>> Studio of Audio, Video Technology Services
at Kennesaw State University. Hi, Palmer.
>> Hi there.
>> Can you start by talking a
bit about your family and background?
>> Yes. I was born in a small mining town in Keokee,
Virginia, which is in
the very southwest corner of Virginia.
And a tiny little mining community,
my father being a coal miner, of course.
And my father died
unfortunately when I was three weeks old.
Mining conditions being what they were at the time,
especially a small coal mine.
Working conditions were poor at best
and he worked in water and that thing.
He was asked it and he contracted pneumonia,
which left my mother with
myself as an infant and I had two older siblings.
And so this being 1937,
she had to basically fend for herself.
I'm sure she had a strong support group around her,
but she managed to support all of
us through door to door selling.
I think a variety of things.
And she also found time to do her first love,
which was gospel singing,
and she traveled around with a friend of hers,
and actually went into
Tennessee and North Carolina singing.
I don't know where she found the time for it,
but she managed to eke
out survival for us and herself,
through this variety of things that she did.
And, of course, this being
the depression things were really tough.
But I have to admire somebody like that,
who's able to do it.
As I said, I had two siblings.
The age gap between us was fair.
They were closer together,
an older sister and my brother,
who was seven years older than myself.
That's it as far as I think my family.
My mother remarried when I was 3-years-old,
and we moved from Southwest Virginia
to basically just across the mountain.
This is a very mountainous country, as you may know.
And we moved from there to Cumberland,
Kentucky which was also a coal mine supported community.
Fortunately, coal mining is unbelievable.
It's an occupation, I think.
But conditions were better here.
It happened to be a union operation.
And so, that was fortunate for him.
And so, that's where I grew up in Cumberland, Kentucky,
which was a town of about 5,000 people
so everybody knew everybody
and knew about their business.
Actually, it had its charms,
even though it was mainly a dusty little one streak town.
At the end of Main Street,
there was a church with a steeple and so forth.
So it's somewhat picturesque.
That's basically where I grew up.
Well, it is where I grew up.
And went to high school there.
I was editor of the high school newspaper,
and I developed a strong interest
in both journalism and theater in my school years,
and decided to go from there.
Of course, my parents couldn't afford
to send me where I wanted to go to school,
so I went from high school to Berea College,
which is in Berea, Kentucky.
And they have a labor program where all students work.
And so this enabled me to go to college.
The pay, of course, was quite low.
I think I was making something like I believe
it was a ridiculous amount
like $0.18 an hour or something like that,
working in the print shop and running presses
and just doing whatever jobs
were available in the print shop.
And I had intended to major in English there.
And had I gone back for the third year,
I would have been a secretary for one of
the English professors as my employment.
But I decided that I would go
from there to the University of Kentucky,
and I managed to get work there also in the print shop,
which enabled me to continue on and to
pursue degree in journalism at University of Kentucky.
And of course, my other love of theater,
of course, that started
actually when I was in junior high school for one thing.
I think, all kids like to perform
and do different things to entertain others.
And I was no exception,
including the fact I was quite the entrepreneur.
I had created a little movie theater
in the shed we had out back
and had a home movie projector and
charged the nickel to kids in
the neighborhood to come see the movie.
And we even did some little performances,
and then in junior high,
I was in a play in high school.
Even when I went on to Berea college,
I was in a production there.
And so I went from there,
of course, to the University of Kentucky.
And after which I came to
work at the newspaper near my hometown,
in a daily newspaper in Harlem, Kentucky.
Harlem Daily Enterprise,
doing feature writing photography,
and court reporting a variety
of types of reporting.
And I knew at that time,
there was a selective service.
The draft was still in effect.
So I knew that I didn't have
very long before I was going to be drafted,
so I managed to work there for two years.
And also during that time a community college had
been built near in my hometown in Cumberland,
a two year junior college,
and I taught basic English
and beginning journalism course there,
while I was essentially waiting for the draft,
waiting to be drafted.
Which did come in 1962,
I believe, if dates matter.
And of course, I had basic training
at Fort Knox near Louisville, Kentucky.
And from there, I was assigned to Fort McNair,
which nobody had ever heard of.
Guys were going off to armor, to infantry,
to Fort Hood, wherever,
but nobody had ever heard of
Fort McNair and neither had I of course.
But I soon learned
that it was in the nation's capital right in DC,
just a few blocks down from the capital.
And it was a very small post
at the juncture of the Anna Coast Jim Potomac Rivers.
And I was to be editor of
the post newspaper which
didn't sound like a bad deal to me.
Better than infantry or
armor or something like that I thought.
And, of course, this was prior to
the beginning of the Vietnam War
and before those things happened.
And so I was delighted with this assignment.
it sounded pretty good to me.
And as I found out, of course,
as I may have said this was a location
for I had its generals row and its NCO Row,
and it was home of the National War College.
And there were a couple of armed service colleges there,
as well as a number of high ranking officers and,
of course, the generals.
And a lot of people
assigned to this base worked at the Pentagon.
And it was a lovely place to be.
I thoroughly enjoy it.
And it also gave me time after being on duty,
gave me time to do whatever I want.
I was pretty much free after,
I think, maybe five O'clock or so.
And so I took advantage of that, certainly.
I had various jobs.
I worked at a newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia,
and doing all things but primarily sports writing,
which was new for me, but it was a good experience.
I was covering mainly high school sports,
football, basketball, whatever.
