(Great story we just received from Bill Schiechowski!) I was at the audition all day. It was going to be my first paying job as an actor. The director, a young, wonderfully naïve, pompous prick leaned back in his chair with a scarf flung around his neck and pointed at people with his pipe. By the end of the day, he had three casts and kept interchanging us until he got “the right picture.” We rehearsed in New York for two weeks and then flew out to the Red Barn Dinner Theater in the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque. It was to be the premier opening for the theater. The producer was beyond cheap and I had to costume myself, save for the western hat, badge, holster and pistol – I played the sheriff. So I wore Levi’s, a faded blue denim work shirt and work boots and the other accoutrement were purchased at a novelty store … for children. Apparently, it was owned by the producer’s cousin. He got a deal. So here I am, a hippie with a Dale Evans cowgirl hat, a plastic sheriff’s badge sprayed silver, and a cap pistol heading for the Wild West. I didn’t care. I was a paid actor. At our first rehearsal, the director wanted us in costume to get “the right picture” with us on the new set. The theater was in the round and the set was elaborate. We rehearsed in New York for a proscenium and our set was a myriad of tape strips on the floor. On opening night, the owner of the theater, a retired teletype operator (he made a bundle of dough teletyping in Vietnam) who had never seen a play before (he bought the theater for his girlfriend who “liked drama,”), delivered to me, courtesy of “the community,” a pair of elk hide boots with leather tassels, a pair of slim fitting boot cut Levi’s, a black leather belt with a turquoise buckle, a dazzling western pearsnap-button dress shirt, a brushed suede Stetson hat, an intricately tooled black leather gun belt and holster and a Dirty Harry – type cannon. Apparently, “the community” had been peeking at us through the kitchen door portholes as we rehearsed – always in costume because the director decided it would help us “get into the bones” of our characters – and decided we needed a little sprucing up. Donning my new togs, I was transformed. Talk about getting into one’s bones. I was a SHERIFF! Unfortunately, that gun was so big – it covered two-thirds of my thigh – it altered my gait and changed the spatial relationship of the set and, as I swaggered on stage for my FIRST ENTRANCE AS A PAID ACTOR (tada!), the holstered gun slammed into a table and sent the checkers game on it onto the laps of two charming blue-haired ladies in the front row. With unseemly grace, Greg Wnorowski, the Rainmaker, leapt off the stage, deftly scooped up the checkers on the blushing ladies’ laps, gave them both a kiss on the cheek and resumed his place on stage. It brought down the house. As it turned out, it was also a fortuitous event. It grounded us. We got out of our heads and into our hearts. We ate the scenery. We got rave reviews. We were the toasts of the town. What a gift. By the way, Greg Wnorowski and I, Bill Sniechowski, believed at least half the people who bought tickets thought they were going to a Notre Dame football game.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:45:45 +0000
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