This is Episode 12 and the Season 1 finale of Pipe and Drape! I’m closing out this first season with a conversation about A Christmas Carol. This story is not usually something that comes to mind as an example of a pipe and drape TYA show, but a majority of children’s theatre performers will at some point do a version of it to close out the calendar year, and most likely in tour form. There are almost as many versions of this story as there are snowflakes, and multiple versions of this classic story tour North America each year. The following pipe and drape story is a stone on my guest’s path that led him from a career as a teaching artist and TYA performer to entering a Master’s program for music therapy.
S: Today’s guest is Scott Duell. Scott was a part of the world premier cast of Neurosis at The Rev Theatre Company, performed and music directed multiple shows at the Palace Theatre in the Dells, entertained families at The Secret Theatre in Queens, Busch Gardens in Virginia, Jean’s Playhouse in New Hampshire, Dollywood, and Millbrook Playhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania and be baked pies in all of those locations. Scott The Pie Maker has has toured nationally with TYA companies like National Theatre for Children, American Family Theatre, and Bright Star Touring and as a result he saw some really cool theatres all over the country. Scott and I met while working as actors and teaching artists with The Rev On Tour in the Finger Lakes. We’d get up before 6AM to drive through the snow, Scott harmonizing with Lorde on the radio, to tour two shows and four creative writing workshops to students in Central New York. After work he would bake pies and I would fall asleep on his sofa. Scott is an avid reader, board game player, bow tie wearer, also he loves a good chip, and today he is joining me from his home in St. Louis to discuss his experience touring with A Christmas Carol. Scott, welcome.
SCOTT DUELL: Thank you so much for having me, pleasure to be here.
S: I’m really glad that we get this chance to catch up. You have since moved.
D: Yeah, the pandemic was a interesting time. I decided to move across the country and start grad school, you know, change the path a little bit. So studying music therapy, working with the kiddos—helping people, just in a different way.
S: Before you went on your path to music therapy, you performed a bunch of theatre all over the country, some for adults and some for kids. And before you were an adult performing for kids, you were a kid watching adults perform. Do you remember your first experience watching theatre?
D: I think it was in the third grade. They took us all to see The Nutcracker. So we went to the ballet in third grade.
S: Did you know what that you wanted to be an actor at that point?
D: I didn't, I actually didn’t…the bug didn't bite me until seventh or eighth grade because I was always a singer and I wanted to be a singer. Actually, I didn't want to be singer, I wanted to be Mariah Carey. And so I remember being in middle school and they were like, ‘Oh, you sing, you should go out for the musical,’ and I was like, 'I don't want to do that. I don't want to…I don't want to do shows.’ And then I finally decided (I think in eighth grade) I was like, ‘Okay, well I'll try it.’ And then I was like, ‘This is cool.’ Not only did that happen, but I remember going to see the high school's production of Guys and Dolls. And my brother was in it (like sports-player brother) got to be in the show. And I was like, ‘Well, I want to do that. He got to do that. I want to do that.’ So that's kinda how it started the ball rolling.
S: So did you end up studying theatre in college?
D: I did! I actually originally thought I wanted to go into music education and I was like, ‘Oh, theatre will be a hobby, you know, a pastime,’ and I got three semesters in before I was like, ‘Well, this isn't for me.’ And funnily enough, I actually had to observe a music therapist while I was studying music education. And I was like, ‘What's this, this is interesting. Maybe we'll put a pin in that and come back to it later.’ And then I went on to study theater and got my undergrad in music theatre.
S: So you graduated from Nazareth College and then you found yourself working in TYA.
D: Yeah, that was like…I got my start with American Family Theater. I went to New York on a whim (I wasn't living in New York at the time but I went to New York on a whim), auditioned for this one show, got it, and then I toured three shows with them and then I got into Merry-Go-Round because I started house managing for them. And then they had an opening in the spring. And so then I started working for Merry-Go-Round with TYA.
S: For our listeners Merry-Go-Round and Merry-Go-Round Youth Theatre has since rebranded and it is now called The Rev or The Rev On Tour.
D: I can't even quite wrap my head around the rebranding. It will always be Merry-Go-Round to me.
S: So you worked at Merry-Go-Round (now The Rev) for two seasons (at that time)?
D: I only did one full eight-month contract. And then I did three, like half-month, spring contracts. I kept saying, ‘I am going out to do other things.’ And then it would be like, ‘Hey, want to come back?’ And I didn't have anything lined up, and I was like, ‘Sure.’ I think Auburn is still like, has a piece of my heart. Like that will be like a home place for me forever. And so it was just a very easy decision to say, ‘Okay, yeah, I'll come back.’ ‘Cause I just loved the people. I loved the work. It was a great place to continue growing and performing.
S: Shortly after that, you went on to do one of the tours of A Christmas Carol. How did you find yourself working on a national tour of this holiday classic?
D: I had previously worked at Jean’s Playhouse doing their summer stock shows, and then not that Christmas but the following Christmas they were casting. I got cast in it. And you know I had the relationship with that theatre which helped me get the job, which was great.
S: What was the rehearsal process for A Christmas Carol like?
