An Accidental Journey: A Memoir of a Life in the Theater

By Tony Stimac

Tony Stimac’s book is a captivating exploration of America’s national musical theatres, with a particular focus on his experience with the emerging musical theatre in China. In granular detail, he chronicles his rollercoaster of successes and failures while sharing intimate details of collaborating with the preeminent musical theater artists of our time, including George Abbott’s last musical, Kander and Ebb’s reworking of The Rink and hosting the first readings of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Tony provides invaluable insights into the secrets of creating innovative musicals. Passionately devoted to his art form, he struggles with the artist’s dilemma of how to balance his two great loves—his art and his family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665744447

Book preview

Part 1

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

I N HIGH SCHOOL, MY PRIMARY interests were girls, hot-rods and rock n’ roll. After I graduated, I needed money to pursue those interests and took a job as a journeyman carpenter. As the summer was ending, after dinner one night, my father and I were sitting on the back porch. It had become a custom for me to go into the cucumber patch next door and return with a half-dozen cucumbers which we salted and ate.

On this particular night, my dad said, You should go to college.

Why? No one else in the family goes.

Right, so maybe it’s time that someone did.

What good is it?

You can get a better job when you graduate.

That was the end of it and we went back to watching the fireflies and eating our cukes.

No one in our family had gone to college. I went to Marquette University, but was too late to enroll for the fall semester, however, I could attend night school and keep my job during the day.

After a few months of dozing off during philosophy and religion classes, I discovered that there was a theatre on campus. In my senior year, I had joined the drama club to impress a girl. Ironically, we ended up as the lead couple in a play, and our on-stage kiss sparked my first real-life romance. The idea of the theatre brought back fond memories, and I decided to investigate further. I visited the theatre and met Father John J. Walsh S.J., the director and a Jesuit priest. Father Walsh had wispy blonde hair, a pale face and intensely blue eyes which shone with messianic zeal when discussing the theatre. We were sitting in Teatro Maria, Father Walsh’s intimate 70-seat theatre. Little did I know that this meeting would change my life.

So, Tony, what brings you to us today? he asked.

"I did a play in high school and enjoyed the experience. Now I’m going to night school here so I can work during the day.

And what’s your day job?

I’m working as a carpenter’s assistant framing houses.

When he heard I was a professional carpenter, his face turned positively beatific.

After a few more questions he said, We can offer you a spot, but there are conditions: you will have to take ballet classes three times a week, an acting class once a week and you won’t receive credit for them.

That’s not a problem. I love to dance and I want to learn more about acting.

In those days, I went to every dance within a fifty-mile radius of Milwaukee as that was where the girls were. I wasn’t entirely sure of what a ballet class entailed, but I figured there would be girls there, too. I was instructed to wear tights and a dance belt to class—tights and a dance belt. Wow. OK. Hmmm, I wonder what the girls will be wearing.

This was 1960. Girls still wore girdles and you never saw their bodies unless you were on a beach. When I walked into class, I found a room filled with about fifteen odalisques in tights and leotards and about six men. Those were odds I liked. I was lightheaded from the scent of their mingled perfumes, coupled with the sight of their toned young bodies clearly visible in their dance clothes. As the class progressed, it was clear I was hopeless and being young, strong and capable, I didn’t like the feeling.

To catch up with the rest of the group, I secretly, took extra ballet classes from a Russian drill sergeant by the name of Madame Chlistova. She was a short, heavily muscled woman with a deep voice and a pronounced Russian accent. Although she taught classical ballet in the Russian tradition, her specialty was adagio. I hoped to impress Father Walsh with how quickly I was learning.

Father Walsh had been a private pupil of Maria Ouspenskaya who had been one of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s leading actresses at the legendary Moscow Art Theatre. Stanislavsky was a Russian director who shaped modern acting in the western theatre. Father Walsh was a charismatic theatre genius and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the theatre. He had lived with Noh actors in Japan; the only westerner to ever do so. His magnetic personality turned every one of his students into acolytes.

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Father John J. Walsh director of the Marquette University Players.

Each day I began to see what lured people into this strange world I had blundered into. It had everything: passion, romance, excitement, an abundance of beautiful women, and it was something called Art. Art was not big in our family. No one I knew had ever been to the theatre, not to mention an opera, ballet or concert.

