Casting and Comments - Part II

Posted by Bruce Miller
In a previous blog, I jumped recklessly into the ongoing debate regarding whether Barksdale and I (and by extension all Richmond theatres and directors) are open to casting newcomers. As I have stated, I believe that all of us are not only open to new talent, we’re downright eager to introduce new faces to our audiences.

Still, the perception persists that directors prefer to cast a disproportionate number of those whom we already know and love.

To test my belief against that perception, I decided to go back and review my casting record for the dozen shows I’ve directed at Barksdale since becoming artistic director in 2001. Here are the results.

I use the words “pals,” “friends” and “colleagues” interchangeably. If I say someone was “new to me” or “never worked with me,” I mean I hadn’t cast or directed them before, not necessarily that I’d never made their acquaintance, heard of them, or seen their work, although that is often true. In like fashion, the term “newcomer" means new to Barksdale.

I suspect I’ve made a mistake or five. A fair amount of this was done from memory. As you notice that I’ve left someone out, screwed up the math, misspelled a name, or mislabeled a “newcomer” or a “veteran,” please let me know and I’ll fix it.

I’ll leave it to you to determine what, if anything, this casting history suggests.

The Little Dog Laughed – Cast of four. I brought veteran Susan Sanford back from LA, and I cast Laine Satterfield, who had been in one Barksdale show previously but was new to me. I also cast two newcomers, John DeBoer and Matt Hackman.

Swingtime Canteen – Cast of five. I cast Vilma Gil, Jan Guarino, Audra Honaker, Katrinah Lewis and Debra Wagoner, all of whom had worked at Barksdale before.

Smoke on the Mountain – Cast of seven. I cast Julie Fulcher and Eric Williams, who were Barksdale veterans and longstanding friends of mine. I cast David Janeski who had acted at Barksdale in two previous shows, but had never worked with me. I cast Billy Christopher Maupin and Aly Wepplo, both of whom had acted once previously at Barksdale, but had never worked with me. I also cast two newcomers, Emily Cole Bitz and Drew Perkins.

Over the River and Through the Woods – Cast of six. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Jolene Carroll, Matthew Costello, Jackie Jones and Stephanie Kelly (Dray), all of whom were Barksdale veterans, and four of whom had worked previously with me. I also cast newcomer Christopher Clawson in the lead.

No Sex Please, We’re British – Cast of nine. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Dave Clark, Larry Cook, Jan Guarino, Cathy Shaffner and Erin Thomas, all six of whom were Barksdale veterans and longstanding pals of mine. I cast Jeff Cole and Chris Stewart, both of whom had worked with me and with Barksdale on one show prior to this one. I also cast newcomer Monica Dionysiou.

The Lark – Cast of 15. I cast Andy Boothby, Rick Brandt, Dave Bridgewater, Larry Cook, Matthew Costello, Debbie Gayle Taylor and Erin Thomas, all seven of whom were Barksdale veterans and prior colleagues of mine. (Allow me to note that Debbie Gayle hadn’t done a show at Barksdale in more than 20 years.) I cast Stephanie Kelly (Dray) and Roger Gregory who were new to me, but who had done one Barksdale show previous to this one. I also cast five newcomers: Pam Arkin, Jeff Cole, Jeff Hendrickson, Stephanie O’Brien and Chris Stewart, three of them in leading roles.

The Man Who Came to Dinner – Cast of 24. I cast Larry Cook, Lauren Leinhaas Cook, Matthew Costello, Thomas Cunningham, Robyn O’Neill, Joe Pabst, Derek Phipps, Susan Sanford, Jill Bari Steinberg, Jody Strickler and Joy Williams, all 11 of whom were Barksdale veterans. I also cast 13 newcomers: Brett Ambler, Josh Bufford, Jeff Clevinger, Sam Cook, Frank Creasy, Barry Ellenberger, Jonathan Hardison, Leigh McSweeney, Scott Melton, Curt Miller, Daniel Strickler, Kim Weeda and Lynn West.

Anything Goes – Cast of 24. I cast Larry Cook, Heather Fox, Jan Guarino, Jennifer Hammond, Robin Harris, Audra Honaker, Chase Kniffen, Richard Koch, Mollie Meagher, Robyn O’Neill, Jack Parrish, Derek Phipps, Russell Rowland and Cathy Shaffner, all fourteen of whom were Barksdale veterans and had worked with me before. I cast Matt Shofner, Jonathan Spivey and Alex Teachey, all three of whom were appearing at Barksdale for the second time, but had never worked with me. I also cast seven newcomers: Brandon Becker, Liz Blake, Charlie Chan, Ryland Dodge, Alexis Goldstein, Travis Kendrick and Eddie Tavares.

Fifth of July – Cast of eight. I cast Steve Perigard, Jody Strickler and Scott Wichmann, three Barksdale veterans who’d worked with me before. I cast Riley Koren, who had done one show with me and Barksdale previously. I cast Chris Evans and Jennifer Massey, both of whom had acted in one Barksdale show previously but had never worked with me. I also cast two newcomers: Peter Schmidt and Jill Bari Steinberg, plus a third newcomer Kristen Swanson, who replaced Jen Massey when she had to leave the show for a prior commitment.