I also got involved in theater
there worked with a number of
avocational groups around the DC area in
Bethta and the environs of DC.
And also managed to get
a walk on role and a role at Arena Stage,
which was also just a couple of
blocks down the street from the Barracks.
And that was a very nice experience.
That was a professional job,
even though I was doing singing the chorus,
of course, but it was basically a walk
on just part of the scenery, if you will.
But that was a great experience also.
And it had its moments of
precariousness having being a part of the Army.
That was my primary responsibility, of course.
And now and then
these situations come along where there were alerts,
and everybody has to be present and
accounted for and ready to react.
And one of those came up,
of course, and I had a performance that evening,
and I pleaded with
the NTO in charge and
told him I would call
in every few minutes and everything.
So he finally relented and let
me go for the few hours I would
be away doing the performance.
But it was touch and go there for a few minutes.
But like I said,
this love of Steger continued right on
up through the time that I worked for IBM.
I left the Army, of course,
and went to work for
United Press International in Louisville, Kentucky.
>> Again, doing general reporting, writing,
radio, news and different things for the wire service.
And from there, a friend persuaded me
to come to work at the daily newspaper in east Tennessee,
which was not far from my home in Kentucky.
And I went to work for
the Kingsport Times News after I left UPI.
And I was doing
feature writing there, primarily education reporting,
and also got involved with
the local theater group in directing,
acting, and the technical side of things.
I was there for a couple of years and went from
there to White Plains, New York.
And why White Plains?
Well, I had no connection there whatsoever,
but I had wanted to try to get back to Washington.
I love the DC area.
And I had applied for a job there through
a federal agency and I didn't get the job,
but I don't know exactly how this happened,
but I expect that they kept my resume on file,
and somehow IBM got it because I got a call from IBM to
see if I would be interested in an interview for
a job in White Plains, New York.
So the next thing I knew I was on flight to
New York for an interview
for a job as the technical editor and writer.
And so my brother in-law to
be who was an engineer
and my sister were also employed to IBM.
She was an instructor for the office products division,
and she happened to be there
in White Plains when I came for an interview.
And of course,
IBM being very tradition-oriented,
the uniform de rigueur was,
of course, a white shirt and tie and 14 pounds wing tips.
And I showed up for the interview,
it happened to be on Saturday morning,
I showed up with a blue shirt,
and a tie, and a suit, of course,
but I went to the interview and came
back to have lunch with my sister afterwards,
and she said, "Did you wear that?
Did you answer?" I said, "Yeah."
But she said, "Well,
good luck with getting these job because
everybody's wearing white shirts around here."
But fortunately, I did get the job.
And again, theater played
a part in extracurricular activities with IBM.
They happened to have
a very fine theater group that their drama club,
which was also supported by
the company had charge of,
and so I got involved with them.
I did some directing,
and technical work, and some acting.
And so unfortunately,
I got to continue on with my work in theater,
my second love in addition
to writing and editing that I was doing for IBM.
So I remained there for 15-and-a-half years
before I actually met Michael Horton,
who was new to IBM,
and he was in White Plains.
He was also in
the information area as a writer and editor.
And he was in town for classes,
an indoctrination period, if you will.
So we got to know each other
within the circle of friends and
found out that we had a great deal in common there.
Our lives was sort of parallel.
He had majored in journalism and
also had this great love of theater.
And he had worked for
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution prior to this.
And we soon found
out that we did have so much in common,
and saw a number of shows in New York,
and he was at
the time assigned to a division in Washington,
DC, but he wanted to get back to Atlanta.
And so he encouraged me
to also apply to get a transfer to Atlanta,
which I did, of course.
And after a long series of events,
it finally developed that I was
transferred from New York to Atlanta.
That was in 1980 I believe.
So that's how I got to Atlanta.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Well, actually, let me
just take an opportunity to backtrack a little bit.
>> Sure.
>> Going back to your childhood,
did your mother and
stepfather have any additional children?
>> My mother and stepfather, yes.
I had two sisters.
Actually, there was a less of an age gap between
the two younger half-sisters than there was
between my actual older brother and sister.
My older sister, of course,
married when I was very young and
started a family, and my brother,
when we moved from Virginia to Kentucky,
he was only 16-years-old,
and he managed to
somehow wrangle his way into the military service
because he was very unhappy with the new school.
Being at that age it was quite a disruption in his life.
So he managed to get into the Air Force at
the age of 16 with
aid of a few forgeries and that kind of thing.
So I basically grew up with my two half-sisters and
felt probably closer to them than my older siblings.
My two half-sisters are still both living.
My older brother and sister,
of course, passed on,
actually, pretty young age.
My sister was 52, my brother was 49.
And so I'm still very close
to certainly one of my half-sisters I'm very close to,
we do a lot of traveling together,
I spend holidays with them,
and so we're very close in that way.
>> And did they stay in Kentucky
or where do they live now?
>> Well, my one sister lives in
east Tennessee in Kingsport,
and the other lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
>> Can you talk a bit more about
your relationship with your mother and your stepfather?
>> Early.
>> Your relationship with
your mother and stepfather growing up.
>> It was a very happy relationship, actually.
I think I was three-years-old when my mother remarried,
and he was the only father I ever knew.
There was a bit of resentment,
I think because I
realized that he wasn't my real father,
and then the two sibling,
two younger half-sisters came along,
and I guess I felt shunted aside because of that.
