Now I Think I Know What I Didn’t Know Then

By Bill Black, Lost Colony Alumnus

My first summer with The Lost Colony was actually two years before I was hired. 

In the summer of 1965, my drama teacher at Newport News High School was the ageless Miss Dorothy Crane. She was probably already in her sixties when I took my first class with her, but, as she did every year with every class, her enthusiasm and concern for all budding thespians under her tutelage was evident.  Miss Crane had that special gift for commanding respect and knowing just how to steer a young impressionable student just like me in the right direction.  What was her secret?  We all knew she’d paid her dues.  She actually worked in vaudeville; done summer stock in New England for uncountable seasons, and when the high school auditorium burned in the 1950’, she convinced the architects to add a tall stage house for flying scenery and a modern ( for the time ) light board.  And convinced the athletic department to pay for it. 

The lesson was: “Get people to cooperate with you, no matter what your differences are.  You’ll get ahead much easier in life if you have the support of other people.”

                                       Chip Clark Photo

Oh.. Hold on..  Time to establish my mental state on Friday, June 4, 1965.  Here I am,  in French Class,

squashing Mike Costner’s head, with help from Ed Bessom. 

Proving once and for all, the guillotine (white model, under my butt) was

a more humane solution for capital punishment.

In early June, 1965, she called me at home.  “Hello William, it’s Dolly Crane,” she began.  “I apologize for disturbing you, but what are you doing with yourself this summer?”   I mumbled something about starting my senior English class reading list, hoping she wouldn’t ask me which book I was holding in my hands at the moment.

I wasn’t much of an actor at the time.  “Well, I see.  William, what if I could give you an opportunity- “That word: opportunity was something she’d frequently mention in class.

“- an opportunity to do your summer reading, and make a little money?”  

Being an only child, money was never mentioned in my home, but she continued. “You see, darling, my friend John Yancey – have you heard the name?”  My mind raced.  Was he an actor? Was he part of the famous duo Lunt and Yancey?  Was it Yancey and Fontaine? No, he must be the youngest child of Eddie and the Seven Little Yanceys.   Miss Crane continued, not pausing for a response from me.  “He’s big in real estate, dear.  Well, Mr. Yancey, like you and I, has a great love of the theatre, and he’s decided to open a summer theatre at one of his hotels in Nags Head, and I’ve suggested you be their lighting person.”

Okay, I thought, I can run a light board.  In a hotel?  Like in that 1965 TV series “Holiday Lodge”? Those guys always seemed to have a great time!  Sure.  But where, and what… is a Nags Head?

After a few more words, it was settled.  All I had to do was have my mother drive me to Mr. Yancey’s office, sign a contract, and be in Nags Head Somewhere by Friday.  I’m sure I should’ve asked some technical questions, but I shuddered to imagine the questions my mother would have.  Like: “Where will my child be sleeping?  Where will he eat? Are there other adults to supervise him? There aren’t any older girls his age in this play, are there? What clothes should he bring?”  All the important stuff.  And before the meeting, I’d better find out where Nags Head was.

The meeting went smoothly; with me pretending not to be embarrassed by my mother’s worries, followed by a quick trip to J.C. Penney at Newmarket Shopping Center for a half dozen brand new collarless ( then known as Surfer Shirts ) shirts and two pairs of tan polyester pants for what would become an eight week vacation.  And of course, new white tee shirts and underwear.  And towels.

We arrived at the John Yancey Motor Hotel on the following Friday afternoon. My grandmother came along to help mom with the four hour drive.  The theatre people, along with between two and five of the hotel staff on any given night, lived in a two story, ground level frame cottage across the street from the hotel.  There went my plan of having room service take care of everything for me.  My room –actually the very first place I’d ever stayed in that didn’t have cousins, aunts and uncles  involved- was on the ground floor, on the right.  I had a private bath. 