Annie Get Your Gun – Cast of 24. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Billy Dye, Robert Fix, Jan Guarino, Michael Hawke, Chase Kniffen, Robyn O’Neill, Steve Perigard and Susan Sanford, all nine of whom were Barksdale veterans and old pals. I cast Crystal Bailey and Annie Hulcher, both of whom had done one show previously at Barksdale, but were new to me. I also cast 13 newcomers: Gray Crenshaw, Heather Fox, Emily Gatesman, Josh Lane, Craig McFarland, Andy McLeavey, Mollie Meagher, Juli Robbins, Russell Rowland, Gavin Waters, Cory Williams, David Winning and Tamia Zulueta.

The Crucible – Cast of 19. I cast Dave Bridgewater, Matthew Costello, Lou DiLalla, Richard Koch and Jack Parrish, all five of whom were Barksdale veterans who had worked with me before. I cast Kelly Kennedy, who was a Barksdale vet but was working with me for the first time. I also cast 13 newcomers: Pat Anthony-Aleman, Amy Barrett, Dale Church, Jamme Coy, Stephen Coy, Kady Fleckenstein, Chelsea Franges, Arthelia Gatling, Audra Honaker, Riley Koren, Joe Mattys, Alice Schreiner and Dan Summey.

The Little Foxes – Cast of ten. I cast Matthew Costello, Jack Parrish and Jody Strickler, all three of whom were Barksdale veterans and longstanding colleagues of mine. I cast Kweli Leapard and Robbie Winston, both of whom had been in one previous Barksdale production. I also cast five newcomers: ‘Rick Gray, Daniel Moore, Erin Thomas, Timothy Thomas and Harriet Traylor.

Total Actors Cast – 156
Total Newcomers – 65 (42%)

Among the “newcomers” – Brett Ambler, Frank Creasy, Audra Honaker, Heather Fox, Daniel Moore, Russell Rowland, Jill Bari Steinberg, Chris Stewart, Erin Thomas, Harriet Traylor and David Winning – all of whom would now be considered Barksdale Theatre and/or Richmond Theatre All-Stars.

--Bruce Miller

Race - Parts III and IV: From Darwin to Ota Benga to the Barksdale Stage

Posted by Bruce Miller
Part III
There are those who believe that Barksdale doesn’t do enough to promote racial equity, and I hear from them on a regular basis. We’ll talk about those issues soon.

There are more people who write to me alleging that Barksdale does too much.

My first production as artistic director was the musical comedy They’re Playing Our Song (2001). Director Jan Guarino cast two African Americans among the three men and three women who function as the alter egos of the leads, played by Robyn O’Neill and Steve Perigard, both of whom are white. “If they’re supposed to be alter egos,” a frustrated patron wrote, “why make them black. Please don’t follow the path of the Theatre of Virginia and try to force political correctness down our throats.”
Similar objections were filed when Susan Sanford and Jerold Solomon appeared opposite each other in Olympus on my Mind (2002), when Jan Guarino and Billy Dye exchanged flirtations in Annie Get Your Gun (2003), when two racially mixed couples headed the cast of Where’s Charley? (2004), and when we cast black actors among Beauregard’s extended family in Mame (2006).

I recently heard from a man who was offended because “the colored girl” in Swingtime Canteen (my wonderfully talented friend Katrinah Lewis) asked a white man in the audience to dance with her. His comment centered on the fact that Swingtime was supposed to be a re-creation of a USO show from 1944, and that no “colored female during the war years would ask a white soldier to come on stage and dance with her.” Hopefully it shows how far things have come in the last few decades. When I cast Katrinah in the role, it never even occurred to me that anyone would object.

Sometimes offense is taken from the other direction. I heard from four women, three of whom I believe were African American, who were offended by the fact that Jill Bari Steinberg played all the black characters in Syringa Tree as well as all the white characters.

I don’t want to overstate the problem. For every person who is offended, there are thousands who love what they’re seeing on stage and cheer us on.

Barksdale has a commitment to colorblind casting. This is not in an effort to be “politically correct”; it is simply our policy to cast each show based on talent rather than race. For many people my age and younger, interracial romance is barely noticeable. What I’ve come to realize is that a lot of our older audience members were brought up in a world where being colorblind was not even an option.

In South Pacific, the great American lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II got it right when he caustically commented on how racial prejudice had become so pervasive in American society. “You’ve got to be taught,” he said, “to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, of people whose skin is a different shade—you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

The eminent British naturalist Charles Darwin may be the father of evolutionary theory, but he is also, perhaps inadvertently, one of the world’s foremost “teachers” of racism. In his 1859 masterwork, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (yep, that’s the full title), Darwin inferred that the “favoured race” was European and white. He stated that the Australian Aborigine and the African Negro were located on the evolutionary ladder somewhere between Caucasians and apes.

Today, the Human Genome Project has proven that Darwin’s racial suppositions were just plain wrong. Genetically, there is only one race—the human race. As Robert Lee Hotz reported in the L. A. Times, our conception of race is merely “a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”

Lee Dye, science writer for ABC News, reports that scientists have found that the basic genetic differences between any two people anywhere in the world is around 0.2%, whether they come from the same “race” or different “races.” “More and more scientists find that the differences that set us apart are cultural, not racial. The so-called ‘racial’ characteristics that people think are major differences (skin color, eye shape, etc.) account for only 0.012% of human biological variation. There is more variation within any group than there is between one group and another. If a white person is looking for a tissue match for an organ transplant, the best match may come from a black person, and vice versa. There are differences among us, but they stem from culture, not race.”

