Flashback: Forever Plaid

This entry is part two in my series of reflections about plays that I have directed, talking about choices I made and things I learned.

In the blistering heat of mid-summer one weekend in 2009, both my parents and I had a nasty stomach flu. Day and night, we lay around the living room—the coolest place in the old non-air-conditioned house—with all the fans on, trying to sleep through as much of it as we could. Man, it was awful. One afternoon, the phone rang. It was HART Theatre out in Hillsboro. I had responded to a notice from them looking for directors for their upcoming season of plays. I was given the second show of the season, Forever Plaid. That phone call turned an otherwise abysmal day of suffering into an abysmal day of suffering with a silver lining. I had been away from theatre since 2001, having gotten a “real” job in retail which, for six years, sucked out my energy and ambition for all creative endeavors. When I quit my job in ’08 and was subsequently unable to find another one (or get back the one I quit which is something I actually wanted), I was at loose ends, flailing in life, directionless, and hopeless. I had no idea that this play—which I really didn’t know much about—would end up being a whole new beginning for me. But that afternoon, I was certainly grateful for something to come into my life.

The first meeting I had at HART was with the two co-artistic directors, Carrie Boatwright and Paula Richmond, along with all the other directors for the season. We all had a notebook full of rules and procedures, and the whole thing—while surely expedient for the ADs—seemed a bit awkward to me. I learned we had to make actors sign in and out of rehearsal, and that no nepotism was allowed. (Gee whiz, what kinda place was this? I did get passed their nepotism rule though; my dad was a huge part of this play, being the voice of the introduction, as well as stage manager.) But it was all right. I was happy to have something to sink my teeth into.

Forever Plaid by Stuart Ross is a musical about a boy band…not the kind of boy band you have now, but the kind they had in the 60s. Not rock and roll, but something of a more barbershop variety. I was completely unfamiliar with this type of music, so I had some research to do. I checked out a bunch of albums from the library of vocal groups from the era. A lot of it was quite dull, but there was some really catchy stuff as well. To this day, I listen to a lot of it that I put on the preshow playlist,  including “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by the Four Lads, “Italian Street Song” by the Hi-Lo’s and “I Like it Like That” by the Crew Cuts.  I researched old Ed Sullivan Show clips on YouTube to get a sense of some of the entertainment that was popular, both for context, and because there was a whole scene dedicated to emulating an episode of that show.  By the time auditions came around, I still felt woefully unprepared in terms of my familiarity with the period, but I thought I could fake it well enough.

I had only directed one musical in the past…and that show had been an unmitigated disaster (in spite of having some good people involved)!  And regarding this, I didn’t fake it; I was very honest about what I would need to make this thing fly. And fortunately for me, I had an amazing vocal director (Alice Dalrymple) and choreographer (Kate Jahnson) already lined up to do the essential things that I knew I couldn’t do. Like most musicals, Plaid is mostly song and dance, and so the success of this show was mostly theirs, and of course the performers who did such an awesome job.

That last point about performers was a minor miracle though. We had very, very few auditions. All four of the characters were young men, and I think we had six auditioning for us. Three of them were former students of Alice’s, and that’s why they were there. They were cast, not for that reason, but because they were the best singers. And then we just happened to have a guy show up who could sing a bass part. In the end, it was so easy…so little to choose from, yet the perfect cast. There did happen to be one actor I wanted to cast because I had seen him rock an amazing performance in a production of Dog Sees God, and I knew that he was an up-and-coming star in the Portland theatre scene. (I was right too; everybody now knows who this person is.)  But I had to defer to Alice’s expertise in putting the right group of vocalists together, and I don’t regret it at all. (As for this other actor I wanted to cast, I’m quite sure we’ll work together some day.)

Preliminary rehearsals took place a few blocks from the theater in the Pythian building (which I affectionately called the Python). It’s sort of a lodge, like Elks or Masons or Odd Fellows. It’s got that sort of ancient, dark, dank, and haunted feeling about it. You climb up a narrow flight of stairs (which had a broken track along the side for one of those chairs you can ride up and down, like that mean lady from Gremlins had, which was sabotaged and sped her up super fast before tossing her ass out the window) and go through a few rooms that seem to have no purpose, and into a giant carpeted hall with weird shaped wooden tables and podiums all over the place. You feel like you should be wearing a robe and a funny hat, in preparation for some bizarre ritual.

