The Little Theater of Geneva

Reg Bird, Mary Lois Adshead in Forty Carats

July 9, 2007

They're all in boxes now, photos of the many plays I worked on in Geneva back in the 1980s. It started as a lark, a Monday evening activity at the American Women's Club, sitting around a table reading plays. After a few months of this, one of our regulars suggested, "It's time to mount a production."

If memory serves me it was Bob Hinely, a personnel guy at the Du Pont company and longtime amateur actor, who made that suggestion. He said, "Reading plays is fun, but if this is going anywhere, we've got to get a stage and put on a show."

He was right. I had been an actress in New York, studied with Peggy Feury and her mentor Lee Strasberg, and had been in plays since I was a teenager in Fairhope. I had worked backstage a little, but what I really wanted to do was direct -- so all the pieces fell in place to get something started. I had been on the board of Geneva's English Drama Society (GEDS), but when I didn't get re-elected to that I decided to produce American plays with the American Women's Club.

We started with an evening of one-acts, which went off pretty well. Then we held auditions and began planning a full-scale production. The play I chose was the old chestnut The Man Who Came To Dinner. It had a cast of 28 people! This was a way to get ourselves known in the American community of Geneva -- I cast the minister at the American Church as a delivery man, and the Vice President of the American Women's Club as a television newscaster. I updated the script ("Hamilton Fish" became "Prince Andrew," "Gertrude Stein" became "Frank Sinatra," that sort of thing). What I didn't know when doing that was that every single celebrity name dropped in the play became a laugh line in the show -- and there were lots of them. Here we see Dorothy Watkins as the actress charming Keith Kentopp as Whiteside.

Jim Buckner, Dorothy Watkins in The Little Foxes

After that first full production, Geneva glowed with a new energy. I heard people talking about the play at cocktail parties, I had a huge crowd audition for the next play, and the Little Theatre was on its way. We did The Little Foxes and Forty Carats that first season. Our mission was to provide American theatre for "the tired businessman and his wife," emphasizing comedies and including 

Reg Bird, Julian Finn In Tribute

one show for the whole family every year. I was going through my boxes of photos in preparing for the move and there it all lived again -- from Mr. Whiteside's "I may vomit" through the real tears from Reg Bird in his monologue in Tribute and the ebullient participation of Julian Finn, an executive at one of the inter-national orgs that make up Geneva's economy. Some people became directors -- Ronnie Cohen, who organized me and often stage-managed. 

Ronnie later directed a first-rate production of Deathtrap in Geneva. We all had great fun.

The Little Theatre changed lives. Reg moved back to Michigan where he and his family produce summer theatre on Torch Lake. Ronnie has written plays and movie scripts. More than that, we offered something unique in Switzerland, and we had as almost many Swiss in the audience as we had Americans. There is nothing quite like the theatre of a country and how it represents everything about that country. We were an outpost of American culture as well as the best of the American attitude that if-you-want-to-do-it, you-can! We made friends and we made memories.

I hope someone looking up Little Theatre of Geneva finds this blog post and adds a comment. Wherever you are, you remember all that we did. It's one project that will live in my memory, and that I'll always be proud of.

Six Years on Another Planet

September 17

In June of 1978 I was married to Jim Adshead, who had just been named Director of Public Affairs and Advertising for Du Pont Europe. This event catapulted us both into a realm neither of us had ever dreamed of.

I, a struggling journalist and public relations practitioner in New York City, single mom of a teenaged girl, and Jim, the respected, charming and too-often-overlooked executive in a big international corporation based in Delaware, were all at once endowed with the gift of living in Geneva and given more money than we had ever had. The biggest leap for me was at last having a husband with job security, and having a status in a mainstream community in a fabulous European city. For Jim, it was having a supportive and interesting wife 17 years his junior, and being given opportunities by his beloved company to do his best work for them. Life in Geneva changed us both.

