"Ummm..." with Frank! with Special Guest Doug Donald

foreign good evening i'm frank mclean executive and artistic director here at the grand opera house and welcome to um with frank this is my weekly opportunity to in a lighthearted way let you know everything that's going on at the grand now the title of our program takes its name from the merciless teasing i get from the technical fruit crew for the number of times i say um or ah if you've been to a grand production you know but before each performance i typically give a curtain speech without notes that i'm quite proud of but uh they're heartless and merciless and tease me about my arms and eyes which means i should be drinking and i will start doing that in just a moment so we have intentionally scheduled this live stream to go out during happy hour because we're going to have a little fun with it so every time that i say um or ah we encourage you to get a drink and drink along so that's two i just said it twice two sips now if you're watching a recorded version of this program you can drink anything you want and remember it's always five o'clock somewhere before i get started i'd like to thank all the people that make this happen michelle blanchard our box office manager and marketing director who forces me to do this every week and i'm grateful because i really do enjoy it tracy richardson our very patient technical director who's such with such a loving hand guides everyone here at the theater uh setting up all of the technical things and so uh kindly lets you know when you're doing something not quite correct austin mcelroy mcilroy who is our man for all things streaming austin is practically living here now we're doing so much streaming we love austin and we have two camera operators tonight yes that's right but they're bitter rivals bridgette wallsworth and stephen dobey hall they're both stage managers for grand productions and volunteer almost all their time here but they fight like cats and dogs whenever they're together it's really uncomfortable but we love them both and i can't choose but i do have to focus on steven right now because if you're a regular viewer you know that we've had a running situation here where we have been trying to find stephen a girlfriend via the medium of this program and if you tuned in last week you found out that we did get an application that looked very promising from a woman in canada yes canada named pat i really thought this was gonna work out but i'm starting to get a little bit leery about pat pat refuses to send a photo of herself and she has started to ask stephen to help her out financially never a good sign pat claims that all of her money is tied up because she's helping a friend she met over the internet a nigerian prince and that has left her destitute but we're not giving up on pat however i have counseled stephen to stop sending her money i just don't want to see steven's heart broken he's very kind-hearted and if pat winds up choosing the nigerian prince over him there it's bound to lead to heartbreak and it's so hard to compete with royalty well in any case because i don't like to admit to drinking alone each week i have a very special guest here on um with frank and if you're a regular viewer you know that i typically drink expired beer from the huge stockpile that was left over when the theater unfortunately closed abruptly in march but not today my very special guest doug donald has generously supplied our beverages maybe because he didn't want to drink expired beer either way i'm grateful and welcome doug donald thank you um um now doug is the director and adapter of our upcoming holiday show kgoh the voice of the grand presents christmas treasures we'll be discussing that in detail a little later in the program but first the question that's on everyone's mind doug what are we drinking well we're drinking because it fits into the theme of the show a christmas ale scotch ale uh eye alcohol stop you there you said ah and anytime either one of us does it and now i repeated it so that's two drinks i actually appreciate it when people at this point there may be a lot of students out there that i've had in the past that i taught public speaking to and at this minute they're celebrating oh every time i say uh because i wrote them so much about doing it so added pressure it certainly is so dog are you a connoisseur of beer no no well oh a snob even better a connoisseur implies that you have knowledge [Laughter] i just like good beer it actually comes out of the first year i did professional summer theater semi-professional i was at the ice house summer theater hannibal missouri block from the mark twain home which is how i got into doing mark twain and we performed throughout the whole summer did five shows uh ah it's gonna be a good one it's gonna be great i love it we're on a good start so did five shows and the very wealthy sponsors of the theater a lawyer in town would have a party for the company every year this big party and you'd walk in their really huge house feel totally unwelcome immediately because they would cover all their furniture with plastic and then they would lay carpet runners down on all the floors where you would go so it's like you like oh okay they let the actors in but they provided food and all this alcohol which to a college freshman just out of his freshman year at his first summer theater experience was like wow and there's this huge bar well we were told before we went don't drink the beer and i liked beer and i'm like no i want to drink the beer and it was like no don't you drink the beer so i drink scotch which is what we all did we drank the hard liquor well it turns out the reason for that was they gave us the beer at the end of the evening we got to take home and there was enough way of conserving yes it was enough of it that got us almost through the summer but just like i found out later about the alcohol like the scotch was the cheapest scotch you can get the rum was the cheapest you said you're what a freshman in college yeah yeah now we won't go into that well i wouldn't i don't i didn't know that at the time but the time was great now i recognize it as yeah that's the cheapest scotch you can buy well the beer was the cheapest beer you could buy i think it was like either hams or it might have been pabst blue ribbon or something so i spent a whole summer drinking cheap beer and basically at the end of that experience i swore when i could do it i would drink good beer well that's great i always think that i'm still an actor at heart because i cannot pass up free food or free alcohol yeah it's just it's just it's not within me i it would be a physical impossibility for me to go to a party where there there's free food and not eat or drink it just it just wouldn't happen uh i however have never i love good beer and i'm greatly appreciative of this but i'll drink swell i'll drink anything so i really appreciate it at this point i was going to ask you if you know the rules of what we're doing but obviously you do because we've been humming and eyeing for a while now that was two i did it on purpose because this is delicious compared to that bud light expired bud light i've been drinking well before we discuss christmas treasures i'd like to find out more about you and i know a lot about you but i know you've had a long career in theater and academia as both an actor and a director but i want to go way back to the beginning and find out where you're from what you did what bit you what was the theater bug that got you in i come out of an army back my dad was a professional army man and so i spent my youth traveling from post to post not really making really close friends and so i think over the years theater kind of became that doorway into making friends but my very first theater experiences was in kindergarten and i i kind of remember it taking place on an army base but it's lava's real faint and it's in one of those little small stages at the end of the gymnasium okay that you still see and i was playing the drummer boy in the skit about the drummer boy okay they sing the song yeah based on the song and so i had my drum and playing the drum and we were in rehearsals like the day before a couple of days i don't remember exactly i was too young to be you know but and i was i was really excited because i think i that time i'd gotten all my lines or something you know it's just a little kid and it got to where i got this i got to play the drum and i hauled off and i really hit it and it broke the drum head ooh and so i faced my first performance disappointment if this is in rehearsal or in rehearsal okay so so there's this little kind of i don't remember the little drummer without a working yeah and so there's like a piano in the pit and a percussionist and because there's other things too they're doing not just a drummer boy and so they decided they didn't want to they couldn't afford a drum head a new drum mat and they didn't want to decorate another drum because they decorated it to look like the what drum a poor little boy would be you know so i had to mime playing the drum while the guy in the pit played it he played ear drums yeah it was the most disappointing thing but still there was something about the audience reaction and just the communi even at that age and so eventually i got to where i when we moved finally settled down and moved to arizona i did all the shows my junior high did i did all my high school shows that's terrific and i want to hear more about that but because this is um oh with frank i love to tell stories about me that remind me so i have not a similar a sort of similar experience with playing an air instrument okay when i was working for orlando opera i was assistant directing a production of manila mancha and i would be standing in for the man that would be playing the guitar during little bird little bird there's a live guitarist on stage and we were doing this with the orlando symphony orchestra would be our pit and so we invited the guy over to watch a rehearsal and they told him okay see that guy up there playing you know pretending to play the guitar that's where you're gonna stand and where you'll really play the guitar and he said okay well where do i put my music stand he says well you can't have a music stand it only has like three chords he said i do not memorize it's like so i got to be in the show as well as being assistant director and i played my air guitar so not really the same thing as you but it reminded of me so let's go back to your high school and college experience that year i was at the ice house where i learned i wanted to drink good beer i don't i i want to say the show was our wilderness but during summer theater as you know we did five shows and we did it in rep which means you did a different show every night well once you get all the shows open you hit that golden spot where you actually get a day off right the theater goes we call it going dark and that means you don't perform on that day but it's a couple of months before you get this but you're really like wow and so it was the show the one show was i want to say it was all wilderness but it was a show i had off i didn't have to do but the director found out i had played clarinet and so he decided he wanted this street old street guy wandering around in between scenes on the streets of new york playing a clarinet so i had