To The Theatre

“To live a life useful.”

“To live a life useful” is the motto for Alpha Psi Omega, the National Dramatic Honorary Society. I am glad to be a member of this organization and have tried to live a life useful in the theatre. It hasn’t been easy. But that is what Alpha Psi Omega is about – the theatre; most specifically, college theatre. I remember during the initiation into this organization thinking about how I could be useful to the world of theatre. Most of my friends and fellow actors at the time went on to work in other areas – business, medicine, computer programming, etc… but not me. I had to be in the theatre. Don’t get me wrong, anyone can live a life that is useful; from a concrete mixer all the way to a college instructor. Usefulness is present in all walks of life, that much is obvious. My contribution to usefulness just happens to be in the theatre. I learned my values as a theatre artist at Thiel College.

Quite simply, my experience at Thiel College changed my life. I know it sounds so cliché, but it’s true. I discovered theatre, and the theatre was the first place where anything had made sense to me during my life to that point. At 18, that matters! By 26, that had become a goal. I went onto graduate studies in the theatre arts at Marquette University and set out to work at a small college where I could offer students the same opportunities and growth that Thiel had provided for me; a place where the arts would enhance the personal experience of young students, help them to grow, help them to find themselves perhaps. Not necessarily big time Broadway, but it made sense to me. I was lucky enough to have found such a gig at Penn State New Kensington, if only for a little while.

The strength of Thiel and PSNK and Pittsburgh Technical Institute (where I now work) and other similar schools is in working with students who are not performing arts majors. What they lack in talent or experience or trainable skill, they make up for in enthusiasm. With passion, dedication, hard work, they somehow do more even if they are studying something else entirely. And isn’t that what we want teaching to be about in its truest form? I would rather take 10 students who really care about the process and help them develop through rehearsals and onto a rewarding opening night than follow 5 mega stars who could do it without my guidance on Broadway. It’s just what I am made of.

I am indebted to Dr. Donald Bruckner and to the late Jackie Kallal for giving me my start at PSNK; and for all of the wonderful students and friends I met while working on that stage for 5 years, 10 shows, 31 live performances in front of a couple hundred people, roughly 300 rehearsal sessions and close to 1,000 hours of rehearsal. Wow! That is a lot….all for 62 hours of performance. Say it with me, guys and gals: “football players practice, actors rehearse.” It’s a mantra.

The beauty of working in the arts (and a lot of fields) is the time spent in preparing, the interaction with the students, the 13 hour days, the skipping of holidays and family time and yes, even Steelers games; the building of the set and sometimes rebuilding of the set – just to get a show up in time. The audience never sees that. They never see the whole cast and crew (and yes, even the director) on their knees cleaning the stage of confetti one night so that it can be tossed all over everywhere again the next night during the show; or the running of lines over and over again until they are actually memorized and finally sound logical; or the magic of hitting that note just right at the first audition and hitting it at every rehearsal and performance thereafter.

While we tend to love performing, I think most actors, and certainly most directors, enjoy the process more. It is the making of the art that challenges us – not the show. So while we go about trying to be useful, you are entertained. And we thank you for that opportunity. We truly do.

My experience in the theatre holds so many cherished memories that I cannot even begin to recount them. No matter the show, be it Shakespeare or a musical, it is a pursuit toward usefulness that drives us, motivates us, inspires us. And for me it was a joy. Working at PSNK theatre was an absolute joy. I learned a lot, hopefully taught a few things along the way and left as a better artist than I had entered.

For those who wish to pursue the theatre – do it! Keep acting, keep writing, keep dancing, keep directing, and in the end you will find your place. It may be New York, it may be Pittsburgh, it may be…anywhere. But you have to pursue it. Live your life useful!

People often ask me why I didn’t go to LA or New York. Well, I kind of knew that my hand would be better used elsewhere, that I could be useful in my own small way, in my own small town. And, honestly, I realized at an early stage of the process that I am a better director than I am an actor. More so, I believe in teaching the script first, believe in teaching the play more than directing it. It is a fine line.

Of everything I obtained from PSNK, a personal motto stays with me the most: “Without risks we are not artists, we are imitators.” That notion arose while we were working on Pippin in 2004, and I believe in those words. I really do. A student thought we should just do everything that was on the DVD from a 1970s touring production of the same show. I disagreed. Out of our argument came the notion that we just can’t copy what someone else has already done. We need to create! This was to be ours, if it was to be anything at all; we were artists – not imitators. I directed what I envisioned from the script as an artist not an imitator. For the record, we got three standing ovations, one for each night of that show.