We met with the play’s director, the drama teacher at rival Hampton High School, who assured me she was proud to have one of Miss Crane’s finest students working the light board.  She was in her mid-twenties, blonde hair, wearing shorts and a blouse.  I blushed, and tried to look at something behind her.  Far behind her.  She reminded me of Miss April, or maybe Miss May. 

Mother asked: “What is the play about?”  Now, I already knew it was “The Voice of the Turtle”, by John Van Druten, but that was all.  The chirpy director answered: “..Well, the title comes from the Song of Solomon: “ the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle shall be heard in our land..”  And it’s set during the Second World War.  A serviceman comes to an apartment in Manhattan for a date with one of the two women living there, his date stands him up, and he falls in love with the other girl.  It’s a comedy,”  her eyes sparkled as she smiled.

Well, my mother and grandmother were pleased with the biblical connection, and might not have been sure about where the comedy was coming from, but it sounded like something suitable for my tender sixteen year old eyes and ears.  She went on to say that they were serving lunch across the street, and just finishing up painting the set.  Would we like to see it? 

I won’t go in to the details, but in the theatre, the director pointed out that there would be an imaginary window on the imaginary kitchen wall stage right, and one on the equally imaginary bedroom wall stage left.  Never mind that it never occurred to me this New York City apartment building was only two rooms wide. It was theatre, and you were expected to suspend architectural accuracy.  Our ‘theatre’ was the hotel’s conference center, a large room with a row of windows on the ocean side, and a suspended ceiling about twelve feet off the floor.  A long iron pipe hung at the edge of the stage, and another one hung over where the ‘audience’ would sit.  We saw where my six dimmer light board would be set up, on a folding table, stuck in an electrical closet at the back of the room, under a large wall-mounted grey fuse box.  “Is it safe?” mother wanted to know.    Yes mother.  See the ground wire?

Lunch was probably my usual diet of a burger and fries.  Mother commented that the “..ocean is right out there, so you’ll probably get lots of seafood.  You like flounder, you know.  You eat it all the time“   Okay, I think I know what flounder is.  Please leave.

“But don’t eat anything that isn’t fresh.  You can get sick.” My grandmother cautioned.  But I wasn’t hearing much of their lecture.  I was too busy checking out the two waitresses scurrying around the room:  Sandra; Miss February ( she even had red hair ), and Hope; Miss March.  Who had apparently traded in their ski boots and gloves for their summer waitress job.

Back in my room, mother unpacked everything for me, said to keep my windows locked when I wasn’t in the room, “..so somebody doesn’t beak in..”, and with hugs and kisses, two more twenty dollar bills so I could buy myself a Coca Cola, and some sudden tears, they drove away.  Leaving me all alone.  I should’ve been pretty pleased with my surroundings.  For the first time in my young life, they’d actually “left me alone”.  I watched the white Chrysler New Yorker disappear down the beach road, heading north. 

I took stock of my surroundings.  The bathroom had a shower, a small toilet, a tiny sink, and was filled with fresh JC Penney towels and bars of Lifebuoy soap.  My bedroom was a single bed, with about two feet of space all around it, a window that opened onto a screened porch, and a window that opened directly outside.  Obviously, I hadn’t paid much attention to anything outside, because I slowly realized as far as the eye could see, everything was grey, light brown, or glaring white.  The color green no longer existed.  The closest shade of a natural green was the low, grey-green , scrub pine way off in the distance.  I’d known for the last three days that Nags Head was on the beach, but I was expecting it to be covered in lush hibiscus and palm trees, like the setting for “Dr. No”, my favorite movie of the year.  The Nags Head I was looking at wasn’t the exotic island paradise I’d seen in the movies.