And then something of maybe
the step-child syndrome figured into this, I suppose.
[LAUGHTER] But basically we got along very well,
but it got much better over the years,
and he really became very much like a father to me.
And of course, my mother who I admired,
as well as loved, and of course,
as much for her desire to keep the family
together and keep going prior to her
remarrying if anything because
it was quite a struggle for her.
But all in all,
I think I basically had a good childhood.
I was happy.
We had our struggles and there were ups and
downs as far as my stepfather's employment,
he continued to work for the mines up until he retired.
And he had developed black lung by that time, of course,
and had his health problems,
but he lived to be like 87,
and my mother preceded him and death by about a year,
she was 86 when she died.
But again, I think my childhood basically was good.
I have happy memories of it.
>> Can you talk about your perceptions
of being gay or what that meant as a child?
>> It was something
that I don't think I was ever conflicted about it.
In growing up and in grade school and so forth,
I had my sweethearts and
everything and there were girls involved,
but in my mind,
I always knew I had
this other attraction but it never manifested
itself clearly until I got into high school,
and even then I
suppose my feelings could only described as bisexual.
Like I said, I was never conflicted by my feelings either
way and I never really was open about it.
I never felt the need to be.
All those years went on,
and I had
a longstanding relationship with Michael Horton.
And we had bought a house in Marietta together,
and our lives were just intertwined.
>> I know I could have discussed this with my mother,
if I had felt the need to,
but there was an unspoken understanding, I think.
And so she was
never confrontational about it, neither was I.
And I do remember that when Michael
spent Christmas with us and I
have a small cabin in the mountains in North Georgia and
one year we had Christmas
there together with both our families.
And so when Michael died,
in fact, the family loved him dearly.
And when he died,
I called my mother and told her,
of course, she just burst into tears.
Like I said, things were unspoken,
but I think there was
no secret about our relationship.
We didn't try to make it secret.
And that was the way it was, I think,
in our relationship throughout
the time that he was alive,
which we were together
for probably 18.5 years before that happened.
>> Going back to your timing in college,
can you talk more about what prompted
your transfer to the University of Kentucky?
>> By that time I had really felt
like majoring in English
wasn't going to do for me what I had wanted to,
which was work for a newspaper.
And as much as I loved Berea College,
and my life as a student there,
I really wanted to pursue journalism and
felt that the only way I could do this
was going to the university.
So I dropped out a semester and
then enrolled to University of Kentucky
to get the degree in journalism.
>> And then, a couple of questions
about your experience in the military.
How long were you in service?
>> How long? Two years.
The draft was for two years at that time.
>> What was your experience as a gay man in the military?
>> I never really had
any gay experiences while I was in the military.
For one thing, I
was well aware of the Army's policy about this.
In fact, during the time that I was in service,
I know an NCO who was assigned to
the unit that I was
in had been court martialled for being gay.
And he was ultimately
finally discharged, of course.
But I knew, I was aware of others there,
the old gay dollar thing.
I was just sure that they were gay,
a term that wasn't used,
by the way, at that time.
But I was just certain those kinds of things.
And I developed a very strong friendship
with one of my army buddies there.
He worked in the craft shop,
and we were practically inseparable,
but it was just strictly army buddy type things, stuff.
>> You talked about your decision to take a job at IBM.
Did you have any reservations about leaving the field
of journalism and moving to the corporate world?
>> I had reservations about it,
but on the other hand,
the lure of being near New York City,
White Plains is very close to New York City.
It's a very short train ride into the city.
That was quite attractive to me,
and being able to see Broadway shows and take
advantage of the wonderful restaurants and
city life was very appealing to me.
So I had reservations about it.
But still, this new life
and everything also had
its element of excitement about it.
>> You talked about how you and Michael met.
Can you tell us a little bit
more about Michael in general?
>> Michael was from Durham, North Carolina,
went to the University of North Carolina
where he was [inaudible].
He was a brilliant guy.
He really was, and very
charismatic and has all sorts of experience.
He won Soap Box Derby one year in Ohio.
And also was a Randolph Hearst award winner
and just an outstanding person.
And he was quite different from me.
He was much more outgoing and much
more charismatic than I was.
I think that's one of
the things that characterize our relationship that works.
He was more outgoing and I was somewhat more reserved
and he used to
say that he was the flashing trash of the theater,
and I was a heart and soul.
That's the way he put it.
But essentially his connection
with the Atlanta on Constitution,
I think was one of the elements that was
essential for the growth
and survival of theater in square,
which we formed in 1982.
And that developed, of course,
through both, the love that both of us had for theater.
He had worked at
an avocational theater in Smyrna
where he lived prior going to IBM.
And when we both
got together in Atlanta, this continued,
and he was working across town in
Decatur at a dinner theater there.
And by that time,
we had bought the house in Marietta,
and I just love that square in Marietta.
I just fell in love with it in my first visit.
And, of course, Michael was familiar with it, of course.
I just wanted to be a part of it. We both did.
I wanted to be more of a part of it
than just living two blocks away.
So he was working way across town in Decatur of course.
And I had done a lot of work with the Smart Theater also.
And we started looking
around for a place to do something in Marietta,
a shop or something.
So what are we doing?
We both thought theater.
It's a place, need the theater.
So people told crazy, of course,
for wanting to try to start a theater
in the suburbs of Atlanta,
which was somewhat new.
I don't think suburban theaters
were quite as common as they are today.
