Part 1, 1975-1977
(circa 1965 to 1977)
In every show that is performed there are always incidents that the audience is unaware of. Sometimes it occurs because the actor makes a mistake, at other times it happens when something quite unexpected goes wrong. Those of you who have acted on stage know that the show the audience sees is sometimes unrehearsed.
FOOTLIGHT THEATRE COMPANY had its beginning in 1965 or 1966 as BURNABY CIVIC OPERA, performing excerpts from light operas such as “Trial by Jury”, “La Traviata, Act II”, “The Gypsy Baron”, “The Count of Luxembourg”,“Pink Champagne”, “The Merry Widow”, and many others.
In 1971 Burnaby Civic Opera put on an original show called “Bonanza Creek 1871” for British Columbia’s Centennial year. It was written by Harry Mossfield with music by Theo Gould. At that time I became a member and sang in the chorus, learning a lot about community theatre, and actor’s egos. I was quite taken aback when a young female lead of 20 complained to me about how upset she was, being cast as a 40 year old. I must admit I was quite surprised, because she looked 40, and I was 40.
In the fall of 1975 the group changed its name to HERITAGE MUSICAL THEATRE. As the club wanted to start performing Broadway musicals, they staged ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. I was cast as Mrs. Sylvia Potter-Porter, the “over-the hill Gibson Girl” who is trying to steal Frank Butler (Gary McGill) from Annie Oakley (Roxanne Harper). Backstage I was affectionately known as “Porta-Potty”!
In the final show during the scene onboard ship when Annie shoots a seagull, someone dropped a facsimile of a seagull from the catwalk. The cast was surprised, as this hadn’t happened in previous performances; however the audience thought it was part of the show…..too bad it wasn’t!
We took ANNIE GET YOUR GUN to Nanaimo, complete with a truckload of scenery and costumes, only to find there had been little or no advertising done. Our venue was a high school gymnasium, and there were three other concerts going on in the city at that time. We had a total audience of 25, and needless to say we lost a lot of money on this venture! We had to put on many fundraising projects to get out of debt.
Some of us girls formed a group called “The Fabulous Frowzies” and we would close these fundraisers by coming through the audience as “charwomen”, ad-libbing with the audience and ending up on stage. We’d sing “Hey, Big Spender” and do a pseudo strip-tease. One of the girls fastened water filled balloons inside her top, and one night the wife of a plastic surgeon spoke to her, suggesting that she have plastic surgery to correct her problem before she got any older!
In the spring of 1976 we performed a lesser known musical, ANNIE LAURIE. It is the story of the courtship of Jean Armour by Robbie Burns. I was Mrs. Armour, Jean’s mother. Our director was attending Drama classes at UBC and took no fee for directing the show. He had his professors attend a performance for this “thesis”, which helped us with the loss of revenue from ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. There were winners all around!
And so we embarked on a theatrical journey to raise money for our club. We traveled to the PNE, nursing homes, conventions, senior’s activity centers, and even to Hope for the Hope Brigade Days. Slowly but surely we began to build a bank account for future shows.
We decided to do a big popular musical in the fall of 1976, so we chose FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, which was a huge success. I was in the chorus, and also had the great pleasure of playing Grandma Tzeitel in the dream scene; this was a lot of fun!
We rehearsed the complicated opening number “Tradition” for one month, only to learn we had to do the routine set down by the original Broadway Choreographer for that song. That’s what we were told; so back we went to square one to unlearn, then learn a new, different and complicated opening.
In 1977 we staged GODSPELL in the spring, and HERE’S LOVE for the Christmas Season. HERE’S LOVE is a delightful musical which was based on the classic film “Miracle On 34th Street”. I played Miss Crookshank, secretary to the psychiatrist, who was to assess Santa Claus’ mental stability. The scene immediately following the intermission was one in which Santa was to teach me a song, while waiting for the doctor.
One performance, I was waiting behind the closed curtains, wondering where Santa was. The orchestra started to play our music and I knew we should begin singing as soon as the curtain opened. In the meantime Santa Claus was standing behind the mid-stage traveler, telling the crew they were setting up the wrong scene.
On stage, the curtains opened and I said “Where is that man? He’s late for his appointment”. I went to the desk and frantically started dialing the telephone. Meanwhile one of the crew realized what was happening and pushed Santa on stage just in time for me to look up, hang up the phone and say “There you are, you’re late!”. We then started with the dialogue that followed the song. The audience never suspected what had happened, but I sure did!
In another scene, Fred Gaily (Roy Fairbairn) and Doris Walker (Adele Clark) had a romantic scene which ended with a kiss. Roy had touched up the white spots in his beard; after the tender scene Roy gazed fondly at Adele and realized that the colour had come off his beard and onto her mouth. Roy fully intended to apologize as soon as they were off stage, however as Adele took a deep breath to sing, her blouse popped open, and Roy’s good intentions flew out the window!
For the final scene, the Stage Manager had devised a snowfall of artificial snow to fall on the cast as they walked along singing “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas”. Every night the crew had the tedious job of cleaning up this “snow” for the next performance, so they had placed a tarpaulin on the stage to make the task easier. However no one had told the actors! During the court scene when the judge said “Do what?”, Roy turned abruptly, and hurrying to the bench to deliver his reply, skidded from downstage to upstage without taking a step, bringing a loud “Whooooo!” from the entire audience!