to do the fifth show and he had this composer write clarinet music and i learned it and i memorized it and i could play it but he decided that the live clarinet didn't sound quite what he wanted so he had the composer guy even though i could play it he had the composer guy record and then manipulate the clarinet sound and i had to play error clarity so even though you really could play clarinet you're still i had to give up my fifth show that i had off which is much more of a big deal so to mime now claire you are much more of an expert at this but ah wilderness is eugene o'neill right yes right now i always look especially right now i check what shows are coming into public domain and it's either this year or 2021 a wilderness goes into public domain so because right now we're with this weird covet thing we're looking for anything else now our wilderness is not going to work here at the grand but it is in public domain now or will be in 2021 well i was going to say though don't call me it's not saying well we have a very special clearance for you wow that's serious let's get back to we haven't made it we've only made it up to like junior high or something so give me some more stories or you were going somewhere before i rudely interrupted you no i just i got involved in this because to me and what we miss so much now in in this covert is that communal this theater is so communal you don't go into it because you're the singular artist and you're really focused on yourself for me theater people are so focused on others i mean good actors are so much focused on the other actors you know when you're really into it you're not thinking what am i doing it's like what are we doing what's going on between us i remember that first i went to icehouse for four years and one year i worked with a guy by the name of richard kelton who eventually went on and he played like the leading role guest role in kung fu the series and was on the waltons was on gun smoke he had just got done doing a john wayne movie when he came to the ice house and it was a small part but uh he was still suffering he had his whole shin here was just a big scab and had been torn apart he had a couple of stitches in it because the scene he did with john wayne john wayne had hauled off and kicked him in the shin which was planned and you usually wear shin guards underneath your pants for that but they were rehearsing so richard didn't think he had to wear the shin guards and john waited as soon as he had them on and just hauled off and really kicked him and split his skin open down to the bone i'm sure it's a great story getting kicked in stitches by john wayne it was a perfect moment for me because he talks about john wayne and he says at one point john wayne rams him up against this wall and he said but the whole thing from john wayne was about richard he had run him up against the wall and he'd turn to the director and go can you still see him and then it'd be like i'm not pressing too hard so you can't talk am i and it was all about richard for him that's great and that to me what theater is about and i think in this covert that's what we miss so much is that communal creation that happens with the cast and the director and the crew and everybody coming together you're so right it happens on stage and it happens off stage and it reminds me of what you just said about growing up in the military and moving around and makes perfectly sense why you would be drawn to theater because you make that bond and family so quickly yeah so even if you're only in a town for a year i imagine you were able to really connect with people in a way that if you weren't in theater you you would have just been a lonely sad sack sitting at home yeah it really is kind of like a family it is you know every show becomes a family it really does you know and then it goes that next step with the audience which we don't have now you know and that that's that fact that really to me in a movie as an audience you observe the movie you have absolutely no effect on it you play that movie 20 years from now it's going to be the movie when you do a play as an audience you affect that play especially in the comedy but it's that sense also of community with the audience that happens absolutely and that's why we're doing a lot of wonderful things here virtually like this we don't have an audience but here at the grand we're trying to with our productions do them both for live audiences and virtual and even if we have a very small live audience it makes all the difference in the world because there's still that direct communication between performer and audience and one of my favorite things about being artistic director here at the grand is that i watch all the shows i really do i never get tired of them you know i'm usually sitting in the last row of the balcony and it's just getting to experience uh that feeling that okay are they connecting tonight how is this different how is this doing it's like some people would get bored with the show that i i never do i never do it seems like the more i watch something the more i like it yeah well like once again i went blah blah blah blah blah we have to get through a lot of thing here so let's jump forward a little bit in your let's move past academia uh or your high school or whatever any high school good high school stories i don't want to miss anything out but we do have a the a summer stock theater in common that i want to talk about okay because i saw on your resume you worked at timberlake places like playhouse as did i you know i will say um just so we can direct great and drink to timberlake i must say you were beating yourself up about it because your students baby watching but you're very articulate actually i've sat for about five minutes there and you didn't give me any alms and i was dying to take a drink and i try not to unless there is one so uh ah looks like i'm going to have to do all the work let's talk about timberlake what year were you there you don't have to stay there what decade 79 i was there in 79 i think so you were there six years i believe i was there in 86 and but you were a director and yeah i got hired to be the director of the children's theater company they did at that time three children's productions one in the spring they would do it just as school was getting ready to do to get out so they could sell it to the school kids and then they would do one in the middle of the summer and then one in the fall okay as school was re-establishing to sell it again to the schools and so i was hired to be the director of the children's company for the summer good experience i love timber that was i love you i love being out in the woods i love you living in the cabin did you rehearse out on the path yes it was just this oh thing of cement in the glaring hot sun that you're there and you just rehearsed there because the theater was always they were building in there you know it was like i was being at summers like summer camp right they had cabins i was an actor so if you weren't in if you were not actively in rehearsal you were building a set you're doing something else or as you said cleaning back right one day i got a sign because the cabins they're just cabins you know you had to walk in the middle of the night to the bathroom so one day i got assigned to clean the men's bathroom and i spent all day doing it it's like it might have been a job they thought could take half an hour but once i get into that it was like okay now i'm pulling these out i'm scraping three years of scum off of the little planks you stood in for the showers but i loved it it was it was like but i can remember i would lie there in the cabin at night and you could literally see through the walls you'd see like stars up there there were no air conditioning so it must have been brutally hot sometimes but i don't remember that part it was great i will because once again this is um with frank tell stories about me my audition for timberlake was i believe the best or most satisfying audition i've ever had oh wow i was the very last person to audition at their timberlake auditions they auditioned in chicago they auditioned in several places then they have auditions at the playhouse and i had been living in florida at the home at the time and i was just home for it and i went to the timberlake to audition there and i was the very last person so as soon as i finished auditioning they didn't even let me leave the room they like bent over talk to each other for a couple minutes and said okay we want you to play joseph and joseph and will in oklahoma oh wow and i had played curly in oklahoma two times before and i was like so excited to play will cause it's so much more of a fun part and i go you haven't even seen me dance and you want me to play well that's fine i'll do it but like you never get instant gratification like that and it was so much fun in junior high school if you go back i played currently okay you would look at me and go curly but i got casters in oklahoma but i love timberlake was a great experience but you'd sometimes you'd do box office but yeah but i do remember being friends with the box office manager and just maybe during a break sitting up there with her she had to remember her name and her playing les mis it was the brand new thing for the first time the first time i ever heard les mis was there well i'm going to have to move on here here at um with frank we like to break up the interview with shameless plugs and i'm going to enlist your help with this whenever i point at you like this you need to say it's time for shameless plugs you can say it in any way you want you i know you're a wonderful actress no motivation i don't have any certain motivation you get to choose how you want to whether you want to do it like a game show host whatever i'm really interested in how you're going to interpret this line you're going to do it multiple times throughout the evening so okay it's it's it's time for shameless plugs are you ready yes it's time for shameless plugs the most dramatic reading of that we've ever had the grand opera house is a 501c3 organization and now more than ever we need your support please consider donating to the grant you can make a one-time or reoccurring donation by visiting the grands website www.thegrandoperhouse.com so we're going to fast forward a little here doug now i i had this wrong before but you corrected me you came to dubuque in 1979 many wonderful things happened after you got here and i'm going to ask you to tell me about those so what brought you to dubuque originally and tell me some of the wonderful thing that's happened after after you got here i was at timberlake playhouse oh okay prior to getting here so you were close yes that's close i couldn't have planned it better i got a call from a friend frank slattick offering me a directing job with what was a fairly new theater company here in town fly by not i'm not flying but i see theater company and he was offering me a directing job and i had known frank we had become friends who we were students and undergraduates you're just a baby directing already yeah is that like your focus early on yes i just love fisher and control and he offered me a directing job and we were fairly close friends because we'd gone to undergraduate school together when i went to graduate school university of iowa i didn't know this but i walked