How We Came to Run the Gamut By Clark Nicholson
Chapter 7: “Curtain Up!”
So, there I was. Desperately preparing to chew for me and Meliss what I’d just bitten off. The Popcorn Hat Players (not yet under the umbrella of Gamut) had committed to producing a scenically minimal, small cast version of Midsummer… Say… seven actors and six cubes for levels to sit and stand on. I had some small experience playing in Shakespeare, but I’d never directed any of his work (or really anything outside of kid’s shows, a couple of Chekhov one acts, and some scene studies in college,) and so I had no idea or inclination of directing this one. As I’d stated earlier, my friend, previous director, and former tour-mate, Tommy Hensel, was about to complete a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Carolina in cooperation and residency at The Shakespeare Theater in Washington, DC. Melissa and I had been in touch with him, and he said he would be excited to come up and direct the show.
So, we had that commitment, and now I could concentrate on perhaps building those cubes and maybe learning some lines. It would be great. Melissa was excited, and so was I.
But, hold on to your hats, everybody! It’s about to get big, fast, and bumpy! When Tommy arrived and moved into our guest room, he had bigger plans than “seven actors and six cubes.” Much bigger plans. Tommy wanted to put together a full cast: no doubling of characters an actor would play. A cursory look and the Dramatis Personae of the script will show you that there are roughly - between the lovers, the court in Athens, and among the ranks of the clowns - 20 named characters…. to not only play the parts, but to costume. Also, Tommy made a really good case for why we needed, not 6 cubes, but an entire set which embodied both the worlds of Athens in the daylight, and the Faerie Kingdom of the forest at night.
Sooooo…. a lot more people, and two complete sets. And, we had: no money. Zip. Nada. Bupkis. Now, you’d think that this would have caused me, caused Melissa, caused Tommy to reevaluate and rework. But, we were young. We were ready. We were not burdened with the experience that would tell us to not attempt such a thing under any circumstances. So, we just… jumped out of the plane. And we joyously and maniacally went flying; never reckoning on the ground or any effect that gravity might have on us. Things were about to get insane… In a mostly good way.
First off, Tommy wanted me to reprise the role of Puck, which he’d directed me in a couple of years before at The Lost Colony outdoor drama on the Outer Banks of NC. No problem. I had a blast playing that, my first complete Shakespearean role. Next, he wanted Melissa to play Titania, Queen of the Fairies. Then we called our friend, Hank Hale, who had worked at the Lost Colony, as well, and also toured with us during our time in the Carolinas. We asked Hank to play the Fairy King, Oberon, and he accepted and came to live for a time with us in our big old rickety house in Millersburg.
(l. to r.) Clark Nicholson as Puck, Melissa Nicholson as Titania, Hank Hale as Oberon. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
Tommy held auditions at our Popcorn Hat location in Strawberry Square, and we had a really good turn-out. He cast a wide array of Harrisburg talent: Harrisburg College Theatre Educator Dave Olmsted came out and landed the role of the young lover Lysander. Also, among the lovers was the beautiful and talented Tracey Hall, a full-time employee of the first professional theatre company in Harrisburg, Open Stage. Chris Kendra, a young wild-eyed madman who had been operating a CRAZY avant-garde outfit in Harrisburg called The Gaga Ontological Theater (which Meliss and I had both worked for; but that’s a long and insane story for another day) was playing the arrogant lover Demetrius. Among the Mechanicals (the clowns) was Clif Swinford as Bottom the Weaver. Clif was an average sized guy with the voice of a Gargantua, which he could use to great comic effect. And did. Also, among the Mechanicals was our departed friend Rick Jewell as Snug the Joiner, and Rick went on to do several more shows with us before he relocated to Manhattan. And let us not forget a young Eric Messner, a beginning Harrisburg Area Community College student who played the small, funny role of Robin Starveling in this production, but who would shortly go on to have a HUGE impact on this company as he became the first full-time employee of Popcorn Hat besides Melissa and myself. Local theatre regular and a legendary local actor in the tough guy Richard Harris/Oliver Reed mold was Richard Johnson. He’d worked extensively on Harrisburg stages like the Harrisburg Community Theater, Little Theater of Mechanicsburg, and had even been a part of an earlier attempt at forming a Shakespeare company in the Pennsylvania Capital city. He shared the stage with the enormously talented Joanna Gerdy, whom I’m sure we would have done many more shows with, had she not left the area right after this to form a fulltime professional Children’s Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina; an operation which still runs to this day.
