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....