FEATURE: Pioneer Press
"Radio Man": Playing Garrison Keillor when Keillor is right here
By Chris Hewitt, Pioneer Press
September 25, 2014
Garrison Keillor, left, wrote "Radio Man," which stars Pearce Bunting. Notice any resemblance?
Any actor will tell you that playing real people adds technical demands. You have to get the walk down, make the voice sound right, deal with fake noses.
Now, imagine you're an actor in a play that was written by the guy it's about -- and that the same guy is in the theater, watching you rehearse. And that guy is an entertainment icon.
Pearce Bunting doesn't have to imagine any of that because he's living it in the History Theatre's production of "Radio Man."
Bunting plays The Host in Garrison Keillor's "Radio Man," a "host" who sounds a great deal like Keillor and who presides over a radio variety show that is an awful lot like "A Prairie Home Companion."
"He told me from the very beginning, 'You're not me.' But he writes in a vernacular and with a rhythm and cadence, this music that he speaks. I guess I'm finding those helpful in some ways to find a way into the character," Bunting said last week just before a rehearsal.
The real breakthrough may be not what Keillor sounds like, but what he holds.
"We're moving onto the stage now, so I haven't been working with a live microphone so far and I think that'll be a big deal," Bunting said. "Everybody says the ('Prairie Home') show is for these millions of listeners around the world, but it is a live show and when I listen to it, I hear him with this intimate way of talking."
Bunting has had to make voice choices. In some ways, his voice should suggest a memoir, as The Host looks back on bygone days.
Sometimes, the voice needs to have a flat, "not acted" sound, when The Host is doing commercials or reading from a script. And there are other times when The Host sounds more like a traditional character in a play or when he's simply interacting, off-mic, with the cast and crew of his show.
Posters advertising "Radio Man" make it look like he's playing another local media personality: Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray, a resemblance that came as news to Bunting. But he acknowledges that he is not a dead ringer for Keillor.
"He's completely different-looking than me. We're roughly the same height and we both have a little bit of slumping at the top of the back, the shoulder shrug thing," said Bunting, who adds he's finding the most success when he doesn't over-think the resemblance. "His writing has such ease and his manner is so easy, as in easy-going. That's really helpful. You can just slide into that."
Apparently, it has gotten easier over the course of the rehearsal period, to the extent that Bunting (who, a glutton for punishment, will play dramatist Bertolt Brecht in his next gig) sometimes does Keillor even when he doesn't mean to. Recently, when Bunting was writing something to be read at the funeral of a beloved teacher, he suddenly thought, "I'm sounding a little bit Keilloresque in a turn of phrase or two."
It's an occupational hazard lots of other actors have faced. At least three other plays on Twin Cities stages this fall -- "The Heidi Chronicles" at the Guthrie, where the title character shares many characteristics with playwright Wendy Wasserstein; "Middle Brother" by Mu Performing Arts; and Illusion Theatre's upcoming "Jeffrey Hatcher's Hamlet," in which the playwright re-creates his own youth -- fit in with the grand tradition of plays in which writers show up on stage.
What: "Radio Man"
When: Through Oct. 26
Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
Tickets: $45-$15, 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com
Chris Hewitt can be reached at 651-228-5552. Follow him on twitter.com/ChrisHMovie.
Posted: 09/25/2014 12:01:00 AM CDTUpdated: 09/25/2014 02:53:24 PM CDT
FEATURE: Star Tribune
Garrison Keillor writes his first play, “Radio Man”
By Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
September 20, 2014
The writer and radio host launches his first play, “Radio Man,” in which he does — or perhaps does not — reveal himself.
Garrison Keillor arrived late for a rehearsal at History Theatre. If this shock-topped scarecrow had emerged from a New York subway at 4 a.m., you would not have blinked. He’d spent a long day “rewriting like crazy” the script for “Radio Man,” his first stage play, which has its world premiere Saturday.
Keillor’s rewrite had preceded him to the rehearsal room and caused quite a stir.
“He’s rewritten the whole first act,” said director Ron Peluso, leafing through the pages. “I’m having a heart attack right now.”
Now as Keillor entered the rehearsal room with a friendly wave to the cast, Peluso approached.
“You were busy,” he said to Keillor. “There were a lot of surprises, so we should probably read through this.”
Keillor nodded silently, watching choreographer Jan Puffer and the actors work their way through what used to be the opening number.
“Who’s the Sharks and who are the Jets?” he quipped.
To actor Pearce Bunting, who portrays the Host in “Radio Man,” he said, “You play me, and so you do not dance. Brought up by Christian people.” Keillor watched for a few minutes, snapping his fingers sporadically to the music, but quietly he told Peluso that he felt the dance was too much — a distraction from the story.