Sadly, the racial attitudes of many Americans were forged more by Darwin than the Human Genome Project. That will change overtime, but not overnight. To understand the pervasive impact of Darwin, consider this story which ultimately brought Darwinism to our home state of Virginia.

(Those of you who need a break during my overly long blogs may take one here. Go enjoy a nice bowl of popcorn or a trip to the gym. Ota and I shall be ready and waiting for you should you elect to return.)

Part IV
In 1904, a 30-year-old explorer, anthropologist and missionary named Dr. Samuel Phillips Verner was hired to sail to Africa to acquire pygmies willing to move to Missouri for the upcoming World’s Fair. Once there, the Africans would join other native people, including Eskimos, American Indians and Filipino tribesmen, and be put on display in replicas of their traditional dwellings and villages. (Think of that next time you hum Meet Me in St. Louis.)

Ota Benga, one of the pygmies Verner acquired, had survived a massacre carried out by the Force Publique, a notorious armed band employed by King Leopold of Belgium to bring his Congolese colony under control. Ota Benga’s wife and two children had been killed in the massacre, and Ota Benga himself had been spared by their killers only so that he could be sold into slavery to another tribe. Verner purchased him at a slave market because he was fascinated by his teeth, which had been filed to sharp points in accordance with tribal custom. (The photo of Ota Benga above and to the left was taken at the World's Fair.)

When the World’s Fair was over, Verner took all eight pygmies back to Africa as free men. Ota Benga had nothing to return to, so he befriended Verner and assisted him as he pursued his anthropological work. In 1906, he returned with Verner to the United States.

Verner was not a wealthy man. Not knowing how to pay for his charge, he took Ota Benga and his other African “collectibles,” including two chimpanzees, to Hermon Bumpus, director of the Museum of Natural History in New York. Bumpus said he would store the cargo, including Ota Benga, while Verner tried to raise funds. A makeshift bedroom was created in a maintenance area. Ota Benga was fitted with a white suit and allowed to roam the museum at will.

As might be expected, he had difficulty assimilating to this new life. At one point he threw a chair at Florence Guggenheim, one of NYC’s most prominent philanthropists. When the situation became untenable, William Temple Hornaday (pictured to the right), director of the Bronx Zoo, agreed to take custody of both Ota Benga and the one surviving chimp.

Officially, Ota Benga was “employed” by the zoo, but records indicate that he was never paid. He was free to travel throughout the zoo as he pleased, and he frequently assisted the zookeepers with minor jobs. A good deal of his time was spent in the Monkey House, where he assumed personal responsibility for the care of Verner’s chimpanzee and became attached to an orangutan named Dohong. (The photo at the top of Part IV portrays Ota Benga with Verner's chimp.)

Prior to his second weekend in his zoo home, Hornaday had his staff encourage Ota Benga to hang his hammock in a cage within the Monkey House. They gave him a bow and arrow, which he seemed to enjoy shooting at a target. They made a sign and posted it outside the cage, listing Ota Benga’s height as 4 feet 11 inches, his weight as 103 pounds, and his age as 23. At the bottom of the sign were these words: “Exhibited each afternoon during September.”

When visitors to the zoo stopped by the Monkey House on Saturday, Sept 8, 1906, they were fascinated by their first glimpse of the Ota Benga “exhibit,” and encouraged to think that what they were viewing was an in-the-flesh example of the "savages" that Darwin had described as being halfway evolved between ape and man. To create atmosphere, a colorful parrot was released in Ota Benga’s cage and dried bones were scattered around the “jungle” floor.

On Sunday, under the excited headline “Bushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes,” the New York Times stated, “Few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions … and there could be no doubt that to the majority the joint man-and-monkey exhibition was the most interesting sight in Bronx Park.”

The zoo was mobbed that day as thousands of readers ventured out in the afternoon to see the new attraction. From all accounts, Ota Benga played to his crowds, just as he had learned to do at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He practiced with his bow and arrow, and wrestled enthusiastically with the orangutan Dohong.

An immediate outraged response came from the Colored Baptist Ministers’ Conference. Rev. James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, wrote, “Our race, we think, is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes.” He noted that the exhibit “evidently aims to be a demonstration of Darwin’s theory of evolution. ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.” A few white churches concurred. “The person responsible for this exhibition,” wrote the white pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, “degrades himself as much as he does the African. Instead of making a beast of this little fellow, we should be putting him in school for the development of such powers as God gave him.”

The ministers sought support from the Mayor of New York, George McClellan (pictured to the left), and were denied. Zoo director Hornaday later applauded the mayor for refusing to meet with the ministers. “When the history of the Zoological Park is written,” Hornaday assured, “this incident will form its most amusing passage.”

Nonetheless, in a belated effort to avoid controversy, the “exhibit” was disassembled on Monday afternoon.

