New Digs

I was sitting there at my desk at Emerson Art Service minding my own business (and the client's) when "The Amazin'" Pat Hazen called. The Guild, she told me, was prepared to buy the building outgrown by the Central Assembly of God church, which had moved to an enormous piece of property west of town. But the Guild needed a zoning variance approved by the City Council to open it back up as a theatre, which (for some ridiculous reason) has different rules from a church. We needed a presence at the Council meeting to help convince them to go ahead and approve it. I went. There were at least thirty of us there. They passed it. The Guild now had its own home again, for the first time since they helped build and outfit Riverside so many years ago. The best part: it was about ten blocks from my apartment. I could walk!


There were many things to do to turn this building into a viable theatre, many of which would wait years for the capital to proceed. Short term, the house needed some acoustical help as well as a light booth and sound booth, the stage needed some modifications, the whole interior needed a paint job, and in the meantime there were shows going on in remote locations that needed sets built and rehearsals rehearsed. The whole Guild family sprang into action.

I was there one night, working on the doorway to the Green Room, when local cartoonist Dick Turner came over to me. He had a drawing in his hand, and he looked unhappy. "You're Gil Emerson's boy, aren't you?" he asked. I admitted I was. Still am. He explained that the Guild had asked him to do a backdrop painting for the Guild On The Go production of The Music Man. He'd drawn this 8 1/2" x 11" rendering of it, but his macular degeneration was so bad now that he couldn't even see the whole piece of paper at once, much less an 8' x 12' wall. Would it be possible for me to take the project off his hands? You all remember several postings ago, when I often said "Sure." Well, I said it again. Dick went away happy, and I called my dad. Gilbert H. Emerson had often said he would like to do some artsy stuff at the theatre, but he didn't want to step on any toes or make waves or whatever his excuses were. Also, he had been hinky about driving that four miles to the other side of the river. W - e - l - l - none of his excuses would excuse him this time!

The Music Man has long been my dad's favorite musical. So when he was spending his evenings laying out, drawing and painting a backdrop while performers rehearsed songs from The Music Man in the same room, he was hooked. After we finished that, he worked on the building rehab, and then the production people asked him to design and build the set for John Loves Mary, the first show of the season. He couldn't say no - he was hooked. I'm sure he said "Sure!"

I auditioned for John Loves Mary, and landed a small but pivotal role, Lieutenant Victor O'Leary, former Army officer now ushering at a movie theater. I entered as a straight arrow in Army uniform, drank a wee bit of Mary's dad's scotch, and left the scene plastered. Having such a short time on stage, I knew the scene really well, so when (nearly every night) the rest of the cast got off track, I was able to bring them back to the script seamlessly. It was fun!

I had very little to do with the next two shows - Ten Little Indians and Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. I wrote the cast and crew biographies, and I came to see them on opening night. LORHL was interesting. During the big seduction scene, the main character and his lady friend suddenly stopped talking and stared at each other for way too many seconds. Shirley finally said,"May I use your bathroom?" Al gratefully acquiesced. She left the stage, and Al squirmed a little. Finally she returned with a fresh idea of things to talk about.


Cast and crew bios were kind of fun to write. I handed out information forms to my subjects and told them, "If I don't get this back by Friday, I'll just make something up." There was one that intrigued me from stage manager Carmen Braden. It said she enjoyed reading and riding her bicycle. I added that she didn't do both at the same time. I hadn't ever actually met her yet, but It was in the cards. After opening night of Red Hot Lovers I walked to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast. After I'd been there awhile reading my Vero Beach Press-Journal, a slightly tipsy Ms. Braden came up to me and asked if I was willing to part with the classified ads. "Sure," I said.

Then came the Big One. Damn Yankees was the musical for the season. There were seventeen scenes to be performed on that little stage with no backstage, no wing space, no fly capability, not even any way for the thirty actors to come and go without filing out through the audience.

Set designer Betty Abbott solved one problem. "Make trilons," she said. What she meant were things called Periaktoi, three-sided columns on wheels that can be arranged into multiple configurations for multiple set possibilities. She then went on vacation, leaving my dad to work out exactly what scenes needed to be represented, how many "trilon" sides were needed for each scene and what to paint on them, and how many of what size trilons needed to be built. He built them, laid out the scenes and got them painted. Needless to say, he was a tiny bit cheesed off when the Best Set award went to...Betty Abbott!

I, of course, auditioned, and of course was chosen - as I indicated before, if a show needs a lot of men, pretty much any man that shows up gets drafted. In fact, I had two parts: Joe Boyd at the beginning and end, and Brian, one of the baseball team, in between. This meant that I was there just about every night of rehearsals. And of course I helped with the painting of the Trilons. Also helping was the woman soon to be known as "The Imperious Leader Of The Trilon Forces," the one, the only Carmen Braden. She was my dad's buddy before I actually met her! Soon I became the only actor in the show empowered by The Imperious Leader to move Trilons.

The next solution was pretty drastic. They busted a hole and installed a door through the concrete block wall on the stage left side, built a stairway down to the ground and set up a big tent to be used as a green room and dressing room. Wow.

Another bit of drama in the comedy was that, on opening night, Kevin, who played Applegate, hurt his back after the show. He was bedridden on the second night. Mike, who played Benny Van Buren, had really wanted to play Applegate, so he did for one night. I had wanted to play Van Buren, so I did for one night. Kevin came back in a back brace for the rest of the run.

None of us won real Genie awards for this landmark show, but I won The Imperious Leader of the Trilon Forces award.