“The guy who plays me should not be touched by the other people,” he joked with the cast at one point. “No touching.”
“Can I touch them?” Bunting asked.
“Be very careful,” Keillor said.
At 72, Keillor celebrates the 40th anniversary of “A Prairie Home Companion” this year. And he has added “playwright” to his long line of descriptors. He loves it, wants to do more and has ideas for future scenarios. On this day, however, his effort was focused on the present, on “Radio Man,” a loosely autobiographical play with music about Keillor and “Prairie Home.”
The main character, Keillor said, is an “Everyman, a schnook who gets pushed around by everybody. … His major foible is that he has allowed himself to be the subject of a play.”
Waiting for 20 years
When Peluso became artistic director at History Theatre 20 years ago, he invited Keillor to write a play. The two knew each other through Peluso’s wife, Sue Scott, who has been in the “Prairie Home” cast for 22 years.
Keillor finally took the bait a couple of years ago.
“He said, ‘I think I should write a play about the 40 years of “Prairie Home Companion,” ’ ” Peluso recalled. “He said, ‘I’ll play the dad or the janitor.’ ”
Early drafts were too much about the show and less about the man. “It’s called ‘Radio Man.’ We want to get to know more about him,” Peluso remembered telling Keillor.
And did the writer heed this advice?
“I think he has,” Peluso said. “The personal stories he goes to — this man has made some mistakes in his personal, emotional life. He was very brave to write about that stuff.”
Keillor was not so sure in a separate interview.
“He may have pushed, but I don’t think he got what he was looking for,” he said of Peluso’s desire. “I don’t reveal myself in this play because I don’t think I’m that interesting.”
For example, he said, look at Tennessee Williams, whose work he admires. Williams came from a crazy family, was gay in an oppressive era, could be combative and reckless and felt constant guilt about his sister, Rose.
“Compared to that, I’m pretty normal,” Keillor said. “I don’t come from the South.”
No, just Anoka County. He laughed.
“My people were very cheerful,” he said. “My parents loved each other, were openly affectionate. They were evangelicals, and growing up as an evangelical does not qualify as a big traumatic experience.”
His life was far removed from Hollywood movies that portray evangelical childhoods as scary and spooky.
“These were gentle, kind people,” he said of his relatives.
As he watched rehearsal, Keillor had a side conversation with Jonah Harrison, who plays Young Garrison Keillor.
“How does it feel to be just a memory, the ghost of my childhood?” Keillor asked Harrison. “I doubt you have a lot in common with my childhood. What do you have to draw on, from your own experience?”
Tough questions for a young actor, but they lead Keillor into stories about being a kid, running out to the woods and the ravine behind his home, where he’d meet other 13-year-old boys for games of chase and war.
Keillor grew up with the ambition of making his living as a writer, which marked him as an outsider, but even there, he said, most of his contemporaries “felt they didn’t quite belong.”
‘I want to be a playwright’
Playwriting suits Keillor. He hopes to do more of it.
The work is sociable, unlike the solitude of book writing, and “the beauty of a play is that you create something that you’re not in.” Unbidden, he talks about a “Lake Wobegon musical,” or a screenplay. He did write for Robert Altman’s film “A Prairie Home Companion,” but that was on Altman’s dime.
He threw Peluso with his extensive rewrite 17 days before opening, but that’s how the business works.
“I thought it was very jumpy, with a lot of transition difficulties,” he said.
He also wanted a larger moment for the Host at the beginning, to give Bunting a chance to win over the audience before the razzmatazz of the dance takes over. Then there were a couple of characters who deserved better — Mary Louise, the ex-girlfriend, and Marilyn, who represents a good-hearted Lutheran woman who gets overwhelmed by a bigmouth rival.
“I have to do something for Marilyn so she can stand up,” he said with a sympathetic tone of obligation.
After a break, Keillor, Peluso and the cast gathered to reconsider the new version. This was a Wednesday, and Keillor had told Peluso that he would deliver his final rewrites by Saturday. Peluso begged for Friday.
When Keillor addressed the troops, he thanked them for their patience and assured them he’d be done by the director’s deadline.
“I turned around a lot of things in Act One,” Keillor said. “It’s a more studied opening, and I’ve taken Pearce’s narrative from later on and put it together in one place. I’ve tightened things up, made things more coherent, I hope. Most of what you’ve gone to the trouble of learning is still there, just in another place.”
Then it was back to work. The playwright never rests.