Later that week in an editorial, the New York Times wrote: “Not feeling particularly vehement excitement ourselves over the exhibition of an African ‘pigmy’ in the Primate House of the Zoological Park, we do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter. Still, the show is not exactly a pleasant one, and we do wonder that the Director did not foresee and avoid the scoldings now aimed in his direction. … As for Benga himself, he is probably enjoying himself as well as he could anywhere in his country, and it is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation he is suffering.”

Despite the dismantling of the formal exhibit, the public was not about to relinquish its fascination. Everyone, it seemed, had heard of Ota Benga, and they all wanted to see him personally. On Sunday, Sept 16, 40,000 New Yorkers came out to the zoo. Ota Benga was no longer constrained in the Monkey House (the entrance of which is pictured to the right). As he roamed the zoo’s grounds, great mobs followed him, according to the New York Times, “howling, jeering and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him.”

Within two more weeks, Ota Benga was moved to the children’s orphanage managed by Rev. Gordon in Brooklyn. Fifteen months later, in 1910, Ota Benga was transferred to the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, an all black school in Lynchburg, VA. (Civil rights icon Vernon Johns would serve as President of the fiercely independent Seminary for five years in the early ‘30s. Their catalogue from approximately this period is pictured to the left.)

While living in various private homes throughout Lynchburg, Ota Benga had his teeth capped and changed his name to Otto Bingo. He was befriended and tutored by the world renowned poet and civil rights activist, Anne Spencer, who lived in Lynchburg. Anne Spencer was the first Virginian and the first African American to have her work included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. She figured prominently in the Harlem Renaissance.

Through Anne Spencer (pictured to the right), Ota Benga met W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. After three years of study, Ota Benga abandoned his formal education and went to work in a tobacco factory, where his duties included climbing into the rafters to retrieve tobacco leaves without benefit of a ladder. He was most at home discarding his American clothes and living more freely in the woods.

On March 20, 1916, Ota Binga went into the forest, built a ceremonial fire, burned all his clothes and knocked the caps off his teeth with a stone. He was 32 years old. We’re told he performed a dance native to his Congolese homeland, and then, on the vernal equinox, shot himself with a borrowed pistol.
The obituary in the Lynchburg paper read as follows: “For a long time the young negro pined for his African relations, and grew morose when he realized that such a trip was out of the question because of the lack of resources.” Dr. Verner wrote that Ota Benga “probably succumbed only after the feeling of utter inassimilability overwhelmed his brave little heart.”
Today, efforts are underway to locate Ota Benga’s remains and return them to the Congo. The life mask above and to the left was made of Ota Benga when he lived at the Museum of Natural History, and is labeled only PYGMY.

In 2006, in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of Ota Benga’s experience in the Bronx Zoo, NPR interviewed Carrie Allen McCray who lived as a child with Ota Benga in Lynchburg, and Phillips Verner Bradford, grandson of Dr. Samuel Phillips Verner who first brought Ota Benga from Africa to the United States. This 9-minute recording from All Things Considered can be accessed at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5787947.

When reading letters from those who are offended by interracial romance on stage, I always try to remember that the world we live in today is, thankfully, very different from the world in which their personalities were formed.

--Bruce Miller

Rambling Thoughts on a Running Theme

Posted by Bruce Miller

The playwrights from this year’s Signature Season are a somewhat diverse lot, but there’s a common thread that ties several of them together.

The late Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding) wrote with the distinctive voice of a young woman reared in a small Southern town during the 1930s and 40s. Ron Hutchinson (Moonlight and Magnolias) is an Irish-born playwright who came to fame in England and now lives in LA, working predominantly for the film industry.

John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, pictured to the left) is a former Marine who was raised in the Bronx. His writing has earned him an Oscar (Moonstruck), a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize (Doubt). Douglas Carter Beane (The Little Dog Laughed) is a gay playwright who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and wrote the libretto for the current Broadway musical Xanadu, a re-make of the 1970s cult film. Beane is currently writing the libretto for the upcoming stage musical remake of The Band Wagon, now re-titled Dancing in the Dark.

Our summer musical, the great American classic Guys and Dolls, features music and lyrics by Frank Loesser (pictured to the right) and a book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Frank Loesser, born in 1910 in NYC, also wrote Where’s Charley? (produced by Barksdale in 2003), The Most Happy Fella, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the songs "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" and "I Don’t Want to Walk Without You" (currently heard in Swingtime Canteen) and "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" (recently heard in our Holiday Cabaret).

Jo Swerling (co-author of the Guys book) was born in Russia in 1897 and, as a child, fled the Czarist regime with his family, arriving in New York’s lower East Side via Ellis Island. Before working on Guys and Dolls in the late 40s, he was called to Hollywood by Frank Capra, where he helped to “polish” the screenplays of both It’s a Wonderful Life (recently produced as a radio drama by Barksdale’s Bifocals Theatre Project) and Gone With the Wind (the re-screenwriting of which is the subject of Moonlight and Magnolias).

Abe Burrows (the other co-writer of the Guys book, pictured to the left) was a renowned radio writer and comedic performer, who went on to serve as “script doctor” for numerous Broadway and radio shows. Interestingly, Abe Burrows is also the father of James Burrows, the legendary television director of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and co-creator of Cheers.