But we persuaded Bill Swearingen
who was the owner of the Depot restaurant,
which had been established in
the old train depot alongside the tracks in Marietta.
And off just to the back of the restaurant was
the old burger storage area for
the depot and which served as
the banquet room for the restaurant.
And we persuaded him to start a theater there.
And we had 85 seats.
And we were there for three years.
The restaurant in the meantime,
we outlive the restaurant, actually.
But what Swearingen had hoped would develop was it.
And it worked for a long time.
We would provide patrons for his restaurant,
and the patrons for his restaurant would have a place
to go after his meal.
So it was a good synchronistic synergistic relationship.
But things being what they were,
the restaurant closed, and we of course continued on.
And after he left
we encountered such things as leaky roof
and different things that we had to contend with
because we happened at that time
to be the only tenant there,
which had a new owner by that time.
We were both still working for IBM in
those early years of the theater.
And I can remember coming up at
lunch time to try to repair leaks on
the roof including putting down plastic on rainy days
and hanging buckets from the ceiling to catch
any drips and so forth.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Going back to your transfer to the Atlanta area.
You mentioned it took some time.
Michael moved to the Atlanta area first?
>> Yes. He was here before I managed
to get my transfer through.
>> And why did you select
Marietta as the place to settle down?
>> We had looked at a number of places in
both Atlanta and Marietta.
Michael had a number of friends that
lived in Marietta proper.
Well, he had friends in Atlanta as well,
but a realtor friend lived in
Marietta and found some places
that she wanted us to look at.
And we both, when we found this place near the square,
fell in love with the house.
It's historic. It was built just after
the Civil War in 1868.
And we both just
fall in love with it when we walked into it,
so we sad, this is it.
And I know Mike's father
in particular, he couldn't believe it.
He said, "How old is that house?"
[LAUGHTER] He thought we
were nuts for buying an old house.
But we both just adored it.
And so it was located two blocks from the square,
which seemed ideal to me.
And that's how we came to be in Marietta.
We had looked at places in Atlanta as well,
but the place in Marietta
just seemed to be just perfect for us.
>> We're going to take a quick break. [LAUGHTER]
>> If you could start a couple of
those sentences 'cause she was talking really loud.
>> Can you just repeat what you
were saying about purchasing the house,
and I just have
an additional question if you want to answer it now.
Was it a fixer up, did you need to?
So talk a little bit more about [OVERLAPPING] decision.
>> At the house itself,
but the previous owners
had done quite a bit of renovation work.
And it appeared to be in good shape.
There were things that we wanted to do ourselves.
And of course, we
didn't know at the time that buying an old house,
particularly one that's over
100 years old has one problem after another,
and it continues to this day.
It's something you expect.
It's built into the situation of buying an old house.
>> Did you have any reservations
about moving to a small town
and buying a house with Michael
as being a gay couple in the Deep South?
>> It never entered my mind, actually.
Like I said, I just loved the house,
I adored the location,
and didn't give it a second thought.
And we never made any effort to try to conceal
our relationship or try
to disguise it in any way.
>> So can you talk about the art scene
in Marietta when you arrived?
>> Well, the ballet was there,
and they had symphony orchestra.
I believe there was an avocational theater,
we had not been a part of that.
But what we had hoped to do when we started
the theater was make a professional theater.
And in the strictest sense we
did even though the pay for our first production was,
the top pay was $25 a week,
so hardly a living wage, if we will.
But that was pretty much it as far as the art scene.
There may have been, at the time,
the beginning or the germ of the art museum,
which developed a much larger organization,
and I think it's now pretty much doing
well and the ballet is still there,
of course, the symphony and so forth.
Like I say, we were told we were crazy
for wanting to start a theater in Marietta,
but fortunately, we ignored that.
[LAUGHTER]
>> So can you talk about how you got
involved in theater in Marietta?
What was the local climate for theater and
any support or lack of support that you got?
>> When we started things,
of course, we used our own resources,
our own money to do the initial,
pay for the initial start up costs and so forth.
The restaurant kicked in things like chairs,
the straight back chairs that we use.
Like the platforms for
the risers we had financed with our own money.
And we did get some financing from IBM,
which was quite unusual, actually.
We got a fund for community service grant from
IBM to buy our lodging equipment.
And so it's quite unusual for them to fund
anything for a startup organization.
But Michael being as persuasive as he
was and as charismatic and so forth,
he managed to pull this off and get us, I think,
it was something like $6,500 for
just a good bit of money at
that time for the lighting equipment.
And then we used our own funds for
getting some basic sound equipment and some other things.
But it remained until after we were well
underway before we got any local financial support.
And I remember when we got
our first contribution, it's like $250.
And it happened to be from,
she wasn't mayor at the time,
but [inaudible] who became Mayor of Marietta.
And I thought, Jesus,
it's wonderful, [LAUGHTER] a contribution.
But we found that there was a great hunger for
live theater and especially if done
well which we thought we were doing pretty well.
We had some pretty ambitious programming
those early years.
And we not only caught
the imagination of the audiences in Marietta and beyond,
actually, as well as the Atlanta Theater community.
And which is where most of our talent came from.
And so people decided
or actors decided that it was worth the trip
fighting traffic getting up here from
Atlanta to Marietta to participate in
this new theater which I think they thought of it as
pretty gutsy as well as we did.
And so we pulled off
some pretty ambitious programming
during those first couple of years.
