Adventures in Musical Theater Land

Just about a year ago I released “More Fog, Please,” my one and only non-fiction book, a memoir of some of my “adventures” directing community and high school musicals over a period of thirty-one years. It truly was a delight to revisit some of the eighty shows I directed during that time, and to recall my interesting experiences when using stage fog … hence, the name, suggested by my terrific editor, Ashleigh Evans.

I’ve had a nice response to the book and at present it is being offered at a reduced price both on Amazon.com ($10.95) and at the Pocono Cinema and Cultural Center in East Stroudsburg ($10.00). I name lots of names, because every show involved a small army of people all working together to produce some pretty darned good shows! If you were involved in Pocono Lively Arts (1984-2007), Black Sheep Productions (2008-2011), Stroudsburg High School (1974-1990), East Stroudsburg H.S. and later ESHS South (1991-2015) musicals, you may find yourself in these pages. I wish I could have included every person who contributed, and I named as many as I could.

By request, there are also signed copies of not only this book but also my four novels (How I Grew Up, Eli’s Heart, You Are My Song, and Jamie’s Children) available at the theater. Books can be purchased whenever the theater is open. Don’t forget ─ books make fine Christmas gifts! People tell me it’s a “fun read.” It certainly was an enjoyable “write”! NOTE: A share of the proceeds from book sales goes to help support the theater, so you’re giving to two good causes: a wonderful community theater and a “starving author.”

SOME COMMENTS FROM READERS:

“More Fog, Please” is Susan Moore Jordan’s affectionate and witty look at her 31 years of directing community and high school musical productions. The director has selected her favorites from some 80 musicals and (she) describes perils, successes, things that made the show particularly memorable. The fog of the title appears more than once, sometimes with near-disastrous consequences. It is a testament to the excellence of the productions that many participants have gone on to careers in music and the theater. Producers and directors of amateur musicals will find a great deal to love in “More Fog, Please,” but every reader will be entertained by the lively narrative which shows the drama behind the drama.

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"More Fog, Please" is an incredibly captivating, quaint, beautiful portrait of community theater in small-town Pennsylvania. With stories about some well-known musicals, and other not-so-well-known musicals, the memoirs in this book have something for everyone. Susan Moore Jordan brings these productions back to life in a way I didn't think possible, bringing a new respect to the hard work and dedication that it takes to put on a successful show. 

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The book is written in a familiar, graceful style as if you are sitting across from the author sharing a cup of tea and swapping tales. She gently brings the reader through many of her productions. The ups and downs, the mishaps and calamities, but through it all, she puts a face and history to the many people, young and old who she worked countless hours with, and the many challenges they all had to face building a successful production.

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Capping a remarkable musical career, Susan Jordan has published her memoir of 31 years of directing amateur theater for Pocono Lively Arts (P.L.A.) and Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg High Schools. A reminiscence of 80 shows from 1984 to 2015, “More Fog, Please” highlights all the measures – moving, stressful, comical, scary – that confirmed the old adage “the show must go on.” For anyone connected with any of Jordan's productions, this easy read will be a delightful trip down memory lane. For those in the audience, it is a peak at the months of creative labors that bore the fruitful stage production you enjoyed. For those aspiring to be directors, it is an enlightening, encouraging, engaging must-read.

www.susanmoorejordan.com  Amazon author page: http://tinyurl.com/osmvab 

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/sjordanauthor/

Cover by Tristan Flanagan

“More Fog, Please” Musical Book Signing

The Pocono Cinema and Cultural Center was the site of an enjoyable and melodic evening of songs from several great musicals! The theater generously allowed us to host a “musical book signing” for “More Fog, Please”: 31 Years Directing Community and High School Musicals. A dozen performers from over thirty years of shows shared memories and music.

The theater set up a lovely display for all my books. This is one of the two tables.

Long-time friend and colleague Linda Schaller was pianist for the evening.