About Thiel College. My mentor and professor, Dr. William A. Robinson (Dr. Bill to all Thiel Players), taught me everything I needed to know for a career in college theatre. He once interviewed for a job at PSNK – back in 1975 or 1976. He was hired at Thiel College first, and ironically that opened the door for Lil Coury to take her job at PSNK – a job she held until 2003 when she retired and opened the door for me to work there. Think about the sequence: Dr. Bill almost worked where I got my first job, but I was lucky enough to have studied under him at Thiel. He attended my first professional production at PSNK, which I only had the opportunity to do when Lil Coury retired. Life has a funny way of working out. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I didn’t even know the town of New Kensington existed. Now it is an integral part of who I am.

I thank everyone I met along the way for any small part you played in my success, and I wish you the best while you live your own life useful. I will wrap up in the same fashion I ended every rehearsal: “Questions? Comments? Concerns? Criticisms? None? Than that’s a night. See you next time…"

But What's in a Jersey?

We have the ability to take stands. This aspect of humanity connects us with the animals to some degree, though they are driven by instinct whereas we are driven by logic and emotions. (And, typically, our stands aren’t quite as bloody as those between a bull and a ram.) Sometimes we have great difficulty balancing the two – logic and emotion – and this often gets us into trouble. If we had a red light to tell us which to use in any given situation, we would be a much more successful species. Our right to take a stand, however, doesn’t have to represent something larger because we can choose to stand up for small things or for things that matter only to us. I have taken one such small stand by not wearing a jersey of a player on my favorite football team.

Allow a digression as means of explanation. I, for instance, reserve the right each year to be a fair-weather basketball fan. I just don’t like the sport enough to care unless the University of Pittsburgh or Marquette University on the college level, or the Boston Celtics on the professional level, are doing well. If they lose, I don’t watch; when they win, I scream and hoot and holler and root. It’s the one area where I am dispassionate about certain sports teams.

On a larger scale, I take a stand on things such as education and family values. I absolutely stand firm in keeping my children away from bad things and bad people and bad places, and yes even bad relatives, in the world that only do more harm than good. Through action we parent; through dis-action, we end up with regret.

One stand I took in 2010 concerned my aforementioned favorite football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. I like to think that I am not a Yinzer. For those unaware, a Yinzer is a Steelers fan, usually from Pittsburgh, who thinks they know everything, thinks they would make all the right calls on the field, and somehow takes credit when the Steelers win but points a big foam finger elsewhere when the team loses. It is the kind of person who will say, “We beat the Raiders by blocking down,” or “We need to fire Coach So-and-So.” I try to avoid the “we” comments. I am sure no Steelers players know me, and I am even more certain I have never done anything to help them win or cause them to lose. Yet, I am a devoted fan. I am just not the kind of guy who will spread rumors about gay quarterbacks and divorcing coaches when the team has 6 wins and 10 loses only to praise the same Kordell and Cowher when they beat the Ravens. Ever notice how that talk seems to follow when the team is lousy but never rears itself when they are in the play-offs? Huh, I wonder why?

Anyway, to my Stand.

There are few who will disagree that the Steelers current QB, Ben Roethlisberger, has been a jerk the last few years. As much as I admire his athletic skills and leadership abilities, I have to think that when he took a knee at the end of the AFC Championship in January 2011, his prayer went something like this: “Dear Lord, whom I believe in when I win, thank you for good lawyers who got me out of trouble in Georgia last summer.” (I might be paraphrasing.)

Sure, he has been a model citizen and yes I want him to win his third Super Bowl in six years. However, I decided in August of 2010 that I would make a personal protest by not wearing his jersey for a year. I wore it briefly last week only because I thought I would need an extra layer against a cold night…I was wrong. It is already back on a hanger and out of sight, and here is why.

That Big Ben had a great season in 2010 does not dictate that he will be a Good Little Boy in the off-season. It is how he deals with success when he has nothing to focus upon that will make or break his legacy not as a quarterback, but as a human being. It is easy to behave when you are focused and pre-occupied. Any good parent knows that a kid starts to get into trouble sometime after they get bored. Thus, such a parent keeps their kid busy, or at least full of options that will not allow them to get bored in the first place.

When all the cameras are off, when CBS and NBC are focused on their spring and summer line-ups, when the seats in Heinz Field are doing nothing more than absorbing the sun’s rays, when Steelers Nation is on vacation, when the bars are open late, when Ben’s entourage doesn’t want to go out and play, when the summer doldrums set in, when the excitement and thrill and passion of a football season wears off and Ben Roethlisberger is still a well-behaved and dignified human being, THEN I will pull out my number 7 jersey (which was a gift by a team of really great students, by the way!) that I really do enjoy wearing, and I will put this all behind me.

I believe in second chances, I really do. I also have two daughters. They may never ask, but for them I have taken a personal stand. I am disappointed in myself for having sported my Roethlisberger jersey last week, but I too deserve a small and inconsequential second chance. If Ben is still a nice guy after his recent success, then I will welcome him back to the fold. Winning isn’t everything that a Yinzer would make it out to be. You can win the game with a touchdown, but to win respect you have to be in it for the long haul.