Of course, we opened in 1982 with On Golden Pond,
which had been released not long before as a movie.
And it had some built in recognition.
But we had quite a credible production of that,
even in this small little space which was
barely 35 feet wide and maybe 65 feet long.
And the actual stage entrance
was the back door of the building itself.
By the way, the dressing rooms were outside and upstairs.
So the actors had to get dressed and
come in makeup and costume around
the building to back entrance
to make their entrance on stage.
But that first production was,
well, it's a lot of friends.
I remember, as I mentioned earlier,
Michael still maintained his relationship
with a lot of people on
the staff at the Atlanta Journals Constitution.
And Helen Smith, who was, I think,
the primary arts critic
or theater critic at
the paper happened to be a good acquaintance,
strong acquaintance of Michael's.
And she came out to do an interview with us,
and we had invited a number of prominent Mariettans.
We were told that this would be a good idea,
and we agreed that getting on the right side of
the old Marietta population would be good for us.
So we invited.
Our invitation list was primarily these people,
and we sought some help in identifying those people.
And response had been not that good at the outset.
And Helen Smith came and
interviewed us and did a feature story,
which appeared on the front page of
the art section on Friday,
I think, and our opening night was on Saturday.
And boy, that did it for us.
Our phone started to ring and response was immediate.
And we filled up that opening night performance.
And I remember we
had not only the present mayor of Marietta,
but three future mayors of Marietta,
who were there for the opening night,
including, as I mentioned,
[inaudible], who was with me at the front door,
greeting people and identifying them for me,
and giving me little asides about this one and that.
[LAUGHTER] It was
quite an intriguing and fun if not gossipy experience
in that respect.
And I remember also,
we had invited the then relatively new president
of Kennesaw College at the time, I guess,.
Betty Siegel.
And we happened to be from the same hometown.
I didn't know her well,
but I knew who she was.
We both edited the high school newspaper
and had some things in common.
But we invited her and her husband,
Joe and she showed up and she came around the corner.
And I had known her as Betty Fay Lenz, her maiden name.
So when she heard the name Betty Fay,
[LAUGHTER] I was pretty cheeky,
I suppose in calling her when she was Dr. Siegel.
She was taken aback.
I think she enjoyed it.
But it was quite a stellar audience that night.
And I do remember that afterwards at the reception,
which we had in the Atherson Square Courtyard
in the back of the theater,
I remember overhearing one of the people talking to
another and said something to
the effect that we certainly have to hang on to this,
then we can't let this go.
That made me feel awfully good.
I knew that we had made it.
We were in with Marietta at that time.
And so the support continued from there.
And while it didn't produce a great deal of finances,
we got a good, strong,
loyal following and a good deal of financial support.
>> So you mentioned that
your productions were considered gutsy.
Can you talk about how you
decided which productions you were going to put on them?
>> Michael and I made all of those decisions,
and like I said,
we both had a great love for theater.
And while he was still
living in Washington, DC, for example,
we had occasionally to see
this little show at
Arena stage called the 1940s Radio Hour.
And after we started the theater,
which was two or three years later
from having seen the production in Arena Stage,
and we were putting together the programming.
>> We said, we've got to do
that little musical show that we
saw at Arena stage called the 1940s radio hour.
And so we did it,
and we scheduled it around Christmas time.
And we had forgotten this strong Christmas connection
that there was with the show.
There's a broadcast within
a broadcast of a [NOISE] Christmas carol.
And, of course, throughout the show,
use of all the sound effects devices, and,
of course, the wonderful '40s music and all of that.
And the audience just loved.
It just add up.
We had to add performances
and it was just a huge success.
So when we were putting together next year,
we said, well, let's try it again.
We had to turn a lot of people away.
And so we did a second year.
And again, it was just as popular.
And we had improved
the production values and all of this.
And so we continued doing this little show
for 25 years after the theater started.
And so that was
one of the shows we had chosen.
But like I said, I would think that I had done
a production of 1,000 clowns prior to this.
That was added.
We did, of all things,
a sun time musical,
and this was one that wasn't quite the success that
the 1940s radio hour was
because sun time didn't
have that bigger following in Marietta.
And while we had the talent to do the songs,
there just didn't seem to be,
like I said, the following for sun time,
and it was our second show.
So it was pretty discouraging that it didn't
do quite as well as what we'd hoped.
But then, which didn't discourage us from still
doing other things that we still
believed in as good deer and,
like I said, Michael and I did the choosing of the shows.
And basically, they were things that we had
either seen or in the course of things,
we would take trips to New York to see new shows
and regional shows and new works.
One of the things I am
really quite proud of in the history of theater
in the Square is that we did do
so many new works,
either works that we had commissioned
or had not been done prior to that.
In fact, we did
25 original works over the period of our history,
about half of which we had commissioned.
So they were world premieres
and included things like that,
and of all things,
a world premiere of a play by Maxwell Anderson,
which we produced, of course, posthumously.
And this came about through a relationship
with one of our actors
was a friend of a nephew of Maxwell Anderson.
And he knew about this play about
the last days of
Queen Elizabeth and it was called Mask of Queens.
And I read it,
and I just thought it was magnificent.
It just read so
beautifully and we had an actress Jessica Phelps West,
who had done Elizabeth The First
and at least two other locations.
So we cast her in this as Queen Elizabeth.
And just great to
death scene but we gave it quite a credible production.
