"Don't Go Smelling Like a Rabbit"

Chapter Twenty Nine

There was a lot of theater going on in Austin in the late '70's and early '80's. The largest and most modern was the city sponsored Zachary Scott Theatre Center located on the shores of Town Lake -which was what that stretch of the Colorado River was called.

I wondered how often and how long the committee had to meet to come up with that name for the lake.

The theater’s physical plant was a square building that housed a small costume shop, dressing rooms with showers, a carpentry shop, plus green room and offices with an auditorium that could accommodate about 150-200 people.

A portrait of the theater's movie star namesake hung in the lobby greeting patrons. His family donated the money to have the theatre built.

In my first show there, I was cast as Biff -the oldest son- in Arthur Miller's masterpiece, Death of A Salesman.

As Biff with Dell Aldrich in "Death of A Salesman"

I chose to play the character as a strongly willed individual constantly at loggerheads with his father.

Traditionally the role is played considerably lower key.

The reviews supported my choice: "Excellent", "Outstanding performance", "...won't compare it to Broadway because it may well be better", "Memorable".

It was a marvelous experience except for the fact our actor playing Willy Loman spent much of rehearsals and most of the performances "in his cups".

Actors would come off stage almost in tears after a scene with him because he'd forgotten cues which, of course, were always lead-ins to important speeches their characters made.

After one horrendous act he came back stage all full of himself boasting how he hadn't missed a single cue.

He was right. He hadn't missed a single cue. He'd just skipped three pages altogether!

Lesson: Never work in an altered mental state.

Then, miraculously, two weeks before the show closed our Willy suddenly either “took the pledge” or finally learned his lines and began throwing us cues we hadn't heard since the first read-throughs.

We were elated...and a little bewildered because we suddenly were spouting lines we hadn't said very often. It made the already successful run blossom and we closed with full and happy hearts all around.

The thing that amazed me when people talked about the show, even years afterward, they raved about the man who played Willy.

In retrospect, his bleariness and drunken forgetfulness-cum¬-confusion just added color to the character and made him look all the more like the Willy Loman Arthur Miller must have envisioned: a loser.

Not all the praise was for Willy. It was generously, and rightly, spread throughout the solid cast.

Five years later, while living 70 miles away in Houston, people came up to me and said they'd seen the show and thoroughly enjoyed my performance as Biff.

To make a living after leaving KOKE radio I reverted back to an idea that had kept me alive during my hippie days: window washing.

I'd recently lost another car to the repo man and so I hitchhiked around town with my bucket, stick and a squeegee washing windows in shopping centers to keep body and soul together.

It didn't make me rich, but it paid some bills for a couple of years.

After a couple of years, the "moonies", religious zealot followers of Korean Rev. Sun Myung Moon, started making the rounds and undercutting my prices. They'd wash windows for any amount of money just to get the "contract".

I started loosing quite a bit of business.

Something else happened at the same time that did more to sway me to "commit to the career".

I had been asked to join the InterActors, Zach Scott's touring troupe that performed for elementary schools in the surrounding smaller communities. It paid a nice salary but rehearsals and performances were during the day when I washed windows.

I turned down the first offer to join because of my work schedule. A few days later I was approached by a fellow cast member of the show I was currently rehearsing there, Lillian Hellman’s adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s, THE LARK.

Jeff Ellinger, who was also in the troupe, made his pitch and said that I’d have a marvelous time if I joined them.

I thought a little longer this time before saying I had my regular window route to take care of and couldn't afford to lose the contracts if I neglected them while on tour, even if they were only day trips.

They, fortunately, didn't give up. They got the director of "The Lark" in on the campaign and the light finally came on in my thick skull that I was turning down a paying job in the profession I was trying to become great and famous in.

Lesson: Always follow the path of your dream.

I signed on!

We toured all over Central Texas to little towns that included Hutto, Elgin, Fredricksburg, and Schullenberg.

The first year we did a show called Topeng: Tales of Trickery.

They were Polynesian folk tales and we tried to capture the flavor and the spirit of the colorful tales by employing the same masks and costumes used in the islands.

As the Banana Tree in "The Monkey and The Barong"
in "Tales of Trickery". Jeff Ellinger is the front of the
Barong and Suzanne Wells is behind him.
Cora Cordona is the Monkey.

The InterActors were Cora Cordona, Suzanne Wells, Jeff Ellinger, Marty Ratliff, Sharon Daniel, Janelle Kelly, and Alice Wilson. Emily Kelly, whoplayed Joan of Arc in The Lark, joined us the second year.

About the same time I told my agent, Michael O’Sullivan, of the Actor's Clearinghouse Agency that I'd do anything for money.

Originally, I'd said I was only interested in films and TV work but that was getting me nowhere.

I got cast in a small part in the horror film Piranha! but was dumped when they learned a name actor, Guich Koock, was available. Guich had gained a bit of notoriety as being one of the owners of Luckenbach, Texas; made famous by the Willie Nelson/Waylon Jennings song.

Also in the film was Paul Bartel, who would later cast me in his film Not For Publication with Larry Luckenbill and Nancy Allen a few years later.
Michael asked if I wanted to do voice overs for TV and radio commercials and I told him if it paid money...I wanted to do it.
Me with Nancy Allen
Suddenly I was getting calls to voice commercials and do industrial narrations. The money wasn't great...as a matter of fact it was below union scale at the time... but the union hadn't made much of an in-road into Austin just yet.

But it would.

The first year I did voice overs I think I made about $1,000. Not much but it supplemented the window washing business nicely and I found I continued to eat regularly.

My squeegee days were coming to an end as I began getting busier and busier.

I spent a little over four years in Austin during whichI played 20 characters in 17 stage productions ranging from Ebenezer Scrooge to a Banana Tree.

I played the telephone repair man in Barefoot In The Park; the retarded Lennie in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; the lecherous French governor, de Beaudricourt, known for his penchant for deflowering young virgins and who was persuaded by Joan of Arc to supply her with horses in The Lark; and Dromio of Ephesus -one of the looney slaves in Comedy of Errors -for which I won the prestigious B. Iden Payne award for Best Actor/Comedy.

Payne was a highly acclaimed Shakespearean director. A theatre at the University of Texas carries his name.

I won the Bippy (as it is un-officially known) again for Best Supporting/Comedy when I played a French-accented stilt-walking Brun, the bear in Reynard, The Fox, a mainstage presentation of the InterActors.

During those four years in Austin I immersed myself in my craft. I did nothing but eat, drink and smoke theatre. I sank up to my gills in my roles and learned how to find, in myself, the characterizations that would bring my roles to life.

It paid off; not only in amount of work, but also in critical acclaim.

I would more often than not be performing in one show while rehearsing the next. I was almost never without a show...except for two extended breaks when my brain just had to stop memorizing lines.