All these folks were involved and many, many more. It was a full, uncut, non-doubled cast, remember. Many, many more people than my originally pitched seven.
(l. to r.) Christopher Kendra as Demetrius, Tracey Hall as Helena, Hank Hale as Oberon. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
(l. to r.) Justin Shipman and Drew Rush as Attendants, Joanna Gerdy as Hippolyta, Richard Johnson as Theseus. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
The Lovers (l. to r.) Ashley Graham-Bell as Hermia, Dave Olmsted as Lysander, Tracey Hall as Helena, Christopher Kendra as Demetrius. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
Now, down to business: Tommy left the designing and conceptualizing of the production to me. And why not? I was as qualified for that position in a brand-new Shakespeare Company as any; which was to say… I wasn’t very qualified. But, then, I only had a $500 budget, so what was the worst I could do?
Well, I’ll tell you: I’ve always been a comic fan, and especially a fan of the high concept, genre-redefining work done by innovative writers of the mid-eighties and early 90s: Giants like Alan Moore of The Watchmen fame, Grant Morrison who’d worked his Theatre of the Absurd magic on titles like The Doom Patrol. But, I was most especially moved by the stories of The Sandman by the wizard of words and visions, Neil Gaiman. In the story of The Sandman, there is an important storyline about Shakespeare making a deal with Sandman to write the original Midsummer Night’s Dream script, which is then performed by the actual characters in the story. I was very moved and inspired by this treatment of the classic play, and although what I came up with for our first production was markedly different than Gaiman’s take, I’d be lying if I told you this wasn’t a huge influence on what I was about to try to bring about. I wanted it to tie the contemporary to the timeless and endless. I wanted it to be imbued with the magic of old fairy stories and to be as immediate and exciting as an alt rock festival, like Lollapalooza.
So, I started thinking about the primal, Dionysian feel of various underground music movements, and how they might correspond to the essential natures of the spirits of the forest in our play. Oberon as a ghost biker. Titania as a Goth queen. Puck, the part I would play, is rooted in the old English fables of Robin Goodfellow, who was renowned to clean your house in the middle of the night and as payment to take a snippet of cloth from your clothing and weave in into his multicolored shirt. Which made me think of plaid flannel, all the rage in those days as the flag flown to denote grunge culture, the brash hybrid child of Punk and Metal. So, I would be Puck, the Grunge-dog, with shredded flannel, long shaggy hair, and, yes… a snout.
Clark Nicholson as Puck, Dave Olmsted as Lysander. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
All the other fairies were different alt-rock archetypes: Peaseblossom, played by the young local dance devotee Laura Vracarich was a Deadhead fairy. Mustardseed played by Melissa Blizzard was a coffee house pixie a la Suzanne Vega. Cobweb played by local visual artist Elaine Gleason was a leather dom, a Siouxsie Sioux banshee. And Moth, played by Missy Bailey was a faded and tattered prom queen, much in the style of Hole-era Courtney Love. Also, we cast a very young man named Matt Cramer to play the Changeling Boy so treasured by Queen Titania. Matt ended up playing a kid in several shows during those early years.
(l. to r.) Matthew Kramer as Boy, Lara Vracarich as Peaseblossom, Elaine Gleason as Cobweb, Melissa-Anne Blizzard as Mustardseed, Melissa Bailey as Moth. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
Then, we had a meeting at the City of Harrisburg’s Parks and Recreation Department. They told us that they were very glad to have us, and in order to help get us started, they allocated us $500 and the usage of select City services. We were assigned to Parks and Rec assistant Michael Hartman, a nice energetic young guy who was excited about what we could do. To be honest, I wasn’t sure yet exactly what we could do, but I was about to find out.