There was a knock at my door, and the stage manager, a heavy-set girl who’d just graduated from Hampton High School let herself in and by way of introduction said: “So you’re settled, huh?  We can start hanging lights now, if you’re ready.”  I was.  “Want to change your shirt?” she asked.  I was wearing a new, short sleeved blue seersucker shirt that still smelled of the spray starch my mother had ironed into it a not too many hours ago.  I didn’t see the need to change.  “Some of those lights are pretty filthy.”  I shook my head as if to say: Naww.. I’m okay.

Ten minutes later, the front of my shirt was completely smeared by a dark, oily dust that fell off every ceiling tile, and every length of heavy black cable I fed from the back of my dimmer board to each lighting position.  And by dinner, I’d hung and cabled all seventeen of my stage lights.  A good afternoon’s work by my standards. 

But I’d run into one problem.  The stage was a series of plywood platforms about two feet high.  My light pipes hung down about six inches, which meant –for artistic theatrical lighting purposes- the lights were practically aimed straight at the actors’ eyes.  Not at the steeper angle we could get in Miss Crane’s mega-sized high school auditorium.  And that angle would also put exaggerated shadows on the back wall of the set.   At least I could cross-light the areas on the stage, but the shadows were still there.  Not good.  Miss Crane wouldn’t be pleased at all.  “Dear boy,” she would roll her eyes upward, “Have you ever heard of Stanley McCandless’ principles of stage lighting?”

So, I decided rather than hang my lights under the ceiling pipes, I’d lower the pipes another couple of inches, and mount my stage lights on top of the pipes, nearly touching the ceiling tiles.  Now, as anyone knows, the fresnel lens spotlight has a lamp ( what the amateurs called the ‘bulb’ )  mounted at the rear of the instrument, in line with the lens.  But the ellipsoidal reflector spotlight has a small tube-shaped lamp mounted in a base socket that projects upward..  Meaning you can hang a fresnel in a tight space, where the ellipsoidal spotlight ( commonly called a Leko, after the company that developed them.  I was nothing if not a wealth of information after a year of Miss Crane’s stagecraft class ) needed  another six inches of space at the top. 

Genius that I was, I merrily hung my lekos upside down.  Which helped make my wall shadows about a foot shorter than the actors.  And then I discovered that by moving the entire light pipe four feet closer to the stage, thereby increasing the angle to the actors’ face, the shadows would be even shorter.  So, after doing everything twice, I managed to practically eliminate the shadows on the wall entirely.  And after putting some furniture on the back wall, and a pair of chairs, and a lamp, and an umbrella stand you could hang coats on, and painting the walls a darker color, you hardly noticed the shadows at all.

Of course, it was distracting as an audience member to see the actors squint in the bright lights only a few feet from their heads, and noticeably perspire when then came downstage, but that wasn’t my fault now, was it?  Certainly not.  No, the problem was all with those ‘ack-tors’ I’d mumble.

I still remember our cast.  Woody Kayian played “Bill” the serviceman, Roseanne Conte was the sexy roommate, and June Miller was the plain roommate.  And –this really impressed me- they were all professional actors from New York City.   Very nice people, in their early twenties.  Roseanne confided in me that she didn’t feel right playing a character who ‘ had dated, you know,  so many men’, which caused me to nod understandably. 

June was very outgoing off-stage, in contrast to her character,  She would later be the first woman, whom I would see in just her bra and panties. It happened a couple of weeks into the run of the show.  I was sweeping the stage after a performance, and walked into the small dressing room behind the back wall of the set. There she stood, in front of a mirror, hanging her costume up.  Her light brown shoulder-length hair softly highlighted by the sixty watt light bulbs around her makeup mirror.  “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Bill”, she laughed, as she gracefully turned to face me.   I was trying to hide behind my broom handle, holding onto it with both hands.  “Girls show more out on the beach, don’t they?” 

“Sure,” I said, starting to sweat, and staring at something on the opposite wall over her head, but not letting go of my death grip on the broom handle.  I started to say I’d seem pictures in magazines, but decided not to pursue that line of conversation.  Nope, it was better for me to say “excuse me,” and leave.  Knowing that when I would tell this story to the guys in gym class next winter, I’d make up another ending.