As Moonlight continues its laugh-a-minute run at Barksdale Willow Lawn (I saw it again last night and it was GREAT), it’s interesting to follow the theme of the un-credited “script doctor” and re-write artist. In Moonlight, Ben Hecht, played by Scott Wichmann, is brought in to rewrite the screenplay for Gone With the Wind. Moonlight playwright Ron Hutchinson (pictured below and to the right) earns a very lucrative living doing the same thing today.

Discussing the movie industry, Hutchinson writes, “Now, as back then, in the last weeks, days and hours before shooting, there’s a mad scramble to finally get the script right. That’s where guys like Ben Hecht came in then and where guys like me come in today. In 25 years as a rewrite man, I’ve been parachuted into movie locations in places such as Morocco, Mexico, Australia, South Africa and really bizarre places such as Burbank.”

Carson McCullers (pictured to the left) has always given credit to her principal “script doctor,” fellow Southerner Tennessee Williams. Douglas Carter Beane (pictured below and to the right) is becoming somewhat of a specialist in rewriting the librettos of vintage movie musicals for contemporary Broadway audiences. And his real-life experience in which unnamed “script doctors” transformed the lead character from gay to straight in the Hollywood adaptation of his Off Broadway hit, As Bees in Honey Drown, inspired the comic story he tells in The Little Dog Laughed.

Both Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows were considered among the foremost “script doctors” working to polish other author’s work in both Hollywood and New York in the 40s through the 70s. In Deathtrap, produced by Barksdale at Hanover Tavern earlier this fall, the lead character of Sidney Bruhl offers to serve as a “script doctor” for a young playwright, citing the fact that George S. Kaufman (pictured to the left) served as his “script doctor” when he was polishing his first play. In his memoirs, Abe Burrows credited his success in the theatre to his work under George S. Kaufman, director of Guys and Dolls.

For many years, the expression, “Get me Abe Burrows!” remained Broadway shorthand for “this script is awful and needs an emergency rewrite.” Burrows himself downplayed his “script doctor” role in his memoirs. “I have... performed surgery on a few shows, but not as many as I'm given credit for. I've been involved in 19 theatrical productions, plus their road company offshoots. Only a few of these have been surgical patients. And I don't usually talk about them. I feel that a fellow who doctors a show should have the same ethical approcah that a plastic surgeon has. It wouldn't be very nice if a plastic surgeon were walking down the street with you, and a beautiful girl approached. And you say, "What a beautiful girl." And the plastic surgeon says, "She was a patient of mine. You should have seen her before I fixed her nose."

Of all our playwrights this season, John Patrick Shanley seems to be the only one who has little to no experience rewriting the scripts of others and/or putting up with others who are brought in to rewrite his work. Long may he wave.

--Bruce Miller

Oh Christmas Tree! Oh Christmas Tree! Look!! The Show I Did in '63!!!

Posted by John Steils

The good men and women of Barksdale’s Bifocals Theatre Project—our dynamic initiative for senior theatre artists and audiences—are launching a new program. During the next several months, they will be working independently and with Barksdale’s artisans to create handcrafted Christmas tree ornaments to represent each of the approximately 300 mainstage shows that Barksdale has produced since its founding as Richmond’s first professional performing arts organization in 1953.

Simultaneously, we will all begin creating ornaments for each of the mainstage productions at Theatre IV and the Virginia Museum Theatre / TheatreVirginia, the two other great stage companies whose resources and energies contribute so much to make Barksdale the powerhouse it is today.

Eventually, all these ornaments will be hung each year on the festive trees located in the lobbies of our Willow Lawn, Hanover Tavern, and historic Empire performance facilities. Christmas and Hanukkah are an ideal time to remember and celebrate all the great professional productions that have made Richmond the theatrical capital of the region. Who knows, maybe other theatres will join in the project to create memory trees of their own.

During my three months at Barksdale, I’ve had the privilege to meet and talk with many of the hundreds of theatre artists, Board leaders etc. who make up this landmark institution. Kevin Kilgore, Jacqui O’Connor, Essie Simms (she’s seen every B’dale production since 1953!) and many, many others have shared stories of the Tavern that have made the historic Barksdale come alive for me. Ford Flannagan, Gordon Bass, Terrie Powers and their pals have related stories that go back to Theatre IV’s founding in 1975, allowing me feel like I was in those touring vans myself. Did Jan Guarino really learn the entire score to Jubilee! while riding in the van on the way to a Newport News performance?

Sue Griffin, Meredith Stanley Scott (pictured with husband Alfred in the '70s to the left), Bob Albertia and dozens of others have shared their tales of VMT / TVA, keeping that company very much alive in the hallways, dressing rooms and rehearsal halls of Barksdale. Did you know that six of our current staff members, scores of our talented theatre artists, even our artistic director are all VMT / TVA vets? Shoot, the evening gown that Jan Guarino wears nightly in Swingtime Canteen was first created for and worn in Bubbling Brown Sugar at TheatreVirginia, and Jan herself starred in countless TheatreVirginia productions (in between those notorious van rides at Theatre IV).

