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I first saw MAGGIE FLYNN on Broadway with the delightful, talented Shirley Jones, whom I\u2019d had the pleasure and honor to work with the summer before in a package of ON A CLEAR DAY \u2026 (wherein her dual roles of Daisy\/Melinda were breathtaking to share at every performance.) \nGiven the interracial theme of the play, inspired by a true incident during the NYC draft riots of 1863, I recommended the play be performed by an interracial cast, with each performer playing a variety of races and ages including five children\u2019s roles. Maggie\u2019s two loves also each played a minor role. Maggie was the only non-doubling role. The three creators loved the idea, and a terrific and extremely talented cast and a clever design team made this production a hit!<\/p>\n The Children <\/b>\u2014 in the Broadway production, there were real youngsters portraying (excellently so) the Black children in the orphanage. ELT\u2019s insurance, however, did not cover children, so I suggested, and we found, nine actors who could believably portray young children. Ironically, within the next two years, almost all those performers auditioned for me for other shows, and I realized they had each grown personally, and probably couldn\u2019t portray \u2018children\u2019 anymore\u2014but they did then! One of my favorite moments was when the orphanage is beginning to be burned, the \u2018children\u2019 are all huddled on the floor around Maggie USC and she tells them to run and the terrified \u2018children\u2019 rush DS screaming in fright, and en route each \u2018child\u2019s\u2019 scream becomes an \u2018adult\u2019 scream as each actor switches a \u2018child\u2019 piece of clothing for an \u2018adult\u2019 piece of clothing until they have transformed into a screaming, angry mob of \u2018adults\u2019 who finally reach the front of the apron!<\/span><\/p>\n The Designers<\/b> \u2014 Richard B. Williams incredible, morphing unit set was multi-leveled which helped the visual for the children when they were with adults. And Susan Tzu\u2019s inventive costumes, mirrored on the program cover, helped the performers create the illusions of their multiple characters.<\/p>\n The Musical Director<\/b> \u2014 Thomas Helm was a joy to work with musically and personally, and brought this rich, diverse score beautifully to life, as well as guiding the talented cast to their best vocal sharings!<\/p>\n The Cast<\/b> \u2014 Wow, w<\/i>hat a privilege to work with this group of talented, hard-working, fun fellow artists! The cleverness and dedicated work of these 15 performers creating 51 roles gave the show the feeling of a \u2018cast of thousands!\u2019 \u2014 and was a terrific showcase for each performer\u2019s talent! One of my favorite memories is a Stage Director friend who after the show said he wanted to meet two of the actors he thought he could get work for, The Irish Cop & The Black Runaway Slave. So we went backstage and I asked one of the actors to step out and introduced him, \u201cThis is Mark Hattan\u2014he was The Irish Cop.\u201d<\/i> They chatted for a bit, then Mark and I went back into the Men\u2019s dressing room. I came out a second time and smiling said to my director friend \u201cThis is Mark Hattan\u2014he was also The Black Runaway Slave!\u201d<\/i> My friend was blown away!<\/p>\n Reputations<\/b> \u2014 A year later, Mark was hired for 8 roles in a Summer Stock season because of his work on MAGGIE. I did recommend, and would have hired every performer in this production, and actually worked with seven of them later, some more than once. Reputations are often the deciding factor when more than one actor is right for a role. When you do your job, use your creative gifts well and work as part of the ensemble team on a production that\u2019s an immediate reward\u2014and it\u2019s also money in the bank reputation-wise because Theatre is actually often like a small town!<\/p>\n MAGGIE FLYNN will always be one of my favorite productions, and it did lead to other work for me, as well as being a wonderful learning experience as Stage Director, as a Choreographer, as a fellow worker, as a human being. And it was another show about integration I dedicated privately to my first friend, Eddie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [aesop_gallery pslightbox=”on” galleryType=”thumbnail” id=”289″] I first saw MAGGIE FLYNN on Broadway with the delightful, talented Shirley Jones, whom I\u2019d had the pleasure and honor to work with the summer before in a package of ON A CLEAR DAY \u2026 (wherein her dual roles of Daisy\/Melinda were breathtaking to share at every performance.)I had invited George […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_last":["227"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_chapter_enable_timeline":["off"],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"]},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/kochbill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I had invited George Wojtusik, Manager of Equity Library Theater (ELT) to see my work with The American Noh Theatre in hopes he would ask me to direct a show at ELT, the most fantastic professional showcase in NYC \u2014 a place where many successful and some later famous theatre artists got their start.
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George left halfway through the Noh performance so I was surprised when he called me in for an interview saying <\/span>\u201cI loved your work, Noh is not my favorite form of Theatre.\u201d<\/em> I was further surprised when he offered me the job of directing & choreographing MAGGIE FLYNN \u2014 with the authors\/composers approval. Thanks to George\u2019s trust, Messrs. Peretti, Creatore, and Weiss gave me copies of the originals and Broadway scripts and asked me to recommend my own version of this wealth of their material. When they approved my adaptation, we went to work. It was exciting and educational and one of the biggest honors of my life \u2014 better than an Oscar or an Emmy \u2014 to have the opportunity to work with these three talented men\u2014four with George\u2014and to have them extremely pleased with the eventual production.<\/span><\/p>\n