Hit The Ground Running

Now that I've watched several roadrunners in action, I know what that phrase means.


In June of 1980 I saw a notice in the Vero Beach Press-Journal that the Vero Beach Theatre Guild was hosting a Summer Workshop over at Riverside Theatre. Come one, come all, learn about theatre and the Guild. It seemed like a low-pressure way to get myself known over there. So I hopped on The Artmobile - a Honda Express motorized little bike thing, outfitted with two big baskets for carrying artwork and stuff; the signs on the baskets proclaimed it to be The Artmobile - and went over to the theatre to sign up. Most of the folks there knew each other, just another way to hang out together. Ten or twelve of us were new. We did the usual kinds of stuff one does in workshops, except that, instead of introducing ourselves and telling a little bit about ourselves, we paired up and interviewed each other for fifteen minutes, then introduced each other. It was actually kind of fun.


It turned out that the big deal for this workshop was to be three one-act plays, each directed by somebody who had never directed before. We had auditions for each one, and I was picked for The Happy Journey by Thornton Wilder, directed by Fay, a lighting designer and employee of Riverside. We all had a good time with it, and it was a good show.




After the workshop was finished, I felt confident enough to audition for the first show of the season, Bus Stop. I read the script. There were two parts I really wanted: Virgil the sidekick, and Dr. Lyman, the intellectual sleazebag. I was locked in mortal combat for both parts, and got neither. I was cast as the bus driver, Carl. It was okay, though. I had the resources and know-how to put together my own costume. I made a bus company patch for the sleeve and one for the hat - a postal hat - which I found in the window of a thrift store for 75 cents. But the biggest deal for me was that, while we were working on the set, I overheard the director and the sound man - Mike and Mike - talking about music. The director wanted something that evoked the cold barrenness of this Kansas bus station in a March blizzard. I was on the case. A few nights later I heard it! It was on, of all places, John Denver's Rocky Mountain High album. I was goosebumped out while it played, then I got the cover and looked it up. "Late Winter, Early Spring, When Everybody Goes to Mexico." I took the album to rehearsal the next evening and showed it to Mike. Needless to say, he was skeptical, but with a patronizing smile he gave it to Mike to play over the sound system. It started playing, and everybody stopped what they were doing to listen. Why? Because it was perfect. I accrued a lot of respect that night.


The next show, You Know I Can't Hear You When The Water's Running was cast while Bus Stop was running. After their first production meeting, technical wizard Read came to me and asked me if I could help with the set, "Sure," I said. There were three different plays within this play, requiring three very different sets. So they were using slides and rear projection screens instead of real walls. What they needed from me was a set of titles to show on the center screen before each vignette. He described each segment, and asked me to make each title kind of go with the ambiance of the scene. Easily done. Plus, during the run of the show, I was on scene shift crew, hauling furniture and props in and out.




A watershed moment occurred in November. Fay asked me if I was available to work a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday gig for actual money. "Sure," I said. I said that a lot. Anyway, Long Wharf Theatre out of Boston had a two-show tour going - The Lion in Winter and Private Lives - and required local help to unload the truck, assemble each set, work the two shows, strike each set and load the truck again. This was my first up-close look at scenery that is designed to assemble and disassemble, with flexibility to fit diverse stages, and load on a truck for transport. I was fascinated. But - they also had many heavy drops to hang. Somehow, I was chosen to go way way up onto the Loading Rail, where heavy stage weights are added and removed to counterbalance loads being hoisted up and down by the fly system. They told me to just stay up there while they were hanging drops, since it took so much time and energy to clamber all the way down and all the way back up again. I spent about six hours up there, listening for instructions shouted from the stage. Unfortunately, I happened to have a black marker in my pocket. I wrote on the concrete block wall: "They also serve who only stand and weight" Anyway, I worked scene shift crew Friday night. We moved furniture and props in near total darkness. I was carrying a table in under the big-ass staircase, and smacked my head a good one. I was lucky I wasn't knocked out. Hell, I didn't even curse! So after the show, we struck the set, stored it in the wings, and Saturday helped assemble the Private Lives set. It had one scene shift element, a wall section twelve feet tall and sixteen feet wide that levered up onto wheels to move it in and out of position. It required a bunch of us to finagle it safely. Sunday's show was in the afternoon, we did our scene shift, waited for the end, struck the set and loaded the truck. We finished about midnight, exhausted but elated to have been a part of such a cool thing. Take me home, Artmobile!