into directing class on the first day of graduate school and frank's sitting there and he had applied and he was starting directing school also so he went to graduate school together so he offers me a directing gig and then i get a second offer in debut to direct for the fine arts players because back then they did three shows a year they did full-length shows at that time not just the 1x and so i came to dubuque to direct for them five flags theater company was just starting so they ran into money problems and frank canceled on me i went on and directed later for them and acted for them and everything but that show got cancelled i was still doing the show a still life was the name of the show by bob cronin a local playwright titled loris at the time did that on that show i miraculously made the intelligent decision to cast my future wife i didn't know this i've never heard this story i loved it so lenore howard uh casper ah yes to lenoir 2 oz now that's three okay when i polished my first one off with that thank you lenore i'll say um just to me um doug i'm gonna have to do it doug has so graciously also provided us each with our bottle opener usually with my cans i just pop them but he knew that we'd need this so he got us each one so that we wouldn't have to non-socially distance or touch the same thing so i think how many do i owe you here a couple couple so i caster we eventually started going out after the show we would at that time there was a bob's big boy oh i'm dodge on the way yeah yeah west into town we'd go there we'd sit and talk and everything and i would convince her of things she's going to kill me for telling me what role was she she was in the show yeah she was playing the leading role uh i usually bring napkins out here and i didn't this time and now oh i brought my own suffer frank suffer so i i would sit there and i would actually convince her i convinced her one night that it was winter was coming and i convinced her that she could go to the lumber yard and rent sand for the winter to put in the back of her car and then at the end of winter you would return the sand to the lumber yard and this happened at the big boy yeah okay i have a story she was all ready to go to the lumber yard the next day to rent sand to put in the back of her car so she could return it at the end of the summer at the end of the winter when she didn't need it anymore in the back of her car this is my big boy lie story because i don't know why it just popped into my head because they happened at big boy we 24-hour restaurant in high school we would always go to the big boy and i feel so sorry for those poor waitresses because when they see this group of high school kids coming in they're gonna split the check but it was 1978 when pope paul died and then pope john paul the first died again and i remember being at the big boy and me and another friend convinced a female friend of ours we went to catholic school waller and we had convinced her i think this was after paul paul's died that during the interim between when a pope died and when a new one was elected you could do anything you wanted and it wasn't officially a sin so somehow we got her to buy into that little knowing that a month later we'd be able to get to do it all again love that love missed the baby there's a lot of great stuff that's one thing i miss at the buke right now is you really don't have that great and it was open all night wasn't it yeah or maybe it's i feel like is there anything open all night no not anymore the milkshakes and milkshakes were great they give you the the extra in the metal thing that they did it in because it was when you finished your one guys here talking about i love the big boys like the good old days damn it yeah that's what this is all about okay so you met lenore you must have worked out yeah uh we we ended up then we ended up doing a one act for the do you fine arts players i directed you're not married yet no and she was acting in it at that point i got a job offer in san francisco california okay and so i borrowed money from frank because i didn't have enough money to get out there borrowed money from him drove out straight through to interview for the job interviewed for it it felt there was something about it to just felt it would have been the artistic director for this theater company in san francisco which sounds like why the heck didn't you do it but like he wanted me to take it right then and there and it was like don't even go back to iowa have them ship your stuff out here you can live on my houseboat while you're find a place to stay which all sounds so romantic but there was just something about can i have some time to think about it and he wasn't willing to give me that there was just something about it plus i'd met lenoir and there was just my thought in my head like there's something there you know she's a great lady and and so i came back to dubuque and turned the job down found out later though that if i'd asked her to go to california with me she would have gone but i stayed here because of her and it's all we've got that theater we've had company wash up or i have no idea it was a it was a theater run by the town i've run by the town yeah and so i would have been a church in fact the community theater but i would have been the part of the professionals we are so fortunate that you came back from the north thank you lenore for bringing him back but and i'm glad i did come back so now another big thing that happened i'm sure there are many wonderful things but i'm sort of leading into you started your own theater company here yeah flyby which is still in existence yes so how many years fly by nine thirty eight are you the oldest theater company that's continuously running i can't think of anything no actually you with your roots going back to the barn community theater all right in 71 re-established before us well thank you for giving us credit for that but yeah it was it was wonderful now you look at dubuque and you think of all the different theater companies that are going in dubuque but it's hard to imagine at that time there was no other place for me to direct yeah because at the the the barn community theater which was out at the park on the right was the bar right it was all the place were directed by one individual the fine arts players eventually because of financial reasons closed down to where they were just doing the one acts so there wasn't those opportunities and there weren't any other opportunities so i just decided okay and what year did fly by night start 82 82 so i was still in college so yeah and lenore came home one day and at that time prior to again old man talk prior to computers and everything are you married by now no still not married okay we had to wait and see if the theater company worked out not really if you can work together you can be at that time you could buy graphic art books at the store and once you bought the book you had the right to use all the graphic art things in the book to use to do programs or posters or whatever and so i had a couple of those and so she comes home one day and we're living in sin oh scandalous we're leaving we're getting married we know we're getting married that's fine uh and oops um that was two so she walks in the door and i look at her and go we're going to start a theater company i've got a logo the first thing i said i've got a logo you said that or she did i did and you said we're starting a theater company i said we're starting a theater company i got a logo and she just looked at me so we started it in the basement of the ruth and russ nash's old art gallery on loris boulevard in their basement the old romantic image of two people setting up at night at their dining room table with blank postcards going through the phone book finding all anyone that name they recognized and writing out by hand all the invitations to come to our first show wow looking at the city council and finding all their addresses and writing them personal invitation and all done by hand i feel like i should be doing that right now the cast when they weren't on stage uh the first show was were you directing and listening or in it i was yeah i was directing the nor was in it and four of our other friends were in it and the cast would sit when they weren't on stage or doing something on stage because the cast was on stage most of the time they would have markers and colored pencils and we had the posters printed in black and white because that's we were we were paying out of our own pocket everything and they would sit there and they'd have a master poster and they would all color in the poster to match the artwork lenoir was an art major so she had done basically images of everybody in the cast playing different characters in the show and they would color it in based on this mask so we'd have colored posters and the first weekend there were five in the show i was running lights and sound on a homemade light board that we still have and still use to this day with with sliders you could buy in the hardware store and clip on lights for our lights and everything there was one show where one audience member showed up and we had two ushers that night so we were in three quarters of a setting and so one audience one usher and the audience they sat in all three sections so we still had to play to all three areas and so the cast outnumbered the audience and then the second weekend we get to the first performance of that weekend and we're turning people away that one person must have liked it i don't know but and so the second weekend we were turning people away and it was just bad and so we've been going ever since then that is great well i think the when i moved back to dubuque in 19 no 2015 i think the first show i saw once i got back here was a fly-by-night show i can't remember the number of four thousand miles one thousand miles two thousand miles i think i thought i did that's wrestler was playing the 90 year old grandma and i had never seen this but i loved it and that's when i by that time i in 2000 i left i'd been artistic director up until then and in 2000 lenore took over and became the artistic director of the company and i went over to loras because we'll get into loris in a little bit by that point what happens is when you're when you're out there fly by night mainly performs during the winter months we don't perform in the summer and so at that point in our lives in the summer i would take off because i was tired of lenora oh no that's not true honey i will say um to toast to you um that's two for those of you out in stream i guess facebook live land obviously lenora is sitting out in the audience she's the only person out there other than our camera people and tracy and austin high up there so she's just like it's just like your fly-by-night show we have an audience of one but she's out there because i knew frank would say um so much that i might be doing you just said it again and it's always my right she's playing to somebody she's my ride home you're so lucky but we brought me home uh-uh there's another one come on so by that time i've been going out during the summer to other gigs and for example two years i was the production stage manager for jack daniel that jack daniels original silver cornet band out of nashville tennessee and it was a brass band supported by doing this remotely no i was out touring