Wyld Ryce; 101; If Your Dreams Could Come True Children's Theater; Tpt Master

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Hello

that's Linares and when are you going to the Muppets. I'm sure I haven't gotten down yet. I'm fine. You're moving really. Where you moving police station. You're getting Where is it. Riverside Oh yeah I don't know if I know it or not. We're doing it with Martha Pearce. I don't think I met her I don't know if I want to really a job. What's it like. Broken windows no heat. They have a good old good luck. No I would like to see it go really but I can't tonight I'm busy I can only see it tonight. Oh well I'll try. I Can we stay a half hour. OK bye bye. My name is

Donahue JOHN CLARKE Donahue years nine hundred sixty two and I've just gotten a phone call from a schoolmate. She wants me to come down and look at an abandoned police station. She wants to start a theater for children there. I don't really want to go. I would think these days part time for many of the people rights in the Education Department keeping our children mostly black I've been thinking lately about starting some kind of a school for children growing now with his children's theater. I really thought about that at all. He wanted me to design build scenery. I don't know if I'm interested really going to be around here somewhere. This whole neighborhood I sort of like the way it feels. I like the idea of working with the children of a neighborhood like this. The arts are powerful. They could use it. Oh there it is.

It's bigger than I thought maybe this could work out. So this is it. Dirt on the floor. Place has to be all painted that room there that could be a lobby. This room here could be with a stage mural could go there go go up stairs that room back there that could be the scene shop a wooden floors could be a dance studio maybe over here costume shop back there could be an art

class room I think. Not too bad the windows are broken. It's going to take a lot of willing people to pull this off. Still a lot of it. I'm being built here. I have just gotten back from Germany where I spent three years in the army. I'm so excited to be here again. So happy to see Jon again to talk to him again about the theatre and acting to renew our old friendship for college. I suppose one of the reasons that we're so close is that we share the same vision for the future of theater here in Minneapolis. I'm Bobby Crabbe. I've just been acting at many apps some poetry theater in the director always there and her advice brought me over to the markets here and told me I get an opportunity to work. I find myself doing a lot of technical things like lights and sound and I help rebuild the interior of the building. And but soon John says we're going to do a show called Hill Island Spiegel's Mary pranks and it'll give me an

opportunity act you know. My name is Carlos was Ole's. I've just come in from Chicago. I don't know how he found me down there and I didn't have any phone that was listed in the home that rang I answered. I don't know John very well. I guess I'll build sets down here see if it works out. I'm Wendy lair. John had a wonderful reputation at the University I think and Jane and John were there a few years before I started to go to you. And I was always interested you know and in getting the job and finding a place to work because I didn't want to leave you and go to work as a waitress or in a shop or something and I'm so excited about acting and want to act. It's

1965 now has become quite a success the houses are filled. The critics are applauding our work but I feel we've got to grow. In order for the company to survive I feel we've got to expand. We all don't agree upon this. We have to stay the way we are. But I feel that there needs to be more fulfilment more growth some people have to be paid for their work and somehow the artistic vision has to be able to expand. We need more seating. We've got to move on. I had to leave the children the neighborhood and much of the marvelous community that we've created here. I'll try to bring as much of it as I can along good by salt or street turning. Say

20 years ago when I first walked up the stairs as a child in the neighborhood to visit this museum here I go up them again but this time as director of a theater company it's amazing. It's fantastic I love it doesn't smell like mama roses does it doesn't look like a police station either. Oh what an environment for the children passing by this fountain on their way to see theatre. Six hundred fifty seats in here it seems like a coliseum and the production is with a stage twenty four feet wide instead of fourteen feet wide. We don't have any sound or lighting equipment yet but we'll get that it's going to be a marvelous improvement. Oh by the way my new salary as artistic director will be double

the six thousand five hundred dollars. Some people call me Stan golly they say I want to have power over people I want them to do only what I say that I'm a puppet master. Other people say I'm simply crabby or ill tempered and impossible to work with. But I will say that I demand impossible things. For instance being in this space here where we're going to have 60 75 people dressing in change and nothing's impossible practically nothing is impossible if you believe that if you simply put all of your energies and focus and see to it that that it comes about that's all. And if I feel that way I demand that others meet that challenge. That's just how I feel about I don't know how any other way that I can work. In the days of the police

station at the Muppet theater I used to try to make delicious shrimp and macaroni dishes for our board meetings. Well now that we're here in the member suite of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts we hold our board meetings here and eat peanut butter sandwiches. Actually sometimes we have very elegant teas here like the day when John Davidson my business manager decided that we would have to outfit the theater with a lighting and a sound system and he determined that it would cost about $18000. Well that sum was raised here at tea in one afternoon thanks to some very nice friends. You know the thing that bothers me most about being here in the Art Institute now is that I'm concerned that the work that I make will not somehow measure up to only works of art in the prestigious surroundings of our new home. Besides I've committed myself to creating this new work. Good morning Mr Chilly I don't know what it's about yet I only know the

