Main Characters

Reliable actors of local theater relish the applause

Reliable actors of local theater relish the applause

Actors who give their time for little, if any, recompense are the mainstays of the theater community of Charleston. As the new season begins, it seems an appropriate time to recognize a few of these dedicated souls.

Longtime actor, director and set designer George Younts, who teaches theater at the Charleston County School of the Arts, points out that about 30 productions will be staged this year by local theater groups, involving the time and effort of hundreds of actors, set designers and directors.

"Counting about five actors in each show, and, of course, probably many more for a musical, you have about 150 actors taking part in local shows this season," says Younts. "Also, it's not inexpensive to lend one's talents to the stage; I would estimate that most spend about $50 for transportation to and from the rehearsals and performances for each production."

There also is the cost of baby sitters, when needed, and one can't calculate in dollars and cents the time spent away from family and friends.

In talking with local directors and producers, one can see that it is difficult, if not impossible, to make a living on the stage. Julian Wiles, founder and producer of Charleston Stage, says that actors are paid $100 for the run of a production, including rehearsals. Wiles says he thinks most theaters that present musicals pay the musicians $75 to $150 a performance.

David Reinwald and Keely Enright, co-owners of the Village Playhouse in Mount Pleasant, establish a budget for a play or musical and then pay actors equal amounts from it. Reinwald says the theater pays all directors $1,000.

Robert Ivey, artistic director of the Footlight Players, says the actors are not paid, but that Footlight directors are paid $2,000 per show.

Pure Theatre, now in its fifth season, has just started to pay its actors and directors.

"We pay our actors a percentage of the door, and pay our directors $1,500," says Sharon Graci, co-founder of Pure Theatre with her actor-director husband, Rodney Lee Rogers.

So why do Lowcountry residents spend a large chunk of their lives treading the boards, as the Bard would say, or working backstage to take part in that most intoxicating of worlds?

We talk to some folks who harbor the urge to climb into someone else's skin for a brief time and the chance to hear, as the title of a 1970s Broadway musical put it, "Applause, Applause."

Melissa Haneline
The Post and Courier

Karl Bunch

Karl Bunch

In 2008, Karl Bunch will celebrate his 50th year of acting in Charleston. He has appeared in more than 100 shows, 42 of which were staged at the Footlight Players, where he was bitten by the thespian bug.

Through the decades, the Charleston native has watched the local theater scene transform in a multitude of ways.

"I'm so glad to see the Footlight Players change from being afraid to use any so-called 'language' to producing two of David Mamet's plays, which, of course, use the F-word profusely — it took me weeks to get that out of my vocabulary — and to allowing brief nudity in 'The Full Monty,' " says Bunch, 59. "I think that newer theaters such as the Village Playhouse and Pure Theatre have been influential in this change, as has the theater at the College of Charleston, where some of those young actors have taught this old dog a few new tricks."

A former teacher in Lowcountry public schools and assistant principal at Rivers Middle School from 1994 until he retired in 2000, Bunch earned a degree in speech and drama from Charleston Southern University and a master's in education from The Citadel. "As a teacher and school administrator for 30 years, I found acting a terrific way to escape job pressures and become a completely different character," says Bunch.

Widely known for his madcap physical comedy, to the point that some other actors feared for his life, the actor recalls a memorable moment in the Footlight Players' "Something's Afoot": "I was supposed to be blown up on a staircase and fall 'dead' on stage," he says. "However, it was NOT planned for me to crash through the banister railing. So when I lay on the floor for most of the act (as was called for by the script), the whole time my fellow actors wondered if I might REALLY be dead!"

Also, several years ago, he was able to meet actor Ossie Davis, whose play, "Purlie Victorious," was performed by the Flowertown Players. As an actor in the play, Bunch recalls, "It was such an honor to discuss my role with the playwright himself."

Bubbly and versatile, Bunch has used theater to see life from a plethora of angles.

In Mamet's "Duck Variations," about two old men who spend all day watching ducks in a pond, he drew inspiration for his role from a favorite elderly uncle who recently had passed away. "Also, I learned that ducks really do relate to everything in our lives," Bunch says. "It's something I had never thought about before."

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Kathy Summer

Kathy Summer

As Kathy Summer was pulling up her shorts, getting ready for her dance in "South Pacific," the curtain suddenly rose and she accidentally mooned the audience. To add insult to injury, while slinging a wet towel around her head in "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," the towel slipped from her hand, flew into the audience and hit a man in the face.

These incidents made the actress realize she couldn't be embarrassed by anything that happened on stage.

"These things occurred in high school, but they didn't keep me from loving every minute of singing, dancing and acting," says Summer, 47, who has appeared in 20 local productions in as many years. "Even though I have had to work in theater while juggling teaching school and raising two sons, now 16 and 19, I've loved every minute."

After graduating from Winthrop College with a degree in speech and drama, Summer went to the Big Apple to try her hand at the big time. "I just didn't have any direction as to where to begin in New York. I took classes at Herbert Bergott Theatre and worked some in off-off-Broadway theaters; then I realized that I just didn't have that great drive to be a star. I really just wanted to enjoy acting."

After six months, her boyfriend, Bill, now her husband, called and begged her to come home, which she did. After earning her master's in speech and language pathology from Winthrop, she and her husband moved to Charleston, where her first play with the Footlight Players was "A Midsummer Night's Dream," directed by Richard Futch. There, she met actor and director Sheri Grace Wenger, and they formed a friendship.

When acting at the Colony House Dinner Theatre, directed by Wenger, Summer encountered another weird situation. "I was eight months pregnant in 'A ... My Name is Alice' and the scene called for me to walk by some workmen on the street who yelled, 'Hey, Chickie Baby! Com'ere.' I thought the whole thing was hilarious. But a few months later, a stranger on the street, who had seen the play, complimented me on losing so much weight!"