It didn't take long for me to realize that I was blessed to be removed from the world of New York Magazine, where trends were inaugurated and dropped so fast you hardly had time to learn of them before they were "out." In Geneva, it was still okay to discuss astrology as a lighthearted opener for cocktail party conversation.

And there was a great deal of that. People who worked for us gave parties; people Jim worked for gave parties. As for me, being the wife of a American corporation executive all but removed me from the work force, as the job market in Switzerland is tightly controlled. I had never been in a situation in which I not only did not have to work, I couldn't get hired if I tried. Women on the lower rungs of the ladder, even writers, were expected to be fluent in at least three languages.

My college French was rusty, and I thought a quick brush-up would do it -- but, for heaven's sake these classes were in conversational French and you were expected to converse! It wasn't a matter of memorizing a few key verb conjugations -- it was listening, understanding, and framing whole sentences in a nanosecond (and pronouncing the words in a way that a francophone could understand). A year of daily lessons didn't do it for me. I could make the right sounds, and sometimes come up with the right words, but I never got as good at it as I thought I would.

Immediately I joined the Geneva American Women's Club. For the most part the members of this club were wives of American corporate executives, ex-Junior-Leaguers who were good-hearted, wise and beautiful in appearance and spirit. They welcomed newcomers with the attitude, "How lucky we are that you've moved here! What can you do for our club?" It was a unique situation, and ideal for me in my first stint as corporate wife. I joined the newcomers on field trips to local historical and cultural sites; I helped edit the monthly magazine, and started a play-reading group which met on Monday nights at the clubhouse. I said to Jim, "It's like being at the Organic School again!"

I never learned to ski. Not being a snow person, or an athletic person, I was awkward and unhappy on the only trip where I bothered with lessons.

I decided to concentrate on learning French and on American Women's Club activities. From those early play readings grew an actual performance group, which soon split with the club because it violated the by-laws of being exclusively female. I had been on the Board of Directors of the Geneva English Drama Society (GEDS) and edited their newsletter, but when I didn't get re-elected to the board I took my marbles to my own society to make a viable organization out of the American company, the Little Theater of Geneva. We would do only American plays, mostly comedies, and include one family play per season. We were launched with an old chestnut, The Man Who Came To Dinner, which miraculously came together on opening night after a series of shaky and unpredictable rehearsals.

As a producer I had an epiphany. While my experience in theater had been as an actress, I had read scores of American plays and, like many actors, had a secret desire to direct. When reading through the script of The Man Who Came to Dinner I worked on updating it by changing the many references to celebrities from their 1930's origins to 1980's counterparts. Here my husband was very helpful. I would say, "Who was Hamilton Fish?" and he would say "A rich playboy." Hamilton Fish became Prince Andrew. (Don't forget, we're in the early '80s here.) I spent hours struggling on paper with the blocking of the show. I felt a connection to the writers as I worked on it. Even though I knew nothing specific about how to block the action, the set-up in Act One where Mr. Whiteside is introduced to a couple of eager fans, and they gaze on him him rapt admiration, I had the whole stage of characters in a semi-circle. Mr. Whiteside, a cynical New Yorker, is rolled in in his wheelchair, takes one look at the worshipful gazes, and turns to his secretary (who happens to be downstage of him so the audience gets full, deadpan face), and says, "I may vomit." The night we blocked the scene the theater was full of stage crew and performers, and the line brought down the house. I swear I heard George S. Kaufman say to me, "You see? It always works." And I knew I was onto something.

There are dozens of miracles-in-Geneva stories, many many based on the adventures of the American little theater company. While over there, I missed out on many fads that took over in the U.S., some I will never know about. But I felt so relieved to be out of it for awhile, doing something I loved and felt I was destined to do.

I was saddened to learn of the low regard in which my country is held internationally. Apparently many of the English still chafe at our late entrance to World War II; the French, well the French feel we are naifs -- don't forget Jimmy Carter was President -- and the Swiss hardly pay attention to any foreigners except for the financial gain they promise. This gave strength to the American Women's Club, and to our husbands in their careers, as we Americans formed a critical mass in the operation of our activities in Europe.