It was beautiful and I had put
a lot into the production values of it and so forth.
And I just loved it.
Loved the history and
the pomp and circumstance involved in it.
It was, as I say, a world premiere,
and subsequent to that,
his widow and the nephew
arranged for publication of the script.
And, of course, we're listed in there as having
produced the premiere production,
first live production of the work.
And it listed all of our cast and everything.
So quite proud of that.
But there were a number of other things that we did
that as far as things we commissioned,
including a play about
the establishment of the first Black Church
in Marietta and one of the very first in Georgia,
for that matter, prior to the civil war called Zion.
And that went on to have production
that Willie Kings Theater
in New York at Riverside Church,
and there was a production of it in Miami.
And we also produced it
at our theater at a later time, as well.
But it took wonderful production,
and they actually have plans to do it
again at the Church in commemoration of,
I think the 150th anniversary of
the establishment of Zion Church,
if I'm not mistaken.
But it's quite a thrill saying that's
produced in New York at Riverside Church.
I was here for the opening.
And I just remember
one of the opening lines or the opening line,
I think it's an over voiceover saying,
it was 1848 in Marietta, Georgia.
And this has sent a chill down my spine, hearing this,
knowing that I was in New York
and this little play that we developed
and brought to the stage was
now being produced elsewhere.
And to very good success.
Frank Rich reviewed it and it got a number of
reviews up there and it was quite well received.
There were other things that we produced over the years.
In fact, our second season,
I think, included a new work
by a local TV personality, Zeke Siegel.
Michael had adapted a script
about Joan Crawford, her biography.
And that's another story, too.
We're in production for that show,
and the author of
some other biographies was interested in
doing something about Joan Crawford and Anne Edwards.
So I think she had done biographies of Judy Garland and
Katharine Hepburn and Vivien Leigh and Margaret Mitchell.
And she showed up one night.
We had no idea she was there.
But this turned out to come back at
us a few years later when we wanted to do another show,
so we got in touch with agent in New York.
Michael wanted to adapt
a movie script of I think High Street,
Charlotte, there or something.
So he asked about AD agent about that,
and he said, no,
this is not available.
I wonder if we might be interested in
a script about Judy Garland.
So Michael said,
yeah, I want to take a look.
So we went up and saw a production of it
at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey,
and it was called One More Song.
And it was by Anne Edwards,
who had seen a show at our theater,
which we were totally unaware of.
And we offered to do it at our theater, and she agreed,
and it was new work,
so she wanted to do some tweaking and so forth.
Anyway. But the star who played
Judy Garland at Paper Mill
was a Tony nominee, Donna Theodore.
And we talked her into coming down to
Marietta's little theater to
do the first production of it here also.
And it was quite well received.
And so it just
illustrates how sometimes you
never know who's in the audience.
I remember Mick Jagger came to a production.
It happened to be an all coward play that
his wife at the time, Jerry.
[LAUGHTER] She's a model.
I cant remember her last name.
>> Jerry Hall.
>> Jerry Hall, yes.
She was interested in doing a production of it elsewhere.
And so they wanted to come see this place.
So we were rehearsing something else
in our rehearsal space.
And somebody came back to the rehearsal space
and just besides himself.
He just never guess who's in the audience,
Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall.
[LAUGHTER] So Michael being ever
the entrepreneur and charismatic person,
they went home to get dressed and something got a little
flashier too before intermission,
so he could say hello to Mick Jagger.
But no fuss was made over him and everything,
and he was quite cordial.
And I think they enjoyed the show. They seemed to.
But it was quite an experience
for all of and gave a number of
his fans the costumer in
particular was just absolutely
enthralled and besides himself,
that Mick Jagger had come to theater.
[LAUGHTER] What was the question?
[LAUGHTER] I veered off there.
So deciding on our programming
was a collaborative experience.
We based on a lot of things, audience input,
things that we saw in New York or within the region.
And, of course, we read voraciously,
and Michael was always eager to adapt something new.
He adapted the original script for enchanted April,
not the movie script, but the play.
And that was quite a hit for us,
also. Quite a success.
And, of course, later and this was after Michael's death,
I had read the memoir that
Celestine Sibley had written called Turned Funny,
about her beginnings in newspaper and
life at the Algal of Constitution.
And she's quite a remarkable woman, I think,
as not only a pioneering newspaper woman,
but a personality with just a huge support base.
So we talked Philip Depoian into adapting her memoir.
This was after her death.
>> And that was a huge success for us
and led to another adaptation by Philip.
It was about the Great Train Robbery,
which actually took place between Marietta and Kennesaw.
I believe I'm correct on that.
But I know the group
of union guys spent the night at Kennesaw Hotel,
which was right across
the street from where the theater is located.
And so it had that immediacy about it.
And again, people thought we
were nuts for trying to take on
doing a stage production
about the great locomotive chase.
And we had done
another show a little earlier in the season,
a show that I had seen at Barter Theater
in Virginia called Tradin' Paint,
which is about NASCAR racing.
And the director had
staged it in such a manner that you really, I think,
got caught up in the excitement of an actual race,
and just do choreography and
just the kinetic movement and staging.
That gave me the idea.
We had a board member
who wanted us to do
a show about the great locomotive chase.
I said, you're crazy.
We can't do that honestly.
So after having done this, I said, well,
maybe there's a possibility we can.
And so I talked to Philip Dupois about it,
and he said, yes, let's give it a try.