 

Jeff and Tassy Gilbert started the evening with a duet, “Heather on the Hill,” from Brigadoon, reprising the roles of Tommy and Fiona they had performed in 1985 for Pocono Lively Arts.

Jamie Snee performed “Christmas Lullaby” from Songs for a New World, the first production presented by Black Sheep in 2008.

Amanda and Melanie Meilinger sang “Hold On/You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a medley from The Secret Garden and Carousel, arranged by Marti Lantz especially for the evening. The sisters had never sung together on stage since Amanda was a senior when Mel was a freshman at ESHS South. Amanda was  Martha in 2010 and Melanie was Nettie in 2013.

Two great songs from Ragtime by the cast members from the 2011 Black Sheep Production: Rebecca Roeber as Mother singing “Back to Before,” and Rodney West as Coalhouse Walker, Jr. presenting “Make Them Hear You.”

 After all that drama, we needed to lighten the mood, so Kelly Foley and Jane Asher entertained us with “The Stepsisters’ Lament” from Cinderella, a show I directed three times: 1984, 1993 and 1999.

Back to more drama as John Coakley performed “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha. John performed the title role at ESHS South in 2004 and stopped the show every time!

We ended with Gilbert and Sullivan, the trio “Away, away! My heart’s on fire!”  from The Pirates of Penzance. Kurt Moucha reprised his role as Frederic and Kelly and Dale Foley their roles of Ruth and the Pirate King in the 1993 Pocono Lively Arts production. 

The audience adjourned to the lobby to select books!

(all photos by Tristan Flanagan)

Musings of an Indie Author

Bits and Pieces

So I had a nice surprise this morning when I received an e-mail from the music librarian at the University of Cincinnati library. We’ve been corresponding for a while now, and it’s his responsibility to keep track of “U.C. Authors” – of which I am one, by virtue of my three years as a student at the College-Conservatory of Music from 1955-1958. Paul Cauthen was nice enough to mention me in the library’s blog and give a plug to my most recent and only non-fiction book, “More Fog, Please.” There’s a link from that link to all my books which are listed at the library, and they have two physical copies of each … one has been archived, the other is available for circulation. I would love for more people who are contemporaries of mine to know about in particular Eli’s Heart, since about two-thirds of that book takes place on the old CCM campus in Mt. Auburn. The student uprising on campus in 1956 actually happened. Maybe this will help!

http://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/liblog/2016/04/new-book-by-ccm-alumna-susan-moore-jordan/

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I am currently waiting to hear from two more Beta readers about their reaction to my work in progress, my fourth novel entitled Jamie’s Children. It’s great to have had two positive responses from the men who volunteered to read the book. I’m taking more time with this one. Basically, I had to … my character Niall Logan is bipolar, and trying to get inside his head took a lot of research. He also aspires to be a singer-songwriter, more research about a genre I knew very little about. And yet more research: Niall’s sister Laura is a virtuoso violinist. Though I was familiar with some of the literature, I’d never even held a violin. I’ve had great assistance with all three of these fields from some terrific friends, reinforcing how important networking is to an author.

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One of my Beta readers requested a little more about Jamie Logan, the famous father to Laura and Niall, and his reaction to Niall’s illness. Happy to oblige, so here’s a sneak peek at Jamie’s Children.

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Deep into practicing the Brahms concerto, feeling herself one with the music, Laura was annoyed when the buzzer in her apartment sounded and she almost ignored it. Her concentration broken, she went to the intercom and asked rather crisply: “Who is it?”

     “It’s Niall.”

     “Niall! Come on up!” She was thrilled to hear his voice. She hadn’t seen him since Bonnie had gone to Hunter Mountain and brought him back to the city. Bonnie had talked with her and with Meredith and Jamie, explaining Niall wasn’t ready to see them yet. Not at Thanksgiving. 

     Not even at Christmas.

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     It had been strained and strange, just herself and her parents trying to somehow capture the joy of the season. They were all recalling the Christmas two years earlier with Jack, when they had filled the house with music. This year a recording was playing of Vaughan Willaims’ Hodie – a work Jamie was to perform the following year with the New York Philharmonic. There were some half-hearted attempts at discussions about the music, but these trailed off into silence.