When it came time to leave, I was ready to come home, feeling I could translate my experience to a working environment here. Jim's career, helped not a little by my community visibility, (she said immodestly), had soared; he would have been happy to live his life out there, sipping red wine on a restaurant patio on the quai overlooking Lac Leman. It was not to be; I knew it was time to get home, and I have never regretted it.

But on mornings like this one, my heart goes back. Perhaps I'll visit Geneva again.

Jim and I did go back once, a year after we left, and already things were changed. The American expatriate group had dwindled. Numbers in the American Women's Club were much lower. Only a few people I had known remained, and they all said, "It's not the same."

When retirement time came, Jim and I chose Fairhope, and ever since my arrival I've seen how it, too, is not the same. Maybe it's me. But I know, of course, that I'm hardly the same either. After my six years in Geneva, I had four years back in the Northeast -- New York and Wilmington -- to say nothing of the other years during that little 30-odd-year gap between Fairhope and Fairhope again. Nothing remains the same on this planet.

Theatres I Have Known

August 17

Years ago I lived in Geneva and was active in a very dynamic group known as the American Women's Club. Not limited to American Women (but limited to women) the club encouraged new activities and boasted several thousand women with lots going for them. I decided to start a little playreading group to meet at the clubroom at 7 P.M. on Monday evenings.

We welcomed men, in fact we needed them if we were going to read plays of any consequence. We were able to find a number of American men who had been active in little theatre groups in the States and relished the idea of getting together with other theatre fans. This activity continued for about six months, and then the men said to me, "If you want to keep this group going, you're going to have to put on a play. It's nice to read plays around a table, but it only makes us want to be in a real production."

Having been involved in amateur theatre years before, I and I alone knew what we were in for. It would mean building sets and finding storage, ditto for costumes and props; finding venues for productions (and I was already in the Geneva English Drama Society, which I knew had trouble booking theatre space even though it had been running some 20-odd years). It would mean planning a season and finding actors for all the parts. It would mean finding directors and technical people for stagecraft, costumes, properties, lighting, sound, publicity, and so forth. We had a few actors but nothing else. Besides, we were in a foreign country, with hidden laws and a different language.

So of course I did it. I took charge of the first project, which I decided should be a tested American comedy with a big cast, so we could interest a lot of people. The play I chose was Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came To Dinner, an old chestnut that might not be remembered, but would make people laugh. (I was right it wasn't remembered -- Americans stopped us on the street to ask, "Are you really going to find a Negro for the Sidney Poitier role?")

We held auditions and lots of surprises turned up. We were able to assemble the cast from the international group who were in Geneva at the time. A delightful Swiss German lady with a strong Swedish husband turned up -- he wanted to work backstage and she would love a little part if one were available. I cast her as the maid, and she was outstanding. Why not have a maid with a slight accent? People turned up who seemed to fit the roles in the play. The wife of the head of the Du Pont Company was an accomplished amateur actress, a glamorous redhead who relished the role of the wickedly funny Lorraine, a Broadway actress with designs on every available man. I was able to get her husband to do a walk-on at the end of the show, and he recruited his number two to walk on with him. (This brought down the house when the audience was full of Du Pont executives and their wives.) An American advertising executive had had professional theatre experience in the distant past, and he took the role of "Banjo," a thinly disguised Harpo Marx, and played it to the hilt.

After that the American theatre group was on its way. The next show was The Little Foxes starring our Du Pont lady as Regina, and then I and the advertising guy did a turn in Forty Carats, surrounded, of course, by a large cast, lots of technical people, and a set built by the Swedish husband. It was on-the-job training at its best. We broke from the American Women's Club because our group contained lots of men, and became The Little Theater of Geneva, a play on words in a way, aping the prestigious Grand Theatre de Genève.