And early in our run, we had a visit from members of The Lost Colony, who seemed to enjoy our play, and eager to take Woody, Roseanne and June to a party somewhere up the beach that night.  Little Willie, unfortunately, had been taught not to get in a car with strangers, so I declined the invitation.

But that night, I met Nananne Porcher, who introduced herself as the lighting designer for The Lost Colony.  She was standing on the stage, looking at my cleverly-hung lights. 

“A very nice job, sweetie” she said in a friendly voice.  “But darling you’ve hung the ellipsoidals upside down.”  I said I knew that, and that I had to, to get a better angle on the stage.  “Yes, I can see that, but those instruments were designed to burn in the ‘base up’ position, and to do it your way generats too much heat inside the instrument since vents were now at the bottom rather than the top of the light, and that will burn out the lamp much quicker that it should.  Tell me, have you changed any lamps since you started?”  Well, as a matter of fact, I had…  “And I don’t mean to be petty, but both of your ‘window lights’ off left and right wouldn’t be the same color. One would be a light blue for morning, and the other one an amber for sundown.”  Oh.  Sure, I’d thought of that.  I just didn’t do it.

Nan invited me and the rest of our cast to come see the Colony one night soon, since she’d be going back to New York, and would be happy to give me a backstage tour of their theatre.  Our one night off was coming up, so all of us accepted her invitation. 

To say my eyes were opened would be an understatement.  I was used to the confusion of being backstage in my high school productions, but the crew I watched all seemed to have a purpose to what they were doing.  Prop banners were being pre-set against the proscenium wall; there was a cleared space for Indian huts to go when they came off-stage.  Everything was functioning like there was a divine plan to it all.  My high school experience was to rush backstage, run back to the tool closet for a crescent wrench, then back again for a screwdriver, and maybe after three trips I could stand on a prop chair to re-tighten the clamps on a light that had mysteriously swung out of position. 

And she let me watch the light crew do a lamp check before the show.  One of the crew stood onstage as the master electrician flipped on every switch for every light on the set.

And if anything didn’t come up as it should, another crew member would be dispatched with the proper wattage lamp for that instrument.  And most miraculous of all, it was done before the house opened.  This was planning and preparation like I’d never seen.

And then, there was the actual execution of then light cues.  I was used to lights being on or off.  But during the scenes I saw, lights in certain areas of the stage would fade subtly, to help direct your attention where the scene was being played.   The lights would flow from one side stage to the main stage, and then off the other way.  Sitting on the back row, I would watch the action on the stage,  then turn to see if the light crew was doing something, then look back to try and see the different levels of light.  Nan showed me the artistry that should be part of every lighting design.

Quickly, I realized I could’ve done a lot more with my seventeen little lights back at the John Yancey.  And that I should do a lot more when I got back to high school in the fall, and contribute a lot more with the community theatre productions on our stage.  That evening and a some subtle constructive criticism certainly paid off, personally, and professionally, for years.  And to think it all started with a doofus mistake on my part.

                                                                                                          Aycock Brown Photo

Note:  This photo was taken during my first summer at the Colony, in early June, 1967.    Note the sneakers I’m wearing.  Now, look back at the picture from May, 1965.  Don’t ‘cha wish this was printed on scratch ‘n’ sniff paper?

Another Note:  Bill Black was still only seventeen the next summer, but two years later was hired by Nan Porcher to run a follow spot.  Then over the next seven summers moved up to be master electrician, and then technical director.  He now lives in LaGrange, Georgia, where, ironically, he recently found out Nan was born.

1971- The picture of Susan and me when Susan was a mere wisp of a girl at sixteen...	1972 - The picture of Susan and me when she was a mere snip of a girl at seventeen
- Bill Black ('66) of GA - 06/23/04 and /6/24/04 WOW!  Thanks so much, Bill!