How We Came to Run the Gamut - By Clark Nicholson -
Chapter 5: “…What Happens When You’re Making Other Plans”
Hello, all… I’m very sorry that this chapter of our Gamut History is so long in coming. To be frank, I have been so caught up in current events that, looking back with focus and clarity, have not been quite so easy of late. However, I’m stepping back in here with the intention of continuing this story of the past, to help us remember where we came from as we attempt to bravely face what will surely be a challenging (but also hopefully very abundant) future for us all.
Clark and Melissa Nicholson, Wonder Tales From Around the World, 1993. Photo by Lynne Porter
Empty stage featuring Bandana Line
And, so we went down to Harrisburg to “Pick out our space.” Wow. I still remember this as just an earth-shaking development. We had wanted to secure a regular temporary space in which to perform, but we had no idea that Strawberry Square would be interested in us. This was so unexpected, and felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of our shoulders concerning whether or not the pursuit of our goals, a pursuit that was a couple of years old at that point, would prove fruitless, but more importantly, would prove to be a mistake. But, as John Lennon said, “Life’s what happens while you’re making other plans.” Sometimes that aphorism breaks toward the good; sometimes it breaks toward the bad. This time it felt like it was breaking toward the good.
Anyway, we went down to Strawberry Square and met Mary Roth, who was head of Strawberry Square’s Special Projects and Tenant Relations. What a sweet woman she was; very professional, but also very warm. I immediately thought, “She reminds me of my mom.” Later, after the meeting, Melissa told me, “She really reminds me of your mom.” It was a good first impression, because over the next couple of years, as we were struggling to build the organization, she helped us out several times, and she protected us… like a mom; like a business associate, smart, ethical, professional, dear mom. She was another person in this history, like others previously mentioned and those to come, who contributed to our foundation.
We all agreed that regular performances in front of Strawberry Square’s clock wouldn’t be ideal for performance. It’s fine for fully microphoned musical performances, but besides the sound issues, there was just too much activity around that central structure to ask audiences to focus on us. And, it would be very hard to arrange ticketing, which we were going to need to establish if we were to move forward. So, Mary took us around to look at several different empty retail spaces. Some were too small, some the wrong shape, because theatre spaces require a direct, unobstructed view of the stage.
Meliss and I going over the rules
Finally, she showed us a space about which she said, “I think you’re going to like this one.” And she was right. The space she showed us had recently been vacated by The Plum, a unique clothing boutique. It hadn’t folded, but had moved fully into a space between Walnut, Locust, 2nd, and 3rd streets where it still resides to this day. As a side note of interest, back in the 1800’s, that building had housed Harrisburg’s first establishment dedicated to the presentation of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Hall. More about that history, later.
It is significant that The Plum was the previous occupant of this space we were considering. In addition to it having a very conducive shape for presenting Children’s Theatre, it also had very helpful features like nice shelves on which we could have stuffed animals and children’s books for our audiences to play with and read before the show, really nice changing rooms in which actors could dress, and most importantly, a very lovely, very thick piled carpet. Even though we could put some chairs around the perimeter for adult seating, we largely wanted the kids (and adults who were willing) to sit on the floor.
It was perfect. If you go in Strawberry Square to find it today, you’ll be disappointed, since it has long since been reconfigured and now houses a large office space. However, back then it was set to become a theater, because we told Mary Roth, “Yes! Thank you!” on the spot. She gave us the keys.
I don’t know that I can fully express to you what being on the receiving end of the act of those keys was like. It was validation by folks in a central institution like Strawberry Square, that we weren’t just silly kids who needed to out-grow our flimsy pipe dreams and “get a real job.”
Meliss and I sing Raffi's Mr. Sun
There have been many struggles since that moment, but receiving those keys from Mary Roth would prove to be a huge step toward building the foundations of Gamut Theatre as a multi-person theatrical arts ensemble, a respected home for theatrical education, and ultimately, a physical facility housing two classrooms, a scene shop, multiple offices, and three performance spaces. Small gestures sometimes mean very big things. In the lives of Melissa, me, and the thousands of people who would become Gamut, this gesture was one of the biggest.
In this original space, we had no stage, mainly because the ceilings were too low to accommodate one, but we had a “stage area” separated from the audience by the “Bandanna Line” - a series of bandannas (mainly Melissa’s) tied together to delineate the performance area.
Upstage of the performance area were 7 floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Pennsylvania State Capitol. While that was absolutely beautiful, it was also distracting and “up-staging” in the terminology of theatre. So, on a visit, my mom came up from South Carolina and sewed various rainbow-colored curtains, one for each window: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Purple to block out the window light, but also to look attractive when viewed from the outside. To this very day, we still find these rainbow-colored sheets of material in our stock, and they have been used in many shows and for various purposes throughout the years. Thank you, Mom!