I auditioned my heart out for The Sunshine Boys but didn't get a part. I didn't look Jewish enough, I was told. I worked on the set, though, and helped with hanging, patching, focusing and gelling lights.


Agatha Christy's The Mousetrap was next in line. I auditioned and was cast as Giles, the owner of Monkswell Manor. My character was subordinate to Giles' wife, Molly. My blocking notes in my script nearly always said "Follow Molly." I carried a lot of luggage.



It was somewhere in here that the Joffrey 2 Ballet came to Riverside. They needed local labor, and I was now a known quantity. Everyone who was working the show had to be screened by the Secret Service, because Ron Reagan Junior was in the show. I helped with the Marley floor and the set and the lights, and ran follow spot during rehearsal and performance. There were serious-to-a-fault guys in black suits everywhere backstage whenever Ron was in the building. At one point in the performance, a light cue came up wrong. "Damn!" said Fay. "We didn't repatch those lights!" I ran out of the light booth, took the catwalk to the backstage end, descended the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, and took off running toward the patch panel. Three serious-to-a-fault guys in black suits reached inside their jackets. I stopped, raised my hands, and slowly strolled to the patch panel to fix the lights.


I didn't audition for The Sound of Music, but was cast as Franz the Butler anyway. They needed a lot of bodies for that show. The cool thing about Franz, though, was that I was also on scene shift crew, and if anything was out of place when the lights came up, who better to set it right than the butler? Many stories were generated by this crazy show. The Reverend Jim Newsome played Captain vonTrapp, an Austrian naval hero with a deep and wide Southern accent. Every night from dress rehearsal on, you could walk into the green room to find six nuns with cigarettes in their mouths playing cards. The Terrace set was mostly flown in, and one night the pinrail guy lost control of it. It slammed to the floor with a loud BOOM, causing the audience and everyone else in the building to gasp. The next time it came in, it came in fast until it was about six inches from the floor, then eased to a stop with a barely audible thump. Everyone broke into wild applause. The stained glass window was hung from a pipe by two long cables. One time as it came in it bumped into something and began to swing, long, lazy arcs, from one side of the black drape to the other side of the black drape, back and forth, back and forth. After four or five swings, a hand magically appeared through the black drape and caught the window, stopping it in the middle. Mary Ann got applause for that. One Saturday night, after a Children's Theatre Workshop, the lights came up on the "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" set, and there was a bright green Sprite can gleaming on the bench. The actors ignored it through the entire scene. My particular event was the night I exited up the staircase during the party scene, and ran around to the props table for my tray of drinks - only to find the glasses were empty. I grabbed the tray, hurried to the green room, said hello to the smoking nuns, poured a little coffee into each glass, took them to the sink and filled them the rest of the way with water, hustled to the stage left wings and entered on cue, not a second to spare.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the last show of the season. Yes, I auditioned, and yes, I was cast. One thing you'll find in community theatre - if a show requires a lot of men, pretty much every man who shows up gets in. I played Ruckly, a severely damaged soul who spent most of the show up against the wall with arms spread in a crucifixion pose. My only lines - twice I was supposed to say, "F-f-fuck 'em all!" - were cut and replaced with rude hand gestures. I was placed wherever I went, so I had no blocking to remember. It was a very low-stress role. The only thing was the outstretched arms thing. I rehearsed holding books out for as long as I could stand it, ever increasing my strength until I could go the whole show with books. Without books was easy. The other thing was my lobotomy scar. Bill, the makeup guru, made it bigger and uglier every night. My last one was about four inches long. It's in my scrap book.

Riverside Theatre and the Guild hosted the Florida Theatre Conference in 1981, and our contribution was an encore presentation of ...Cuckoo's Nest. It was a great show.

So that was the larger part of what I remember of my first season of total immersion into the world of theatre. As I had suspected decades before, it was a match made in heaven (or wherever) and still makes me happy.