Peg Guilfoyle - Offstage Voices: Life in Twin Cities Theater

The publication of the book was funded in part by the Elmer L. and Eleanor Andersen Publications Fund.

Text 2015 by Peg Guilfoyle. Other materials 2015 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN: 978-0-87351-970-0 (paper)

ISBN: 978-0-87351-971-7 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guilfoyle, Peg, 1960

Offstage voices : life in Twin Cities theater / Peg Guilfoyle ; foreword by Sally Wingert.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-87351-970-0 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-87351-971-7 (ebook)

1. TheaterMinnesotaMinneapolisHistory20th century. 2. TheaterMinnesotaSt. PaulHistory20th century. I. Title.

PN2277.M54G85 2015

792.097765790904dc23

2015019902

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Book design by Wendy Holdman

Actor Sally Wingert. (Photo courtesy of Sally Wingert)

Shh, lets just keep this to ourselves.

As an actor in the Twin Cities, I live somewhere between pride and fear.

Pride, that our cities support a vibrant, truly progressive theater scene. This is a community that encourages new work, companies large and small, challenging ideas, and innovative productions by financially enabling the work and, as importantly, actually seeing it.

Fear, that our theater scene will become known to the rest of the country and we will be inundated with actors moving here to make the kind of careers they had always hoped to have.

Selfish? Possibly.

Our Twin Cities are enviable places to be a theater artist, as Offstage Voices makes abundantly clear. Here it is possible to be an actor and a parent, a director and a homeowner, a set designer and a community organizerall while doing our theater work at a very high level. We live here and thrive because theater is more than a once-a-year event for our audiences. It has become a necessary part of their cultural landscape.

Theres something in this book for everyonethe audience, the practitioners, educators, young people considering a life in the theater, their parents. The voices here come from every corner of our communityplaywrights, producers, directors, designers, and performerstalking about the excitement, the joy, and the deep satisfaction a life in the theater gives them. These voiceswhich I hear in person, every day in my work, both on stage and offhave plenty to say, both insightful and cautionary. In the thick of rehearsing and performing, its hard to talk about the how and why of what we do or to grab time with our friends to anecdotally discuss the work. Offstage Voices allows me to listen in on those stories and at the same time lets our audiences get to know us a little more personally.

The theater world changes constantly, morphing as artistic minds respond to our world, the cultural landscape, the next new thought. Theres a healthy climate here that encourages theaters to emerge and, sometimes, be dismantled. I could not have guessed, almost forty years ago, what the face of Twin Cities theater would look like today. I was graduating from high school in a near-western suburb, seeing shows at the Cricket, Dudley Riggss Brave New Workshop, and the Guthrie, among other places. I was about to dip my toe into the scene and audition for roles at theaters that are now no more than a memory. What began as a toe dip turned into a lifelong swim, a true love affair for me, and a sustaining career.

The first time I remember seeing Peg Guilfoyle, she was wrangling a live horse on the Guthrie stage for a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. The duties of a production stage manager are wide ranging, including figuring out how the young actors with brooms and buckets could keep close enough to Dolly so if the mare felt an urge they could respond, quickly. In her time as Guthrie production manager, and at other theaters, Peg capably wrangled many actors, directors, shows, and entire seasons.

Peg has been a friend and cohort since 1985; her depth of experience and profound love of the theater make this book an insiders guide to the hows and whys of our local theater world. She has asked us about our lives in the theater, allowed us to recall the past and muse about whats next.

In the answers, Offstage Voices captures the pulse and temperature of our theater world as it stands right here, right now. Its a portrait of the people who make it happen, in their own words. They tell it like it is with candor and humor.

Youll find personal truths about the state of our theater scene: how it came about and how it might evolve in the future, what its like to live and work in the Twin Cities. Youll find the answers to questions, both pragmatic and poetic, about how theater is made. Want to know how a play gets written and finds a home on area stages? How an artistic director begins selecting a season? Or how people have gotten their start in the theater? The answers are here.

And youll find some answers to the question why? These discussions are ones Id like to have with my compatriots, if we only had time.

Im an actor, living in St. Paul. This is my community. These are the stories, recollections, and dreams of my colleagues, speaking from offstage and deep in the heartbeat of theater life.

Enjoy. Im off to rehearsal.

I am deeply grateful to the offstage voices who sat with me as I prepared this book. It was a treat and a thrill to step outside the daily hurly-burly of the theater and talk about why and how this work is done.

Great gratitude to Lou Bellamy, Sarah Bellamy, Sonya Berlovitz, Bain Boehlke, Michael Brindisi, Peter Brosius, Carlyle Brown, Chris Code, Jesse Cogswell, Jeremy Cohen, Richard Cohen, Richard Cook, Marcus Dilliard, Teresa Eyring, Barbara Field, Nathaniel Fuller, Bradley Greenwald, Rich Hamson, H. Adam Harris, Michelle Hensley, Alberto Justiniano, Aditi Kapil, Kevin Kling, Wendy Knox, Jeff Larson, C. Andrew Mayer, Tyler Michaels, John Miller-Stephany, Bonnie Morris, Dipankar Mukherjee, Kira Obolensky, Ron Peluso, T. Mychael Rambo, Jack Reuler, Randy Reyes, Michael Robins, Peter Rothstein, Joel Sass, Rick Shiomi, Anna Sundberg, Kate Sutton-Johnson, Christine Tschida, Ricardo Vazquez, and Sally Wingert. I also had a stirring group conversation with students from the 2014 Minnesota Centennial Showboat production: Bear Brummel, Katherine Fried, Jane Heer, Kelsey Peterjohn, and Daniel Piering, all from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program. Jeffrey Hatcher gave permission to quote materials from his play Jeffrey Hatchers Hamlet. I have retold a few stories here from my own The Guthrie Theater: Images, History, and Inside Stories (Nodin Press, 2006), and added many more.