Beard of the Week LXI: Some Guys and Some Dolls
This week's beard* belongs to Clay Boyce, artistic director, chair, and founder of Park Players, a group in Birmingham, Alabama, that performs live outdoor theatre. For example, next year is a big Shakespeare year with "As You Like It" and "Taming of the Shrew" on the playbill.
In addition to his chairing and directing, Mr. Boyce likes to act, too. In the 2006-2007 season at the CenterStage Theatre–apparently also in Birmingham, Alabama, although their website never actually says where they are located†–he performed in "Guys and Dolls", playing the part of Harry the Horse. Here is his admirably brief biography from the program for that show:
Clay is the artistic director and founder of Park Players (www.bhamparkplayers.com). He was last seen as Mark Transom in That Darn Plot! and in July he'll be directing Blackpool and Parrish being presented at the theatre at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Some of his favorite roles have been Rutledge in 1776, Fagin in Oliver!, the title role in Hamlet and Uncle Arvide in Guys and Dolls. He would like to thank his wife, Vicki and his daughter, Victoria for all the love and support they give him to do this foolishness!
The point of this week's BoW, I may now reveal, is "this foolishness", specifically the role of Harry the Horse in "Guys and Dolls", which I now know I will be performing next March.
We had our audition / hazing ritual yesterday (Sunday) for our spring show, the aforementioned "Guys and Dolls". It was fun and we had a good turn out. I am more of a character actor (yikes! "actor", he said!) than a romantic lead–lots more–and I can read music and count, so I often end up doing the complicated ensemble bits (some that spring to mind: "Tom, Dick, or Harry", from "Kiss Me, Kate"; "Je suis bidin' mon temps", from "Crazy for You"; "Sign it, Lily", from "On the Twentieth Century"), and I like singing the complicated ensemble bits, too.
Gosh, the only reason I mentioned all that was to provide my excuse for why I chose to use Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" as my audition piece. You know it? Of course you do: music by Sir Arthur Sullivan ("The Major-General's Song" from "Pirates of Penzance": "I am the very model of a modern major-general…."), and the lyrics by Lehrer consist almost entirely of the names of the chemical elements. If you'd like to hear it, may I suggest this animated version? Anyway, I made it through at a break-neck pace but without error.
"Guys and Dolls" is a show I know practically nothing about, although it's relatively popular. The music and lyrics are by Frank Loesser; the book is based on stories by Damon Runyon. I'm reading the synopsis right now at Wikipedia, but you can read it as well as I can.
And that's what I did this weekend.
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* Mr. Boyce's beard is delightfully shaded in tones of brown, gray, and white, a color combination that we usually refer to as "granite". The photograph is credited to Angela Karen; source.
† I'm getting seriously deranged by organizations, particularly newspapers, that create websites that have a strong local viewpoint but that never, ever specify on their websites where that locality is! Evidently they don't realize that people outside their city might actually see their websites on the internets.
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on Wednesday, 10 December 2008 at 11.52
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Congrats, Jeff! What fun that will be. I saw a production of Guys & Dolls here at Stratford a couple of years ago and it was wonderful. So much fun to watch and to listen to the great songs. Enjoy it!