“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.

***

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

A Long Ago Shooting

Up From the Ashes

Over a half century ago, when I was a junior at Oak Ridge High School in Tennessee, my close friend Anita Barker’s parents were shot to death by Anita’s estranged brother-in-law.

Oak Ridge was a unique town, established as a part of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War and operated and guarded by the military. After the war, eventually the town became independent but it was still a safe place. Of course, in the nineteen fifties the entire country was very different. What happened when Bob Duke walked into the Barker house and gunned down three people (the third person was Anita’s other brother-in-law, who lingered in agony for several months before succumbing to his horrific wounds) was a terrible shock to the entire town. The three Barker daughters, of whom Anita was the youngest, were orphaned in mere minutes that night.

Anita was a talented girl who aspired to be a singer and actress. The shooting happened the weekend before auditions for the annual high school musical, which was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel that year. Since she’d had a nice supporting role the year before, Anita was hoping for a lead in her senior year and it seemed she had a good chance to earn one of the three female principal roles.

The directors, primarily the school’s chorus and orchestra teacher, chose to reschedule the auditions so that Anita would have a chance to audition. She won the leading role of Julie Jordan. Seeing how being immersed in the musical drama helped Anita through the most difficult period of her young life – she was eighteen ─ had an impact on me that I only fully realized decades later.

My part in her drama was peripheral. I didn’t have to bury my parents and go on stage some seven weeks later in an emotionally draining role. But my family and I did everything we could for her, all the while feeling helpless. It was a journey she and her sisters had to take by themselves.

I learned only recently the terrible toll those events took on Anita for the rest of her life. She died of breast cancer while in her fifties. I feel sure there was little if any understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the time. I doubt Anita received the help she so badly needed. While she had not been home at the time of the shooting, her world was blown apart.

Directing a high school production of Carousel – a musical which deals with life and death ─ in 1994 brought her very much to mind. And a second production two years ago, in the same high school, made me think even more about what she had been through. Each time I directed Carousel I shared Anita’s story with my cast, and it added depth to their performances.

It was that second production that opened my eyes to how much I had been affected by being with her during that experience. I keep saying I wasn’t “directly affected,” but I certainly was changed. I looked at the world differently. I thought more about death and its aftermath, and realized at a very young age how fragile and uncertain life is. People were not supposed to die suddenly and violently while they were still young. Yet I had attended a funeral of two such people, people I had seen only a short time before, when I was barely sixteen.

But at the same time, seeing my friend’s strength and courage bolstered by her participation in Carousel, I also became aware of the healing power of creativity, particularly of music. I think the experience helped me understand beyond question that music was my calling, and it has been my life.

To see the extent to which gun violence has burgeoned in this country during the past decades is saddening and distressing. To think how many young people these days have to deal with these events and their aftermath is – I can’t even find the right word. Horrific. Awful. Unthinkable.

The remarkable group of twenty-first century young men and women I directed in 2013 performed Carousel with love, respect, and skill, moving their audiences at each performance with the beautiful story. Not long after that production, I wrote my first book, How I Grew Up, giving Anita, finally, a voice to tell her story.

From the pages of that first novel came two additional stories of young people who had been part of that Carousel production. I am in the process of making slight revisions in How I Grew Up to tie it more closely to Eli’s Heart and You Are My Song. While the books are stand alone stories, they all began in that brief period when a group of young people shared an intense, life-changing experience. How I Grew Up with be re-released in early November as the first book in “The Carousel Trilogy.” These are coming of age stories of young men and women who face challenges with courage and hope. Music is very much part of their lives – and part of their courage.

 Cover designs by Tristan Flanagan

 www.susanmoorejordan.com

 http://smarturl.it/elih

Sneak Peek: THE FANTASTICKS

My current writing project is a non-fiction book, working title Director’s Notes, since I begin each chapter with the notes which were included in the printed program for the show. In the book I revisit some of the shows I directed over a period of thirty-plus years beginning in 1984. Here’s an excerpt.

The Fantasticks

(2003)

 The Fantasticks is considered a classic in American musical theater, and with good reason. It is refreshing, imaginative, and has a first-rate musical score, which serves to help develop the characters and move the story forward. It asks the audience to use its imagination and to become involved in ways most shows do not. It’s a unique experience, and I only wish every person in this audience had the privilege I’ve had of spending time with the remarkable people involved in this production.

In preparing The Fantasticks, I have worked with an absolutely incredible cast and directing staff, and this has been a memorable experience. Kelly Foley is one of the most creative and imaginative people I’ve ever known. With The Fantasticks, she has been able to let her imagination soar and the results are, well, fantastic. Scott Besser is a remarkable musician and very gifted pianist and this score has offered him the kind of challenge he enjoys. His artistry enhances every moment of music in the show.

The cast has been delightful to work with and each person has developed a character that is truly unforgettable. I would like to thank each of them for making every rehearsal a special time I looked forward to. I believe we have all had a great time learning this lovely show.

For those of you who recall life before TV, you will remember (as I do) radio shows that let your imagination take you to wonderful places. The Fantasticks does that – but it also makes you think about a lot of important life lessons. It’s easy to see why this show has run for 42 years off-Broadway, and why it will be performed for decades to come. Like Shakespeare, it is timeless and absorbing. It is a show that resonates.