Also, while I’m letting you know about other family members who helped out, it’s important to tell you, here, that on a trip down to South Carolina, my Pop painted our first sign that we kept in our front window. We were largely healing from our differences mentioned earlier in this history, and I think it was important to him that he lent his talents to this central image in our front window. Knowing that still makes me feel good. The sign was 4x8, displayed horizontally, and said “The Popcorn Hat Players” along with our logo: A rabbit popping out of a hat, designed originally by our dear friend and wickedly talented cartoonist from our Lost Colony days, Dan Myers. Through all these years, the design of that original PHP logo has been tweaked but is still the central image of our Children’s Theatre component.
Meliss and Me with Tiny volunteers who are now in their mid thirties
Oh, yes! And the name? The Popcorn Hat Players? Well, that came from one of the many stories that my Grandma Thelma, my mother’s mother, read to my cousins and me when we were tiny kids. I was, and still am, a fan of the poetically bizarre children’s stories written by Carl Sandburg, one of America’s best-loved poets. This collection, The Rutabaga Stories, contained some of the most entrancing, whimsical, and evocative imagery of anything that I’ve ever heard or read since. And one of the strangest stories, called “How Jason Squiff Got His Popcorn Hat, Popcorn Mittens, and Popcorn Shoes” was accompanied by a bizarre illustration, a picture of Jason Squiff wearing his Popcorn Hat. I’m sure you who have lived a little while have experienced this, but there are sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that can take you immediately to another part of your life. Well, that’s what this image did for me. Still, when I see it, I’m by my Grandmother’s side, in her bed, seeing that beguiling image for the first time. So, when it came time to name our theater for children, the image of Jason Squiff and his hat popped (pun intended) immediately into my head. Voila!
Rootabaga Stories - His hat was popcorn, his mittens popcorn and his shoes popcorn.
Over the next couple of years in which we lived and worked in that space, we would perform many of Don Bridge’s scripts, which he was kind enough to let us use free of charge. It would be hard to express how much this meant to us. Many of the adaptations of classic children’s stories that our audiences have seen over the years were actually originally written by Don.
But, it was also during that period that Melissa and I would sit down and write out the bulk of the Popcorn Hat Players Children’s Theatre scripts that we still use. We had set a rather ambitious goal for ourselves, which we hoped would help us build a rapport and a relationship with our audiences and encourage them to keep coming back: “A New Show Every Month!”
Many of Don’s scripts were 3- and 4-person casts, so we had to adapt them into a 2-person form so just Melissa and I could act in them. One of the ways that was accomplished was by portraying some of the characters as puppets. This was in addition to all the puppets that Don had already included in his original productions. However, to keep from having to make endless puppets, we took another idea from Don’s Little Big Theater Company model. We created a central puppet that would become the mascot of the company, and actually became a bit of an official company member. Little Big’s mascot was a goofy lizard-like goon named Algernon. All the kids who came to Little Big had known and loved that goon, lovingly presented by his papa, actor BC Ellis. When we started Popcorn Hat, I set to work and created Al, the Popcorn Hat Bunny who is right there in the center of the PHP logo, and festooned over the years on thousands of T-shirts and other PHP merchandise. Al still lives in my office, to this day, and although he’s largely been in retirement for many years now, I still bring him out to meet the folks from time to time.
Melissa in 1st PHP show
As these first years of production rolled by, the “New Show Every Month” schedule became brutal. Even though we’d gotten our keys and opened our space in Strawberry Square, we still had jobs to sustain us. Melissa continued to wait tables at Denny’s Lennies, and I continued to peel potatoes and cook french-fries on Denny Williams' French-fry trucks. And then, we’d write scripts, make props, puppets, and make scenic pieces for each of our new shows. It was relentless. And at first, the audiences were very, very small. We began presenting shows for 3, 4, or 5 people at a time. Many days we had to cancel because there was simply no one for which to perform.
But, on the days when audiences did show up, they started telling us things like, “Well, we saw you last month, and we knew we had to come back!” and “I brought my next-door neighbors and their kids! We want to get our daycare to come next month!” It was the follow-up of these sentiments that ultimately built us.
As the amount of our shows grew, so did our necessary time commitment to form the structure of what we were building. Melissa and I were doing a lot, on barely any money, and as I’ve said, we did “work arounds” with our scripts that called for multiple characters. We had, as I’ve mentioned, developed shows in which we used puppets that we operated ourselves to fill out the cast. We also had developed the aesthetic, based very much on the dynamic we’d all learned as kids, to establish imagination as our foundation for costuming and character.
What I mean is, if we put on a small item of clothing, like a worn vest and said, “Now I am the poor miller” then we were that. If we put on a crown, then we were the story’s King or Queen. If I put on a silly old Santa beard in addition to the crown, then I was the “old King.” And so, we tried to build a performance dynamic with the audience that said, “We are pretending. However, for the telling of this story to work, you’ve also got to pretend with us.” In a very simple way, this the same sort of playful agreement with the audience that Shakespeare asked of his viewers in the prologue of his play King Henry V:
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass.
