Notes from the Archives of Peter Zavon: Yeomen '68

There was a good deal of carry-over from Pinafore '67, as fifteen people returned. George Fulginiti was promoted to Associate Musical Director. All costumes were made by the BUS. The primary construction material seemed to have been dyed burlap. The Yeomen's costumes were never really finished. Some pieces of yellow trimming were held on with pins to the last. They were also unsymmetrical, historically inaccurate, and tended to unravel. The set was reasonably traditional. The flats for the houses, stage left, always looked as if they were going to fall down, but they never did. There was a carefully constructed three-dimensional arch, stage right, made by Bob Krivi. Fay Gade, who painted it, forgot to give it a keystone. With Yeoman '68, the BUS began to be bothered with a couple of problems which, two shows later, seem to have been chronic. These are 1) the problem of maintaining a full cast, particularly in the chorus, and 2) the problem of starting rehearsals on time. At one point, there were four Yeomen to sing six-part harmony. Eventually a level of one Yeoman per part was achieved by adding Rupert Davis and Clinton Smith to the chorus. Neither of them had auditioned, and Clinton joined the cast about two weeks before the show opened. Rehearsals started late because some of the cast did not arrive on time. It seemed as though they left their dorms at the time the rehearsal was supposed to start. This problem, however, did not reach crisis proportions for this production. Conflict between the director and staff continued, and even increased. Conflict between the director and cast began to appear. Yeomen was a difficult show to produce. There was not as much room for light-hearted rehearsals as in previous shows. Ranking according to the excellence of the finished product, BUS productions since the 1966 revival might be ordered thus: 1) Pinafore '67, Patience '67, Yeomen '68. However, ranking according to the effort required to produce the shows, Yeomen might well be placed at the head of the list. Yeomen '68 was not dedicated to anyone. However, by majority decree of the December, 1967 general meeting, Fern Volkman was the mascot. By decree of the spring, 1968, general meeting, the mascot was Sully Schlegel's grandfather, with whom selected members of the cast had been communicating during not infrequent seances. There were essentially three cast parties for Yeomen. They were held at the homes of Juliet Cunningham, in Brookline; the Edmonds, in Lincoln; and Laura Tosi, in Cohasset. The Pinaforecast party had resulted in some lost jewelry, besides being an allnighter before a matinee. As a result, the Yeomen party at Juliet's was carefully regulated and ended at 1am. Since the performance was over at 11, it was a rather short party. At the party at the Edmonds', films of Patience '67 and Pinafore '67 (by Al Swonger) and slides of Patience, Pinafore, and Yeoman (by Prof. Colson) were shown. There was a good deal of food available and singing was freely indulged in. The party at Laura's was held during reading period. Again there was singing and eating and Prof. Colson's slides. A couple of hours were also spent on the Cohasset Beach.

Framingham Tour: Professor Warren Colson, a strong G & S fanatic, taught at Framingham State College. It was his custom to attend all G & S performances with in driving distance and to take numerous pictures. He arranged for BUS to give one performance of Yeomen at Framingham on the evening of 10 April 1968 (the night of the Academy Awards). For this we were paid $200. The set was moved on Monday. Tuesday the cast went to Framingham for a rehearsal. This was needed very much because it was the first time BUS had worked on a stage of any reasonable size, since the 1966 revival. To get to Framingham, the cast rode in a 24-foot U-Haul truck (which had been used for moving the sets), and Prof. Edmond's and Bob Santoro's econolines. We had to use the truck because we couldn't afford to rent both a truck and a bus, and there was not enough private transportation for the entire cast and stage crew. Carrying people in such a truck is illegal and can result in the loss of the driver's license. It was therefore necessary to enforce silence every time the truck stopped on the expressway to pay a toll. The day of the performance, we arrived in the late afternoon and had a short rehearsal. Then we went to dinner, which was provided by the sponsoring organization at the college. We had been promised steak, but did not get it. The stage at Framingham was about 1/3 professional size, front to back and side to side. It was in a very new building. There was enough fly space to fly one scene, if enough ingenuity was used. There were two rows of striplights, front and middle. The gels are never changed, so that now the centers were completely transparent. Luckily we brought our own gels. The apron was very large and there were footlights. There were three non-movable on-off spotlights aimed at the stage from the ceiling. The only other lighting available was an old, weak, spotlight in the projection booth. Here, too, the gels were pretty burned out. We also brought our own lights. For the performance, the set was opened out in the front, but had to remain the same size in the back. Thus we could not take full advantage of the stage. The apron was larger than the space available behind the curtain once the set was up, so most of the action took place there. Because even the front of the set could not cover the entire space available, the curtain had to be closed part way at all times. The curtain is electric and the motor was faulty. If it was left part way open, the fuse in the motor tended to blow. Every time this happened, it took twenty minutes to get the janitor to reset the fuse. (He couldn't fix the motor). Yet Marc Kelberman looked at the motor, against the janitor's instructions, and felt he could fix it in three minutes. He was never allowed to. The auditorium seated more than the population of the college, yet outsiders were discouraged from entering the campus. As a result, we had a very small house, although it would have been large in CLA12.

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