Theatre Days (1982)

Moving on to 1982. The theatre year (for me) began with William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," directed by Doug Cummins. I won the part of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is pretty much a fool's fool. One of those "inappropriate suitors" who populate Shakespeare's comedies in pretty spectacular numbers. So this one happened around the time we were getting secretive cocaine deliveries to the back of the theatre when rehearsing. Talk about adding extra pressure to yourself. Truthfully though, I rarely imbibed when I had to get on stage and orate, or even gyrate. Most of the time, that was for afterward. Pretty sure no one knew about any of this behavior beside those of us who were in on the purchase. I think the powers that be only thought we were drunks. It was 1982, man.

I had a pink outfit for this one, pink and white, actually. Yep, that added to the manliness of this performance. In this case, you spell "dandy," all uppercase - "DANDY." I was part of the "prose posse" in this play; the nobility and more serious characters spoke in verse, the bawdy low-lifes and such spoke in prose. I was a pink, bawdy low-life, although a "sir."

(I should mention in here that sometime in 1981 - I believe - I began volunteering for people's directing projects. A lot of those I've completely forgotten, but I'll try to pepper these posts with them when I remember. I'm thinking of this now, as I believe I did some project for Bernadette Murray around this time. That one I sort of remember. But that's all I remember about it.)

The next show up was the Peter Shaffer play "Equus," to be directed by Dr. Monta. This one was predicted to be a biggie. The "intelligentsia" among us were pretty sure I was going to be cast as the boy, Alan Strang, if I wanted it. I did. I'd seen the movie once but had never seen the stage production (and still haven't), and they are two completely different animals (pun intended). The story of a psychiatrist on a downslide in life, remarking on the passion of this crazy boy who blinded a bunch of horses in a stable one night, is illustrated on the stage as some sort of modernized Greek play. The players are always on stage and seated to the side of the main stage area when not a part of the action. And all the horses are played by men wearing wire horse's heads and hoof-shoes. For this production, we had a turntable built at the center of the action. At key moments, actors would unlock the turntable and spin it around while lights flashed and crazed sound effects (compiled by yours truly) went off.

I got the part, as predicted by everybody except me. The rest of the cast had some interesting notables. Dan Donahue, who I had never acted with but had seen perform a couple of times, got the lead part of Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist. Doug Cummins had campaigned really obviously for months, trying to get Dr. Monta to cast him as Dysart (it did need an older actor, for sure), but she went with Dan and cast Doug as my father. Dawn Novak, who was one of the shyer people I'd ever met got the part of the mother and rocked it. She used that shyness to fantastic effect. As Jill Mason, the "love interest," but more accurately, the camel that breaks the stable cleaner's back, was Maureen Clifford. I could probably write a whole other post on Maureen, but not now. She was, simply, for me, the big crush. I'd been head over heels for her since I first saw her in late 1980 in a French class. She was a Music major, a great pianist, and we crossed paths a lot until I started getting up the nerve to ask her to do things. But most of the time, when I was around her, I turned to some sort of jelly, and I'm pretty sure Dr. Monta knew this. I've forgotten why she auditioned (maybe I hinted at it); she hadn't done any acting, other than a chorus part in "The Mikado" in 1981. In retrospect, though, it was perfect casting.

Rehearsals were smooth, as I recall. I don't even remember Dr. Monta giving me many notes, and I was just going for it. By then, I had twenty years of crazy built up, and I was letting it loose every night. Especially during the climactic horse-blinding scene. One night, during a dress rehearsal, maybe even the last one, one of the horsemen, played by Nathan Murray (brother of the aforementioned Bernadette) kneed me in the crotch during this scene. And I'm pretty sure he did it on purpose; word was he had really wanted the part I was playing, and I was led to believe by a couple of folks that it was most definitely not an accident. I might've padded during real performances, not sure. It was all still worth it. I remember the school newspaper's review of the show - glowing. I was really, really proud of this one. And again, I owed it to Dr. Monta. I got to go through a weird sort of primal scream therapy every night we did the show. Or at least some of it felt that way. And it was probably the zenith of my short-lived  acting career.