First, I had to figure out how to do our two distinct settings. The framing setting, where the play began and ended, was in the court of Athens, a genteel urban environment; but then, we had to leave and go to the forest, where most of the action in the play takes place, before returning to Athens to end the play. Now, here was the problem with our newly refurbished, much loved bandshell: there was no wing space, no backstage space… in short, no support space whatsoever. And, of course, this is because a bandshell is not a theater. It’s made to house an orchestra. So, there was no way to have set pieces offstage that we could just roll on to indicate the change in location. I wondered if there was some way that we could establish the Athens scenes downstage, close to the audience, and have the forest location reside upstage. Then we could just hide the forest setting until needed.
The Mechanicals (l. to r.) Richard Jewel as Snug/Lion, Eric Messner as Starveling/Moonshine, Dennis Hoerner as Snout/Wall, Matthew Kubala as Flute/Thisby, Dwayne Menges as Peter Quince, Clif Swinford as Bottom/Pyramus. Background Justin Shipman (left) and Drew Rush (right) as Attendants. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
Well, just hiding the forest setting was going to be a challenge, because, in addition to the other limitations of the space that I’ve already talked about, there was also no “fly space,” which is the place in standard proscenium theaters where curtains and backdrops “fly,” or are raised and lowered in and out of sight, as needed. So, I settled on a black curtain, set back about 12 feet from the edge of the stage that would hang from one of the ribs of the bandshell. Then, I came up with an idea that the bottom of the curtain would be rigged with a light gaged rope back through screw eyes high up at the very back of the bandshell. What I wanted to happen, essentially, was that the second setting, the forest, would be revealed as this curtain was, in a manner of speaking, “raised,” tenting out like a black cloud of night over the area where the forest setting would be.
Now, this is what we did, but do you remember my saying that the city had allocated $500 for us for this production? Well, we actually spent about $400 dollars on the black, lightweight fabric to construct this truly gigantic curtain. If you go out to the bandshell today and look up at the top of it, on the third rib back, you can still see a little bit of the hardware that I had to put up in order to rig this curtain. Rigging that I put up by crawling up a rickety extension ladder, telescoped to its full length, which my buddy Hank really, really advised me against climbing. In hindsight, he was correct. I had no business up there, but at the time I just couldn’t figure any other way to make this needed scenic element happen.
So, the Athens scene would take place in front of this curtain, and to give it the flavor of the wedding party called for by Shakespeare in the first scene, we managed to get a lot of formal wear loaned to us from different businesses in exchange for ads in our program. Then we set out a couple of park benches that we had rustled up from the basement of the bandshell, painted them black, and we were set with that scene. Voila.
BUT…. What were we going to do for our “forest” to be revealed when our giant black curtain was raised? Well, since our costumes were contemporary, I also wanted a setting that kids in the city (aka “The Lovers”) might conceivably be able to run to in the middle of the night. So, I decided that instead of an actual, tree-filled forest, they would run to an old junk yard that was overgrown and being taken back over by shrubs and roots and vines; in that way I’d update the contrast that Shakespeare had made by juxtaposing the daytime world of Mankind with the nighttime world of Wild Nature.
So, where was I to get a junkyard? Well, as luck would have it, since the park was being revitalized and upgraded, a really wonderful playground was being constructed a little over a hundred yards away from our stage. To do this, the landscapers had to use a backhoe to dig and remove hundreds of tons of dirt in order to terraform the playground’s shape. And so, I asked Parks and Rec if we could use a little bit of dirt to make our set, and they said, “Sure, as long as you get rid of it when you are done.” And so, I got the guy running the backhoe to bring 23 backhoe buckets of dirt over to the stage and dump it on the front edge. I was told that each bucket, when full, held about a ton of dirt, and so, from this I have always felt confident in saying that we put 23 tons of dirt on the stage. Which we then, as a cast, shoveled into wheelbarrows and took to the back of the stage.
It was, to say the least, A LOT.
Then, we trekked out into the actual forest and found bushes, weeds, and various plants which we brought back to our stage. I then went to Michael Hartman, knowing that we were coming up on a big junk disposal day that comes around once or so a year in Harrisburg, where people put out all manner of rubbish, from old tires, to giant broken business signs, to old furniture, to just random, bizarre gadgetry. I asked Michael if I could ride along with a City junk hauler and pick and choose items for our junkyard. He said, “Sure.” And so, with the help of a City truck driver, I rode around Harrisburg and picked out all manner of unique crap. I got a large flower pot (I mean, really large: about 3 feet tall and 6 feet wide). I snagged an old clawfoot tub which was to become my (Puck’s) home base. I managed to get a STUNNING faux zebra skin couch that would become Titania’s bower. And, really…. All manner of junk. The bandshell is a big stage, and I needed to fill it up with set… without spending any money.