You generous people in Richmond’s vibrant theatre community have had the good sense to combine and unite your passions to create a current company that thrives on all the strengths of the various companies that preceded it. That’s a pretty amazing achievement, and I don’t think there are many theatre communities that could pull it off. Pete, Nancy and Muriel (and Leslie Cheek, Robert Telford et al) must have been amazing people to have created the family you have become. Now, the three memory trees you are creating will represent their and your star-studded history in all its glory. You have my undying admiration.

Sadly, sort of, for me, this is my last blog entry. I came to Richmond at the end of September to be with my sister, who was seriously ill. The wonderful news is that she is now SO much better and I am able to return home. While I was here, Barksdale was kind enough to welcome me into the fold, and give this theatrical fish-out-of-water a temporary home. My part-time internship with the marketing department has been a lifeline for me during a somewhat stressful time, and I can’t thank you all enough.

So Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! I will miss you all, and I thank you for being the most amazing theatre I’ve ever had the privilege to know. Long may you thrive!

--John Steils

The Show Must - Ah Choo! - Go On

Posted by Bruce Miller

So you know that cold/flu bug that seems to be wiping out everyone you meet? Well, that same destroyer of throats, noses, sinuses and any and all other body parts having to do with breathing, talking and basically standing upright seems to have hit 4/5 of the cast of Swingtime Canteen.

The only healthy songstress—at least we hope she’s still healthy—is Vilma Gil.

It all started last week with Jan Guarino. We love Jan. So apparently did some airborne virus. Our five wonderful singers were all doing just fine until, with little warning, Jan shows up one night sounding like a frog—and feeling like a frog who’s been run over by a beer truck. Trooper that she is, she went on stage all smiles and, only on occasion, had to cut one of her songs or quickly summon the other women to join her at the microphone to cover the melody.

Jan was feeling so badly on Monday we cancelled Tuesday’s performance to give her a little rest before shows began again on Thursday. I went out to the Tavern Thursday night to see how Jan and the show were doing, only to find the entire dressing room now packed with wheezing, sneezing, coughing women.

All dressed up in their 1940s gowns and hairdos, they looked lovely but were starting to sound like the Andrews Sisters with a foghorn filling in for Maxine.

So why not send in their understudies? As most of you know, that answer is simple. We don’t have understudies. The economic model of a 156-seat theatre performing four times a week is this. You count on selling at 75% capacity (approximately 470 tickets per week). With subscriber, group and other discounts, you plan on averaging $32 per ticket (approximately $15,000 per week). To that earned revenue, you add approximately $4,000 in contributed support (contributions make up just about 21% of gross revenue).

From that $19,000 in gross weekly revenue, subtract:
$2,300 for talent and nightly personnel;
$2,200 for royalties and music rental;
$2,100 for weekly allocation towards sets, lights, costumes and sound;
$2,000 for rent and other facility expenses;
$1,900 for ad buys, brochures, subscriber campaign allocation;
$1,600 for playbills, box office, Internet ticketing and credit card fees;
$1,500 for marketing, promotion and group sales personnel;
$1,100 for development and accounting personnel and audit allocation;
$900 for support facilities (offices, shops, rehearsal hall) and website allocation;
$550 for insurance and business fees; and
$2,850 (15%) for overhead.

Which leaves nothing, nada, zero, goose egg for understudies.

So, many MANY thanks to the heroines of this story, our noble actresses who approach those vintage microphones night after night feeling miserable but looking like they’re on the top of the world, singing gamely on even though they know they’re not sounding their very best. Like so much in the Greater Richmond theatre business, our actors and other theatre artists carry the day, night after night and show after show. They bear much of the weight of our industry on their shoulders, even when they’re feeling lousy. All of us, administrators and audience members alike, owe them our undying gratitude.

--Bruce Miller

Three Hits (No Strike!) and We're In

Posted by Bruce Miller
Last Thurs, Nov 29, the strike ended and all of Broadway returned to work. The following evening, Fri, Nov 30, Theatre IV opened A Christmas Story at the historic Empire Theatre, the third mainstage opening in 15 days for the Barksdale/Theatre IV team. Today, Sun, Dec 2, the first Christmas Story review came out in the T-D, and, just as with the first two openings of our holiday trifecta, it looks like another winner coming out of the gates!

To paraphrase a song from Swingtime Canteen, “Praise the Lord and pass the approbation!”

Under the headline: “Caution: This Play Could Lead You to Fits of Laughter,” Susan Haubenstock writes, “Theatre IV’s holiday show A Christmas Story may be too funny for children. Well, too funny for them to fully appreciate. The adults who bring them to the Empire Theatre will be laughing out loud.”

Technical glitches aside (see my Opening Night coverage), Susie basically loved the whole thing: “Off Center and Always Hilarious!” “Clever Theatrical Devices!” “Incredibly Funny!” She loved our director and designers: “Director Chase Kniffen hits every laugh.” “The house set designed by Mercedes Schaum looks like it’s laughing.” “Matthew Landwehr’s lighting contributes mightily to the scene transitions.”

She especially loved our cast: “Eric Pastore has the charisma to keep our focus throughout the play’s 2 ½ hours.” “Michael Thibodeau and Eric Evans play his buddies with thorough 1938 credibility. Chandler Hurd is delightful as a coonskin-cap-wearing bully; and Lillie Izo and Lyla Rossi are wonderful as the neighborhood girls.”