Wrapping up the spring of 1982 was a directing project of Kerri Logsdon's (I think), "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown." I was pretty impressed that she took on a musical for a direction project (might as well set your stakes high!), and she asked me to be Schroeder in it. That meant I had to sing lead onstage for a couple songs. First time for that. I did okay (still remember the line "A book report....on Peter Rabbit....") and kind of ended up with a girlfriend out of it - I began to see Jackie Linn, who was playing Lucy. And that takes us on to summer.

PASS in 1982 was a blur. I was cast in a leading role in three of the four shows, and I did sound (with my ever present sound tapes) for the other show. The first show, which began rehearsals a couple of weeks before PASS began was Neil Simon's "The Star Spangled Girl." Jack Strawn was directing this one, and joining me were Mark Watson and Anna DeHaro, a tight three-person show. The plot revolves around two young men who publish a subversive magazine (set in the 60s) and the love triangle that develops with their neighbor Sophie, who in today's world would probably only watch Fox news. Why we wanted to update things I don't know (I'm sure it was either Jack or me), but I changed references in the script to bring it up to date and have the guys publishing a left-wing punk rock-oriented 'zine. As a result, I managed to wear out the only Sex Pistols shirt I ever owned. Costuming was quick and easy on this one! And I really enjoyed acting with both Mark, who had become a good friend by this time, and Anna, who was one of the best actresses we had but seemed totally unserious about it all.

The second show was "Bus Stop," which I was not in but spent each night in the sound booth, spinning some reels. Next up was "Arsenic and Old Lace," which you might be familiar with from the movie version, starring Cary Grant. And I had his part, Mortimer Brewster, who discovers his kindly aunts are poisoning old men to "help them along." This one was directed by Jim Hawley, who I haven't mentioned yet but was always great to be around. He was old school technical theatre, chainsmoking, and maybe the most friendly and approachable of our theatre staff. As a director, I always thought he was way more interested in the technical aspects of everything and just kind of let the actors get on with it. Which we did. It was kind of weird to have what I considered to be "the straight part" in something, but I got in a few funny moments. The others in the cast carried most of the comedy weight here, though, and they were fantastic.

The final show of PASS 1982 was the old chestnut "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." Old chestnut, but I knew nothing about it until auditioning. Chuck Pokorny, who knew all musicals it seemed and later to be my roommate, insisted I would get the part of Hysterium. And he was right. I had a solo song in this one, "I'm Calm," the joke being that this was one of those ever-nervous Don Knotts-type characters. And I went wild with it. Dr. Monta was directing this one, and Jack Strawn was cast as the lead, Pseudolus. If you've seen the movie, with Zero Mostel as Pseudolus, you'd have known Jack was our only choice for Psedolus, although I understand Whoopi Goldberg took a Broadway turn as that character. I'd really like to see a taping of that, if one exists anywhere. Anyway, broad comedy was the palette here, and we all delivered.

One instance I was reminded of a few years ago by Mark Watson and Valente Rodriguez: Jack apparently said a line incorrectly or at the wrong time or something that changed the plot in a major way. He did it toward the end of the second act and was pretty upset about it. (I really don't remember much of this, so I'm kind of paraphrasing what Mark and Valente told me.) They said I took a sheet of paper and quickly rewrote the beginning of the third act so everything would be on track again, and those lines were delivered...and all was well. Feels weird to pat yourself on the back when you don't even really remember what you did, but I'll pat myself on the back here. Good job, Lance. Amazing. Overall, the show was a nice way to end this PASS and move on to the fall.