The Marquette University Players created a four–hour medieval mystery play called Ludus Coventriae, a religious dance drama, that began at the creation of the world and ended with the Last Judgment. Father wrote and directed the play, while John Neumeier, a student who would later become a renowned choreographer, choreographed it. For the past forty years, John has served as Artistic Director of the Hamburg Ballet, creating numerous original ballets that have been performed around the world.

Watching Ludus Coventriae was the moment when my lifelong desire to pursue this elusive art form began. Seeing the actors bring the story to life, I knew that I wanted to be one of them. Here was something more. Something I didn’t understand. Something profound.

In high school, I excelled in many things—swimming, cross-country, tennis and wrestling—quickly earning a place on the varsity teams. I taught myself chess, became skilled in pool and was a passable carpenter. At sixteen, I formed a hot-rod club and eagerly disturbed the quiet of Milwaukee’s streets with the sounds of peeling rubber. Jobs as a baker, landscape salesman, women’s shoe salesman and truck driver resulted in speedy promotions.

Acting was a completely different world, requiring years of practice and dedication to master. I became obsessed with learning everything I could about the craft, neglecting my schoolwork and spending every waking moment in the theatre. I devoured every book on acting I could find and was willing to make any sacrifice.

At the end of the semester, my hard work paid off with a full scholarship, but I still needed money to pay for gas, food and clothes. Bob Beaudry, a friend in the theatre group, and I came up with an idea to put on rock and roll dances. At the time, teenagers had nowhere to practice the courting rituals that were sparked by their young libidos.

In those days, live bands played all the dances, but only for twenty minutes before breaking for another twenty. The lighting scheme was always bright. We hired two bands to alternate so the music would never stop. We installed colored lights, to create a more romantic atmosphere and hired off-duty police officers as chaperones. Little did we know that we had inadvertently invented disco—continuous music, flashing colored lights and bouncers.

The dances were held at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. Bob and I created brochures to promote the event around Milwaukee, Rock n’ Stomp at State Fair Park. We ran the dancehall for two years and grossed $250,000. After expenses, we had a net of $125,000 which we split between us. This was 1960, and in those days, that was real money.

In my sophomore year, a new young lady joined the group. I first saw her in ballet class as she did piqué turns across the floor. She had been studying ballet for ten years and was an excellent dancer. Being a gentleman, I tried to make her feel welcomed by asking her out. Our relationship blossomed slowly because our courtship had to take place in secret. Father frowned on romantic entanglements as he felt they would distract us from our sacred mission of becoming artists. Her name was Marilyn and we have been married now for fifty-nine years.

EUROPE

I N MY JUNIOR YEAR, FATHER Walsh declared it was time for me to get rid of my hood mentality and learn something about the world and its art. Since I had the financial means, he suggested I go to Europe during the summer between my junior and senior year. My real father liked the idea and promised to oversee the dancehall and send my share of the profits to American Express offices around the Continent.

As a culturally ignorant twenty-year-old, I was awestruck by the array of European art I encountered. In Dublin, I attended a performance by the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s preeminent theatre company, where I saw John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, a celebrated Irish masterpiece that incited riots when it opened.

In London, I saw the original production of Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What A Lovely War in the East End. To this day, it remains the most emotionally powerful, cathartic piece of theatre that I have ever experienced. Only the theatre at its best can give you this kind of liberating and purifying cleansing.

On the Tube on my way home, my eye fell on someone sitting across the aisle. It was Victor Spinetti, who had played the leading role in the musical. He could see that I had been run over by an emotional bus. I gestured for permission to move across the aisle. He smiled and waved me over.

I asked him what it was like to work with the director, Joan Littlewood.

He said, Oh Joan’s all right. Of course, she’ll stab you in the back for a good performance. For the rest of the too short ride, he entranced me with some of her rehearsal techniques and other war stories of the production process.

My next stop was Paris, where I stayed in a small hotel on the Left Bank on the Boulevard Saint Germain des Prés across the street from Le Deux Magots, the famous restaurant where French writers, poets and impressionist painters hung out at the turn of the century. On my first night I went to see La Boehme at the Lyric Opera Comique—my first ever opera.

I visited the Louvre, but it was my visit to the Rodin Museum that truly inspired me; I had no idea the power sculpture possessed to create emotion.

The next evening, I saw Moliere’s School for Wives at the Comédie Française. As I sat down in my seat, an usherette began berating me and with rude gestures, insisted that I leave my seat. As we were about to come to blows, the woman in the seat next to me intervened and said, Perhaps I can help.

