alden.  Michael is an alumni who has spent most of his career producing on the two coasts. His work has appeared at La Jolla Playhouse, the Falcon in Burbank, on tour, and on Broadway.  One of his latest projects was producing Grey Gardens, which earned him a Tony nomination.  Currently he is working on casting the stage version of The King’s Speech, which is set to open in London this January.  I got to hear about the challenges of casting the show and how many highly regarded British actors had turned down the lead roles-so far.

Lots of our conversation focused on all of the opportunities we both had as students in the CHS Theatre program.  The challenging shows and curriculum was only part of it.  Michael stressed that what set up a part from many of our peers was being expected to problem solve, work with many adults, work with students of all abilities, advanced problem solving and working as a group of diverse students to rehearse, build and perform our shows.

Michael is a gold mine of information and ideas.  As we talked about which alumni I was seeing he brought to my attention what all the alumni were saying-many of them had worked together but few of them knew they had come from the same department. He also shared a great story about Charles Nelson Reilly taking him to Sardis to hear Rod Gilfry, the opera singer, perform.  Afterward Rod and Michael were chatting about where they were from and discovered that they had both spent a year at Claremont HS together. Their paths had never really crossed in HS since Michael graduated during Rod’s first year and Rod didn’t get involved in theatre until his sophomore year when he started performing in many of our shows.

Besides being a great resource it was important for me to hear Michael’s perspective since he was the only alumni I’m meeting with who went straight from HS to work, and does not have a college degree.  We talked about what that meant and how it had impacted his professional life.  Michael explained that most of us-whether in the theatre or business world-made connections in college that we use as our contacts-or “posse”-as Michael calls them.  Since he never had the college experience his posse are his classmates from the CHS Theatre.  As a result of our conversation he is very interested in me (and hopefully my student Thespian officers) getting a database of our alumni involved in theatre organized and out to everyone.  Michael is also interested in mentoring younger theatre professionals and says he can’t do this if he doesn’t know who they are.  This project puts another big job on the TO DO list for summer.

Another of Michael’s great ideas is to look into some financial backing for my Alumni workshops-he has a grand plan to film and copyright them and perhaps have them seen nationwide. While I think this would be a huge resource for theatre teachers and students who don’t have the opportunity to have guest artists in person, it is a daunting charge.  However, I do think it is a viable project for future summers. 

At this point I’m beginning to wonder if I have enough summers to get all of my projects started, much less completed.

Hard to believe it was still Thursday. 

My dinner date was the only non CHS Alumni I was seeing, but it was still a treat to meet with Laura Daniel.  Laura was one of my first alumni from Hemet HS and she has spent the last 23 years as a working actress in New York.  Laura has done a lot of workshop productions of musicals, and new works projects.  I heard all about the ups and downs of her career, as well as how she kept a positive attitude when she wasn’t performing.  By far the most inspirational message I got from Laura is that she never stops being a student.  She is constantly taking classes, learning, watching shows, and keeping her performing muscles limber as she works on her craft learning new skills. 

Thursday night gave me the opportunity to take Taylor, back in the city from her orientation, to her first Broadway show.  I choose Billy Elliot since I had seen it last fall and thought it would be a winner.  She loved the show and we (Phil too) went for Juniors after for some cheesecake and show discussion.  This was also a celebration since Taylor had declared her major that afternoon-theatre! She became the fifth member of our family five to become a theatre major.