with that oh okay are you married yet yes okay finally we got married in five flights i was just so concerned we did we were living in sin for so long we did our wedding like it was a play we had play programs for the audience we had a mime perform a mime mime yeah okay and everything all my old theater friends came in and did things and some a friend of hers who was a folk singer in chicago came and did she was a professional musician and came in and did the music and it was like a play and our her parents were the granting organization and provided the grant for the production now i got to say a little in here did you at some point work for westerberg schools or who did that yeah that was one of those gigs i was taking because i didn't have a permanent job so i went out there and directed for them free gear okay i know my uncle tom and aunt brenda michael tom was principal out at west dubuque and all that and he my aunt friend tells a story about meeting you and lenore after you were married and lenore kept her own name yes she did lenore howard and my friend this was the first person the first woman she'd ever met that kept her own name after she was married this is not i think i think my aunt brenda was inspired by it not scandalized in any way but it was you know it was particularly that was a real tough decision for her we we talked about all the combinations you know we talked about me taking her name we talked about all the different combinations howard donald donald howard and everything and the person and remarkably we really haven't had that many problems with it legally or anything the person that threw off the most was probably her mother not because of any moral judgment but she never knew how to address the envelopes so it was like for a while every envelope we got would be mr mrs howard donald then the nest would be mr and mrs donald howard or mr thanks for her mother to even include you in the letter absolutely but yeah i i appreciated it because it it said to me that i was marrying a strong what attracted me to lenore is that she she's a very strong talented intelligent woman and i find that very attractive that's fantastic and with that we're going to ah shameless plugs i didn't think it could get more dramatic but i guess it can fly by night productions will present a virtual christmas play reading of peace on earth good will to dogs on friday december 18th at 7 00 pm this little-known family-friendly christmas story takes place in a small new england town in 1906 and evokes feelings of a dickens christmas for upcoming details go to www.flybynightdubuk.com so i put in a shameless plug for flyby and i tell you know anything about this show i've not heard of it no you know nothing about the show i'm intrigued by it because i love dogs i know what i know i hope that's not a typo what i know is that lenore has been spending hours down in her office adapting the script uh she spent hours tracing who controls both of you for a can you give me a shameless plug about five it was lenore that responded yeah she's she's far my night now yes absolutely okay doug i'm going to put a little teaser out here and i will ask you about the production you directed for the grand that opened our 2019-2020 season that was unfortunately cut short i'm going to ask you about that a little later but first i want to acknowledge or at least have you acknowledge i lost my place this 7.5 percent is getting to me that i have been trying to get well then um that i have been trying to get you to direct here at the grand for several years i asked you multiple times before you finally said yes or maybe you just i know i don't know no i you always say i would literally sit you always said you had other commitments i would sit there going frankie i think you just didn't like me i would cuddle up and just go into a fetal position going why well regardless of what prevented you from doing it yeah i will admit that yes you had content in 2018 there was a change in your life circumstances that gave you a little more free time and then the next time i asked you did say yes yes so what happened after 2018 that gave you a little more free time i retired he retired i highly recommend you are far too young to retire you didn't have you retired from somewhere but you're still working so tell me what were you doing well we've kind of already talked about this you were at loris from win-win i i had been teaching at laura since nineteen 82 yeah old man 82 year-old students i did t-shirts since 1982 at lawrence mainly theater courses but also public speaking and in 2000 don stribling finally retired as director of theater and they offered it to me at that point lenoir and i had a an absolutely fantastic daughter caitlyn she was little then not totally fantastic yet grew up to be fantastic eventually through no fault of mine uh oops we've only got a six pack here so both better slow down a little there's a lot of show to go and so i had thought at that time that i needed a little bit more steady income because going out and doing things like jack daniels or directing somewhere else wasn't real steady it wasn't a steady form of income and so it gave us more security well you seem to be like a natural teacher you know obviously you're a great director i've seen you both direct i've seen things you've directed i've seen the things you've acted and now i've seen the way you interact with actors and it feels like academia feels like a really natural fit for me for you so tell me about some of the stuff that you did laura it's like i i saw one of your shakespeare shows there uh obviously i was only back in town for a few years while you were still directing and running dolores program but there were other features that you what was that yeah any students i know in this show we'll talk about that a little later you have several students i'm always running into your former students and two of them here tonight stephen although i don't claim him always and austin both former students and tracy at one time was our technical director before you took him but he was our technical director loris i enjoyed teaching i i didn't enjoy to be bluntly honest i didn't enjoy all the all the other things you had to do surrounding teacher as far as the meetings and and all the other things you had to do but i loved the time i spent with the students and did you have sort of complete artistic control of what yes i will say i i loved loris because of that they never once came to me and said you can't do that do that what are you doing or anything they never they always there is it is a catholic school there is a conservative element to the catholic church and so once in a while i would get backsplash on some things we did in the theater post show yes but the school always supported me in doing it well that's terrific i did a show at loris when i i went to clark so i actually went to clark the year after it went co-ed and primarily at that point they were still switching right back and forth some guys well the clock laura singers were still in effect they were it was still very much you know loris had been traditionally a men's school in clark women's school so they they did a lot of stuff together so we laura skies were allowed to audition to clark so and then when it became co-ed we got to audition at laura's show so i was able to do the pirates of penzance at loris and i got to play the pirate king and my good friend chris patrick got to play frederick so i was we always thought this was so great that the two clark boys got the leads in the loris show the rumor at loris was that they felt sorry for clark no i'm sure they did but i also took classes you know they had the little bus that would run around so i know it took psychology at loris i took german at loras it was the best of both worlds you know you had to you were able to look at the syllabuses of things and i took german because i was a vocal major at the time and thinking i'd want pronunciation we have so much i also i lived in germany when i was a young really really young probably with the military thing yeah we were in germany for two years so when i came back i thought i would cheat and in high school i took german my sophomore year in college we toured europe with the clark laura singers and one of my most indelible memories is that i got terribly sick and vomited all over the streets of stuttgart the only thing i really remember now because i haven't spoken for the alt this do yeah i don't know what that means how old are you i know which means the moon shines over the mountains which was the lyric of one of the shubert songs i sang so so we talked about anything else about loras you know you want to say i probably was lucky enough to do the production one of the productions i'm most proud of i did i was lucky at lawrence in that i think they were lucky somehow well somehow i i was i think directing well yes there's some skill and knowledge but some of it's luck because when you audition a show and this is why when you watch a movie a lot of times you see directors working with the same group of actors is when you hold auditions there are those actors you've worked with that you know what they can do you know how willing they are to try new things but then there's always those actors that try out that you've never worked with and you don't know if what they're doing in audition is that's it that's all you're going to get is what you see at audition or if there's someone that and i've had a number of students at auditions they really to be honest but you cast them and you find out in the rehearsal process they take off that's very rewarding you know and they don't audition well that's their weak point and you don't know that when you audition so so much of what you do with a show as a director is in how you cast it and so there's an element of luck and i left out at lars and so we one year we did in combination with fly by night productions and i think at the time from the research we were maybe one of four to five companies in america that had ever tried it and i felt really great when it was three or four years later that american players theater in spring wisconsin the theater i love to go see tried it and that is we did hamlet in combination with rosencrantz and gildan sterner dead same cast in both shows rosencrantz and guildenstern are two minor characters in hamlet and he writes a play about how the big events of hamlet affect these two minor characters in his play tom stoppard wrote it and so we did it in combination and i look back at it now and i sometimes think how did we do that did you do them sequentially or were they in wrap well we were they were in reps so on friday nights and then saturday night we would do rose and cramps and gildan stern are dead and then sunday afternoon we'd do hamlet sunday night you'd do rose and cramps and guilden same costumes same set i worked it out so that for example in rosencrantz and guildenstern there's a place where you see hamlet who's a minor character in that play just walk through the scene but i duplicated all the blocking where they overlapped so even though we just walked through if you had seen hamlet first you would sit there going he's doing the to be or not to be speech at that point even though you didn't hear a word whereas if you saw the other one first you would sit there watching him doing the to be or