D: It was a week, and the producer/director/the man playing Scrooge also wrote the adaptation. So it was his own creation based on the Charles Dickens story. A lot of what's funny is that I have read the story since, and he did a good job of taking lines directly from it and then sort of making it his own. We also had music in the piece that was all in the public domain, like old Christmas carols. And during the rehearsals he picked someone, he was like, ‘Hey, why don't you just teach everybody this music’? And that person was like, ‘Oh, okay, cool.’ And we sort of just kind of took what we were given and kept rolling with it.
S: Were you touring with a live orchestra or was it all canned music?
D: Canned music, and then even some of the songs were like Christmas carol a cappella. I know we did…I think it's “O Holy Night?” Yeahyeahyeah and we did that a cappella, which was…and I think I actually, I think I had to start that song and by myself, and then everybody would come in and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I hope it started in the right keeeey.’
S: Were there a lot of you?
D: I want to say that there were like eighteen of us? It was a pretty big group. ‘Cause we had one of the big sprinter eighteen-passenger vans and then two minivans and then the U-Haul or like big truck with the set in it.
S: And so you had some experience driving larger vehicles on various contracts beforehand. Were you doing any of the driving on this tour?
D: I did. I drove, I was a driver for both the mini vans and the eighteen-passenger van, but never the truck. I think there are only two people that were allowed to drive the truck.
S: Did you guys tour with a stage crew?
D: No stage crew. We acted as the stage crew. It was all a beast of a job. We've talked about theatre for young audiences, I know this is Pipe and Drape; this was not your typical pipe and drape, unfortunately. We had these huge flats that had to be screwed into the floor every day that would have projections put onto them. And we had lighting rigging that we had to put up. I was essentially the lighting assistant to the technical director who had to light everything. So I had to hang all the lights and put the poles up and it was a lot. And so we had people in charge of the wardrobe who would get out of the wardrobes, steam it, wash it. I would say load-in took two to three hours every time we got to a new space.
S: How often were you in a new space?
D: Quite often. I only think we had two or three venues where we did more than one performance there. That might not be true. I might be lying. I know there was one at the very end. We did like two back-to-back days in Colorado. And before that we may have done a matinee and an evening. We never did more than two days (I think) consecutively at any one space other than I think at the very end.
S: Did you have any experience working with lights before this job?
D: Very little in college. They, you know…and so it was all about learning on the job and screwing up and figuring it out.
S: What were your duties during the show on top of performing?
D: So during the show there was, there was definitely (now I'm remembering the whole thing!) there was…I had to (like in the scene where Scrooge is leaving the office) I had to stand behind the flat and pull a thing on the floor so that the chair would move and that something else would move, and then I had to lift up the brakes and move this whole big unit offstage. And so, yeah, we were definitely part of the scene changes, bringing in boxes for the fuzzy wig party. They tried to keep it fairly minimal because we had a lot of projections, but there were still quite a few moving pieces that we had to take care of.
S: So the show comes down and you load everything out. Did you immediately go to your next city or did you get to sleep?
D: Usually (‘cause we had the evening performances) usually we broke it all down and we would go to our hotel, catch some sleep, and be off the next morning very early. I remember for this tour in particular, it wasn’t…not that we did backtracking, but the locations were not super close together. And so we were just on the road what felt like constantly. As I was sort of looking over old photos today there was a picture and it was like, ‘Well, after a nine hour drive, we're ready to do a two show day.’ It was just like that sort of feeling of just constantly being in the car, putting up the set and doing the show, ripping it down and leaving the next day to go somewhere else. There was not a lot of downtime.
S: What are some kind of magical or unusual things that happened on tour?
D: Getting into Colorado in the middle of a snow storm. And we had to put chains on all of the vehicles during the snow storm because we did not prepare appropriately. And also that meant putting chains on the huge eighteen-wheeler. Numb fingers, everybody’s standing around like, ‘What…what are we…what do we do? What do we do? Oh my God.’ I do remember (because we had the two back-to-back days in Colorado and we were sort of in like this skiing community and it was at the very end—we were all exhausted, ready to go home and it kind of felt like this magical, like little snowy village in Colorado) we got to walk around the ski resort and go shopping. I, once again, I found a picture earlier where we were walking and we ended up like sort of being in a parade, but like, we were just walking and I was like, ‘Oh, hi, sorry, let me get out of your way.’ We were in the parade trying to get out of the way.
HUNTER DOWELL (in the distance): I got to see you!
