View fullsize Pavilion Theatre at Penn State I had resolved to stick with it (acting, theatre, whatever you want to call it), and that fall I started my freshman year at Penn State. The first few weeks were a whirlwind of meeting new people, getting oriented to the campus, attending classes, and being waylaid by … Continue reading Janus—The Resolution
LCTI
Janus—The Show Goes On
June 22, 1967, the day of our first performance arrived. My photo had been in the local paper the day before along with a nice write-up as publicity for the play, and one of my co-workers had spotted it. His name was Pyles; I don’t recall his first name, but I’m sure it wasn’t Gomer. … Continue reading Janus—The Show Goes On
Janus—A Synopsis
View fullsize In the February 13, 1956 edition of Life magazine there was a feature on Janus, which was then running on Broadway. Here is the first page. Click to enlarge Some of the initial reviews of the original production attacked Janus for not being realistic. Well, of course, it isn’t terribly believable, one has … Continue reading Janus—A Synopsis
Janus—A Dress Rehearsal From Hell
View fullsize The Lebanon Daily News was good about giving LCTI publicity for its productions. This piece ran in the June 19, 1967 edition, three days before the opening night. I don’t really know what her intentions were, but I have to assume that Carolyn Green meant for her only Broadway play to be a … Continue reading Janus—A Dress Rehearsal From Hell
Janus—Rehearsals Move To the Set
View fullsize Mary Finney and Robert Preston as Miss Addy and Gil in a scene from the original production of Janus In those days LCTI didn’t have its own permanent performance space. It did have the barn which it had just bought, but it was still undergoing massive rehabilitation, so it wasn’t suitable for rehearsing. … Continue reading Janus—Rehearsals Move To the Set
Janus—Backstage Drama
Our director, John Osborne, was demanding with his actors, and he generally stayed in an upbeat mood with us, but he could be a real terror to deal with if he thought someone wasn’t being straight with him. View fullsize Margaret Sullavan and Claude Dauphin as Jessica and Denny in a scene from the original … Continue reading Janus—Backstage Drama
Janus—Rehearsals Begin
According to the rehearsal schedule, we had just over a month to bring Janus to the stage. Happily two of the three leading parts had been cast with truly outstanding amateur actors, and in another life either or both of them might very well have made choices that would have struck the “amateur” from that … Continue reading Janus—Rehearsals Begin
The One Where I Auditioned
In these posts about incidents and people from my past, I try to write about things that might be of interest to folks today. So humorous incidents, interesting people I’ve known, surprise endings, the sort of thing I can shape into some semblance of a coherent story or anecdote, all these are fair game. … Continue reading The One Where I Auditioned
The One Where I Met Betty Schultz
I mentioned in my last post how Allie (Allyce Mulhern, and I hope I’m remembering her name correctly) approached me about participating in a play reading at Lebanon Valley College (LVC). The single rehearsal was on an evening a few days later at Allie’s home.The play was essentially a short radio play in that it … Continue reading The One Where I Met Betty Schultz
The One Where We Joined LCTI
View fullsize I have no idea whose idea it was. The previous year, when we were Juniors in high school, our classmate Debbie Miller had been a member of the Lebanon Community Theatre (LCTI, the “I” standing for “Inc.”), and it had sounded like a lot of fun. Now Debbie was dearly departed (to New … Continue reading The One Where We Joined LCTI