Big Fish

So I'm sitting on the couch of my lovely in-laws, Martin and Nancy Goodpasture in The Villages, FL. This is the first visit to the Orlando area when I didn't saunter to Disney World or Universal Studios...and GAY DAYS are happening just as I type! Boy did I ever mess things up this time!!

Before Terrance and I flew to Florida, I just finished piano/conducting the run of a hauntingly beautiful musical, Big Fish. This is the first musical I have directed for Playhouse Merced, a company that I began my theatre experience with 37 years earlier when I auditioned for Frederick in THE SOUND OF MUSIC at CSU Stanislaus. Back then, the young theatre company was called Central California Conservatory Theatre (or "Triple C-T"). I was 13 and my voice was in the middle of a very long change. The audition day didn't go all that well, as this obedient Assemblies of God minister's son, had resisted the sinful urge to dance until that morning of auditions. I remember that my audition number was #10 but I remained in the lobby with Joanne trying to get my feet to dance the Ländler until I was finally sent in with the #60 group. Due to my voice changing, I couldn't sing, "Do Re Mi," in the key of C and asked the audition accompanist to play it in G for me (how naive was I)! Ever kind, Yvonne Field transposed it for me. That night when I didn't receive a call-back, I was crushed and called my choir teacher (Madelyn Maechler) who pulled a few strings and the next morning I received a call from Sandra Dinse, inviting me to the morning call-backs...I was the rehearsal accompanist and played the altar boy in the Wedding.

CCCT profoundly changed my life, as it allowed me to find a place of belonging (in the beginning, I honestly suspected that my parents found a way to pay the people at CCCT to be kind to me, since my experience there was lovely compared to my life at school) and also allowed me to see what being gay was like for people in the non-pentecostal world. I also made wonderful friends and learned so so much from Yvonne Field and Sandra Dinse.

But on to BIG FISH. BIG FISH connected with me in such profound ways as, both a son and as a father. The story addresses parental fallibility and forgiveness. I have found myself needing to forgive and also asking for forgiveness and this show tugged me on both fronts! I wish two people had been able to see the show, but somehow couldn't manage to get either of them there. But, OH, was it good to be back! Playhouse Merced had a few transformations from CCCT to PHM, but my heart, again, found it to be a place of welcome and belonging for my soul...and the story we were telling couldn't have been more personally meaningful!

Shortly after my arrival in Florida, PHM asked me to musically-direct ROCK OF AGES; so I have a few weeks before we hold auditions and begin rehearsals. ;)