not to be speech and then you would see rosencrantz and guildenstern kind of peek around the corner for a second and disappear and you'd go they're over there talking about this at that point and it was just the whole coordination and the work was so lord you really do have the heart of a director and it seems like you it came to you very early it did and very different than mine but a lot of that comes from my dad i think my impetus to become a director came from a very different place i was working in opera as a performer and opera can be very stayed and sort of stand and sing or it can be very dynamic and there was a particular director that i found repulsive and i thought i can do better than that i'm going to try it so my first directing experiences were in opera because i thought i can do better what than what they're doing right now that had in my head a much more happy and funnier tone to it and it got very kind of serious i don't mean i don't mean that i i really loved directing and i moved there but i remember being a performer being so frustrated by a director that wasn't allowing us to act these wonderful emotions that are in opera an opera can be dynamic and exciting or something or you can stand there and sing and sometimes there's nothing more appropriate than standing there and singing because the voice can tell the story but so we came to directly i'm going to play the interviewer for a minute okay please first i'm going to say um because we've gone too far without drinking have you found in your career in opera that the way of staging operas and doing operas has changed it seems like to me it has changed over the years to become more dramatic and incorporate more acting and and the way it stays have you found that i think definitely yes and i think if you take opera back you know even decades farther than when i was in it it was much more so i think when i started directing opera that revolution was already happening okay but i also have come to appreciate the other side of it i used to be very much a why would you ever cast that person to play so and so when they obviously can't be a teenage girl you know or look like a teenage girl whereas i i directed rigoletto one time and jilda is supposed to be an 18 year old girl and it's insanely hard to sing and there is no possible way an 18 year old girl could do it justice and i got to direct a woman in her 50s who had a lovely build play gilda who i originally was sort of like in opera the director does not get a say in the casting it's the conductor okay it was like i got to work with this 50-plus year old woman playing an eight-year-old girl and she was brilliant she was a you're in a much larger house and you're in a thing and the way she moved her body you believed she was a teenager and she produced it vocally so it was great so there i have come to appreciate both sides of the thing the music sometimes demands a more mature voice than the character would be and the musical experience is ultimately what it's about but you don't have to sacrifice the drama and the movement and all that for no reason at all okay now i apologize to the audience because i know we're getting into the director weeds here but when i first started directing i was that director that would cast the actor over the singer yes i remember when i did of the i sing a very great political show about politics by the gershwins and i was doing it at a community theater in washington iowa they had built a brand new community theater i had the honor of directing the very first show they did in the community theater and at that age i was still at it was at the beginning of my career and i was still at the actor i want the actor instead of the singer but i think i realized over the years that in a musical singing comes first in a lot of ways there is a fine line sometimes not so fine sometimes it's really a broad line between what to do because if somebody can't sing you can't teach it to them no in the rehearsal process it's not going to work so i have learned to trust musical directors and have them put actors through the paces of going okay is this somebody that can match pitch is this somebody that can take direction is this somebody that's going to be able to at least perform in the numbers you know and then when it comes down to it if there's if there is an actor that can really sell a song and they don't have the best voice i'm probably going to go with the actor but if there's an actor that really can't hold a tune it's just going to ruin you and the other thing i think usually is the audience wants the singer yeah i think they'll do they'll choose a lot if an actor that can really you know knows how to talk sing or knows how to knows how to put themself in the best light can do wonders but it's it's a dice boy when you get that actor that can do both oh yeah or that attribute can do all three and move well yeah then you're like thank you exactly well we're maybe running longer so [Music] that was excellent doug it's getting really dramatic next time i'm gonna want you i'm gonna be the director here give me a different tat give me a different uh attack on it you know okay can i have a moment i think about it we're going to move yeah you're going to have a lot of time the grand opera house in partnership with the iowa rock and roll music association presents maddie poppy's acoustic christmas join the season 16 american idol winner and iowa native maddie poppy for an intimate night of music at the grand opera house since her idol victory maddie has been in high demand appearing on multiple tv shows including jimmy kimmel live and live with kelly and ryan and performing at the hollywood bowl in los angeles special olympics and the cma fest in nashville and she's going to be here at the grand maddie's new album christmas from home will be released on november 20th that's like just in a couple days right you can pre-save it now on spotify pre-save something they could say right now due to social distance seating an extremely limited number of seats will be available for our live audience and they are going very fast there are still some available but if you want to see lot mary maddie poppy live in person here at the grand you better make your reservations now call the box office we're only doing these reservations in person or over the phone so that we can assure socially distant seating box office hours are monday through friday noon to 4 p.m or by calling during those same hours 563-588-1305 a live stream option will be available for this concert and we're going to be releasing that information in a very short amount of time for more information on this and other events visit the grants webpage www.thegrandoperhouse.com you owe me a drink okay sorry don't apologize that's one of your things i've heard in rehearsal just watching this i guess you're a don't apologize guy yeah i do that it is really embarrassing when you do an um or an ah while you're reading okay let's talk about the production i did finally get to direct you to direct here at the grand which was murder on the orient express yes and i love that it was ken ludwig's brand new adaptation of it it had never been yeah you were i think we were the second or third theater in the country to do this so it was really exciting that we were able to do it and everyone told me you got to get doug to direct this you got to correct this because you are the a agatha christie and a murderer well not a murderer i guess a mystery expert maybe you are a murder expert no i don't know if maybe but my wife's still here so i guess not that was a joke so let's talk a little bit about murder on the orient express well i i love murder mysteries first show i did at lloris as i said you're yeah it was part of your movie the musical oh which has actually it has actually 218 different ways you can do the show because it starts with the audience choosing the cards from the weapons room and murder and then based on what cards they choose you have to adapt the show to fit those cards and then eventually i've gone on and i've done three agatha christie shows and there's just there's something about doing a murder mystery of trying to balance out the aspect of giving the hint to the audience but not hitting them over the head with it where they go ah it's so and so beforehand but yet at the end letting them go oh yes that does make sense but i didn't catch it didn't see it coming or then you re-watch it i love watching murder mysteries a second time to get all that stuff going oh there's a clue there's a clue i missed the first time there's a clue i missed firstly well we have some photos from oh okay murder on so let's look at this we could talk about it a little more so austin we put up the first photo of bird around the orange express so here we have this tell me what's going on in this scene well this is actually the exterior of the train i was lucky enough that when you offered me the first show to work here i got to work with tracy again tracy and i have some of my former students and people have accused us of being like a married couple because sometimes we can really fight and really go with each other but i think we do it because we both recognize we really care about the production i am laughing because i'm recalling a particular production meeting up in the office where you two did exactly go at each other like that and i was so horrified it's like oh my god they're going to kill one another and you just turned to me and said it's okay this is the way we communicate together i mean i've been lucky enough to i love working with tracy but yeah at times but it's because we both so care about what we're doing and yet i think we also know that we both can do that with each other and then they'll be okay it will it will be safe at the end but to an outside observer it's horrifying and frightening but we kind of know like okay it's okay we'll go out afterwards and have a beer and we'll be okay and so this uh oh oops it wasn't a cut myself so there you're on the outside of the train station it took us a while to work there because i can't imagine and i i know huge challenges it is other people that had told me like god i would never want to to design this set because how do you design a moving train on stage right and you have to have two scenes before you even get to the train and how do you do that and then i'm sitting there thinking how do i block a play on the on the confining room of a train that's interesting where you're not just sitting there the whole scene but that out actually ultimately so this added to the drama of it and so this first scene is the exterior of the train where the cast was getting ready to board the train and get on the orient express and it was it was just so wonderful to try to figure out how to use this train and and how to create interesting images and movement now i'm going to add in here for some reason i'm not i think just because i'm the only person left typically for shows i get stuck doing sound effects not sound effects like we do here but sound cues and i build them and i really don't know what i'm doing i'm just taking what i think should be and i'm working very rudimentarily tracy yells at me all the time saying you should have audacity you should be doing this on your mac or whatever i love you did everything you knew what you wanted for sound you created all of it