Oklahoma! 1988-89

The Fall of 1988 was tough in many respects. I took my final doctoral exams, and after 2 eight hour days of writing, and a 3 hour oral exam, I passed.

I was still driving down to Decatur to teach at Millikin at least twice a week. Then in November I also started a 12-week run of Oklahoma! at the Sunshine Dinner Playhouse in Champaign. This time I was playing Will Parker instead of Curly which was fun.

The local paper gave us a great review.

Mary Mahoney and I as Ado Annie and Will Parker.

Below are a few shots of the cast.

Unfortunately my marriage didn't survive work, school, and shows, and after six years Amy and I got divorced in early January of 1989. I moved to Decatur during the run of Oklahoma! and there were a group of us: Karen Olson, Roger Seyer, Carolyn Kent, and I that would carpool up to Champaign for the shows.

Little Night Music 1988

My last show with Illinois Opera Theatre was A Little Night Music, my third time playing Henrik Egerman. I would probably have been upset if Maestro Flint didn't cast me, since he was the one that got me the job at Augusta. The guest director was Dominic Missimi, and Voice Faculty member Ron Hedlund played my father, the lawyer Fredrik Egerman. Again we did a two-week run in the summer and repeated it in the fall. I'm not sure why they changed the program covers. They had a cool poster with a kind of art deco feel.

Looks like we also had a different actor, Scott Cheffer, playing the Count.

I got to be good friends with Deb Landon and Stacy Simons who played Anne and Petra and were also roommates. Stacy also ended up teaching with me at Millikin for a while.

I recently reconnected with Ron Hedlund on Facebook and found out his wife, Barbara, had uploaded videos of our production to Youtube. Unfortunately, I am unable to embed those here, but below are the links.

A Little Night Music, Act I.

A Little Night Music, Act II.

DMA and Faculty Recitals 1988

I started teaching Voice part-time at Millikin University in Decatur, IL in the Fall of 1987. I also had started to work on my doctoral project which included two solo recitals and a dissertation, though since the Doctor of Musical Arts degree is a performance degree, the dissertation was not expected to be at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation. I also had a Teaching Assistantship with Illinois as well, so doing all of that along with other shows, I was keeping pretty busy. Below are the programs from my doctoral recitals in 1988, at least one of which I also did at Millikin. Tom Schleis accompanied me on the piano and harpsichord.