An Accidental Journey

Tony Stimac

Description

Like Gerald Schoenfeld’s Mr. Broadway, An Accidental Journey takes you deep inside life in the theater and explores the artist’s dilemma of balancing art and family.
Tony Stimac’s book is a captivating exploration of America’s national musical theatres, with a particular focus on his experience with the emerging musical theatre in China. In granular detail, he chronicles his rollercoaster of successes and failures while sharing intimate details of collaborating with the preeminent musical theater artists of our time, including George Abbott’s last musical, Kander and Ebb’s reworking of The Rink and hosting the first readings of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Tony provides invaluable insights into the secrets of creating innovative musicals. Passionately devoted to his art form, he struggles with the artist’s dilemma of how to balance his two great loves—his art and his family.

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Biography
• Entertainment
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665744447
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AN ACCIDENTAL JOURNEY
A Memoir of a Life in the Theatre
TONY STIMAC


Copyright © 2023 Tony Stimac.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4443-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4444-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909437
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/25/2023
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART 1
The Journey Begins
Europe
RADA
A Professional at Last
The Contrast
Fashion
She Would Be a Soldier
PART 2
John Drew Theatre
The 50 th Anniversary Season
PART 3
Musical Theatre Works
The First Season
PART 4
The Helen Hayes Performing Arts Center
The Fight of the Century Helen vs. Floyd
Keepin’ It Global
PART 5
The Adventure of a Lifetime
The Home Stretch
The Reignwood Theatre
Greenland Group, Oriental Songlei, Reignwood Theatre
Joker’s Game
Monkey King
Mongolia
New Zealand
 
Appendix
About the Author

For my wife, Marilyn and my children, Melissa, Nicola, and Mara
INTRODUCTION
My father had six brothers and five sisters while my mother had four sisters. Growing up, I had thirty uncles and aunts and eventually forty-five first cousins. The Stimac men were tough, strong, hardworking and could drink their weight in Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. They grew up during the Depression in Milwaukee, resorting to stealing sacks of potatoes for food and chewing tobacco for fun. Mary’s Log Cabin, owned by one of my mother’s sisters, provided their only exposure to culture, where they would drink, dance, and occasionally get into brawls.