She took over the negotiations in French and quickly determined that my seat had been sold twice. Grateful to my seatmate, I offered to take her to dinner as a thank-you. It turned out she came from a family that was cultural royalty in Copenhagen: she was an opera singer at the Royal Danish Opera, her husband was the first violin at the Royal Danish Orchestra, and her daughter was Ghita Nørby, who, I gathered was Denmark’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. We got on well at dinner and she invited me to stay with them when I visited Copenhagen.

Since Copenhagen was my next stop, we were reunited a few days later. She put me up and was my guide for my stay in Copenhagen. The days passed in a whirl as Mrs. Nørby took me to the Tivoli Gardens where I saw real comedia dell’ arte, danced under the stars and otherwise was shown a Copenhagen that was seen by few tourists. After five glorious days, I took my reluctant leave of the gracious lady and her beautiful city.

I arrived in Berlin the morning of June 26, 1963. It happened to be the day President John Kennedy was there to give his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech. It was overwhelming to be in Berlin and hear my President so warmly welcomed by the Germans. That night, I went to the theatre to see Arthur Miller’s, All My Sons, in German. I was curious to see how the Germans would handle such an iconic American play. When I got to the theatre, they didn’t have any tickets left. I went across the street to a restaurant thinking I would go back at curtain time and try again. The restaurant was full but there was an attractive, dignified, older woman seated alone, and I asked if I could join her. She said yes and we began to chat. I told her what I was doing there and that I couldn’t get a ticket. She instructed me go back to the theatre at five to eight and said she would see what she could do. Then, she finished her meal and left.

I entered the lobby at five minutes to eight and a tall, Teutonic gentleman was paging me. Herr Stimac, Herr Stimac. I identified myself and he handed me a ticket. I asked where I was to pay and he said, It’s been taken care of. When I was shown to my seat, I found myself seated in the fourth-row center, the best seat in the house. When the show began, I was surprised to find my benefactress was the leading lady. After the show I made my way backstage and, to thank her, invited her to a late supper.

The next night, I went to see Verdi’s opera, Aida, at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. It was an incredible production, huge and spectacular in every way. To my left was a white-haired couple who looked to be in their nineties. They were holding hands like they were young lovers, and during the intermissions, we struck up a series of conversations. I was moved to find out that, being Jewish, they had fled Berlin in the 1940s and eventually settled in Israel. They had only been back in Berlin a few days.

On the way out of the theatre, we walked together and I casually mentioned that I was Croatian. The woman clapped her hands in delight and told me her husband was Croatian. I quickly said a few words and he responded in the same language. His wife said we must have supper together. All evening, they entranced me with tales of Berlin in the Forties, and just as the meal was about to end, I told them about my experience the night before at All My Sons. They both stared at me, open-mouthed. I finally realized no one was speaking. They were just staring, stunned. I asked what was the matter.

Two nights before, they had gone to see All My Sons, but couldn’t get tickets. They went across to the same restaurant, sat at the same table, with the same leading actress who also got them tickets in the fourth-row center. Two nights later, we sat in seats, next to each other, at the opera—and we told each other about it! We spent the rest of the evening walking around Berlin, marveling at our mystic link.

A day or so later, I went to East Berlin. If you changed money on the West side of the Wall you got four times as much in exchange as you would in the East. I decided to risk it. I was nervous smuggling money across the border so I put the money in my sock under my foot.

There were huge lines at Checkpoint Charley that day and they seemed to be pulling random people out of the line for no apparent reason. I asked someone what was going on and was told, Don’t you know? Nikita Khrushchev is coming to East Berlin today? That was why the security was heightened. Oh, great, they would find the money and I would spend years rotting in an East German prison. They were only pulling out about every tenth person, so, I decided to take the risk.

There is nothing like an East German soldier with a rifle over his shoulder coming up to you and saying in heavily accented German, Shtep zis vay bitte. Sweat burst out of every pore. They took me into a small room containing only four things: a large washtub with water in it and a small table with two MACHINE GUNS on it. They asked me to disrobe and carefully went through the lining of all of my clothes. They felt through my tie, my jacket, my shirt, pants, and even felt around inside my shorts. I stood there in my shorts and socks, waiting for the end. Then they said, You may go. I have no idea why they didn’t ask me to take off my socks.

I dressed in record time and left the building. As I stepped outside, there was a platoon of East German soldiers marching by GOOSE STEPPING! The sound of their boots smashing into the pavement in perfect unison was too much. I ran with the crowd to get as far away from this nightmare from the past, as possible.

