Between 1976 and 1984 I spent seven summers working at the Sacramento Music Circus. For those of you who don’t know, it is a professional, summer stock in-the-round theater. While it is now a hard top, back then it was covered by a huge tent. I worked there as a tent boy – a glorified janitor but I also got to set up, maintain and take down the large tent – to a Production Assistant to many summers as the Stage Manager/Lighting Designer. It was like theater summer camp, except we produced top rate musicals every week.
The Company would rehearse a musical like Oklahoma during the day for a week, while performing Camelot on Monday through Sunday nights that week. Then on the next Monday we would start rehearsing South Pacific during the day while we performed Camelot at night. We would do this for eleven to thirteen weeks straight each summer. Add to it the weather in Sacramento, which can be brutally hot and humid – especially under a tent! As you can tell by the schedule, we worked our butts off but we still managed to have A LOT of fun. I still count many of the people I worked with there as some of my best friends.
In 1976 we were rehearsing our production of Hair. I was watching the final dress rehearsal when they got to the nude scene. As the show called for, during the peak of the song (under dim lighting) the cast dropped their robes and sang the end of the song naked. Then the lights dimmed down to a blackout. During the blackout I heard Richard call out over the microphone “Okay, I am going to bring the lights back up” to which the cast yelled in panicked voices “No wait, we haven’t got our robes back on yet!” But you just finished a nude scene? Oh well! I wouldn’t have the nerve to do what they did!
Then during the summer of 1984, it was the same time as the Olympics in LA. So one night after a show we held our own Music Circus Olympics. It consisted of a big table on stage with a bunch of solo cups filled with beer. We divided everyone up into four-person teams, and put one person from each team at the top of each of the four aisles that went from outside, down through the seating area and up onto the round stage. After playing the Olympic march music, at the starter’s pistol one person from each team ran down to the stage, chugged a beer and then ran up any of the other aisles to tag their teammate who did the same thing. As you can imagine, chaos quickly ensued, including some staff sitting in the seats that were holding up large cards with scores written on them. I don’t remember if any team ever completed the task because we were all falling over laughing so much. I still crack up every time I remember that.