By the fall of 1982, I was almost "old guard" in the Theatre Department (really a part of the Communications Department, but you get it). But, I was about to come down to earth a bit. The first play produced in the fall was "Candida," by George Bernard Shaw and directed here by Doug Cummins. Again, listening to the sound of Chuck Pokorny in my ear..."the Marchbanks part is yours." I don't remember much about the auditions themselves, but Doug cast Valente as Marchbanks, and Mark as Morell. I got the small role of Lexy. I'll admit it, I was a bit shocked. On hindsight, I needed that, though. And it was good to research a smallish part and put everything I had into it. In a weird way, Doug did me a favor, and he gave a great role to Valente, who I'll talk more about later...he went on to earn a living as an actor!

The later fall production was "The Importance of Being Earnest," by Oscar Wilde. Prepping to audition for this one, I read the play for the first time and could not believe how fall-off-your-chair funny it was. I mean, just read it sometime. It's like reading any sort of contemporary comedy. That was my first Wilde to read, and well, it made an impression. Dr. Monta was directing this one, and once again the "venticelli" (stealing from "Amadeus") were predicting Mark as Jack and me as Algernon, which if you're going to cast the both of us made the most sense. Jack is the quick-to-get-flustered character -  while Algernon enjoys life not caring about much of anything. Well, Dr. Monta cast just the opposite, Mark as Algernon, and me as Jack. We were going to have to work at this one. We did. I think it came off all right. I used to have a Beta cassette of the show when we video'd it in the TV studio, but I cannot find it at present. If I ever do, I'll have to get a professional company to transfer it, as I'm pretty sure the lone Beta machine in the garage is a lump of non-workingness. But, in the meantime...

Each year, there were competitions in Dallas for a scholarship named (and I guess, benefacted) for Irene Ryan (who most of you will remember as Granny on "Beverly Hillbillies). And so each year, the Theatre Department would nominate someone to compete for the scholarship. This year, the Department nominated Mark, and he decided he wanted to do a scene from "Earnest" for his turn, and that meant I went with him to Dallas for this. I remember it being a good time, and I went the following year. Wonder if that still exists (it's just a "Google" away!).

Is this the end of 1982? Well, for this story it is. The rest in a bit....

Theatre Days (1980-1981)

 A few weeks ago, Dr. Marian Monta, former chair of the Communications Department at Pan American University (later University of Texas Pan American, then UTRGV) passed away at the age of 88. Without even having to jot notes and think about it too much, I'd put her in the top five most influential people in my life. And I say that having only seen her twice in the last 33 years. This requires some explanation and much digging in the past. Here we go.

I began college in January of 1980 in Edinburg, Texas, having moved to the Rio Grande Valley with my mother some time after graduating from high school. Originally, I had planned to attend University of Houston, next door to Pearland, where I'd spent my high school years. Mom, in the meantime, had taken a job in McAllen, and rather than be broke all the time, I thought I'd give Pan Am a try, save some dough, and go from there. So, I moved south with her. Once down there I met a few people who were musicians, made some friends, had some fun, etc. I still wanted to be in a band, but there weren't a lot of opportunities there. The RGV at the time was fairly barren musically, unless you wanted to get some dudes together and bang out AC/DC tunes....not unfun by any means, but that's pretty much all you had in the Valley. If you had any other ambitions, well, get prepared to not be able to fulfill them easily. At the time, there were two groups of friends I had, and they were two bands themselves: Masque, who were a progressive rock band, and The Steroids, who were the Valley's only punk/new wave band. Due to my musical upbringing, I identified with both of them. But both drum seats were taken, and frankly, I wasn't very good then anyway. Still new to drumming, in a sense.

But, back to school. I started out in 1980 as a math major, with a computer science minor, so I began by placing into Analytic Geometry on the math side (test scores could move you up in the ranks), and took some computer programming classes - Basic, Fortran, and Cobol, as I recall. Once in the Analytic Geometry class, I quickly realized I didn't care about it. Weird, as I'd been a "math guy" my whole life. But college was different. And looking around at the other people in this class and my computer programming classes as well, I knew I didn't belong there. I quickly lost interest in AG and squeaked by without failing the class. And I mean, squeaked. I took a couple of math classes later in my college career to effectively erase that bad grade. But all this was telling me something. A major change was coming.

