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ll remains a high wire feat unlike any in american popular culture thing two it s all just material our process was for me to turn in four or five short pieces on thursday there was a friday afternoon read through of all the material for that week s show garrison would show up with reams of sketches in the first year of arca there was always a 10 to 14 page continuing drama of gloria played by ivy austin about the life of an aspiring singer in new york as well as the other sketches that repeated every week duct tape dusty and lefty guy noir etc as well as a couple of mine after the read through garrison and i would repair to his office and he would select the pieces that he thought worked and which ones needed revision the first week i remember he took one of his ten page scripts and methodically crossed out page after page until he finally circled one paragraph i ll come back with something the next morning he appeared with a new eight page script with that one paragraph forming its core not many people could do this and produce any quality let alone sustained brilliance but the underlying lesson was that it s all just material don t be precious let it go the good things will come back to you pick and choose good things and put the blocks back together in a new arrangement it s just material thing three come at a story from the side one horrible misconception of garrison is that he spins homespun stories from the heartland nothing is further from the truth garrison started out writing for the new yorker and that means a lineage from james thurber and s j perelman and e b white one writing technique he guided me toward was coming at things from the side if you want to land at point k don t start at point j start way off to the side and come to things indirectly there s a tremendous delight an audience feels when they suddenly see how things have tied together in a completely unexpected but understandable way he employs this technique in the monologues most famously note he always writes the news from lake wobegon in a mysterious cone of silence he d simply show up on saturdays and deliver them never went over them in rehearsal if i had to guess he d write it out saturday morning and because he has what seems to be a photographic memory he d be able to deliver it that afternoon thing four it s a live show keep it live from doing hours of live early morning radio he realized that part of the excitement of a live show is to not overprepare or rather to bake the cake right in front of the audience the audience delighted in seeing the flow of the show in seeing garrison do the high wire act of creating a two hour entertainment that held together but was created right before their eyes this was both true and not true the musical acts were obviously booked long before the show the scripts were rehearsed well read through on friday and then read through again on saturday but the feeling was that we were putting the whole thing together right in front of the audience s eyes garrison always pushed the deadlines for preparing for the show to the final moments i remember one week in new york when at about half hour before air he nonchalantly said he was going back home to get a belt not such an easy trip in the city to go from midtown to the upper west side and back and he actually ducked out there was tightly controlled panic and prayers that he d come back in time and sure enough with only moments to spare he walked in now fully dressed with a belt and walked out on stage and did his pre show i think that was all part of a conscious and subconscious effort to keep the show in the moment this is happening right now we re all in this together let s hope it turns out for the best richard dworsky music director and keyboard player after a more than 40 year association with garrison keillor and his radio show a prairie home companion people often ask me how that relationship began the answer is short and simple my parents bob and shirley dad had owned the world theater and the attached schubert apartments since 1970 a prairie home companion was looking for a permanent home and in 1978 found it at the world theater later renamed the fitzgerald theater sadly dad passed away that same year and mom became the owner landlord she knew nothing about business that was handled by others but she did become friends with the show s producer margaret moos mom had been impressed by a talented russian and yiddish singer sima shumilovsky who had recently arrived in st paul from the soviet union mom thought that sima would make wonderful guest on a prairie home companion and dragged margaret to a little a cappella performance sima gave in a basement room at the st paul jewish community center margaret was very impressed but a little cautious saying sima is great but she needs an accompanist mom immediately replied my son richard can play piano in any style and can learn a song immediately by ear etc margaret was sold on the idea mom then came to me with the plan for my approval not considering myself a russian yiddish folkie my response was less than enthusiastic but mom was persistent and begged me saying come on it ll be a mitzvah hebrew for a good deed sima and i performed on the radio show in february of 1980 and it went so well that we were invited back several more times after a few shows i was given an opportunity to do a solo tune garrison took notice and invited me back as a solo performer and to accompany him and various other guests this all led to me eventually becoming a prairie home companion s pianist music director for decades the moral of the story listen to your mother every once in a while she just might be right and in a way that can change your life a short story about my dad bob dworsky and the world theater after his service bob graduated from the university of minnesota law school in 1949 and began his law practice in st paul he was admired and respected as a brilliant attorney and in 1962 formed the dworsky rosen law firm in partnership with attorney william s rosen beginning in 1956 he performed legal services for his old college friend billy weitzman bob eventually became a development partner in billy s company william h weitzman and associates a firm which designed and built apartments in the twin cities minneapolis and st paul upon weitzman s death bob retained his ownership share in many of the buildings and formed his own company multifam corporation to manage them but he was granted sole ownership of the shubert building apartments and the adjacent world theater later renamed the fitzgerald in st paul which became the permanent home of garrison keillor s a prairie home companion on minnesota public radio in 1978 mpr had approached bob about renting the theater during broadcast weekends bob was a lover of the arts and generously gave mpr use of the theater for a flat fee of 90 per week the show s producer at the time recalled that this fee was supposed to cover heating and lighting i can t imagine it came close bob passed away that same year but shirley never raised the rent mpr eventually purchased the theater from shirley christine tschida producer i have lots of memories about the show in the early days of its reincarnation as the american radio company of the air then the american radio company and eventually a prairie home companion once again though i am from minnesota mac grad and had attended a couple of broadcasts of the original aphc in the twin cities