Bragging, but just a bit!

By Tim Smith

Come out and enjoy the Kiwanis fireworks on Saturday the 4th at the Pauls Valley High School football stadium. It is always a great show.

Travel safely over the days ahead, and see some good theatre when you can.

And speaking of good theatre, (how about that for a segue): I really must share with you something exciting that happened last week.

First, some background information: I serve on the board of directors of the Oklahoma Community Theater Association (OCTA) and The Poteet Theatre from Oklahoma City won our state’s competition for community theatres during OCTAFest 2008 at the Pollard Theatre in Guthrie. Poteet’s production, “Jon and Jen,” then went on to win regional competition qualifying it for the national competition at AACTFest held in Tacoma, Washington. (AACT is the acronym for the American Association of Community Theater.)

The national event was conducted on June 23-27, 2009 and Oklahoma’s production won third place overall.

One of the theatres competing in Tacoma was the Chino Community Theatre (CCT) from Chino, California. Their production, “Scooter Thomas Makes It to the Top of the World” won first place overall.

What makes this such a special story for me is that from 1984-1987, I helped to launch CCT. The founding couple of CCT, Paul and Karen Larson, have remained special friends over these many years.

During the competition, they would call me on a regular basis to keep me informed.

In fact, on the Sunday following the finals, and on their way back to California, they called to give me a ‘play by play’ review of the entire event.

As an obbligato: The actor who won the Outstanding Performance by a Leading Actor for the festival, Jeremy Magourik (from CCT), studied theater at Southeastern in Durant. Oklahoma’s theatre traditions are alive and well, and we need to foster them whenever we can. Are these great states or what?

During this same period, the entertainment world lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

Pausing to reflect on their contributions, each certainly played a significant role shaping our cultural landscape.

I was fortunate to see Mr. McMahon ply his trade on three Tonight Show telecasts, once when Bob Newhart filled in for Mr. Carson and later with Carson himself behind the desk.

My most vivid memory of McMahon was watching him ready himself for his trademark, “HEEERRRREEE’S Johnny” opening.

He held the show’s script as he went through the normal pre-show announcements and in just that split second before the camera zoomed in to show him delivering that famous opening, he let the script slip ever so gently from his hands so his presentation would appear on screen as being totally natural, which it was. What a pro.

Live from the Highlands: It is 1983 and I continue trying to generate theatre work while con-currently building what would become a lifetime career in training and development.

Around this time, I would also work with a performing group in Pacific Palisades as their interim director on two musical theatre reviews.

Theatre too, on a summer evenings in our towns, stretching now from Oklahoma to Washington State. T A S