Kate had told me that not every song would require a lot of choreography, so she was going to primarily focus on the ones that were big dance numbers, leaving me to come up with the small flourishes of movement that the rest of the songs required. This terrified me. I mean, terrified. And with good reason. The first song we worked on was “Three Coins in a Fountain”, and I’m thinking to myself, Okay, how can I visually express this? So I had them slowly raise their arms in unison with three fingers indicated to show that, indeed, they meant three coins and not four or five. It was a little embarrassing, but I was surprised by some of the things that I came up with, of course with some help from the cast and even my dad who came up with a smart movement during “Moments to Remember” where they all took pictures of their loved ones from wallets and passed them around.

I had initially intended to attend vocal and dance rehearsals, but after a few, I quickly realized that for the observer who wasn’t participating, it got quite tedious and repetitive. And I realized that I trusted Alice and Kate with what they were doing, so I didn’t need to supervise. I’d have a chance to scrutinize everything later anyway, when we put the pieces together. There may have been a few things that I was dissatisfied with in Kate’s choreography that I may have brought up to be tweaked a bit, but I honestly don’t remember. Mostly I was thrilled beyond measure at the talent and work that both Alice and Kate put in. As director, all I had to do was fill in the pieces in between the numbers. (With a few notable exceptions; for the Ed Sullivan piece, three out of the four actors frantically came on and off the stage several times as various famous acts that appeared on the show, like Señor Wences, Jose Jimenez, and Topo Gigio. This all had to be timed very carefully and blocked in such a way that nobody ran into each other…unless they were supposed to.)  And that was pretty simple to do. I was also able to work with the actors on character analysis a little more than I think you would usually see in a musical like this. I honestly think some directors would not have bothered, but it really added depth and texture to the piece. There was an element of tragedy to this story, and also a lovely portrait of friendship and camaraderie, which was very important to me to capture. I wanted the audience to feel like they knew these characters, apart from the song and dance. And I think they did, thanks to the thoughtful and emotionally open performances of Frank Strauhal, Joe Aicher, Erick Valle, and Leland Redburn.

I don’t remember if Alice was always going to be the accompanist on the show, or if that just happened because we couldn’t find another one. It worked out great though because the relationship was already there between her and the actors, and the piano player is a character in the show, so the familiarity really helped. There is a very amusing moment in the script where Frank introduces the piano player, and he would give her different names on different nights. A couple of the names never made it beyond rehearsal because they caused hysterical laughter which made it hard for the actors to go on with the scene. I regret that audiences never got to hear Alice introduced as Nelly Belly or Blanket Jackson, but it’s probably for the best.

For a long time we were panicking over who was going to be our bass player, another musician who was onstage the whole time. I did know a guy from my former job who played bass, but really didn’t imagine he’d be interested. But I just walked into the store one day and asked him, and he surpassingly said okay. That’s how Chris Ronek and I started what would end up being a fairly frequent creative collaboration over the years; I’ve relied on him not only for his playing, but also composing in other works I’ve done that required original music.  

Forever Plaid is a prop-heavy show, and my dad and I worked with Paula to track down the many, many things the show required: various instruments (maracas, claves, melodica, accordion, hi-hat), puppets, stuffed animals, bamboo sticks, candles, an old school Milk of Magnesia bottle (supplied by my friend Holly Heft), and much more. Many of the items Paula sent out for from another company who had produced the show in the past; most of these props were rather terrible, like the Perry Como cardigan and the fake Plaid albums. We used most of it, but we made our own albums with the help of my friend Michael Stringfield, who also did all the promo shooting for the play. (It was a very good day with the gang, piled up in our van going to various locations like Mt Tabor Park and the Grotto. The guys had their beautiful teal plaid jackets on—which we ordered from another company—and we walked into a Plaid Pantry waiting for someone to comment, but they never did.) The album covers Michael did ranged from classy to campy and hilarious. It was nice getting a comment from Carrie and Paula that we had, in those covers, really captured the essence of this play and its lovable characters.