Years later, back in Alabama, I decided to get back into the theatre. I started an Equity company I called The Jubilee Fish Theater, for reasons I'll explain someday. There were auditions in Montgomery among actors at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival -- where I obtained the services of John Preston and Steven David Martin, among others, and in New York where I often worked with a delightful Broadway-Danny-Rose type agent to secure some wonderful talent. The expense was a problem, and finally I saw that a professional theatre here was not going to make money -- and my daughter produced my first grandson -- and it was time to get out. We had survived for seven seasons, and I did some work I was quite proud of.

After that it became an occasional turn as a director or actress with Theatre 98, the local amateur group. I'm thinking about getting more involved in the near future. One of my good friends on the board of the Marietta Johnson School with me is a director, technical guy, and sometime actor, who has tossed the idea out about starting a new theatre. And I have a new friend, once a dancer with the Martha Graham Troupe, who wants me to do two-woman show with her.

This morning I have all the Samuel French and Dramatists' Play Service catalogues out again. I'll let you know when I make a decision. But I suspect you know what it'll be. The question is, when?

Once Upon a Time in Fairhope

September 13, 2007


Edward J. Kearney, Sam Guncler in I Hate Hamlet

One of the prospects that enticed me to move back to Fairhope from New York in 1988 was that I could start another theatre company, as I had in Switzerland with the American community group we called the Little Theatre of Geneva. Fairhope seemed a good location for the first Equity theater in the southern part of the state, due to the huge success of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, first in Anniston and then in Montgomery, where it sat, and still does, in the middle of a 40-acre tract of land and a physical plant that cost something like $50 million.

If people from Fairhope would drive nearly three hours to see Shakespeare, I reckoned, would they not go across town to see a little Neil Simon, Noel Coward or Tennessee Williams? The Grand Hotel offered us space in the loft of their golf club, and I used the sale of a little scrap of land as seed money to create my theatre.

I named the company the Jubilee Fish Theatre, in an attempt to be, as I stated in the flyer, "imaginative, innovative -- and fun!" My husband tried his best to talk me out of the name, but the locals enjoyed it. Someone from Fairhope (perhaps me) will explain to you sometime what is meant by jubilee fish, but anyway I liked saying we were the only company in the world with that name. It definitely wasn't pretentious, and it definitely set us apart.

The first season consisted of four plays: A.R. Gurney's The Middle Ages, The Price, by Arthur Miller, The Deadly Game, and Somerset Maugham's The Circle. I scouted Montgomery for some of my first actors, including the dynamic young man named John Preston, who went on to become a favorite at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, playing, among other roles, an unforgettable Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. I made contact with Lewis Chambers, a New York agent who sent some of his stable of actors to me, and we worked for years together, with him supplying me with appropriate members of the actors' union for my plays.

We did such new plays like Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, pictured here with Jed Dickson, Martina Vidmar, backed by a cast of onlookers including Carter Inskeep, Sarah Benz Phillips, Mary Margaret Thomas (mostly hidden), and Tina Hightower. At the end of that production one of my regular audience members took me aside and asked plaintively, "Why do you keep doing these comedies that are so sad?"

It was kind of a trademark at Jubilee Fish Theatre, comedies that had some sadness, or serious plays that had some laughs. I had to keep the casts small because of the space in that loft, and I never made a cent at my chosen profession, but kept pouring my own money in to keep it going. At the end of nine years I was losing about as much as I did on that first event that launched the company. My daughter was in New York City and pregnant with my first grandson. The theatre no longer seemed a viable profession, at least not for me.

So I moved on, and have now boxed all the memorabilia I can find into cartons for packing. In researching this, I found I had kept alarmingly little, and vital bits of information about my casts and my seasons seem to have been discarded over time, and over the recent purge of papers as I pack up to move. You can't keep everything, but there are moments in one's own once-upon-a-time when remnants of past projects will light up your heart. Just thinking about the days of Jubilee Fish Theatre make me a little happy, like a comedy tinged with sad moments.