title but it's turning out to be about fear which doesn't surprise me because as I said I'm afraid that maybe we won't measure up. So I'm trying to figure out the ending to the play. When I go to see Fellini's 8 and a half and I love it at the end of it I come out and I run right on top of a car then another car and I run all the way to the corner and then I run down to the triangle bar and I sit and I laugh. I celebrate the ending because I now know what to do with my own plate. The fear that I had was conquered and little Mr Chilly ascends to the music of all the in the whole play turns from black and white into color then I can go forward now and make more new plays. It's also in this room that the director of the Art Institute Tony Clark said to me what would you do if your dream could come true. And I look and without hesitating I simply said a new theater for young people to

find a new theater the children's theatre today is not a theatre for rich kids. I haven't forgotten what it was like in those police station days ago and many of the people were with us today who were around in those days. For the last 30 years under one roof the classrooms the office spaces the shops everything. What a fan place. It's 1974 now and the theaters ready to open the whole facility devoted to young people. I think we're going to be able to do a job here telling the wonderful stories and tell them with the magic in a marvel. I can't wait to show you. Come on. Let's go inside. Here we are in the lobby space. All these spaces now that we have to use and to fill offices classroom spaces

costume shop scene shop and no longer do the actors make the props and keep the books. I even have my own office no dance room costume shop with Windows. Room library Studio Theater a recording studio a listening audience development and production administration. Accounting and fund development and now we even have an executive producer. I

think you're seeing the world you are seeing your face is like if your forthrightness looking at your feet are still searching. We take them through a series of movement exercises. And right now because you're seeing Wendy Mayer pantomime section I think the theatre is a bit like the circus. There's something about running away to the circus or riding with a theater that's very tantalizing appealing to young people says she's doing to her. I do list decided to take you know you can

use of himself isn't it. It may be rough the human heart is there it's something like you coming to an audition distances. Back to the center shines through and you see there's a fabulous life. Very good. They're like oh I want to be in a school. Yeah ponies and fireworks can see probably possibly shoplifting

in the store at the hardware store. Whether she's guilty or not she's not the story for this story because it provides different this little maybe. Why every

day. People say that I work very hard but I explain the thing that I've learned is that when children discover the hard work discipline way toward realizing my beautiful self. They push me back they complain that I don't work.

Well here we are in my office. You see in my ruthless rise to power I finally achieved an office something I never had for years. It's quite a place it's high above the theater the children call it the tree house. It's very comfortable. But this is a whole new world besides having a new office. I've got a new budget of over a million dollars for a new theater with vast spaces part of a big complex. So there are many problems that go with this nice office and the rest and crisis too. The biggest crisis came to us in the summer of 1975. That first season the 975 was very exciting for us all. The new facility the marvelous equipment and the wonderful response of the community to our season. But there was also a nagging sense we were getting in talking to the society of Fine

Arts that they were going to be problems with the coming season. Now our budget the first year was about six hundred four thousand dollars. The next season we had requested about $750000. And the answer came back after a number of meetings that we could only expect a budget of around three hundred thirty thousand dollars. This meant a 50 percent cut. And what that really meant was because most of our expenses go to our human resources. A 50 percent cut in staff. I knew that that would be absolutely damaging to the organization. I knew that that kind of radical surgery would kill the patient. There was no way that we could maintain the quality that the community had come to expect from us. And in this new institution on that amount of money what would we do. Well it became clear after meeting with our own staff that we would have to close rather than operate on that I'm due amount of money. There was much hitting the table in our discussions with the society about a

solution. It was finally agreed upon that we would go independent. The key thing about that meant that we could raise our own funds for the first time in our history. But this also meant that if we failed we would have to accept our fate. It was then in about June that a group of people who believe you know us and in the future came forward and through their help we were able to raise the remarkable sum of four hundred and forty three thousand dollars. So we were able to solve the crisis. It was not easy. We almost did not make it. So there are problems and responsibilities and there will always be crises. But one happy thing about this office is its view of the beyond the. Here we are in the audience stage House the most important space in the theater. Remember

earlier I was describing a room like space. I think it's been accomplished dark round embracing a safe kind of space. A theater like a womb produces children new works of many kinds and young artists young artists like Myron Johnson for instance the director of this play taking over from the original production in 1070 and now mounting it again. This gives me a very good feeling. The magic of the theatre for me has to do with its primitive nature. Actors at one end of a room on a wooden platform people gathering in seats and both of them participating in creating a kind of heightened reality out of time and place. Children know this very well in their play they roll and tumble and transform and become all things but most of all for me the theatre is a holy space. The figure I was just actually pyro I think we

should hear the music but you should learn the lines once you want to know. Oh you want to run the lines well I just thought we could play and then we'd stop and run back I'd say a little more and then we'd stop and run back and just build on and give you that in other words give you the line and give us some Bach and then just stop and run back again and do it again. Run run them run you see Bane like this. Then tap her then she can run over here and you can

run me over here. Let's just try that with isn't just one you when you come in your first season. Then you go over here to get ready. Earlier I'm going to build a scene one time. Somebody said to me you don't treat the children like children do you I said No I certainly don't. The last thing a child wants to be is a child. 15

minutes to check your costumes. Opening night. I just really like the image just made you feel human. And I've seen the bend in the beginning and every time I see somebody

get pretty mad. Right.