D: Oh Hunter just called out. He got to see us. I got to see…Hunter came to visit on tour. I actually did get to see quite a few people. I got to see Hunter. I got to see Katie Bruno and her mom came to see the show, I got to see a stage manager friend from the very first show I did with American Family Theatre. So it was really cool to sort of post on Facebook, 'This is where I'm going to be!’ and people who I hadn't seen in forever would sort of come out of the woodwork and I got to see them. I believe my aunt came to one of the shows in Florida. So it was really cool to get to see people and sort of like break out of the breakout of the tour life for a minute and reconnect with people who I may not have seen for awhile. When you're spending hours of your day together with no alone time, tensions tend to get a little heightened. When you have some sour grapes at the top of the pecking order it kind of makes things tricky for the cast. I don't really remember the inciting incident, but he sort of had a rage against several people over I-don’t-know-what (something was not done to his satisfaction) and it was so bad that several cast members refused to even ride in the same vehicle with him anymore. And so we sort of had to strategically figure out who was riding where, and who could drive what vehicle, because these cast members were like, ‘No, I refuse to be in a car with him, I can't do it. I won't do it.’ And so…and warranted, it was bad. It was not good. I don't blame them when it was not…I fully understood where they were coming from. What was great though, is that I would say as a whole, the cast sort of came together and we were each other's support system when things at the top were not great.
S: Did the company have HR or an office staff that could problem solve or mediate with the team on the road?
D: No. We had a stage manager and she was great, super efficient. Unfortunately, it felt like she kept being undermined by different people. And so she wasn't able to always do her job, which I know is incredibly frustrating to her. It was incredibly frustrating for us who were looking for answers and she was sometimes not able to give them to us because she was like, ‘Well, I apparently don't have the authority to help you with this.’ I'm trying to even think who would have even been in the office. And if there were people in the office, we didn't know who they were, we had no way to contact them. It was unfortunately a situation where it felt like if you had a problem, you just sort of had to deal with it. As a cast we all really banded together. And, you know, in the spirit of Christmas, which was really nice. And we did like secret Santa on the road. That was super fun. So we pulled secret Santa names and we would like sneakily give each other gifts. I honestly can't even remember who I had or who had me, but like, the spirit of giving was so much fun. And finding things at rest stops and then like putting them…you knew this was this person's bag, so you would just slip something into their bag and it would be really this special surprise. So that was a fun little thing. The cast definitely was the best part of the trip, and getting to meet so many different people, someone new, some new faces. So that was just so special.
S: How did the experiences you had while working on this piece, either on stage or on the road contribute to your growth into adulthood?
D: It was very much a learning experience in patience, and definitely hard work with putting the set up and taking it down, and I think dealing with the stress of being in close proximity to people and tensions rising and how to try to diffuse and be as amicable as possible to make it easier for everybody that you could. What was great was I got along super well with my roommate, he was the one that played Marley. And we were actually roommates the summer before when we were doing summer stock together, so we were kind of like, ‘Hey, let's live together again. We live together well.’ So that was really nice. We were a good sounding board for each other to air the frustrations that we had while we were on the road. And I think we trusted each other to sort of keep it between the two of us, which was really great.
S: Are there stepping stones from your time as a touring actor/TYA industry member/teaching artist that you have now taken with you on your music therapy journey?
D: Oh, I totally think so. I think interacting with people and talking with people, (sort of like I was saying) trying to be a voice of reason when tensions are high is (I think) something that I'm going to have to do in my career. I think that idea of helping to deescalate situations is going to be beneficial to me. It was always impressed upon us when working in TYA, ‘You know, don't talk down to kids. They're just little people and they know what's up, they know what you're doing, and so just talk to them like another person.’ And I think that was always impressed upon us. And I think it's such an important lesson that a lot of people, unfortunately don't know.
S: Scott, thank you for speaking with me today.
D: Thank you for having me. This was so much fun.
S: How can our listeners see more of your past, present, and future journey?
D: Yeah, I am on Instagram. I am @scottthepiemaker. I regrettably have not made a pie in a while, but I mean, Thanksgiving is coming. So there might be a pumpkin pie in my Instagram feed’s future. I don't know.
S: There was a pumpkin pie and it is on Scott's Instagram grid, so please be sure to check it out. I had mentioned that Scott and I met while touring with The Rev a few years ago. And just a few days after recording this interview, we unfortunately lost a member of our youth tour family. So our hearts go out to the family, and friends, and students, campers and audiences of Tommy Walker who passed away this weekend. His vocal talents and comedic gifts and chili recipe were all cherished among my youth tour cast. And he always left us laughing till our faces hurt. So thank you, Tommy.
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The Merry-Go-Round (Rev) Youth Tour company 2013-2014 |
[Pipe and Drape theme plays.]
I’d like to thank my Season 1 guests Terrance Jackson, Alison Liney, Bobby Montaniz, Holly Marie Breuer, Matt McWilliams, Brianna Nicole Hill, Marcus Stevens, Jodi Snyder, Annah Jacobs, Arlee Chadwick, Rusty Allen, and Scott Duell for taking the time to share their pipe and drape stories stories from tours small enough to fit in a minivan to productions so big they travel by caravan. I’d also like to thank Stephen Gordon for his pre-production and graphic design work and Melanie Shafer and Ellen Santa Maria for the recording equipment. Between now and Season 2 I will pop in with a few ten-minute Dinky episodes, so stay tuned, and share this podcast with your friends! If you are interested in sharing your pipe and drape story in a future episode, send me an email at PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com or connect with me @PipeAndDrapeStories on Instagram. Thank you for listening with me this season.
INSTAGRAM: @scottthepiemaker
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EMAIL: PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com
Host: Stephen Fala
Artwork: Stephen Gordon
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