you did all that you took all that off my plate so thank you um um i enjoy doing sound yeah okay let's move on to this next photo so now here we are in the interior of the train and this is right we're we're in the dining car the dining car oh this is beautiful the orient express at that time was an art deco and i actually came in and there were times i actually regretted doing this i volunteered to help tracy during the day because i'm retired and so i could come in and help him during the day so i got stuck with a a jigsaw well look at all that cutting out yeah cutting these out and i'm like god why did i volunteer for this but it was such a brilliant design of capturing that feel of the art deco which is such another challenge of creating both the set and then directing it is that you have to create this train and have one side open for the audience to see but yet how do you do that in train cars that have different functions and stuff so so and this is uh this is ed henry and mike link and karen george the the train i don't think the audience really realized the complexity because it's long it can't just sit there it has to move right too it it not only moved down forward but it moved left and right and so in rehearsal there's also the complication of between the train cars there were doors that had to open and close and i was lucky enough to have bridget for my stage manager but we would sit there and rehearsal and we'd go doors yes it is a wonderful stage i have to close it but trying to get to in a rehearsal where there's basically just tape on the floor and you would have a bench to represent this and a couple of tables a tape round table which the tables weren't round and a couple of chairs to represent this trying to get the actors in the rehearsal space to realize what they were going to come into when they came on the actual set right which you don't get a lot of time right you don't you get a week we can half in this case but i was lucky enough that it was a like ed and mike and karen they they were this great cast that was willing to try things that listened that focused that worked and it was just an overall an absolutely wonderful experience as a director well let's go on to the next photo here and this one shows a much more complex thing because here we're it's one of the sleeping cars and we're divided into three separate right and the hard part here is you look and there's a hallway behind it right you see you see first ed henry who's perot the detective and then you see joe blanket who's who's actually ends up being he had what i think in some ways is the hardest role in some ways because eventually he gets killed it's okay we're not going to do it for another 30 years you can tell what sorry well we know he's killed the the mystery is who who killed him but then so for the second half of the show he has to because in the original production they used to do they were so cruel they used a dummy but at the very end the last scene of the show where the murderers are acting out the murder i wanted him to be able to move right just with this little thing so in other productions they put a dummy in there for this whole second you made joe just lie there dead right i wanted him to be able as they were stabbing him to do a little movement as they were stabbing him and so joe had to lay there without moving the whole second and not fall asleep right he didn't and so but this was because eventually if you look at these little three compartments eventually you get into a scene where you've got every character has to be in there and it's like how do you do that let's move to the next photo which sort of shows that you know so tracy the next photo they're all out in the hallway there right but they're gonna have to come in this car there were rehearsals where once we especially once we got on the set where i would have to go no you need to be six inches over this way you have to be perfectly in this opening at this point yeah and there was one point we called the chase where they're all running through the train and i love the cast because i came in i think it was four days before we opened we were in almost in the tech rehearsals and i looked at them and go we're re-blocking this oh the i do remember that and so we took the first 20 minutes and we reblocked the chase through the train where they all had to run and then stop perfectly in the middle of these openings to be seen i do recall that because this is one of the shows i am occasionally called on to be part of the technical crew if we need people and this one needed a lot of bodies to push the train forward and to move it from side to side and i recall so i was backstage when that happened yeah and and and i loved i loved the cast because they were perfectly willing to do it they were like okay and so this is this again the three sleeping cars you can see joe's laying in his bed you see his feet and things there and but they're all very conscientiously being in the door every single one of them is in their appropriate little window that tracy gave us to be able to be seen by the audience that is terrific well it was it was a great show and i'm so thrilled it was a fun show to do it we got you to finally direct here or had you directed at the ground before that no okay so it was your premiere and now in i had come in and on a couple of occasions i had helped tracy i had built a couple of windows up in the uh the side the wings of the stage for spamalot when you all did spamalot oh that was the first show that happened after i got i came in and i decorated the little house i did the curtains and the windows and stuff and that little house that had to travel but i came in a couple of times and i'd helped him out when he needed help so but i'd never directed for the grand before well i am so thrilled you're here and that you're doing another one and we hope it is just one of many that will come but it is [Music] very different emotion just what i asked for so i try to follow direction now we're going into the shameless plug for what we're actually here to promote finally so i think austin's going to put a picture of our promotion the grand opera house will prevent present k-g-o-h the voice of the grand presents christmas treasures a radio play directed and adapted for the stage by doug donald performances on november 27th 28th at 7 30 p.m and november 29th at 2 p.m set in the 1940s set in a 1940s radio station actors and sound effects artists come together to bring to life three classic christmas stories rudolph the red nosed reindeer a child's christmas in wales and a christmas carol the cast is comprised of a small number of actors voicing all the characters plus live sound effects artists and terry dillon on keyboards who will provide live musical accompaniment and underscoring the production will be presented to a socially distanced live audience and live streamed for tickets and details to get reservations to be part of the live audience or access to the live stream visit the grands website at www.thegrandoperhouse.com you didn't say any but i need a drink so i'm going to say um um and i'm gonna have to eat get another beer out of there you're always just a little ahead of me sheesh got to be ahead of you doug it's hard to be it's one of the few things so in any case let's move on okay we have finally made it to the show that we're actually here to promote okay so tell me about christmas treasures well you had contacted me and you were my understanding is you were trying to figure out right why do we do something safely during this covet age and a radio play felt like a way to do that right because you can this if you see behind right we are actually right now on this different likes of christmas treasures it's going to be more i mean we'll decorate it a little bit up but basically he's here to place the actors spaced at the mics right and then they'll be on two levels and and so i had done originally fly by night got me involved in radio shows we were approached by wwe a local radio station here in town and i believe don't quote me on this their 75th anniversary i think they're 75th and they were doing a big thing of live broadcasts from their station here in town and so they approached fly by night and said would you like to do a live radio show during that day that we're celebrating it so i and a a a guy who was attached with us at the time paul connect wrote an original soap opera based in dubuque and then i went off and tried to i'm not a musician tried to come up with original music that could be performed and the live sound effects and we went out to wdbq and performed it live on the air and that got me associated with radio shows and then eventually fly by night started doing a lot of the old we did february mcgee and molly and the lone ranger and space x and all the old radio shows because the great thing about radio is when they were doing it live mainly in the 30s and 40s was the highlight of live radio because they were doing it so quickly and putting it out so quickly they never copyrighted the scripts okay and so you can do their scripts and you don't have to worry about because they never copyrighted them and most of the time you can't find the scripts i would literally sit there in our house with at that time showing my age again cassette player and i would play a line from the actual radio broadcast and then i would type it and then i would play another line and type it you have to transcribe from the actual broadcast because there aren't printed scripts and so we started doing it and then eventually when i got hired at loras we started doing this it's a wonderful acting exercise well this is the amazing thing when i approached you about doing this you said oh i knew that you had lots of experience and you said oh yeah we did these i don't know whether it was every year yeah every year but you did them with one rehearsal yeah that's what and then you did it it's like which horrifies me yeah we're actually sitting there working on this one now because we have i think six rehearsals yes last night when when lenoir and i were was going home i sat there and i said i don't understa i don't know how we did this in one rehearsal but that's what they did they did it basically they said that at loris it was like performance plus teaching exercises right okay this is the way you got it you wanted to understand how they did it right and so they would get they would rehearse one time and then the same day they would then do a live broadcast have about an hour off and then do a second live broadcast for the west coast so one live broadcast was for the east coast and one was for the west coast and they would rehearse once and a lot of times at the one rehearsal they wouldn't have all the cast there for example orson welles who did probably the most famous radio broadcast that ever happened war of the worlds he was one of the more active radio people mercury radio with the other mercury radio theater he was at one time in i think three to four different radio shows he played the lone ranger ukraine he played uh matt dillon in gunsmoke while it was on the radio i didn't realize it was a radio show before it was a tv show yeah so but he played that character and but he was on a number of different broadcasts and at one time he hired an ambulance so he could get from one studio to the next studio to do what he