TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081390/0813460.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.3 KB | 160 lines

                                                                                SHOW BUSINESS, Page 66

Where the Stagestruck Get Started


Summer stock these days often means a theme park or a cruise
ship

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III


    If the young Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were making a
movie about stagestruck kids today, they probably wouldn't
mount a musical in the backyard and wait for lightning to
strike. Nor would they necessarily look for a summer-stock barn
or tent, like so many fledgling players of times past. Instead,
the tyro tap dancers, crooners and thespians would probably hie
themselves to the nearest theme park or cruise ship to audition
for a job. Theme parks may be more conspicuous for flume rides
and cotton candy, and cruise ships may be best known for bingo
and buffets. But they have become the summer stock of the '90s,
the place where growing numbers of young performers get their
first experience in entertaining live audiences -- and where
many audience members, particularly young ones, first see live
theater.

    Theme-park and cruise-ship shows keep alive the spangled
Busby Berkeley dance traditions largely abandoned by Broadway
and Hollywood. They honor theater-music classics that no longer
make the pop charts. From Wild West rarees to Victorian parlor
skits, from Tin Pan Alley to '50s nostalgia, the shows
reacquaint the public with styles of entertainment that
Broadway once thrived on, and thus conceivably make it possible
for such works to prosper anew.

    And they do so on a scale unjustly obscured by Tilt-a-Whirl
and Cinderella's castle. The giant Disney parks in Florida and
California consider everyone who greets the public to be a
performer; the ranks of honest-to-Goofy singers, dancers and
actors reach into the hundreds and arguably thousands, even if
some sport Mickey Mouse heads. Nashville's much smaller
Opryland, which relies more on entertainment to sell itself
than any other park, employs 400-plus performers -- comparable
with the combined casts of all the musicals currently on
Broadway -- in a dozen shows with a cumulative annual audience
of nearly 5 million. Most of these actors, and the bulk of
their counterparts at other theme parks, appear in five or six
daily performances of a half-hour or more, six days a week,
often outdoors in 90 degrees heat, with no showers backstage.
They develop discipline and stamina. Even harder, they learn
to keep fresh a routine they are performing for the 300th time
but that spectators are seeing as if brand new -- all for about

duty, asking performers to run shuffleboard games or even make
beds.)

    Yet the grind seems to inspirit young performers. Says Karl
Wahl, 20, who is in his third summer at Six Flags Great America
in Gurnee, Ill., and who has worked at the Busch Gardens park
in Williamsburg, Va.: "This is the first taste of the
performer's real world. College shows run two or three
weekends. Where else, as a young person, can you do a long run
like this?" Michael Myers, 22, a Texas Tech marketing graduate
turned singer-songwriter, likes Opryland because "you're out
there in the full light of day, playing to no tellin' who. They
come from all over, and you have to relate right away."

    Performers at theme parks learn things never taught in a
classroom: how to dance without tripping over a microphone
cord, how to improvise when a prop disappears or scenery just
won't move, how to entice an audience distracted by weather or
a crying child or a plateful of food. Says Steven Fox, 24, a
singer and pianist at Pennsylvania's Hersheypark: "Our show
takes place in a restaurant. We call it performing at
McDonald's. For every person who came to see us, another wanted
spare ribs."

    One measure of the practical value of such lessons is that
university drama professors, who used to scorn theme-park and
cruise work, now often guide students toward it. Many
performers at the Six Flags park in Gurnee, one of seven in the
chain, are funneled there from Millikin University in Decatur,
Ill., and what they learned in class helps them survive. "If
you don't use proper vocal technique and warm your body up,"
says Diane Zandstra, 22, a Millikin graduate in her second
summer at Gurnee, "you'll hurt yourself and be out of a job."

    Theme-park actors do not, to be sure, make much use of
training in Shakespeare or Method-style character analysis. But
they say acting study helps nonetheless. Kevin Kraft, 22, is
a University of Southern California junior in his second summer
as a clown and juggler at Hersheypark; he has also toured with
the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Says Kraft: "If
I pretend in slow motion to grab for a nonexistent ball, I'd
better have a real intention to catch it, which is acting
technique, or the comedy falls flat."

    Despite their enthusiasm at getting paid to do what many
would gladly do free, performers at theme parks and on cruise
ships acknowledge three key frustrations. First, many of the
shows are not very good, and once they are set, there is no
opportunity to enhance them. Second, because admission is
covered by a general entry fee, some spectators are just
looking for a place to sit down, especially if the wait for a
roller coaster is long, the day is hot and the theater is
indoors and air-conditioned. As a result, their tastes may be
unsophisticated. Says David Felty, 25, an Opryland singer who
will appear on Star Search, a syndicated TV series featuring
aspiring performers: "The audiences like songs they already
know. Also, many of them don't appreciate how hard we work to
please them because they are used to just turning on the TV,
not seeing entertainment live." Third, it is almost impossible
to get agents and casting directors to come, even to Opryland,
nine miles from the country-music-industry center in Nashville.
Admits Kelly Wilmoth, 26, a Hersheypark performer who has
appeared on the Bermuda Star Line and in dinner theaters: "From
the viewpoint of getting your next job, this work almost might
not have happened."

    Even so, dozens upon dozens of theme-park and cruise-ship
alumni go on to Broadway and movies, among them Oscar nominee
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) and Tony
nominee Patti Cohenour (The Mystery of Edwin Drood). Countless
others earn a steady if unspectacular living from touring
shows, club dates, commercials or studio recording.

    Whether this summer's crop includes future megastars is hard
to judge. Many shows are humdrum and haphazard about sticking
to a theme. Even at the best places, the opulent Opryland and
the slick and imaginative Hersheypark, quality varies, although
the top surpasses the average off-Broadway musical -- including
Hershey's Victorian Sarsaparilla Review and Opryland's cleverly
scored, gymnastically choreographed Wild West show. Moreover,
theme-park shows tend to be ensemble efforts, built around
teamwork rather than stars. But it is hard not to notice a
dancer like Todd Crank, 23, a Wild West high-kicker at Opryland,
or a singer like Connye Florance, 29, Opryland's premier blues
belter. And in Sarsaparilla, Lothair Eaton, 26, and Dedra
Eastland, 25, perform an Ain't Misbehavin' sequence worthy of
the Broadway cast. Or, for that matter, worthy of Mickey and
Judy, barn or no barn.