(clockwise from left) Melissa Bailey as Moth, Melissa-Anne Blizzard as Mustardseed, Melissa Nicholson as Titania, Elaine Gleason as Cobweb, Lara Vracarich as Peaseblossom, Clif Swinford as Bottom. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
And so, we worked hard, played hard, got absolutely filthy dirty (much in keeping with what Shakespeare’s script had in mind, I believe.) My first entrance as Puck actually involved burrowing out of a hole in the ground. The junkyard was largely covered in Lysol so we might have some protection from whatever cooties might have been hiding in all that junk. We were two days away from opening, and far from ready, so instead of having our Wednesday night Tech/Dress, we had a Cast & Crew All-Call to finish building the set, props, and costumes. This was followed by our One-Rehearsal-Only-With-All-Of-The-Stuff on Thursday night.
And then, Opening Night rolled around. It was huge. Hundreds upon hundreds of cars rolled into the park. I still believe it was our largest audience ever. One unexpected feature of our giant black curtain was that from the front side it was opaque, but from the back it was shear enough that we could clearly see the audience filling the seats (the bandshell actually had a bunch of benched seating back in those days) and we as a cast stood center stage behind that curtain, excited, giddy, and terrified as the audience just kept showing up, and completely filled the seats and the ground in front of our stage.
The show began, Tommy went out and made a curtain speech, welcoming and thanking everyone. And, we were underway. Egeus came to the court of Duke Theseus and his Amazon queen to complain about his disobedient child Hermia. We met her male suitors, Lysander and Demetrius, and then she of the “tall personage” Helena. And the audience was with us. They liked what they saw: our well-dressed, tuxedoed and evening-gowned Court and Lovers.
BUT… then it was time to leave Athens and go to the forest… our junkyard… and this is the moment I call “The Birth of the Harrisburg Shakespeare Company,” later to become a cornerstone of Gamut Theatre Group. As the Lovers made their pact to run into the dark night, our first musical selection fired up, and it was a favorite cut from one of my all-time favorite bands, The Replacements: “Anywhere Is Better Than Here;” an appropriate tune for confused life-filled youth running away into the night, I think. But this was the even better part: the song begins with a long, wrenching, primal scream. I think of it as the birth scream of our endeavor. And then, slowly, and the audience realized that as the song thumped into its heavy bass and drums underpinnings, our curtain began to rise. And the audience was taken completely by surprise. They had no idea there was anything behind the curtain, but as the Replacements thumped away, they could see figures running around, darting here and there on our multiple levels of multi-colored junk. They were in for something that they had not expected, and they were shocked. And delighted. At that moment they all stood up and cheered and clapped. The first and only time in our 28-year history that we got a standing ovation before the end of the show. By our largest audience. For a scene change. Electric.
And, the night flew by. We did our clowning and dancing and rhyming our couplets. It was Shakespeare as a mad party. The audience laughed and cried. And loved it.
At the end of the night, we all went out behind the bandshell, and our stage manager hosed all the dirt and filth off of us.
The best night ever.
(l. to .r.)Matthew Kubala as Flute/Thisby, Clif Swinford as Bottom/Pyramus, Dwayne Menges as Peter Quince, Eric Messner as Starveling/Moonshine, Richard Jewel as Snug/Lion. Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 inaugural Free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Alan Wychek.
We had a great run, and the audiences kept coming out in great numbers, excited and surprised with our interpretation of this much-loved story. And, then, like all plays, it was over. We took it all apart, shoveled out all of the dirt, the city sent a fire truck, and I actually got to use the hose to blast the last of our filthy set out of the shell… and you’d think that would be the end of the story.
However, our first year was also notable for this other bit of trivia: it was the first and only year that we would present two different Shakespeare productions in the park during the same summer. And so, Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival (later to be Harrisburg Shakespeare Company) had begun. And, wasn’t stopping. Because, Romeo and Juliet was just around the corner.
