1776 is a musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence and was the only musical I was involved in at Purdue-Indiana Theatre (PIT). I had just finished my freshman year of college at Indiana Purdue University - Fort Wayne as a Theater major.
Performances were June 4-20, 1976. Something I had totally forgotten is that we did TWO performances each Friday and Saturday, starting at 7 and 10 p.m. TEN PM??!?
The director, Larry Life, instructed the cast to approach their characters with the underlying thought that they are all sex-starved, having been in Philadelphia, away from their wives, for at least six months. Being the know-it-all freshman who had done the assigned research, I informed him that MY character, Secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson, actually lived in Philadelphia and so his instruction didn't apply to me.
Not that it really mattered. None of my lines consisted of my character actually talking. All I did was read letters from George Washington to the assembled congressmen. (And I didn't memorize them...which required a lot of faith in the "messenger boy" who brought the dispatches to me (High school classmate, Mark Ferrell). If he had handed me the wrong one, we all would have been sunk!)
Random Memories:
- "Other nice moments are contributed by...Dewey Roth as Congressional Secretary Charles Thomson." [Connie Trexler News-Sentinel]
- During one of the dress rehearsals, the actor portraying Benjamin Franklin cast his vote AGAINST the declaration. We were all dumbfounded: "What?!?"
- The day of our last performance was the last time I shaved for several years.
- The one lasting effect on my life from being in this show was the acquisition of the multi-useful phrase "hot tuna" from the man who played John Adams, Jan Swank. ("Hot tuna" can be used in place of "yippee"...either sincerely or sarcastically. It also stands in for something more vulgar when saying "He thinks he's hot tuna.")