“Above all, tiny R. Cooper Timberline is hilarious as Randy, whether whining, hiding, waiting for Santa, or needing to wee-wee.”

“Tony Foley plays the narrator (the adult Ralph) with heart, and Gordon Bass is perfect as the cursing, growling Old Man. Julie Fulcher’s long suffering Mother is great, and costume designer Sarah Grady even provides her with the requisite pink chenille bathrobe. And Jacqueline Jones puts in another of her high-octane performances as Ralphie’s teacher.”

If you and your kids would like a good laugh this Christmas, and who wouldn’t, please call for your Christmas Story tickets ASAP. If you’d like to revisit comic hijinks associated with the screen-writing of Gone with the Wind, please call for tickets to Moonlight and Magnolias at Barksdale Willow Lawn. And if you’d like to tap your feet and sing along to the boogie woogie hits of the 40s in a colorful recreation of a USO Christmas show, head on out to Hanover Tavern for Swingtime Canteen.

Better yet, go see all three! And remember, theatre tickets and gift certificates make GREAT Christmas and Hanukkah presents!!

See you at the theatre.

--Bruce Miller

Photo credits: All photos by Jay Paul. At flagpole (left to right) - Lyla Rossi, Lillie Izo, Eric Pastore, Michael Thibodeau, Eric Evans. In chairs - Eric Pastore, Eric Evans. Bundled up - Michael Thibodeau, Eric Pastore, R. Cooper Timberline, Eric Evans.

Heaving Hedgehogs in Hanover

Posted by Bruce Miller

After a 12 noon meeting in Ashland on Wednesday, Phil and I decided to drop in on our Swingtime Canteen company at Hanover Tavern before their 2 pm matinee. Our gorgeous ladies were in their costumes and our dashing men were stepping up to their piano, bass and drums in an effort to begin the show, when word came down from Michelle (of the restaurant that bears her name) that she had just been called by a bus group of 45 South Carolinians. They were traveling up 95 and would be about 25 minutes late for the performance. Could we hold?

Three groups comprised most of the sold out house that day. The Henrico Rec and Parks group and the Red Hat Ladies were already sitting patiently in their seats. And right smack dab in the middle of all of them were 45 empty seats for the gentle folk from Charleston.

Situations similar to this happen from time to time, and Phil and I frequently are called upon to do our “dog and pony show.” I’ve never been sure which one of us is the dog and which the pony. Perhaps we’re both donies. Or pogs. But our goal is to keep the on-time audience members happy until the “held up in traffic” audience (usually arriving by the busload) actually shows up.

When it’s a children’s theatre audience, and Christmas, I haul out my audience participation versions of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Snow Bear Boogie, etc. We put our right paw in and our left paw out, and we parents jangle our car keys to Jingle Bells until the errant playgoers finally make it into their seats. At Easter-time I’ve been known to resort to Little Rabbit Foo Foo.

With an audience of spirited senior citizens, it’s not quite that easy. Making antlers with our hands every time we get to the word “reindeer” doesn’t seem to float their boats. So Phil and I took to the stage and announced that we’d be happy to answer questions about the history (fascinating, actually) of Barksdale Theatre and Hanover Tavern.

After breezing through my less than encyclopedic (but fairly accurate) knowledge of Patrick Henry and Hanover real estate circa 1776, the questions started getting tougher. “Who is the Montgomery Room named after?” (The Montgomery Room is the dining room in which the group had just eaten lunch, and I don’t have a clue how it earned that moniker.) “Did Thomas Jefferson really visit Hanover Tavern and which room did he stay in?”

I felt myself missing Nancy Kilgore.

Nancy, God bless her soul, knew all the answers. And when she didn’t, she was an unrivaled expert at making them up. She was at her most dazzling when the “real” answer was either fleeting or unknown. Watching Nancy lead groups through the Tavern and/or other historic Hanover properties was like watching Maggie Smith captivate the tourists visiting an historic British manor house in Lettice and Lovage.

In that wonderful play by Peter Shaffer, the character of Lettice, hilariously played on Broadway and in London’s West End by Dame Maggie, repeats the same historical narrative to a different group of tourists four times, and each time her docent declamation becomes more fantastical and compelling. In the final iteration, she has the tourists spellbound with a tale of British gentry vaulting down the grand staircase holding aloft platters brimming with baked hedgehogs.

I must admit I resorted to a bit of hedge-hogwash myself when I described the fiddle contest that Henry and Jefferson are alleged to have had "just on the other side of that door" during the Christmas season of 1759. We know from his journal that TJ visited the neighboring estate of Nathan Dandridge that year on his way to William and Mary. Who’s to say that the fiddling legend is untrue?

Of course, the Hanover Tavern in which Patrick Henry worked and played actually burned to the ground sometime in or just prior to the 1780s, and the one we know and love today (at least the northern section in which the theatre is located) was not rebuilt until 1791. But that’s not the way that Nancy Kilgore told it. And if I have the choice of being true to history or true to the memory of Nancy’s wildly enthusiastic embrace of the Tavern’s spirit, I’ll pick the latter any day of the week.

After all, as Nancy once said, “Once you’re sitting in those seats, darling, you’re not in a museum, you’re in a THEATRE!!” Here here.