Although Summer spends her days teaching drama to 900 students at Windsor Elementary School, she craves acting in her life.

"To step into someone's else's life for a while is like no other feeling," she says. "I love to study a script and analyze the characters' motivations. With all the frantic juggling, it's still the best life in the world."

Melissa Haneline
The Post and Courier

John Brennan

John Brennan

Washing dishes and carrying luggage for guests at the Wentworth Mansion is the chief way local actor and director John Brennan feeds his theatrical habit.

"I work these jobs because they give me the freedom and flexibility to create my career as a comedian, actor and writer," he says.

Wanting to pursue a career in the theater, Brennan came to Charleston at age 20 to perform with The Have Nots!, an improvisational troupe that comes under the umbrella of Theatre 99, housed above The Bicycle Shoppe on Meeting Street. It was there Brennan took classes from Theatre 99 founders Greg Tavares, Brandy Sullivan and Timmy Finch and toured with them to various colleges.

"I was also part of a sketch group called The Bottom Line for three years until the other members moved away," says Brennan, 25.

He also received rave reviews for performing in the one-man show "Banana Monologues" during Piccolo Spoleto.

To help pay his rent, the actor also is paid to perform at historic Boone Hall in Mount Pleasant every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon. In a 30-minute play based on history, he assumes the role of Samuel Gibbes, a Southern gentleman who has just returned home from the Mexican-American War and is busy greeting guests at a party.

Brennan, who wrote the play "Hobo" with fellow comedian and actor Henry Riggs, is preparing a one-man show to take on the road and writing and performing in the YouTube sitcom "Artsy Club" with fellow improviser Chris Drake.

"I love doing comedy and have done it since I was 5," says Brennan. "My brother and I used to make sketch comedy shows with our home movie camera."

He adds, "Being a performer is an unorthodox way of making a living, but it IS possible. But there are definite sacrifices you have to make. I plan to do this the rest of my life until I get tired of being poor or get married and my wife makes me get a real job."

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

Kara O'Neil

Kara O'Neil

When Kara O'Neil begs her husband to come back to her and their infant daughter in the Irish drama "Shining City" at Pure Theatre, the effect is so visceral that you want to leap onto the stage and shake the actor playing her husband to make him come to his senses.

This is just one of the stellar performances by an actress who made her stage debut by having her head shaved. "It was in my hometown in Southeastern Louisiana when I was 8, and was cast as Michael in 'Peter Pan,' " says O'Neil, 27.

She is a 2003 graduate of the College of Charleston, where she appeared in such shows as "A Woman Alone."

After graduation, she acted in local productions, but realizing she had to find a way to pay the bills, she enrolled in the MBA program at The Citadel, where she took classes at night while working as an account executive for the Charleston City Paper, a position she still holds.

"I had been trying to get my foot in the door at Pure Theatre, and had attended writing workshops there. So it was really great when Mark Landis (professor of theater at the College of Charleston), cast me at Pure in 'Man From Nebraska' because I also got to work with Sharon Graci and Rodney Lee Rogers and learned so much from them," says O'Neil. "For them, it is all about the acting, not the special effects stuff or fancy scenery, and they do material that people here in Charleston aren't used to seeing." Also at Pure, O'Neil has been in "36 Views" and "Colder Than Here."

"It's a hectic schedule to work all day and go into rehearsal every night for three hours. I'm lucky if I get to eat dinner before 10 p.m.," she says. "It's so stressful at times, I wonder why I do it, especially when my friends are going out to have fun and I can't go."

But O'Neil believes spreading the love of theater to others is a good reason to follow her muse.

"Once I was walking down King Street and this kid came up to me and said, 'I saw you in 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress,' and although I'd never been to the theater before, I'll go see plays from now on.' "

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Barbara Young

Barbara Young

"I have never been a starving artist, but for sure, there have been some lean times," says Barbara Young, costume designer at Charleston Stage for 25 years.

Catching her breath after concocting 1930s costumes for the musical "Gershwin at Folly," Young says, "I don't have formal training as a costumer, that was not an option when I was growing up, but being raised in the Appalachian foothills of Alabama, knowing how to sew was a definite necessity."

Young learned early to copy the skills of her mother, who made the clothes for a family of four girls. "These early learned skills, a deep love of history and an innate sense of color paved the way for me to do what I do today," she says. "Sewing is an art, and few things can surpass the thrill of taking a flat piece of fabric, some thread and magically transforming it and an ordinary person into a character in a show. I know when those actors are up there taking a bow at the end of a performance, that they're taking a bow for me and my costume staff as well."

The costume artist began her career in 1982, when her neighbor, George Loukidus, asked her to design the costumes for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" for the Young Charleston Theatre Company, now Charleston Stage.

"That was my first introduction to (theater founder) Julian Wiles," says Young. "My budget was very tiny, and the cast was not that small, but due to my penny-pinching skills, we came in under budget."

As a result, she became the company's sole costume designer. For the first half of her quarter-century with Charleston Stage, Young was a volunteer. Today her work varies from 40 to more than 100 hours a week, depending on the workload. "I am a salaried employee, and I even have a full-time assistant because my job is more than full time," says Young. "The sheer volume of costumes for a cast of 25 or more is mind-boggling."

Once Young did call on her mother to help create the costumes for the Civil War show "In Dixieland, I'll Take My Stand." A recent challenge was "Gershwin at Folly," a musical that called for 10 dancing girls to change costumes five times.

Any regrets? "In 'My Fair Lady,' I thought I would go with understatement in the number 'I Could Have Danced All Night' and have Eliza in a simple dress. But it didn't work at all. So after opening night, I worked all the next day to make a Cinderella-like, stunning ball gown, and it was fit for a queen!"