i was actually working at the brooklyn academy of music in new york when garrison returned from denmark and started arca my college friend ken lazebnik was living in new york at the time and i d occasionally get him comps for bam shows so when he told me he was doing some writing for garrison s new radio show which was actually renting one of the theaters at bam in that first season i asked him for tickets to that in return a couple of months after seeing it ken told me that the show needed to find a new producer and that s how i came to be hired by minnesota public radio while living in new york i had produced plenty of theater and dance tours but i had never really worked in radio so it was good that there were smart people who knew the technical broadcast side of the business because i certainly did not the show was a bit of a nomad those first couple of seasons bam wasn t really the right place for it or for garrison s audience which would happily find its way to midtown manhattan from connecticut and new jersey and beyond somewhere with less expensive rent and production costs was better and not in a sketchy at that time neighborhood in an outer borough would be better so the second season the first one that i worked on found us renting the lamb s theatre on 44th street in manhattan at 350 seats it was a much better fit for a show that was just getting started at building an audience than the cavernous bam opera house was garrison had connected with rob fisher to put together a wonderful 16 piece band they called the coffee club orchestra with a smaller group called the demitasse orch there was also a terrific musical arranger russell warner who would compose theme music for the sketches and commercials i recall the water march for a campaign to promote drinking eight glasses of water a day which didn t last and others like café boeuf rhubarb and coffee that did there was a running soap opera about a young woman in new york called the story of gloria and ivy austin and richard muenz were regulars more or less augmented by tom keith who didn t want to travel and other terrific new york based actors like alice playten and lynne thigpen so the first show i ever worked on was at the lamb s theatre and i don t remember all of the details exactly i think the guest list may have included the gregg smith singers they made a few appearances on shows in that period and perhaps victor borge was on i do distinctly remember leading him up a circular staircase offstage right to a dressing room area that we had designated for him brushing cobwebs out of the way as we went he was a very good sport about it prior to that show i got my first stopwatch we had a meeting or two earlier in the week in the show s offices in the big republic bank building on the corner of 14th street and 8th avenue surely this must have been the inspiration for guy noir s acme building right we read through first drafts of a couple of scripts talked about possible music selections from the orchestra and the guests and called the final tech dress rehearsal for noon on saturday at the lamb s saturday we ran through musical numbers which i timed waited for garrison to arrive with revised and new and different scripts and went through all of that material sometime mid afternoon i sidled over to my friend ken with my list of timings in hand and said so we have all of this stuff now who figures out how it all comes together to be a show i could see a look of fear on ken s face the fear that he had recommended a complete idiot to be the producer still he smiled chuckled and said well you do and so the learning curve began the first tour show i worked on was shortly thereafter a broadcast from the mark twain home in hartford ct but the show traveled to many exciting places london s west end edinburgh dublin berlin and the reading room of the new york public library my favorite tour story though was the birmingham alabama blizzard story where the city shut down and the company was stranded for an entire extra day because nothing was moving of course the show went on despite being told repeatedly on friday afternoon and evening that we should cancel it tom keith would tell everyone that i made him rent a car when his connecting flight from atlanta was canceled i did but admitted later on that it was great that we had it available so he could run a reconnaissance mission out to the birmingham airport by now everyone has likely heard the stories about how 500 people managed to get themselves to the theater for the broadcast the guy with the keys to open it up for us used skis how emmylou harris s tour bus was 50 miles outside of town an hour before broadcast time how our truck driver russ ringsak had to go pick up the last member of the dixie hummingbirds and his pregnant wife from the other side of town in the cab of the semi and they made it onstage for the closing number of the show it was nerve racking as we went through it but so much fun to think about now recognizing that this is a 50 year anniversary i want to mention some things that i think about occasionally related to the show and the world that it was is a part of one thing is technology we used to have scripts come in paper form that we would feed into a xerox copier that we carried with us to every theater we performed in or rented on site revisions were done by hand sometimes sometimes even mid broadcast as the script was being performed research wasn t done via the internet or wikipedia we used books the library and russ ringsak s on site observations from the road the first mobile phones that we had were enormous i remember that technical director scott rivard had one that was roughly the size of a shoebox we had to have phone cables installed in each theater in order to be able to transmit the show for uplink for broadcast there was one night in new york the show by then hand moved from the lamb s theatre to symphony space and then to the town hall when something went wrong with that uplink connection and we had to dash from town hall to wnyc studios down by city hall in lower manhattan carrying two reels of tape so that the show could get on the air for those who tape delayed it on saturday and for the sunday rebroadcast travel was different of course because my time with the show was mostly pre 9 11 and things were easier there was a season when we had two back to back weekend broadcasts in ohio cincinnati and then columbus i think and we had sent out plane tickets to the musicians and guests in advance one of the musicians joe wilder headed to laguardia on friday for his flight shrugged when he didn t see any other musicians in the waiting area but figured they must have been on different flights so joe boarded a flight to columbus one week earlier than he was actually ticketed to go there having mixed up the order of his cincinnati and columbus tickets meanwhile the rest of the band was somewhere down another concourse boarding their correct flight wondering if joe was late or just not booked on the show that weekend my husband used to drive me to the airport and pick me up and could come right to the gate with us one week when i had left my stopwatch in my desk at mpr he dropped me off drove back to mpr to pick it up and delivered it to the door of the aircraft for the stewardess to bring to me and then there are certain historical events that i recall in the context of the show justice david souter joined the supreme court in...
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