So we did stage the show,
we called it Steal on Dixtie.
And it turned out to be quite successful.
And Philip also,
having an affinity for
music and particularly folk music,
incorporated that in the show,
and it was quite a success for us.
I see. Well, there were a number of other things.
We did an adaptation
of some Christmas stories by [inaudible] professor,
as a matter of fact, stage readings
about Christmas stories.
John Dentil put those together for us.
But those are just some of
the original works that we either commissioned or
staged ourselves and something
that I was especially proud of having done.
But in the course of things,
we did countless regional premieres,
as well as, the world premieres,
most of which were quite successful with our audiences.
And a lot of this was part
of our original intent in this theater,
which was to do works that had relevance to the region
and either authorship or subject matter or
just had to do with the South or
particularly as much of
the local history as we possibly could.
And a number of things we did incorporated folk music.
Like Zion incorporated a number of spirituals.
And we had another chancellor professor, or Moses,
who worked closely with us on that.
And so that was part of our original intent also.
So we'd usually have one Southern work or work associated
with original theme or
author or subject matter of that nature.
>> So can you talk about
the original organizational structure of
the theater and how that evolved over time?
>> Well, in the beginning, it was Michael
and me and an answering machine.
That was pretty much it.
For the first couple of years,
that was pretty much literally it.
We were still working for IBM and we
had no money to employ anybody else.
And we did fairly
early employ somebody who could
answer the phone for us or help to run the box office.
And I ran the box office in the beginning,
and neither of us were involved in production.
So we didn't want to give
the impression to vanity theater.
So our involvement in any acting or directing
was put aside in those very early days because
we were so heavily involved
in getting the theater started.
But like I said,
it was just Michael and me until we got enough resources,
finances that we were able to hire
a bookkeeper and a box office manager,
and a few other part-time people like that.
But another thing I was proud of is that even
though our pay structure was what it was,
we never missed payroll.
The number of times Michael and I
would forego and pay for ourselves,
but we always paid the actors and
technicians from the very beginning.
But of course, to get the 501(c),
you have to have a board of directors.
And we had a five-member board of directors at the time.
And that was pretty much it early on.
Michael, of course,
was artistic director,
and I was managing director from the outset.
And I was pretty much a bookkeeper and whatever I can
remember our house being so close
by served a number of purposes in our early stages also.
I built the platforms and
scenery for the very first productions in
the driveway of our house
and transported them two blocks away to the theater.
And our living room,
a number of times served as the rehearsal space.
And I can remember peeling up
the masking tape from the floor and pulling up
the finishing on the floor and
having to deal with that little minor renovation project.
But it was just make-do as
well as you possibly could in the very early stages.
>> So how did the focus of the theater change over
time? Or did it?
>> I don't think it did.
Like I said, I think we started out at
the outset doing something.
We wanted to do something, like I said,
had local or regional relevance,
and we wanted to do
something that we could sell as an educational offering,
you know, a classic, if you will.
I think our first-year first season,
we did a production of The Miser,
which by default, I had a minor cameo role at the end
because we kept trying to get somebody to do
this little minor role
where the father comes in at the end.
But we did that.
And then we wanted to include something
like a classic in each season,
something with the regional relevance.
We wanted to at least attempt to do musical.
Of course, by the third or fourth season,
we saw that we could not do a season
without doing the Holiday show,
and that was the 1940s Radio Hour.
And aside from that,
we would do off-Broadway-type things.
We knew that space limitations
and certain limitations prevented us
from doing anything on a large scale,
like a Broadway-type musical.
But small-scale musicals were well within our capability.
I know one came along and I think it was 1990.
An actress who works for us and worked
for the Airlines had seen a show a Lambsater in New York,
and she came back raving about this show and said,
"I think you ought to do it.
The audiences here would love it,
but you got to promise me that I could
do one role in the mother."
And the show was Smoke on the Mountain.
And this was like a new radio hour for us.
It was a show that the audiences just
could not get enough of.
And, of course, it was
Southern Mountain gospel music essentially,
set at rural Baptist Church
in North Carolina during the Depression.
And of course, everybody loved the music,
and all the actors were musicians, as well.
So they were playing the guitar and the bass,
and we even had a fiddler court piano,
and it they were not only good actors,
but they were good musicians as well.
And subsequent to offering that,
that became almost an annual production.
And afterwards, we were going to a reception,
and Michael was talking to one of
the authors of Polly, about a sequel.
And he said, "How about doing
the gospel singing family with the Sanders family?"
He said, "How about doing a show about
the Sanders family at Christmastime?"
So that planted the seed for
a follow-up to Smoke
on the Mountain called Sanders Family Christmas.
So at one point,
we were doing them alternately;
one year we would do Smoke on the Mountain and next year,
we would do Sanders Family Christmas.
And there even was a third in this series called
the Sanders Family Homecoming,
all of which were enormously popular with our audiences.
But where was I going with that?
[LAUGHTER].
>> We were just talking about the focus of
the theatre not changing.
>> Yeah.
>> A question I got frequently was we did a show in 1992,
I believe it was or '93,
a show that Michael and I had seen in New York,
written by Terrace McNally,
and the production we took had Nathan Lane
and Christine Baranski called Lips Together Teeth Apart.
And we love that show.
I just thought it was absolutely wonderful.
We've got to do it.
Even though it had to have
a pool of water that the actors could jump into,
or at least one of the actors could jump into,
and it represented a swimming pool, of course.