I took a couple of basics during the first summer session, just to knock them out of the way. One day I was talking with my mother about how this math thing might not ultimately be for me. She, and to this day I don't know if she was joking or not, suggested Communications. Why not? I think she even said that was Earl Campbell's major at UT. Skoal, brother - I'll give it a shot.

I signed up for Introduction to Communications in the fall and really had no idea what this might entail, other than knowing Radio, TV and Film came under that heading. Maybe this would be fun after all. Anyway, Intro to Communications was taught by Dr. Marian Monta, the department chair. Sounds like she took it seriously; I will, too. Upon first seeing her, I thought this woman is no-nonsense, and yet there was some underlying thing about her that I don't believe I ever really put my finger on, something that had me knowing she had all of our best interests at heart. So, the first thing I did was challenge her. That's right.

Early on in the semester, and before I think I'd even spoken a word to her, she gave us a spelling test, apparently the official Associated Press spelling test. It wasn't long, maybe 25 words or so. When I received the paper back, one of the words was marked as "incorrect." The word was "judgment," which  her marking said should be spelled "judgement." I should mention that I've always been a very good speller, and this did not set well with ol' "I'm Right!" here. In those pre-internet days, I went home that night, got out our trusty Webster's and saw that "judgment" was the American spelling, and that "judgement" was the British spelling. Kind of like "recognize" and "recognise." So the next class day, I marched to her desk to register my complaint. "Pardon me, Dr. Monta, but I spelled this word as an American would. Last time I checked, my citizenship still had 'States' following 'United,' not 'Kingdom.'" I'm sure I didn't say those words, but I probably showed some of the indignance implied in the sentence. After a minute of looking it up herself, she admitted I was right and quickly corrected my submission to reflect a grade of 100%. And from that day forward, she looked at me differently, and not at all in a negative way. What's weird to me is that she must have given that test countless times. Nobody questioned that spelling?? Or maybe it speaks to how commanding a presence she had. Let's move on.

One of the requirements we had in the Intro to Comm class was lab hours. And you could complete lab hours in a number of ways, such as working in the speech lab or journalism offices, or working crew on one of the university's theatre productions. One day, another department faculty member and play  director, Doug Cummins, walked in to recruit crew members for the production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." It sounded like fun, and I thought that would take care of my lab hour requirement. So I volunteered for sound crew. Doug asked me what experience I had, and I answered that I was familiar with tape recorders and tape editing, etc., and he said "great!" and made me crew chief right there. Uh oh.

I took the job seriously and was in charge of cutting the pre-show and intermission music tapes (a job I kept for pretty much the rest of my Pan Am career) and performing offstage sound effects: telephones, door slams, etc. I had a blast and really enjoyed the cast and other crew members. I thought maybe I'd found a new home. We even took the play to some sort of festival at Sam Houston State in Huntsville and were there for a few days. This was good.

After getting back from Huntsville, it was only a few days later when Dr. Monta asked me if I would be her assistant director for the next production which she was directing. I said yes. The play was "Volpone," written by a contemporary of Shakespeare's named Ben Jonson. AD is one of those jobs that sounds a lot more prestigious than it really is. You get to wrangle everyone for the director, and most importantly for me, as it turned out, you hold book during early read-throughs and fill in for anybody absent. And one of the major character actors was absent for the first couple of read-throughs. The character's name was Corbaccio, and as this was somewhat of a comedy, he was mostly a befuddled old man, a fool. The play was about a lot of people after the inheritance of Volpone, who pretends to be on his deathbed. Corbaccio is one of them after the loot. Even in these early read-throughs, and not really knowing all the context of the piece, I played it up a bit. I guess I was making everybody laugh, and after the cast actor had to bow out of the show, Dr. Monta asked if I wanted to try the role. I said "yes" without even thinking about it. Big turning point here.