 Susan Jordan

Pocono Lively Arts (Best Western Pocono Inn)

July, 2003

Beginning in the summer of 1999, it became difficult for Pocono Lively Arts to continue our summer stage productions at Stroudsburg High School. Newspaper articles from June of that year, including an editorial in the Pocono Record on June 2, 1999, explained the problems that had arisen between the group and the Stroudsburg Area School District. (NOTE: the group had been presenting a holiday show every November or December since 1979, and these were ongoing. The problems were only with using the venue in the summer, which we had been doing since 1989.)

The summer of 1999 we performed A Grand Night for Singing, a delightful scripted revue of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and in 2000 we presented a semi-staged concert version of Guys and Dolls. These were performed primarily with piano, and though our casts were of necessity much smaller (we were performing in the Inn’s Ballroom), we enjoyed the intimacy and the new challenge of theater-in-the-round and the dinner theater performances were quite well attended. In 2001 we did another dinner theater production revue, Blame It on the Movies.

We found a way to do a fully staged show at Stroudsburg High School in the summer of 2002, The Secret Garden. We had to rehearse off site until tech week, and the set was also built off site and disassembled, moved to the school piecemeal and reassembled at the same time we were rehearsing. These difficulties, and the increased fees we were charged by the school district for our week of rehearsal and performance weekend, meant a return to dinner theater in 2003.

Learning The Fantasticks was an absolute joy for me. I’d heard of it, and I knew a few of the songs: “Try to Remember,” “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” and “Much More” were all songs I was familiar with and had taught to some of my private voice students. I had an idea of what the show was about, but hadn’t been aware of its thought-provoking, absorbing, meaningful and complex story. The Fantasticks can be defined in many ways, and I think it means something a little different to all of us. We can see ourselves in more than one character in this deceptively simple fable. The story line seems direct; the characters are what create the complexity.

It’s no wonder the show continued its run beyond the year 2003 and only, finally, closed in March of 2015. More and more people have come to see it and be enchanted, and more beyond that have returned, possibly many times, to find something new in the show each time.

Since we could not rehearse in a busy downtown hotel’s ballroom except on a very limited basis, we found other venues for rehearsal. With small casts this proved to be a relatively easy matter, and the Inn management generously gave us as much rehearsal time in the ballroom itself as they possibly could.

We rehearsed The Fantasticks for the most part in a large room which was in a strip mall behind the Paynter Music building. The school had converted it to a studio which was often used for ensemble rehearsals. It was about the same size as the dance floor in the hotel ballroom, which meant whatever we worked out in that space transferred fairly easily to our actual performance space.

It was an unusually rainy summer and we frequently had thunderstorms in the evenings. The parking lot near our rehearsal space had very poor drainage, and it wasn’t unusual for all of us to arrive with our feet soaked from walking the short distance from our cars to the venue. The rain continued into tech week and performance weekend, and the Best Western, a fairly old building, had a leaky roof right over one corner of the ballroom. We had to mop up the dance floor in that area before most rehearsals and performances and repeat the process during intermission. “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” for sure!

Our instrumentation for the show consisted of piano, keyboard, percussion and acoustic bass. Scott Besser is one of the most talented musicians I have ever been privileged to know, and is a near-genius pianist who tossed off the sometimes difficult score with great relish. The music, as the plot, seems deceptively simple, yet it has some complex and difficult sections, echoing the characters.

Scott hesitated about taking on the show at first; he wasn’t familiar with the music and wasn’t sure about the idiom. “Some of the pieces offered substantial challenges, technically and rhythmically,” he recalls. “‘This Plum Is Too Ripe’ was the song that convinced me to play the show. I gave it a chance and of course it grew on me.”

 The Fantasticks works best in an intimate setting, and it was perfect for the Best Western Ballroom where our audience was on three sides of the dance floor, which was our stage. Working in the venue had its challenges but I felt overall we handled the production well. I think the more intimate setting worked better for this show than the eight-hundred-seat Stroudsburg High School auditorium would have.

Anyone who is familiar with the piano score for this show knows it has some virtuosic moments. It requires a pianist who also understands the subtleties of accompanying singers. There is music through much of the show: set musical pieces, incidental music, scene change music. I volunteered to turn pages for Scott. He was probably sorry he accepted the offer, because I was an abysmal page turner for the show.

I went to a music school and turned pages for pianists fairly often. I know what the assignment is: you follow the printed music closely as the pianist plays, anticipating when the page should be turned, making sure to turn at exactly the right time. You cannot be distracted because that leads to an early page turn or a late one, and I’m not sure which is worse. Scott was generous to his very distracted page turner who had to apologize after every show for getting drawn into the performance. It’s hard to be the director who is admiring her cast’s performance and also be a good page turner. He said it was okay, but it wasn’t. Scott is a kind person. We’re still friends.

Every person who was part of this production was deeply committed to it, and was very much affected by it. Rehearsals were absorbing and sometimes exhausting, but more often, exhilarating. The Fantasticks draws you in as few shows do, and we were all sorry to see the run come to an end.

We could have gone on performing that show for a very long time. It’s definitely a theater piece that the actors live. It’s impossible to be a part of it without feeling you’ve been changed. You know yourself better; you look at the world a little differently. You see other people with more compassion. You resolve to be kinder and more understanding.

Maybe that’s why the pianist put up with this not-so-great page turner.

 Scott Besser

photo by Tristan Flanagan