'Lovers' in 'Our Town'...

“If everyone is moving forward together,

then success takes care of itself.”

– Henry Ford

In the early seventies, having returned from Vietnam, and under the most unexpected of circumstances, I found myself back in college. In the politest of terms, there had been a singularly unsuccessful three-year academic run prior the military.

Through the benevolent hand of the God, I spent a little more than a year at Fairmont State College, supported by the G.I. Bill and a cast of characters that would rival any I had known before or since.

Having always felt the outsider, the overseas adventure behind me, and the societal residue of anti-war sentiment still strong, one might say I was considerably adrift. This small college community opened its arms and introduced me to people and experiences I would never forget.

Those were the days, my friend…

One of those experiences was in the theater department. One afternoon, I saw a flyer posted on a bulletin board announcing upcoming auditions for a play by Irish playwright, Brian Friel. It was called ‘Lovers.’ I’m not sure why it caught my attention, but the play required four characters: two narrators and two actors.

Looking for, no that’s not right…needing to find some human connection, I thought I’d try out for the male narrator. I had never done any theatre, but I had worked in radio for a few years before the war and at the time had a weekend gig at a radio station in a nearby town. I figured it might not be too hard to read a narrator's part and what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I did the audition along with a lot of other kids, you know, theater arts folk. When the parts were posted, the narrators were listed first. I didn’t get it. Oh, well. Kind of disappointed, I read down the sheet and saw my name. I had gotten the part of the male lead ‘Joe Brennan.’ I thought there was a mistake and checked with the theater department office. Nope, the secretary said, I had the part. I was terrified but showed up for the first rehearsal, having no idea what to expect. So began an adventure that I have carried in my heart for four and a half decades.

I wasn’t part of the theatre community – an interloper. But as it turned out, I was accepted and absorbed by some of the smartest and quirkiest people I had ever met. I entered their culture from a different planet and yet they went out of their way to make me feel as though we had known each other all our lives. They loved me, encouraged me, ran lines and exhibited amazing patience with me. For a short period in my life, I stepped through the looking glass and became one of them. I partied, played, lived, ate, laughed, cried and breathed with these remarkable people. Kind and generous, they were a breed I had never imagined existed.

There were three sold-out performances in an intimate downtown theater. It was so successful, the theater owner hired us to come back and do it a couple more times. When we finished the run and struck the set, I had a couple of feelings. One was relief, the other was much deeper. It was the realization the rich relationships I had developed with everyone involved in the production was going to change. I learned there was nothing more exciting and meaningful than a group of people pulling together to make a performance successful. But when the show closed, life moved on and I felt a sense of melancholy that this amazing experience had come to an end.

Take aways…

I learned some things that year. One was the sheer volume of work and dedication required to put a production together. Secondly, in spite of the audience seeing the actors, they were only the ‘faces’ of all those who worked behind the scenes. Important, of course, but just a piece in the chess game that was afoot in making a success. It was a team of set builders, sound technicians, dialect coaches, photographers, musicians, filmographers, makeup artists, and of course the air traffic controller for the entire production – the director. Without the collective work of every single person, there would have been no production.

Fast Forward…

This year, I had the opportunity to do my second theatre adventure with the newly formed Oro Valley Theatre Company. The show – Thorton Wilder’s, “Our Town.” I played Doc Gibbs, a rural family practitioner in mythical Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. It was exciting to be part of a production with so many moving parts and talented people. They were, as had been the case so long ago, generous with their help and guidance.

Considering the decades between shows, I wondered how Joe Brennan (Lovers) and Frank Gibbs (Our Town) could have been played by the same person. On the other hand, the fear and thrill of playing a character on stage had not changed. Learning the lines was just as terrifying as it had been forty-five years earlier.

As with the earlier play, the run of three sold-out shows was successful.

When it was done, we struck the set – as minimal as it was for this play. I looked around the barren stage and remembered. Remembered the young man looking for some stability in his life and finding it in the most unusual of places, through a group of young, enthusiastic theater people accepting him and their respective roles as they worked their hearts out to make the show as meaningful as possible.

As I looked in the mirror this morning, it was clear the ‘suit’ in which I live has seen better days. But the little guy inside?  It seems to me he hasn’t changed very much at all.

  

- ted