My parents, Tony Sr. Madge Stimac–1940
Into this male–dominated world of testosterone, little Tony was born on a June morning in 1942. Bob, my younger brother, came next, and after a nineteen–year gap, my sister Lisa, arrived. At home, we lived with my grandmother who only spoke Croatian, so it became my first language. How did a boy from this background, end up at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, dining with the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, and working in China helping to create its emerging musical theatre industry. This is the story of an accidental journey.
Part 1
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
I N HIGH SCHOOL, MY PRIMARY interests were girls, hot-rods and rock n’ roll. After I graduated, I needed money to pursue those interests and took a job as a journeyman carpenter. As the summer was ending, after dinner one night, my father and I were sitting on the back porch. It had become a custom for me to go into the cucumber patch next door and return with a half-dozen cucumbers which we salted and ate.
On this particular night, my dad said, “You should go to college.”
“Why? No one else in the family goes.”
“Right, so maybe it’s time that someone did.”
“What good is it?”
“You can get a better job when you graduate.”
That was the end of it and we went back to watching the fireflies and eating our cukes.
No one in our family had gone to college. I went to Marquette University, but was too late to enroll for the fall semester, however, I could attend night school and keep my job during the day.
After a few months of dozing off during philosophy and religion classes, I discovered that there was a theatre on campus. In my senior year, I had joined the drama club to impress a girl. Ironically, we ended up as the lead couple in a play, and our on-stage kiss sparked my first real-life romance. The idea of the theatre brought back fond memories, and I decided to investigate further. I visited the theatre and met Father John J. Walsh S.J., the director and a Jesuit priest. Father Walsh had wispy blonde hair, a pale face and intensely blue eyes which shone with messianic zeal when discussing the theatre. We were sitting in Teatro Maria, Father Walsh’s intimate 70-seat theatre. Little did I know that this meeting would change my life.
“So, Tony, what brings you to us today?” he asked.
“I did a play in high school and enjoyed the experience. Now I’m going to night school here so I can work during the day.
“And what’s your day job?”
“I’m working as a carpenter’s assistant framing houses.”
When he heard I was a professional carpenter, his face turned positively beatific.
After a few more questions he said, “We can offer you a spot, but there are conditions: you will have to take ballet classes three times a week, an acting class once a week and you won’t receive credit for them.”
“That’s not a problem. I love to dance and I want to learn more about acting.”
In those days, I went to every dance within a fifty-mile radius of Milwaukee as that was where the girls were. I wasn’t entirely sure of what a ballet class entailed, but I figured there would be girls there, too. I was instructed to wear tights and a dance belt to class—tights and a dance belt. Wow. OK. Hmmm, I wonder what the girls will be wearing.
This was 1960. Girls still wore girdles and you never saw their bodies unless you were on a beach. When I walked into class, I found a room filled with about fifteen odalisques in tights and leotards and about six men. Those were odds I liked. I was lightheaded from the scent of their mingled perfumes, coupled with the sight of their toned young bodies clearly visible in their dance clothes. As the class progressed, it was clear I was hopeless and being young, strong and capable, I didn’t like the feeling.
To catch up with the rest of the group, I secretly, took extra ballet classes from a Russian drill sergeant by the name of Madame Chlistova. She was a short, heavily muscled woman with a deep voice and a pronounced Russian accent. Although she taught classical ballet in the Russian tradition, her specialty was adagio. I hoped to impress Father Walsh with how quickly I was learning.
Father Walsh had been a private pupil of Maria Ouspenskaya who had been one of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s leading actresses at the legendary Moscow Art Theatre. Stanislavsky was a Russian director who shaped modern acting in the western theatre. Father Walsh was a charismatic theatre genius and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the theatre. He had lived with Noh actors in Japan; the only westerner to ever do so. His magnetic personality turned every one of his students into acolytes.

Father John J. Walsh director of the Marquette University Players.
Each day I began to see what lured people into this strange world I had blundered into. It had everything: passion, romance, excitement, an abundance of beautiful women, and it was something called Art. Art was not big in our family. No one I knew had ever been to the theatre, not to mention an opera, ballet or concert.
The Marquette University Players created a four–hour medieval mystery play called Ludus Coventriae , a religious dance drama, that began at the creation of the world and ended with the Last Judgment. Father wrote and directed the play, while John Neumeier, a student who would later become a renowned choreographer, choreographed it. For the past forty years, John has served as Artistic Director of the Hamburg Ballet, creating numerous original ballets that have been performed around the world.
Watching Ludus Coventriae was the moment when my lifelong desire to pursue this elusive art form began. Seeing the actors bring the story to life, I knew that I wanted to be one of them. Here was something more. Something I didn’t understand. Something profound.
In high school, I excelled in many things—swimming, cross-country, tennis and wrestling—quickly earning a place on the varsity teams. I taught myself chess, became skilled in pool and was a passable carpenter. At sixteen, I formed a hot-rod club and eagerly disturbed the quiet of Milwaukee’s streets with the sounds of peeling rubber. Jobs as a baker, landscape salesman, women’s shoe salesman and truck driver resulted in speedy promotions.
Acting was a completely different world, requiring years of practice and dedication to master. I became obsessed with learning everything I could about the craft, neglecting my schoolwork and spending every waking moment in the theatre. I devoured every book on acting I could find and was willing to make any sacrifice.
At the end of the semester, my hard work paid off with a full scholarship, but I still needed money to pay for gas, food and clothes. Bob Beaudry, a friend in the theatre group, and I came up with an idea to put on rock and roll dances. At the time, teenagers had nowhere to practice the courting rituals that were sparked by their young libidos.
In those