The crowd swept me into a huge square in the center of East Berlin—the same square you see in the newsreels of Nazi rallies. In the center of the square, the East Berlin Philharmonic played in their shirtsleeves! "You, vill play gut!" There was a festive air to the whole thing, although tension simmered in the crowd. Suddenly, there was a stir and people started to cheer—Krushchev had arrived. He got out of the car with his wife, Nina, entered the building and came out on a balcony. The crowd around me chanted Nina! Nina! Nina! There were, however, few smiles on people’s faces and you got the sense they had to be there and had to be chanting.

After Khrushchev made the briefest of opening remarks, the heavens opened. I mean, it was a deluge. People ran from the square for cover, and Khrushchev and his entourage retired inside. I had to be back at Checkpoint Charley by six o’clock, so I started heading back. On the way, I saw a sign on a kiosk that read Die Dreigroschenoper. Even though my German was rudimentary, I knew this was the famed Three Penny Opera by theatre genius, Bertolt Brecht. It was the final performance that night. The theatre was the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht’s Theatre. After Stanislavsky, Brecht was the next most influential theatre director and writer in world history. Here was Brecht’s theatre with his hallmark production and I had to see it. I got directions and ran to the theatre to purchase a ticket, which was expensive and in a box. But I still had to get back to Checkpoint Charley before my visa expired at six o’clock.

I ran through the rain, went back through the checkpoint, turned around and dashed to the theatre. The rain was still coming down in buckets and I arrived an unforgiveable fifteen minutes after the show started. I staggered into the box, my lungs heaving, sweat pouring down my face, drenched to the skin. The other occupants of the box were elegantly dressed and stared stiffly at the boorish American in his steaming, smelly clothes with thinly disguised contempt. After a bit of time, my heart rate stabilized and the irresistible performance wove its spell.

The play was magnificent. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in Brecht’s own theatre witnessing his greatest masterpiece. After the day’s kaleidoscope of emotions and the stress of running through the rain I was filled with a deep contentment.

As I filed out with the audience, I fell in beside a small, white-haired man who had a bemused look on his face. I asked him what he thought of the show.

Not much. What? How could anyone not appreciate artistry of this level? I asked him what he didn’t like about the play and he told me that he had been an actor in the original production in 1928, which Brecht himself had directed. We slowly walked through the eerily deserted, rain drenched streets of East Berlin, as I listened with rapt attention to living testimony of a time and a genius, I would only ever be able to read about.

In Salzburg, I went into a small museum. At the reception desk there was an attractive, older woman selling tickets.

I paid my entrance fee. As she made change, she said, May I be so rude as to give you ten groschen instead of a schilling?

I thought she was exceptionally considerate. I went through the exhibit, dismissing most of it in my naive, newly found expertise as an art connoisseur. On my way out, I stopped back at the desk to visit with this obviously well-bred, gracious woman.

The artist doesn’t seem very happy, I said. This brilliant observation was based on the fact that all the paintings were of tortured people.

She responded, Oh I don’t think so. I had dinner with him last night at the castle and he seemed perfectly happy.

I had no idea what castle she was referring to but I suspected that this was a group I would like to know better. I invited her for tea and she accepted. She closed the little museum and we went to a small café nearby.

Her name was Lady Inga Hamilton. She was a titled English aristocrat, living in Salzburg to work on the Salzburg Music Festival. She offered to guide me around the town. She was fascinating and hauntingly sad as if she had lost a great love. One day, she told me, that to her great disappointment, although she was a member of the Salzburg Music Festival Committee, she was unable to get tickets to the opening night of Il Trovatore starring Leontyne Price. It had been sold-out a year in advance.

We spent several delightful days together, attending concerts and visiting museums. She was far more knowledgeable than I about fine art and architecture and generously shared insights with an obviously dumbstruck admirer. She was a sophisticated, woman of the world, who had some mysterious sad secret. We parted warm friends, vowing to keep in touch.

As I was leaving town, I went to the Thomas Cook Agency to arrange my ticket to Vienna and while passing the theatre ticket window, I heard an American woman in a loud, obnoxious, Brooklyn accent, announce, "I got these two tickets for the opening night of All Trovatory and I would like to turn them in. Before the ticket agent could get his hands on the golden ducats, I snatched them out of her hand and said, I’ll take them and I’ll pay you full price for them."

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