Go to StarTribune.com
REVIEW: City Pages
The Working Boys Band: Dignity of Labor
By Ed Huyck
May 9, 2014
When Hiram Titus passed away last fall, he left behind high-quality music for shows as diverse as the Guthrie's A Christmas Carol to the musical Hormel Girls.
The Working Boys Band, playing through this month at the History Theatre, is a fitting tribute to his musical legacy. The show isn't perfect, but it is an often-absorbing look at life in the Twin Cities nearly a century ago.
The story centers on the titular band, the creation of Professor C.C. Heintzemann in 1917. His idea is to organize the young men -- boys, really -- who toil in the factories and mills in Minneapolis.
There's a lot of the "rag tag organization comes together" trope going on here, but playwright Dominic Orlando moves things deeper by exploring the politics of the time. The United States had just entered World War I, and anti-German fervor was at its peak. This spells trouble for Heintzemann, and gives the show some real tension and heft.
Still, I wish there was less about the turmoil and battles of the upper classes and more about the lives of the boys in the band. We get moments of this, from the terrific opening number ("Just Make Sure You Get Home Alive") to the story of one of the boys who is seriously injured in an accident at the mill.
Instead, the plot digs deeper into budding love among several of the characters. While that does produce the show's best moment (the slow building act two number "Moonlight, Loring Park"), it also drags down the pace near the end of the show.
The lithe and loose-limbed Jon Andrew Hegge leads a talented cast as Heintzemann, and he is joined with nice turns by Jen Burleigh-Bentz as the appointed arbiter of what a "true" patriot is, Mrs. T.G. Winter, and Ricardo Vazquez as the draft-dodging Franky Montana.
As has happened before on numerous stages, Randy Schmeling steals the show. This time, he plays businessman A.W. Warnock. His prickly character is intriguing to watch, and he leads the working boys through an act-one highlight, "All Boys Are Working Boys."
IF YOU GO:
The Working Boys Band
Through June 1
History Theatre
30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
$15-$40
For tickets and more information, call 651.292.4323 or visit online.
Go to City Pages
ARTICLE: Star Tribune
History lessons from Park Square and History Theatre
by Graydon Royce
May 1, 2014
Park Square and History Theatre open shows this week not seen before in the Twin Cities.
Two premieres — one world and one regional — make St. Paul a theater destination this weekend. They will be cutting the ribbon on “Working Boys Band” at History Theatre on Saturday. Just down the street at Park Square Theatre, “Behind the Eye” gives Minnesotans a first look at a play that’s been around a few years.
‘The Working Boys Band’
Prof. Harold Hill had it right all along. Remember? The slick-talking huckster said music was the cure for the wayward youth of River City. Put an instrument in a boy’s hands and he can’t hold a pool cue, can’t get into mischief — can’t turn into a juvenile delinquent.
“The Working Boys Band,” a new musical, brings to stage the story of a real-life Music Man. About 100 years ago, Prof. C.C. Heintzeman formed the Minneapolis Working Boys Band to bring structure and discipline to lads living hardscrabble lives on the Mill City’s meager streets.
Heintzeman emigrated from Germany and moved to Minneapolis from Rhode Island in the early part of the 20th century. He taught music at Hamline University and conducted bands. In the play, written by Dominic Orlando and composer Hiram Titus, Heintzeman persuades authorities to let him start a group with kids who worked in factories. There’s nothing like a uniform and a musical instrument to raise self-esteem and purpose, Heintzeman maintained.
Martin Segal, a retired doctor who lives in Edina, played in a Depression-era iteration of the Working Boys Band.
“If you heard Sousa’s ‘Semper Fidelis’ coming down the street, that was the Working Boys Band,” said Segal, who at 93 still plays clarinet in the Richfield Symphonic Band.
The Heintzeman concept was still the same when Segal played as a teen: “In order to keep the kids from getting into trouble, they gave them instruments,” he said.
A mentorship also formed, Segal recalls. Older band members would school newcomers on reading music and proper technique.
“Our uniforms were beautiful red flannel jackets, the pants were blue with a big red strip down the side. And we added a gold braid in high school,” he said.
For Segal, the History Theatre musical has a special poignancy. He knew Titus as a child — “a child prodigy,” he called the composer. Titus died last September at age 66, shortly after finishing the finale for “The Working Boys Band.”
(8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., 10 a.m. & 8 p.m. Thu. Ends June 1, History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul, $15-$40, 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com)
‘Behind the Eye’
Here’s a life for you: Lee Miller was a Vogue model before she became a muse and model for Man Ray and other surrealists. That was before she went to Europe during World War II as a war photographer. And that was before she retired to the English countryside, exhausted by what she witnessed in the war. Still, in the final act of her life she became a respected gourmet cook and played host to many of the great artists who had worked with her previously.