And this was one of
the major challenges of doing that show.
And we had 1,100 gallons of water.
A local swimming pool company had devised this liner,
specially made for us,
that contained the water.
And so we were that.
But the show dealt with two married couples who were
spending 4th of July weekend at Fire Island in New York
and the wife of one of
the couples is with the home of her brother,
who had died of AIDS.
And so they were spending the weekend there,
and they had gay neighbors and this kind of thing.
It wasn't about homosexuality,
about a number of things.
One of the husbands knew that he had terminal cancer,
there was all different revelations
that ensued in the course of things.
And it was just a wonderful play.
But one of our patrons had seen
it and complained to a county commissioner
about the show and
some of the references in it
to gay neighbors and that kind of thing.
So it had developed in this patron's mind
that this was a play about the homosexual lifestyle,
and this commissioner, I guess,
was looking for a cause at the time.
And so he took on Tier and Square.
At that time, we were getting funding from the county.
And he proposed that
nothing be funded by the county that was not approved.
And so we certainly
felt this smacked of
censorship and objected very strongly to it.
And when from there,
it got into the papers and then became a thing
where the Commission was
attacking the theater as having a gay agenda,
and there was so-called anti gay resolution
that was passed by the Commission,
and even got into this was
just prior to the Olympics coming to Atlanta.
1996, even got into an issue there of a venue for,
I think, women's volleyball, it was.
And so there was a huge demonstration about that.
And so as a result,
the county lost that volleyball venue
was taken to another location, I think.
But this whole thing got
enormous publicity throughout
the country and certainly locally,
there were several editorials and only marry paper,
but the Atlanta paper and papers across
the country and even foreign press.
There were papers that were written about the whole issue
and censorship and it
was it was
quite a development
for the small little theater in
Marietta but the question we got afterwards was,
is this going to affect your programming in any way?
When you do other plays that deal with well,
this play didn't deal with homosexuality,
but that might refer
to homosexuality and the answer, of course, was no.
We did a number of things later on,
true, which is about Tom Capodi.
We did the gross indecency trials
of Oscar Wilde, which is about,
of course, the infamous Oscar Wilde trial
for being a homosexual.
And just a number of other things,
and incorporated gay characters in different ways.
And so it didn't deter us
from doing the programming that we thought,
if a show had merit and certainly credentials,
and we wanted to do it, we would do it.
But as a result of all the controversy,
we did lose county funding,
and at that time,
that amounted to $25,000, which was significant.
It was quite a large chunk of our budget.
And so it was quite a blow to us financially,
but it also generated a windfall of
financial support for us also from well,
Joy Wilbert, who has a very strong Marietta connection.
She went to high school there and so forth.
She had gotten wind of it,
and we had this patron who,
well, she said that she and Paul Newman
would contribute $25,000 if it could be matched.
And so we had one patron who came forward
and said he would match the entire amount,
as well as some of our own patrons who
also ponied up to the tune of I think, about $35,000.
And then in addition to that,
there was an Atlanta a group of
Atlanta businessmen who were
connected with Alliance Theater,
who banded together and came up with another $30,000.
So it was quite a windfall for the theater as
a result of all this, and luckily,
because we lost more
than 1,000 subscribers as we thought of all this.
And that was quite a blow to us, also,
since we only had about 3,000 subscribers at the time.
So we lost about 1,000 subscribers.
We lost at least two board members
and an advisory board member.
And one of the board members had
donated an oriental rug that we were using in the lobby.
And, of course, they resigned from the board,
and also came and yanked the oriental rug from our lobby.
So, we lost a number of
things but I think in the long run,
we benefited greatly from it because long after,
we would hear from actors who said
that they would go to places like New York or wherever.
And if their resume included
something from Theater in the Square,
it would prompt a conversation
with so it was an opener for them.
So they were grateful to us in that respect.
But that was quite a trying time for us.
And it was also a time that Michael
was diagnosed being HIV positive by that time.
He was going through some pretty rough times,
and I strongly feel that
this was debilitating to him.
Also, it was very stressful.
And I think it worsened his situation.
He later on that same year
developed pneumonia and was hospitalized
and was on a ventilator for a long period of time.
A long hospitalization period.
He did manage to recover and come back,
and did some other directing for us and so forth.
And he
had a good productive period after that,
and after he recovered.
He died in 1996, I think.
So that production and
the subsequent events had so many reverberations.
It was just unbelievable.
I had the binder full of clippings.
People would send me from around the country,
from Canada or San Francisco,
from London, where it was written about.
We were interviewed by NPR,
and there were a number
of postgraduate students had written papers
about it until I was interviewed
a number of times about that
and asked to speak at
the Southern Theater conference about it.
So it generated widespread interest.
And it's not right way I would like to get on the map,
but we got on the map, despite ourselves.
>> Actually, just because of timing,
I know that Griff has to get the class.
>> I just asked Jennifer if there's
anyone else who can take my place.
If she says yes, then you guys are more than
welcome to stay because I don't
think there's anyone else in the studio
this afternoon if that's something you're interested in.
>> How are you feeling?
>> Well, I'm fine.
>> You're sure?
>> Yeah.
>> Just giving them the option.
So if you guys want to stay.
>> It's totally up to you.
>> You're about an hour and 45 minutes.
A little actually about 10:00-12:00 to two hours.
>> Well, there's two ways to look at it is we
have a good number of questions left to ask