     Jamie especially had struggled with Niall’s absence, and he finally said, “It’s my fault. I should have been more … I’m not even sure what. I should have talked to him more.”

     “No, Dad, it’s not you at all. It’s Niall’s disease, and all the talking in the world probably won’t be much good to him until he’s ready to reach out for help.”

     “I knew he was depressed sometimes. I’d experienced that myself, more than once.”

     “Jamie, you never suffered the kind of depression Niall has,” Meredith told her husband. “You may have come close once … but with manic-depression, the lows are something none of us can really understand.”

     “Still, I should have done something more. I should have been more supportive. Niall is … well, there’s a lot of me in him. We want everything to be … we want … we want life to be perfect for the people we love. And I know that’s impossible, but I still feel it.” He looked at them, the pain he was feeling clearly reflected in his eyes.

     Both Meredith and Laura put their arms around him. The music had stopped, and for a few moments the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantle.

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     Another month had passed and still nothing. She knew her parents were very worried, but they were all relieved he was with Bonnie. She’d keep him safe. That was the operative word these days: they all wanted Niall safe. Bonnie assured them he hadn’t been drinking, but he was struggling with depression. And now, finally, he was at her door.

“A Long Time Ago in a Small Town Far Away”

Excerpt from More Fog, Please, “Carousel Revisited”:

The theater world is filled with drama of all kinds. Sometimes we hear “It’s not life and death”' when a diva ─ a stressed actor or singer ─ protests too much. True enough.

Sometimes, though, life and death hover over the theater like a sudden black storm cloud on a sunny day. High school is too early, but life can hand us a difficult lesson at a young age. This was how I first came to know Carousel. To understand the 2013 production at East Stroudsburg, I need to explain what happened a long time ago in a small town far away.

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In the fall of 1953, I was a junior in high school in my home town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and we received the exciting news that we would be performing this show – a real Broadway show! Not the operettas we’d done in the past. A serious show; a musical drama.

The show was performed in February of 1954. A close friend, Anita Barker, played the role of Julie Jordan. She had auditioned only days after burying both her parents, who had been shot to death by her estranged brother-in-law. Anita’s dedication and professionalism was a marvel for all of us involved with the production. I believe being cast as Julie helped her through a horrifically dark time in her life, and her performance was inspired and inspiring.

***

The [East Stroudsburg South High School, 2013] show was in March. On May 6, I was having lunch with Judy Lawler and whining about having the summer ahead of me and not much to do since Ragtime, two years earlier, had been my last summer show.

“Why don’t you write a book?”

I think I just stared at her. Might as well suggest I climb Mt. Everest, and I said pretty much exactly that. A book! Too daunting, too much, too … everything.

“Don’t think so big. Think of one event, one incident.”

Immediately I thought of Anita Barker and that Carousel production from 1954. I had told Judy the story before, and reminded her of it.

She nodded. “Then use that,” she said. “And try writing it in the first person.”

I went home and sat at the computer, and I spent many hours there over the next five months. The story had been there all along. I realized as I wrote what an impact Carousel ─ that Carousel in 1954 at Oak Ridge High School ─ had on my life. Reliving the show with these twenty-first century young men and women helped me to remember a great deal about that long-ago production.

And that’s how I came to write How I Grew Up in 2013, and followed up with two additional novels over the next two years. The show is almost a major character in the book because it was so important to my character “Melanie Stewart” at this traumatic time in her life. While I was writing about Anita, I also was writing a work of fiction, and Melanie became a person in her own right.

I gave her a leading man named Jamie Logan. I really liked my character Jamie Logan, a handsome boy with a good heart and a superb tenor voice, and I just wrote a book about him entitled You Are My Song. In between, I wrote a book about Melanie’s friend Krissy Porter and the young man who becomes her life, a brilliant pianist named Eli Levin who has a frightening congenital heart defect: hence, Eli’s Heart. All three have their beginnings in that Carousel production. So without it being my intent, I guess I wrote a trilogy.