Another outside talent we had to recruit was Rose Barclay, who showed Leland the art of fire-eating, which was a part of the Sullivan sequence. And on top of that, she gave the guys incredibly authentic period haircuts, which took several hours (glad I also didn’t feel the need to supervise that).

Once rehearsals shifted from the Python to the actual theatre, it was exhilarating to own and occupy that space. I came to love the HART theatre space. I loved the stage, the auditorium, the prop room, the little storage cubby in the lobby, the lobby itself, the kitchen. I loved being there. I felt so alive and at home. In a way, I loved it too much because I wanted to be actively involved in things like lobby decoration, and Carrie and Paula discouraged that. “Just focus on what’s on the stage”, they said, but that’s not the kind of director and creator I am. I ended up going behind their backs and sticking Michael’s art on the lobby walls, and while I got a lecture, they didn’t take it down. The people coming in to see the show were quite fascinated by it.  

The set was fun to conceptualize and to build. I’ve always had a fetish for royal blue and silver, so that was the color palette we used for the backdrops. Four 4x8 flats to make two entrances, in addition to a raised platform with two 4x8 flats as the backdrop, and a beautiful fabric rendering of the title, created by Paula. Behind the platform and off the exits to the sides were the many, many props that were used. There was a lot of coming and going. There was a smoke machine and two bubble machines, one on each side. (Unfortunately, one of the bubble machines—provided by Chris—was quite impressive, putting out a lot of stuff, but we couldn’t find another one like it, and ended up getting a really wimpy one from Party City, and so what was coming from the left side of the stage didn’t match at all what was coming from the right.) There was supposed to be a mirror ball, but our technical director couldn’t get it to work right, so we had to do without.

Prop work and set work became a family project. Dad and I picked up four wooden stools and painted them black; they were an integral part of the show, used mostly during slow numbers. Dad also put together the long-handled plungers that were used in the crowd favorite, “Crazy About You Baby”. My brother Mark was recruited to build the storage area behind the backdrop, so that everything would have a neat place to go. Actually, he also helped build the backdrop. My mother worked on props, like the plaid package that opens for a little Mexican doll to pop out. All in all, I loved the way both family and friends were drawn into this, and I have since longed for that kind of involvement from my creative friends since then, but it’s been mostly elusive.

The unique sense of joy I experienced when doing this show, which has been mostly unsurpassed in my other shows before or since, got the better of me, in that I felt the need to document everything. I decided to make a documentary video about the process, taping bits of vocal warm-ups, interviews with cast and crew, and backstage antics. I hung out backstage a lot, because I just loved the people, and wanted to be in the thick of it. But not everyone was happy with the video or my presence backstage. At least one person was quite uncomfortable with it, and I did not know this until I had already offended the person, and by then it was too late to undo. (Attempts by me to work with this actor again have been unsuccessful.) It was a hard lesson. When you’re a director, you have to have a sense of detachment. You’re not one of the cast. You’re not their “friend”; you’re the director, and it means there are boundaries.

On a happier note, someone got it in their head that we should do a little something extra for the closing matinee audience. We settled upon a performance of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. We went to Frank’s place—then in Beaverton—and they rehearsed the song several times and ran lines. That was a lot of fun, and I did tape most of it. When the show was over on that Sunday, they came out, out of character, and performed the song, which the audience seemed to really think was a nice bonus. It added some “sweet” to the always-bittersweet nature of closing.

In the years following, I tried several times to get Plaid Tidings, the holiday sequel of sorts, produced, but was unsuccessful. I really wanted to bring all the same people back, because that was the magic that made our production so good. But eventually it became clear that they were not all interested in doing it again, so I lost interest. Then recently, I got the opportunity to do it at HART (of all places), and even though I knew I couldn’t get all the same people, I was going to have a go at it anyway. But like before, there were very few people who came to audition, this time too few. Things fell through the cracks, and truthfully, I’m okay with it. Forever Plaid was an amazing experience, and I’m not at all sure that that kind of lightning was meant to strike twice.