Melissa Kickin' Up her Heels as Puss 'n Boots
We embraced this idea, and it’s still the foundation of our work with Popcorn Hat today. Still, we found that we were limited in what we could present with just the two of us, but we also didn’t have the funds to go out and hire actors to fill out our company. We had our “space” but we still had our other jobs to pay the bills. As luck would have it, this helped us move to the next step. One of the other waiters at Denny's Lennies was a smart, funny, dear young fellow named Todd Gingrich. Todd had recently graduated from high school in Millersburg, the same high school from which Melissa had graduated. But at this point, Melissa and I were a few years older than him, had gone out and gotten training, and had been doing Theatre in one manner or another for several years. Although Todd had performed in Millersburg’s high school musical, he wasn’t focused on becoming a professional actor. He wanted to work at the diner, make some money, and go on to college.
Melissa worked on him. And, as I remember, she worked on him pretty hard. She and Todd had become great friends, and so, she wanted him to play the Prince in our production of Cinderella, largely using Don Bridge’s script for that show. We had adapted that script so that Al the Rabbit would be the Fairy God-Bunny, and Melissa and I would be the ugly stepsisters. But, to make the script work, we’d need more actors, whether we could really afford them, or not.
Melissa with tiny Volunteer
Now, I won’t speak for my lovely wife and business partner, but for myself, as a stepsister, I was truly hideous. And I’d be hideous in this role several more times over the coming years. Of course, since that time, we’ve done many more productions, and many Popcorn Hat Players have put their own stamps on these characters, but when I think of this show, I always think of the fun times we had presenting it, and also of that hideous, green polyester dress which was just about the most uncomfortable and unforgiving item of clothing that I’ve ever put on my body. The show was frenetic and filled with energy, and that dress… well, it didn’t breathe… at all. At the end of every show, I smelled like a locker room. I have lots of good and also lots of physically uncomfortable memories from multiple productions of this show. As we move further into the 21st century, in response to the times, we’re probably not going to do any future productions with having male actors play the stepsisters. As I look at the world and see it changing in so many ways, I don’t want to perpetuate “drag” performances merely to make fun of the idea of a male playing a female. There are many legitimate drag performers these days who embrace this aesthetic, and I don’t want to denigrate them. I know we did a lot of fun and funny shows, for the best of intentions and the delight of our audiences, but I think the days of Milton Berle, Bosom Buddies, and Some Like It Hot may be coming to a close. No disrespect to those performances, because they were great for their time, but this is a new time, and we are going to be responsive to new attitudes and trends.
Also, at this time, we met a young lady from the area who showed up at the theater, told us that she had an interest in what we were doing, and wanted to know how to get involved. Melissa Blizzard was a local, Central PA resident, but her association with us was an early step to a life in Theatre, which became her career. I’m jumping ahead, but it’s worth telling you that although the Nicholson path was from the US Southeast to Pennsylvania, Melissa B. would eventually become a fine costume designer and teacher, working at our old stomping grounds, The Lost Colony, and teaching at Coastal Carolina University in my home state of South Carolina. She’d become friends with Greg London, a professor there, and also the fellow who had been Oberon to my Puck (the first of several times I’d play him) at The Lost Colony.
Stage Left Stuffed Animals
I tell you this to say, the Practice of Theatre is rarely just local phenomenon. It often comes out of a community, and is responsive to that community. But also, begins to plug that community into the wider world of Theatre. I began to come to this realization after some years of working in Harrisburg. In the formation of what would eventually become Gamut (but at this stage was only The Popcorn Hat Players), I found that Melissa and I had mutual, but in significant ways, divergent attitudes in what it was we were building.
It was important to me that we got our space in Strawberry Square, and I thought this would be great for a few years. But I believed that it was just one chapter in our life as artists that would eventually lead us to other locations and more “major markets.” My ambition was to eventually end up doing what I could in the Chicago theater scene. As I quoted earlier in this chapter, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
However, what I found as I came to the slow, years-long realization that my future in this business would be in the capital city of Pennsylvania, I also underwent a sometimes painful, but ultimately positive realization. What Melissa and I were building would be in service to plugging Harrisburg into the National, and even International, community of Theatre makers. That our actors would not only come from here, but might in some way, be plugged into an invisible pipeline of folks going out of this region to work elsewhere, and people from elsewhere coming here. Sometimes, in both cases, permanently.
This aspect of what we do is something that we never planned, didn’t even realize was happening, but would ultimately be very important to the life and sustainability, not only of our own enterprise, but also to the enrichment of the region. This happened. We didn’t know it was happening, or that we were helping it to happen. And, it happened while we were making other plans.
Cheat Sheets over first PHP Stage, Looking Toward our first Office
Next up:“O brave new world, That has such people in't!” Or, how we found our best collaborator in a guy who’s been dead for 400 years.