had to do in a given day until the city said basically you can't do that you can't use an ambulance for private transportation even if you have to be on the air yeah so they would rehearse sometimes and like for example he couldn't be there to rehearsal so they would have stand-ins at the rehearsal and then he would come running in for the actual live broadcast and the actor who has stood in would hand him the script and go old irishman and walk out and that's he hadn't even read the script no he hadn't even read it and all he had to go by was it's an old irishman and he would do it live based on that and it was just a chaotic they didn't take time to produce their scripts which is why a lot of times you have to transcribe them from the actual broadcast and it was just a wonderful and at that time in the 30s and 40s it was really the entertainment for america yeah and i think even today you can still hear you don't hear so much now with like for example prairie home companion right but here in town bills walk does a live radio old-time radio on and bill i talked to bill today he gave him your phone number because he's going to call you and talk about this and then he's going to hype the show on his show oh okay he does a lot sunday evenings he plays old time radio yeah and i think the reason i got drawn into it not just because of what it does for actors teaching you because you're really focused on what you can do vocally because you don't have anything else because in radio you didn't see most times you would do a lot like we're doing the company that came into the grand that would do live radio shows that came to the grand at times before an audience but for most of the people it was just a sound right and so as an actor it forces you to think about what you're doing vocally and for this production with a small company of actors telling three different stories everybody has to voice multiple different characters and then we have two sound effects artists that create all the sound effects right live on stage plus terry who's going to be doing some musical things but that's leading me into live sound effects and you are going to give us a little demonstration about okay i'm gonna move i'm gonna say ah so i can get a drink before i do this i'm going this oh you said ah yeah okay doug is now moving over to the sound effects area and he's going to demonstrate how some of these work when i first started doing sound effects there really aren't a lot of records on how they created the different sound effects because again they were fine from show to show the show we tend to think that they did it we want to think they did it recorded wise beforehand right they didn't they originally started using records at first but they found they didn't have enough control oh yeah you can't do the time for the sound and so they started doing them live so the first sound effect artists were percussionists from bands because they had the bells and the whistles good with rhythm and time and the different things that made noises but some of them i look at and i think how did they come up with that for example my favorite is this this is a box of cornstarch and i have no idea in all the research i've done who did it how they came up with it or why they even came up with it but i'm going to try to hold this up to my mic and just listen for a second and think of someone walking in the snow when i first read that in the book and corn starch works but cornflakes don't i was going to say when i first read that i went to the grocery store and people stared at me but as you know in theater you whether people are staring at you or not you do it right so i took a box of stores cornstarch and they and i went yes that sounds like someone walking in snow and i went around and i started squeezing sugar and flour and they didn't work nothing makes a noise like this but who thought of that you know so there are just so many for example this is bubble wrap which we use now back in the day they would have used cellophane but if i do this just think of a fire burning in a fireplace now you probably can't hear it no i cleaned the mic yeah but just all the different sounds and and of course in our show these will be we'll have microphones on them right they'll have microphones on them so the audience can hear them but just a technique for when you do shoes what they would do is they would hang them around their neck but the technique of is not just hitting but it's realizing that no when you walk you go heal the toe and so just the skill when i would do radio i usually find most of the actors we're not doing it in this one because of covid so that the sound effects people only control certain sound effects and they do it and no one else does but when i would do them loris the actors they would want to come and play for example with the piano sounds so this is a very special tell the tell us this we borrowed from i was from tracy at that time tracy was still technical director laura's and we used to get the old pianos from the music program when they would buy new pianos we would get the old ones in the theater and so i looked at him one day and i said i want to tear a piano apart and this is actually it and it was remarkable at how well pianos are made it took us forever to tear it apart and this is the sound board from the piano but you can do such wonderful [Music] creepy it makes such wonderful haunting sounds yeah it just keeps reverberating yeah and we it works so well for a christmas carol which is one of the shows we're doing and it's just a wonderful place to play and all the actors usually want to come over and go oh let me try it which unfortunately in this show they can't do so we do have two very specific performers dedicated to doing the sound effects and then they each have their own stuff and it's been fascinating to watch even just in the three rehearsals we've had so far how far it's come it was just last night you know it's like doing running through a christmas carol it's like and you'd given your notes beforehand and told them what to do and then it's like it's it's really exciting to watch the company i have no idea how you ever did it one night but it's really great can you show us how to do the wind machine maybe the door slam just a couple things and then we'll get back to drinking this is a wind machine uh i built this actually 36 years ago oh my gosh so it's been around for a while but it's just a lot of years you've been holding in that wind it's the old way they used to create wind but it's basically just wood slabs and you're built on canvas huh you built that yeah i did know that learning something new yeah and it's one of those machines we i actually was doing a show one year where the actor turned it the wrong way this way which basically just takes the canvas off of and it quits making sound so now do the little door thing i love that oh this is a door i built same time from this but it's just so you can do all that you can make the sound of the law of the lock and all of this okay one more and then i'll say i love the train whistle oh you just drained whistle and then you've got this it actually belongs to the ground i didn't know that sound effects i have one you blow on but this is one you had so it's a train whistle [Music] that is so perfect [Music] that's magnificent okay thank you so much for that wonderful demonstration well the great thing i think about radio what drew me into it was it's so individualized and and the fact that when you're listening to the show you're hearing the sounds you're hearing the cast but basically for example we're doing christmas carol how you see scrooge's office is your version it's frank's version of the office how do you see the furniture how do you see the color on the walls how do you see scrooge how does he look we give you the sound of scrooge but the visual is all up to you so it's your scrooge it's my scrooge it's that person sitting in the audience it's their screw so what you're saying is on radio i could still play curly in oklahoma you could there were there was you could i could still although i i i that was one of those roads where i thought god i suck at this but yeah you would oh i did an um and then you said it so that's two oh my gosh i'm glad i brought lenoir tonight oh no it's the last one have you got i know i'm fine you go ahead we're we're close to wrapping up here so the great thing is an old radio for example tonto in the lone ranger when they were doing the radio broadcast he was a 70 year old guy by the time they did the radio broadcast you would never buy that looking at him it was very common for women to play boys you would often have a 30 year old pregnant woman playing a teenager this doesn't isn't the person i never watched the symptoms but who's the kid simpson doesn't a woman voice that bart yeah doesn't a woman voice i think yeah i think it's julie she was like wrote a sister on maude or something i'm sorry you didn't mind because even when they performed a number of shows in the studio for example war of the worlds mercury theaters ward of the world orson welles was done in the studio so they they didn't have an audience but a lot of shows performed in front of an audience so you could see things and they would from time to time do so there was a visual element to it as well for the live audience and that's really what we're recreating here because we're doing it for both a live audience and a live stream audience so they'll get to see the actors yes for example which actor is voicing scrooge and then voicing something else who's playing rudolph and also having to play something else and watching the sound effects you get to see for example when they're walking through snow you see someone squeezing the cornstarch and you get to see how the wind's created live but you also get to see things like with the actors if you look behind me there's a tube i'm going to move sorry i'm moving headway this is not approved this is not approved i'm moving i'll move slow don't turn it outside i don't know okay i don't know if that shows or not that's actually for the actor so the actor talks in one end it's actually marley in the christmas carol talks in one end and the other end is at the mic so this is before we had sound equipment i didn't know it was just sitting up there i thought what we got a telescope on stage for and so what it does is it creates the re what we recognize is reverb the constant echoing and it makes the voice very mysterious and so they would vocally use things like that which we're using in this show ways of creating effects on the voice that you're not manipulating it through the electronic sound board but you're creating it live on stage and so you get to watch and see all that and see how it's done and enjoy that aspect well i have really been enjoying watching you put it all together we've got three more rehearsals and then three performances the show opens the day after thanksgiving so i encourage you out there if please come part of be part of our socially distanced live audience or uh purchase access to the live stream it's gonna be a great memory filled experience i'm really looking forward to watching it all come together before i wrap up here i keep forgetting we thought we'd talk about this and it never came up but i haven't seen doug without his mask in months so he finally took his mask