But in writing How I Grew Up, I was able to talk about the rehearsals for the show and recapture the feeling of being part of a musical. There’s really nothing quite like it, and having been with the South kids so recently, I drew on the feelings I knew they had experienced.

Here’s a very brief excerpt. It’s a school day; it’s also opening night.

We all kind of went through the day as if we weren’t really there at all, but were waiting for our lives to start that evening. At lunch, everybody in the cast tried to sit with each other. We had a connection that nobody else could really understand. The cast was a group for the weeks that we rehearsed the show, especially that last week. For that brief time, there really were no other groups in our high school.

It was pointless for us to talk about anything except the show, because that was the only thing any of us were thinking about.

And if you’ve ever been in a high school show … you’ll understand exactly how these young performers felt.

***

How I Grew Up is available on Amazon, paperback $10.00 and Kindle $3.99.

It’s a good story! I’d love to share it with you.

http://tinyurl.com/h257dyo

www.susanmoorejordan.com

  Carousel, South H.S., 2013

Reaping Rewards

Interview with Susan Jorstad, The Pocono Record

Writing, as we all know, is very much a solitary endeavor and the writer sometimes wonders if they are writing words that anyone else will ever read. It is immensely gratifying to have written a book that has garnered some attention ─ especially in my community ─ since it is about musical theater in this community; thirty-one years’ worth.

My recently released book “More Fog, Please” – 31 Years Directing Community and High School Musicals has been doing well on Amazon since it’s November 11 release, reaching the number one spot in its category of Theater Direction and Production for a time, and presently is number two. That is definitely a first for this indie author!

A recent interview by writer Susan Jorstad for The Pocono Record was a very encouraging experience as well. Susan was a thoughtful interviewer and made me sound articulate in her article. With her permission, I’m including excerpts in this blog post. She refers to herself as “PR” for Pocono Record in her questions.

(from The Pocono Record, Saturday, November 28, 2015)

PR: Your book, “More Fog, Please,” relives memorable moments from 30 of the 80 shows you directed.

JORDAN: This is a book about the people. You can’t put on a musical by yourself. For each chapter, I focus on a production and the people involved. It’s almost a collection of reminiscent short stories I worked with so many amazing, generous people over the years. When a show went up, I always felt by opening night, the show belongs to the cast. The cast has to take ownership, and that usually happened early in tech week, and I could spend my time with lights and sound. Every person involved with a show is vital. I always said to my cast, be sure to thank people for what they’ve done to make the show happen; you wouldn’t be out there performing if they hadn’t. My attitude was, ‘It’s your show and I’m glad I’m here to help.’

PR: How did you help your actors, especially those new to performing, to ‘get into character’?

JORDAN: The director has to have the original vision – to take script and music and think through it. What are the authors trying to tell us? And then help your cast make it come to life. I did a character study for every character.

For ‘Carousel,’ I started with Julie and realized it’s really her story, not Billy Bigelow’s. The whole thing is about her love for Billy; nothing could shake that love. She’s fragile but strong. There are amazing women characters in that show set in the 1870s. When you approach the show from the characters, Billy becomes more sympathetic and loveable to the audience.

I loved shows that had depth and characters that really had something to say, like ‘Carousel’ and ‘Secret Garden.’ I also like shows with wonderful scores, which required an above ordinary commitment from the kids… ‘Into the Woods’ (1997?), ‘Ragtime’ (Black Sheep production at Sherman Theater, 2013). Ragtime was tough subject matter, the beginning of the Industrial Age, racial tensions … and wonderfully written. (Ragtime) had a cast from seven different schools. They became so close, they knew what they were doing was incredibly powerful.

PR: You’ve also written a trilogy of fictional books, all highly rated on Amazon, all with a common theme of the value of music. Are those also based on real events?

