Goodbye to Sam Bass Theatre

As theaters go, the venue isn't fancy, but the theatre owns it, so there's that.  It seats 50 (52 in a pinch, if it's a small cast and the fire marshall stays away).  It hasn't always been in Memorial Park in Round Rock; when I first auditioned, it was downtown, next to the spot where the City Hall parking garage is today.

It was 1982, and they advertised auditions for The Odd Couple.  With my built-in English accent and thirtyish look, I could totally see myself being a Pigeon Sister...Gwendolyn or Cecily, it didn't matter.  Unfortunately, they didn't get the six men required, so they chose a different play.  They did, however, ask me to return in the spring and audition for Ten Little Indians, which had several female characters, all of whom had English accents.  That time, they got enough men and I was cast as Mrs Rogers, AKA corpse #2.  I was terrified, but I had the time of my life..AND, was bitten hard by the acting bug.  I loved the positive reinforcement I received (something I had been lacking for a few years) and being someone besides myself.  It didn't hurt that we did a couple of scenes live on local TV.  In short, I was hooked.

A friend and I co-costumed the next show I worked on, and I acted in the one after that.  By then, SSS had had enough and cut me off at one show a year.  As we had two small children at the time, I agreed, though with very bad grace.  He was a volunteer fireman at the time, and got to take off with his volunteer fireman buddies whenever he liked for training and practice. Sauce for the goose, I said.

Right before my second foray into acting, the theater was moved from it's location off Main Street to its current location, where it has been for 33 years.  Slowly, it grew.  A deck was added to the back when it was still downtown, and that was closed in to make a backstage area.  The annex was built.  Jim Prior, who I eventually married, was instrumental in all these construction projects.  In the late 80s, he and Jim Grisham cut an entrance through the side of the building, and the Side Stage grew around that.  A deck was added, connecting the back and side stages.  A barn and costume shed were built, and another shed.  Sometime in there, the courtyard was paved so we weren't wallowing in dust and/or mud.

There were great shows, and great parties, with much barbecue, booze, and all sorts of fun.

People came and went...moving here, moving away, moving on.  One day I looked up to realize there were only a few people still around who had been there when I started, but there were other people who had been there an only slightly shorter long time.  And I understood continuity.

A few years ago, a lot of new people came in fast.  They were welcomed, as new people always are, even though the first thing the first person did was try to tell me I didn't know what I was doing with a particular set design (I was designing my own set for a show I was directing).  He was willing to design my set, and I did manage to insist he do it my way, but it wasn't easy.  The set looked beautiful, and close enough to what I had envisioned...but still.

A couple of years later, these people were firmly ensconced on the Board of Directors, and ripples of disquiet were rumbling through the theater.  I could see that they saw us old timers as relics who just couldn't quite manage to get the place to make money.  I should probably say that we had never really striven to make money, ploughing all that we made back into the next season, like all small non-profit theaters do.  It is very true that, as Round Rock had grown around us, we had not kept up, and were serving an ever-shrinking percentage of the population.  But we produced good theatre.

I noticed that fewer directors were asking me to costume their shows, but I had been costuming in Austin, and getting paid for it, so it was no big deal.  I was very happy to see others interested in trying to organize the immense collection of costumes shoehorned into a small space.  But the last time I auditioned, I was required to audition privately, and to memorize the sides in advance.  This was not usual for Sam Bass; no one else in the cast was asked to do that.  The director had worked with me in years past, when I had trouble memorizing lines for a role I was less than comfortable with.  He needed proof that I "still had it," as he said.  It was a bucket role, so I did it.  That's the last time I have auditioned there.

I could understand why my next directing submission didn't fly; the show was Wait Until Dark, which requires a fairly elaborate set including stairs and working appliances (practical, as we say in theatah, dahlink).  The last play I directed had made no money, as it was a dark piece that didn't attract a large audience.  The Artistic Director did, however, ask me to submit something else, suitable for production on the outside stage they had just built in the courtyard.  To go up for one weekend.

Dearly Beloved, I am far too old to enjoy rehearsing and performing outside in the Texas summer heat, 50 ft from a major state highway.  Let alone putting in all that work for three performances.  So, no.  All prospective directors were also informed that the Board would now have the last word on casting, something that had been strictly left to directors under the old Sam Bass Theatre SOP.  So I left the meeting and have not submitted anything since.

The Board has also changed the audition dates and times.  The new schedule makes it almost impossible for me to audition.  Did I mention that cast and crew are required to sign an agreement that they will say only nice things about Sam Bass for the duration of the production?  Yeah...that happened.

The straw that broke the camel's back came when I asked said Artistic Director if I could borrow a couple of capes for a show I was costuming in Austin.  I've always borrowed costumes from Sam Bass (I made quite a few of them), and often from the Artistic Director himself.  My work at Sam Bass was never paid; it is an all-volunteer organization.  I had also given Mr AD quite a few costumes outright for his own projects, separate from Sam Bass.  He said he didn't feel like helping me, as I had slighted him on Facebook.

They are changing the theater, and, maybe it was necessary.  Nothing stays the same forever, but I had somehow expected my 34 years of blood, sweat, tears, and support would earn me a place by the fire for as long as I could totter up there.

I owe Sam Bass a lot...the skills I've learned, the talent I learned to recognize, the joy and terror of acting and directing, the friendships, the applause, and the love.

It's a shame it's over.  I wish them well, really...but it's like they say:  not my circus; not my monkeys.

Not any more.