off to put his microphone on here and he's got this big mustache on i go oh my gosh now i've seen it you you have that's your mark twain mustache and that's something you have been doing regularly is features so tell us about mark twain and the the little mark twain videos you've been doing that are so wonderful and they're still accessible right we can still watch those correct uh when the pandemic hit i was like every other performing artist the the art industry the performing artist industry has i'm just going to start drinking right now because doug does not say um or ah nearly enough well i would we'll drink to for the fun of it go ahead the industry has been hit very hard yes you know that everybody here knows it we were one of the first industries to shut down we're going to be one of the last ones to reestablish there are millions of people in the entertainment industry out of work right right now and so i was like everybody else mark that that shutdown hit and you're like what do i do i can't do what i love doing i can't be with my community and it is so different than every other tragedy that has happened artists are typically the first ones to rush in yes and go okay we're going to put on a benefit we're going to do what we can to help and this one by its very nature but we can't do that we're not allowed that that's the last thing i know yeah you're right everybody feels isolated everybody feels but you found a creative outlet and and it's like you you want to connect with your audience so you try finding the the virtual ways the ways of your doing of streaming of connecting but it's not the same with that personal that person out here yes and so i was looking for what can i do what can i fill it with and so i've been doing twain for years and since i was in hannibal missouri at the ice house theater originally i didn't do twain i was that really did wrap it back around to the beginning good for you good and so in march i started doing what i called twain shorts and they're just little short five to ten minute sections of things twain has written uh some of them comedic some of him not comedic for example the one the one now i'm i'm doing is kind of based on what's going on election wise not taking sides or anything but he wrote a piece called running for governor and it's based on him running for the governor of new york did he actually do that no okay it's just fiction but it's all about these things the opponent starts putting out about him and it ends up with him burning down an insane asylum with all the inmates because it obstructed the view from his house oh and then it ends up with all these kids of all colors and raggedness being taught to rush up onto the platform and clasp him by the leg and call him father and it's just based on the opposition no matter what side you're on of going after the other side and it's done comedically but you just sit there and you think wow this was written over a hundred years ago but it still fits perfectly into our world and so i started doing them i've done approximately 30 of them and where can we find them online if we want they're actually on my facebook page at the moment doug donald i'm going to be uploading them i'm lucky like you austin who's my former student uh came to my house one night and we sat there in our masks and sat on opposite sides of the table and he showed me how to add titles and everything i'm a live theater i'm a technical idiot i know what you mean thank god for you guys out there i love you i appreciate you we get to sit here and have fun and do this and let them do the work right they're working and we're not so i've done about 30 some of them humorous some of them not i'm getting ready the one i'm doing the one running for governor and then i'm preparing one he did on christmas in his house i'm going to do that one for the christmas season but they're just they can be things like my one of my favorite pieces is one he wrote on jefferson and her glass eye and it's this woman who had to use she had to borrow a glass eye to use and just all all the things that would happen with this glass eye that didn't really fit and and she was always dropping it out she'd try to pack it in with raw cotton but that wouldn't work and sometimes the cotton would stick out okay i'm feeling like this one we're going to have to listen to you to completely understand they're out there because it feels like i don't know what the hell is he talking about i'm like everybody i'm like every other artist out there how do you how do you still feed that creative impulse in this climate you know so we so greatly appreciate that one of the other reasons why we choose to chose to do a radio play is that we could do it in an abbreviated rehearsal fashion not the one night you do you know we gave ourselves six nights but also our actors are all socially distanced up to this point they've all been wearing masks which is different isn't it i mean it is we have all these actors that for example we're doing rudolph the red nose ring right so they're doing all these elf voices and reindeer voices but they're wearing these masks and you can't see their faces but that's just the way it would be in radio yes it would but you pointed at me that wasn't a point point was it no it wasn't a point so but you sit there with masson and i sit there and i think wow i can't wait to hear them when they don't have the masks on so and we won't we're not going to do that until we get them actually standing in front of their things properly socially distanced so we've said one thing we are really attempting to do we're making our theater as safe as possible for our audience member and for our performance performers and for our technical you called me i i will admit everybody i i don't hide this at all i have a compromised lung system and so when you called me about coming and doing this i had to think about it for a little bit because i'm obviously obviously of the age yes and then when you get into your mid-40s you've got to worry with the compressor i thought about it and i i after all the years of working with tracy i know him well enough that he has sat there and looked at everything right you know and so part of us yes the desire i want to get back to this community but we want to do it safely right and then that's why i said yes because i knew that would happen here yes it's frustrating being in a rehearsal wearing a mask you want to take it off and i want to use my voice and as we've talked to the cast you know it's like like we've said one of the great things about being part of a cast is making that family and doing that social connections and we've been talked to them and said okay i'm sorry during your breaks you can't all cluster together and talk to each other so we're making sacrifices to make sure we can present this safely but i still think it's been wonderful to be an observer i'll let a little uh secret out you know we know that because of covid somebody if they become exposed even exposed to the virus not even get it it's like we've made provisions okay if you have a symptom of you you're you're out we're going to do it you're welcome we don't normally have understudies but you are one of the interns i'm sitting in i'm watching every rehearsal as the male understudy and we have my wife lenore has the female injury so we've been sitting out in the house watching everything taking scrupulous notes and just praying nobody gets exposed because we're gonna have to go on unfortunately we've already had it happen right on the very first day the very first day of rehearsal we had someone that called and said she she does not have covid but she was concerned because someone in her workplace did right so we made the decision that okay we are going to right honestly an abundance of caution we're going to replace you and we will not hesitate to continue to do that because that's what's the most she's one of those actors that i love i've worked with her before she was in murder on the orient express i've worked with her in fly by night i love working with her and for me it was really a heartbreak to lose her yeah and even but it was that safety issue of she didn't know at that point if she would really if she had really been around the person or not and if you go by the technical rules of what you should be doing she hadn't been so we're we're going but playing safely because we've been going above and beyond right what is not just legal but what is safe and responsible yeah and that's our that's our goal yeah which enables us i would just add that it enables us selfishly on my part it enables us to do what we love and hopefully share that with all the people out there ah you are right so i'll go with that ah and take it as it has been wonderful spending time and drinking with you doug before we go though you have to earn your keep so we're going to flip things around you're going to point at me and i'm going to give my best acting rendition of it's time for shameless plugs and then you're going to read the shameless blog so i'm ready okay you have i didn't realize who's going to direct me you have just received the absolute most positive news you have ever heard in your life it is time for shameless blogs how was that we'll call you oh do your reading and this better raise us some money the grand opera house is a 501 c 3 organization this is going to take a while and now more than ever we have your support please consider donating to the grand you can make a one time or reoccurring donation by visiting the grand website www.thegrand opera house dot com i think we're gonna have to have our own weekly show and call it overacting with doug and frank that was magnificent doug thank you for being my guest son thank you um with frank it has been great spending time and drinking with you on the set here of christmas treasures we are going to see a lot of each other in the coming week i just want to thank you for being such a great partner on this project i'm really looking forward to watching it all come together and then be presented for both our live and virtual audience as it would be in radio days you know we would have had a live and we would have had a virtual audience in real radio days so i think that's great yeah no and i really want to extra special thank you for bringing the beer it has been delightful drinking this christmas ale scotch ale that is not expired fresh stuff i am i am who knew it could be so good next thursday i can't believe next thursday is thanksgiving so we will not be having um with friends seen right now but unless i start day drinking and decide to interview my turkey which i'll be eating home alone but we will be back on december 3rd and in the meantime i invite you to stay on top of not you audience you too stay on top of everything that's happening here at the grand by visiting the grand on-demand webpage on our website www.thegrandoperhouse.com doug i'm going to give you 10 seconds for any final thoughts and then we gotta sign off because it's probably about midnight now thank you for inviting me happy holidays to everybody i hope you join us for a wonderful time at christmas treasures stay safe good night and [Music] you

Channel: The Grand Opera House - Dubuque

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Id: 0ZKHzhTB6PM

Length: 115min 3sec (6903 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020