I should mention here that I was quite a shy boy. I'd spent a lot of my youth being shuttled between parents, and as an only child, I had become pretty withdrawn. I never really had a problem making friends, but when you're moved around a lot, it's hard to keep any. To this day, there are still several friends I had when I was young that I wonder whatever happened to. My generation doesn't like Facebook a whole lot, it seems. The fall of 1980 changed everything. I was plopped on a stage in an outrageous costume and told "dance, boy!" I did. And I still am, to some extent.

I was off to the races. The show was a success, although Mark Servis, who was playing the lead character, had broken his leg in a caving accident. A special set was built, so he could lie or sit for the majority of the performance, some references being added to his having gout. I played it up, as I really didn't know a whole lot about what I was doing. I Tim Conwayed a lot of it, bumping into the sets, getting immediately confused about where I was going, etc. But whatever I did seemed to work and to please Dr. Monta. The best thing I learned in that first production was the concept of focus, how to pull it, how to give it, etc. To this day, I use that in drumming. Drum fills and general showing off are for when the singer isn't singing and no one else has some sort of featured solo. Sounds simple enough, but a lot of musicians don't think about it. Thanks, Dr. Monta!

Most of the productions at this time were held in the 1000-plus seat Fine Arts Auditorium, a mammoth cave where you really had to project (across an orchestra pit!) and have exaggerated movements. I was good at that sort of stuff, in a way I never could be for the camera.

I rather quickly became omnipresent in Pan Am productions, in one way or another. Mostly on the stage, but sometimes as crew only. In the spring of 1981, I was in the general chorus of "The Mikado," I created the sound tapes for an original show called "Saturday Serial" (don't remember if I auditioned or not), and then it was time for the first Summer Stock session. The biggest change, though, for this time period, was the arrival of one Mark Watson. He would become the closest I had to a constant acting partner during this time....but not yet.

Also, in March of 1981, I had the opportunity to visit NYC for the first time. Each year, theatre patrons would sponsor several students to take in a bunch of Broadway shows - you know, "broad"ening us. That meant we still had some expense, but it cut the costs a lot. So, I got to go to New York for ten days or so. We stayed near Broadway around 45th or 46th street, not far from Times Square. Movies like "Basket Case" show this time period in midtown Manhattan perfectly. Lots o' sleaze. This sheltered boy dug it. I got to go to the record store on Bleecker Street that I'd heard of forever, and I ended up having to ship a whole box of records home (the Valley wasn't the best place for record shopping). We also saw all the hot Broadway hits of that time, like "Barnum," "The Pirates of Penzance," and "A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine." We saw an off-Broadway play I cannot remember the name of now, in some small theatre, starring Frances Sternhagen and Ralph Waite (The Waltons' pop!). And, best of all, we saw two performances (some of us had to go back) of "Amadeus," which was brand new then and is still probably the best performance of any play I've ever seen. This starred Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, and Jane Seymour. If you've seen the movie, and that is a good film, sorry, the play blows it away, just in terms of sheer effect - the way it's presented. I saw it one more time when working a touring company performance in 1982 or so, and that was almost as good. It's just a freaking good play. I suppose I should mention some of us also saw "Caligula" (the movie), which was only in release in LA and New York at the time. That was the first and maybe only time someone's passed me a joint in a movie theater. I still remember after we returned to the hotel, a couple of our friends who hadn't gone asked how it was. Tina Atkins said "it sucked. Literally!"