Minneapolis-based playwright Carson Kreitzer takes on Miller’s story in “Behind the Eye,” which opens Friday at Park Square. Leah Cooper directs a cast that features Annie Enneking as Miller.
“It’s a little intimidating to look at someone’s life with such an epic scope,” Kreitzer said. “She discovered and tasted and experienced everything there was to experience.”
Kreitzer first came across Miller’s story when she read a review of a 2005 biography. Miller, who grew up in upstate New York, posed nude for her father, an amateur photographer, before she caught the attention of Condé Nast in New York. He employed her as a model at Vogue magazine before she was 20 years old and for three years she was a highly sought fashion model. She went to Paris in 1929 with a letter of introduction to surrealist Man Ray. She became his muse, collaborator, lover and model.
Eventually, Miller got out from in front of the camera and started to exercise her own eye for photography. She returned to New York, opened her own studio, ran off with an Egyptian businessman, got bored, returned to Paris and met Roland Penrose, a British artist.
They were living together in England when World War II broke out. Miller became a news photographer for Vogue and documented the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris and, most famously, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Her colleague David Scherman, a Life magazine correspondent, photographed her in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich.
She covered fashion and celebrities for Vogue after the war but retreated to the English countryside with Penrose. She slipped into depression and alcoholism even as she continued to host artistic royalty at her country home.
Kreitzer developed her script at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis before the play had its premiere at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park. Interestingly, that production starred Minneapolis actor Sarah Agnew as Miller.
“There’s a lot to weigh in [Miller’s] life, and it’s a question she asks, ‘What did it all add up to?’ ” Kreitzer said. “That’s a question any of us will have to deal with. Her struggle in reconciling the facets of herself is a struggle we all can appreciate.”
(7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends May 18, Park Square Theatre, 20 W. 7th Pl., St. Paul, $38-$58, 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org.)
Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299
Go to StarTribune.com
ARTICLE: Minnesota Public Radio
History Theatre's 'Boys' recalls music, street life of WWI Minneapolis
by Euan Kerr
May 1, 2014
The people of Minneapolis always seem concerned that youngsters without enough to do will get into trouble.
It's a theme History Theater Artistic Director Ron Peluso recognized immediately when composer Hiram Titus arrived on his doorstep with an old black and white photograph in a broken frame. It was a picture of the Working Boys Band, a group formed in Minneapolis a century earlier. They often performed at civic events, playing patriotic songs and hoping music could keep kids out of trouble.
Titus "walked up to me and said, 'You know this would make a great musical, we ought to do it,'" Peluso recalled.
"The Working Boys Band" makes its premier this weekend on St. Paul's History Center stage. It's a story that looks back at the Twin Cities and family life 100 years ago when there were no child labor laws and many youngsters scrambled to make a living, playwright Dominic Orlando said.
Orlando researched the band, and found it often reflected the changing nature of Minnesota. He set the play during the World War I era at a time when authorities worried about large number of immigrants here.
The band's organizers came from the German community, taught musical discipline and moral integrity, he said. It became a tool to keep immigrant kids occupied and out of trouble.
"Manliness, integrity, intelligence and kindness -- these four are the remedy to bigotry and blindness," a cast member sings during the performance.
Peluso, who is directing the production, remembers talking with one former band member of the original Working Boys.
"He's 93. And when I first called him he answered like 'Hello, it's Dr. Seigel,'" said Peluso, imitating a frail elderly voice. "He talked my ear off for about an hour. He didn't want to talk about being a doctor or a World War II vet. He just wanted to talk about the Working Boys Band experience and how it changed his life."
Siegel told him about how he and his brother were poor kids growing up in South Minneapolis.
"Somebody gave him a clarinet," said Peluso. "And it became a self esteem thing, I think.
"The Working Boys Band" is perfect for the History Theatre because it tells personal stories of ordinary people with themes everyone can recognize, Peluso said. He agrees with Orlando when he says it's a story about families, and the way humans form them to meet their needs.
One family member will be missing at the performances, however.
Hirum Titus, who started it all with that old black and white photo, died just days after completing the music for the play. Titus had a successful career as a composer for the Guthrie, the Minnesota Opera, and the History Theatre.
"We miss him," Peluso said. "The first couple of weeks of rehearsal were bittersweet because we knew he was in the room with us, but in a way he would never be able to see this wonderful piece that he has written with Dominic."
"The Working Boys Band" will play at the History Theater in St. Paul through the beginning of June.
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