ADDENDUM FROM MELISSA:
Clark asked me to add any remembrances I had from that first park show of Midsummer. Oh man, so many memories! Here are my top 6:
The fairies wore extensive makeup, and I distinctly remember that my “makeup station” was on top of a large City riding lawn mower parked in the basement under the bandshell. There was a flat part of the mower where we placed a lighted makeup mirror, and we took turns sitting in the seat of the mower to paint our faces. Also, Mayor Reed had a boat parked under there as well, and some of us used the boat as a place to sit and do our makeup. Ah, the fumes of riding mower gasoline mixed with the scent of cut grass will forever remind me of Free Shakespeare in the Park!
Our “sound system” for the first few park shows was a large boombox CD/cassette player stationed at the back of the bandshell, turned around facing upstage. We were so worried because we didn’t have any money to rent a sound setup, and then we were like, “Wait a minute, we’re inside a giant megaphone…” That boombox facing the backwall of the bandshell produced enough volume to carry to the top of the hill. Science!
Also, sound-related… We had a grunge-fest free for all dance underscored by Nirvana that the Fairies did after Oberon says, “And ROCK the ground whereon these sleepers be!” And one night someone did not change out the intermission Wyndham Hill CD, so our “rock the ground” consisted of a very pastoral, improvised Fairy ballet, as that seemed to be what the music called for, executed by fairies that had no business doing ballet, but we gave it our best shot.
Clark mentioned the huge black curtain. We hung the curtain on that Wednesday night of Tech Week, and I remember Susan Stachow had the responsibility of hemming the entire curtain so that it would hang properly. We set up two rolling office chairs. She sat in one and the other had a piece of wood across the chair arms and the sewing machine was on top of the piece of wood. She slowly moved her way across the entire width of the bandshell that night hemming that giant curtain. Susan was one of many Angels to help advance Free Shakespeare in the Park!
Clark also mentioned the unexpected turnout on Opening Night. I remember that so well! All of the months leading up to our opening, we had been told by so many people that “Shakespeare doesn’t go over in Harrisburg,” and that it had been tried before and just couldn’t make it. “Stick to children’s theatre - folks love Popcorn Hat Players,” we were told. So, when the cars kept coming, and coming, and coming into the park that night, I was stationed under the bandshell facing the Reservoir Park entrance, and I started to cry from all of the emotion. I knew we had achieved something amazing. I remember some of the other fairies saying, “Stop crying, Melissa, you’ll ruin your makeup!”
And lastly, I remember the neighborhood kids watching our rehearsals and wanting to know what we were doing. By opening they had the whole show memorized, knew the story of Midsummer, and could “magic clap” along with Puck. Each year, we’d have a new crew of kids we’d “adopt” for the summer. Meeting those kids led us to start an education program at Lincoln School (the then-elementary school by Reservoir Park, now administrative offices,) which led us to Ben Franklin School, and then Camp Curtain School and on to an established partnership with the Harrisburg School District. But it all started with kids that wanted to hug you to death, had SO many questions, and “could we have a bag of chips, pleeeeeease?” Psst… I may be known for my strict watch over the Gamut budget, but I always had a bag of chips for our neighborhood regulars!
Some other notables from the inaugural production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
It ran for only four performances: June 18, 19, 25, and 26, 1994.
Almost all of the costumes of note were borrowed: Creeper Al’s in Lemoyne provided fairy costume pieces, Green’s in Camp Hill and Formal Affairs in Harrisburg provided evening wear for the opening scene, of which, we unfortunately, do not have any photos.
Victor Capecce loaned us “Walter” (the ass head.)
The only cast member that we do not have any photos of is Joe Witmer, who played Egeus.
Production Credits:
Directed by Thomas A. Hensel
Assistant Directors: J. Clark Nicholson, Melissa H. Nicholson
Lighting Design: Dennis Bertolette
Set & Costume Design: J. Clark Nicholson
Dance Choreography: Melissa Bailey
Fight Choreography: Bill Eissler
Props Master: Herb Mumma
Production Stage Manager: Jon Halcovage
Assistant Stage Manager: Amy Bowman