Moving on a few months - Pan American Summer Stock (or PASS) had been running for quite a few years before I did one, and was one solid month of nothing but theatre (maybe a meal occasionally) - and you got six hours of college credit for it. I did three during my theatre days, the first in 2001. The four shows were "The Fourposter" (I cut the sound tapes), "Two By Five," which was a musical revue (I think I cut pre-show music, but this one I don't remember much about), "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," a Neil Simon play directed by Dr. Monta (sound crew for this one again), and "Pippin," directed by Doug Cummins (I was a "player," or chorus member). Despite not being on stage too much, I look at this as one of the happiest summers of my life. It was a frigging blast. One solid month of in-house classes, rehearsals, shows, partying, etc. The finale of this first PASS was the annual parody, which I had some part in writing, and I had the lead part of....whatever we changed Pippin's name to. It was fairly filthy, largely due to Holly Zimmerman, who I was dating at the time and was one of the funniest people I've ever known. As I recall, we showed Pippin's birth by me sliding down the "Pippin" set's slide from way below some poor actress' open legs. I remember a lot of laughter, so it couldn't have been all bad. Plus, frankly, I treated it as another audition, as everyone was there.

The fall of 1981 saw me moving on up, as they say. The first show was "Not By Bed Alone," a French farce where I played the character of Bouzin. Second-billed, not bad. The play was fairly hilarious, with lots of running around, slamming of doors, etc. by the end. Doug Cummins directed it. And now I have a confession to make. When the show was about to be cast, and all of us wanna-be's were reading the script, all I heard about was the character of General Irrigua, a Latin American general who was an obnoxious blowhard and probably the focal point of a lot of the comedy in the show. We all suspected that Rafael Torres, a naturally funny guy from NYC, would get the part, and he did. I liked Rafael a lot; we had fun times and acted in a few other things together. But hearing the constant ha-ha'ing about the General (largely from the director) lit a fire under me. I was determined to make my character even funnier. And I think I did. Art is not a competition; I'll be the first to say that. But at that time, in my life, I constantly felt like I had something to prove. I worked hard.

I did pay for some of this "enthusiasm," though. In the last couple of acts of the show, I had to run around backstage a lot, running to make cues from one side of offstage to the other side, etc. It was an energetic show, in general, and I was just trying to keep up. One night, toward the end of the second of three acts, I got my foot caught under a piece of scenery, up on wheels, when I was trying to get from one side of the darkened offstage to the other, and I heard a crack, followed by screaming pain. During intermission, one of our theatre patrons, a doctor, came back to look at me. He makeshift-wrapped my ankle, and I toughed out the third act. I remember being carried a few times from one offstage side to the other. But I made it through the rest. And went directly to the ER afterward. I was on crutches for about a week after that. It got me out of strike (the dismantling of the set, following the last performance). I have ankle issues to this day - irritating for a drummer.

Following a bit of healing, I did something none too bright. I accepted two roles, one for the Music Department and one for our department, performances happening on the same days. Weirdly, though, the Music Department's show was "A Christmas Carol," and I was cast as Scrooge, a non-singing role in an otherwise opera. For some reason, the MD cast me as Scrooge for the matinee performances and another actor as Scrooge for the evening performances. Weird, but fun, too. I was doing a show in the evenings called "El Grande de Coca Cola," one of the most fun times I've had. The show is a cabaret act happening somewhere in Mexico, and I played the emcee and troupe leader, Don Pepe Hernandez (I think, might have to get the program out). The great thing about this one is - the show was all in Spanish (I knew fifty words, maybe), and largely improvised for the emcee. I had a ball. Jack Strawn directed it, and as he was always wont to do, he let me run wild....whether that was a good thing or not, I don't know. But I'm eternally grateful to Jack (RIP) for his constant encouragement to be as entertaining as I could be. The show, as I mentioned, was a cabaret put on by a family, so every performer was related to Don Pepe in some way. Ridiculous, non-impressive magic acts, terrible humor, it had it all. I would usually pick on a couple of people in the audience for particular barbs. I'm missing it just typing about it. So, in a nutshell, I was performing as Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" during the afternoon, then washing all the gray out of my hair, etc. to get ready for the evening performances. The "El Grande" performances were held in the cafeteria, for some reason. I guess to get enough people in, but close enough to be able to interact with.

This post is already incredibly long, so I think I'll break the remaining years up....