--Bruce Miller

Images (from the top): Hanover Tavern, Swingtime logo, Rudolph in Claymation, the new Thomas Jefferson gold piece, Nancy Kilgore in Stop the World, Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage, Patrick Henry.

Reviewers Hail Boogie Woogie Blockbuster

Posted by John Steils

The first two reviews are in for Swingtime Canteen and we couldn’t be happier.

On Richmond.com, Joan Tupponce raves ...

“Magical!

Set in an Air Force concert in 1944 London, the musical revue includes more than 30 sentimental hits made famous by everyone from The Andrews Sisters to The Benny Goodman Band.

The five actresses – Jan Guarino, Vilma Gil, Katrinah Carol Lewis, Debra Wagoner and Audra Honaker – are as adept at belting out a high-powered tune as they are at easing into a nostalgic ballad.

A Hoot! Right-on-the-Money! An Absolute Delight!

A finger snappin’, hands clappin’, toe tappin’ musical!
A Swingin’ Good Time!!

Perfection!”

--Joan Tupponce, Richmond.com

At the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Susan Haubenstock adds her appreciation …

“Swingtime Hums with Music!

It’s London, 1944, and five American lovelies are putting on a USO concert to boost Air Force morale.

Swingtime Canteen brings back some great songs from the Big Band era, along with some lesser-known gems. It’s heart is the GREAT MUSIC.

Cute! Fresh Faced! Entertaining!

Don’t get much better than this!”

--Susan Haubenstock, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Tickets are going fast, so if you or yours would like to join us over the holidays for this boogie-woogie blockbuster, call the Barksdale Box Office today at 282-2620. You’ll be glad you did.

--John Steils

Why Do These People Look So Tired?

Posted by Bruce Miller

Well, all right. Scotty, Debra and Joe don’t look so tired. It’s just me.

In the old days, the Barksdale tradition for tech Sundays was for Muriel to make a huge pot of her spaghetti (with green olives, of course) to serve to the cast and crew between the afternoon and evening rehearsals.

Even though we finally arrived at a respectable recreation of Muriel’s beloved meat sauce (minus the cigarette ash that she always claimed to be the secret ingredient), we gave up trying to make the sauce itself in 2002. After two years of cooking at home and hauling the spaghetti fixins to the theatre in giant tubs, we decided enough was enough. If you want to re-experience Muriel’s magnificent abbondanza, you will find the recipe in Erin Thomas’s upcoming theatre cookbook.

Since 2002, we have made our lives easier. We now walk across the Willow Lawn parking lot and enjoy our delicious and moderately priced tech dinner at The Crazy Greek, where the flaming saganaki has become as legendary as Muriel’s spaghetti—well, almost. Our kindly restaurateur friends push several tables together and we all have a grand old time.

The photo shown above and to the right was taken just before the tech dinner for Moonlight and Magnolias. We are standing in front of The Crazy Greek and across the street from El Toro Loco at the Intersection of Insane Eateries. Debra and I are the interlopers. We heard “free meal” and we were there, rushing over from the Tavern after our Sunday matinee of Swingtime Canteen, which opened last week.

To confess, the rushing and the late hours have finally gotten the best of me. After several 100+ hour work weeks in a row, I’ve finally lost it.

Yesterday, I started the day with staff meeting at 9:15, then planned some improvements to the Swingtime sound system, then went to the JCC to seek their guidance on the proper Hanukkah display for the Barksdale lobby, and then sought out and purchased the appropriate electric Menorah (we can’t have lit candles) and other Judaica that we had decided upon. Do you know how hard it is to find a blue tablecloth in Richmond?

I met with Jackie Gann about how to best credit Gino’s Italian Restaurant as our “Doughnut Sponsor” for Swingtime. I checked in on Judi Crenshaw and John Wiley as they set up the amazing Gone with the Wind gallery exhibit in the Barksdale lobby. I received a fund development update from Phil, who had just completed a very successful day raising money. I planned my next moves on two major fee-for-service grant programs that we have in development.

At 4:30, we began a Theatre IV Board meeting (with record attendance, I’m proud to say) and I left the theatre at 6:30 feeling like I’d put in a full day’s work. I made it home by 6:45, and immediately left with Terrie to go to my son’s orchestra concert—he had a solo on the double bass.

Just as we were sitting down at 7 and the curtain was rising, Terrie’s cell phone rang. Mine was on the fritz. It was Ginnie Willard, reminding me that I was supposed to be, at that very moment, directing auditions for The Little Dog Laughed from 7 until 10. So out of the middle school auditorium I ran, and made it back to the Empire by 7:30, where I apologized profusely to the waiting auditionees.

Thankfully, Corey Davis and Jason Campbell had filled in ably in my stead.

How can you really explain being brain dead because you’ve just come out of four weeks of working 15/7 directing Swingtime Canteen while trying to juggle a hundred other responsibilities. You can't. It comes off as whining. Shoot, I’m whining now.

So, why do I look so tired in the photo? And why did I forget about my own auditions—which is about as stupid as you can get? Who knows? To quote my least favorite thing that is said to me with regularity when folks find out I’m employed by a theatre: “It must be nice not to have to work for a living.”

--Bruce Miller