JORDAN: In the first novel, “How I Grew Up,” the lead character is based on a close friend of mine from high school, a true story. The week before our ‘Carousel’ auditions, Anita’s estranged brother-in-law broke into her home and shot and killed both her parents. She auditioned only days after burying her parents, and played the role of Julie, a dramatic, emotional role. Her performance was an inspiration to everyone.

There’s a catharsis of becoming a character, to escape our personal lives. The experience opened my eyes to the power of creativity and especially of music. Being able to immerse herself into the role was an immense help to my friend. I watched her performance from the orchestra pit where I played harp.

PR: Why this nonfiction book now, and how are your friends and former cast and crew reacting?

JORDAN: Eric Mark, an actor and journalist, who was one of my readers and mentor for my first novel, said to me, ‘You need to write about your years directing.’ I’d thought about retiring after “Bye Bye Birdie,” but it wasn’t the right timing. I knew I’d be leaving after “Tom Sawyer”. I told the cast at the cast party that this was my swan song.

PR: Although you’ve retired from directing, you continue to give private voice lessons. What else do you have planned?

JORDAN: I am working on another novel, a sequel to “You Are My Song,” about a brother and sister who both have musical ability but who have very different journeys. I’ve been researching it for about a year because one of my characters suffers from bipolar disorder.

I’m thinking about a possible trip to the West Coast at some point. I’ve never been to San Francisco and I have friends living in the Bay area … friends from Oak Ridge, where I grew up.

And I’ll be the most supportive, delighted, entertained and enchanted member of the audience at the South High School show next spring. I may even sit near the front of the house.

www.susanmoorejordan.com

http://tinyurl.com/pv4q8lz

Cover by Tristan Flanagan

"More Fog, Please"

My New Book

After many months, and much rewriting, editing, re-re-writing, re-re-re-writing, more editing, proofreading, and a great deal of joy and angst and everything in between (every author can relate!), “More Fog, Please” – 31 Years Directing Community and High School Musicals has been available for sale on Amazon for just over a week.

To my great delight, the book is doing well. People are buying it! People like it! I already have four five-star reviews, and for us independent authors, those reviews are like standing ovations (especially the five-star ones). If you’re interested you can click on the link below and read the nice things that have been said about the book. And maybe buy it? (Just an example of the shameless self-promotion we have to learn to do.)

Most of the reviewers comment on the humor in the book, which was also gratifying. I don’t think of myself as a very witty person, but I did have a ton of fun directing the shows I talk about. When I released it I selected “Theater>Direction and Production” as the category. I have no idea why, except that  the title alerts the reader to some fun, but Amazon also chose to put it in “Humor and Entertainment.” The ways of Amazon remain mysterious.

The book is about some of the shows I directed and the people who were involved. Theater is a team effort, and I had some great team members involved in those productions. Probably several thousand over those thirty-one years, and in the book I named a good many of them ─ but barely scratched the surface. Scrolling through my Facebook News Feed last night, I saw a photo that caught my attention – a former cast member, one of the “PLA Kids” I talk about frequently, stretched out on her sofa reading “More Fog, Please.”

I left her a comment, thanking her for buying it. Liz Groff Heuser became a “PLA Kid” with our 1993 production of Cinderella, and six years later she played a leading role in the 1999 Cinderella as Joy, one of the stepsisters. Her reply made my day, if not my week, because this is one big reason I wrote the book:

“This PLA Kid has seen 16 of your shows and performed in 13 (not counting Mouse Country!)! I could write my own book on how all of those experiences and people I met changed me. I recently showed my husband the VHS of Cinderella #3 since he had never seen me perform and now completely ‘gets’ my addiction to it. Thank you for writing this and sharing our world! My time under your direction will remain some of the best in my life!”

That’s what I wanted to do, share the world we made with our musicals. And it seems for at least one former PLA Kid I succeeded.

“More Fog, Please” – 31 Years Directing Community and High School Musicals

http://tinyurl.com/p6metaf

cover by Tristan Flanagan