Tootie Ramsey is back in boarding school! Jack Tripper gaily returns! Al Bundy rides again!
It’s not merely the magic of syndication or Nick at Nite. It’s those Robot Johnson renegades teaming up with Collaborative Arts, bringing you the full live studio audience experience of Sitcoms Live!
Three episodes of classic sitcom TV will be staged at Duke Energy Theatre beginning this Thursday night — with commercial interruptions devoutly included. Robot will recreate no fewer than 10 vintage commercials from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, plus the audience warm-up before the sacramental countdown to: On the Air!
What made this miracle possible? It was a heart-to-heart powwow between two esteemed theater artists, Collaborative artistic director Elise Wilkinson and Robot perpetrator Meghan Lowther, about the boob tube pabulum that suckled them in their youth.
“Elise and I were sitting down and chatting,” Lowther recalls, “and she said, ‘You know I’d really love to do sitcoms onstage.’ And I went, ‘Oh my God, that would be awesome.’ If we got Robot Johnson, my other group, to do the commercials! And I started spitting out different television shows like Who’s the Boss? and especially The Golden Girls because that one is also near and dear to my heart. And I went, ‘Oh my God, I would love to direct one of these.’ And she said, ‘OK.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ Because nobody has ever let me direct before.”
Lowther isn’t alone in making her Charlotte directorial debut, although Patrick Tansor didn’t have to wait nearly as long — arriving last August from D.C. after stints with Folger Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company and Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre. You may remember Tansor’s lordly tonsils as Prince Don Pedro in the Collaborative Arts production of Much Ado About Nothing last month. Rounding out the triumvirate is BareBones Theatre Group backbone James Yost.
Yost showed up at auditions with his favorite Married With Children episode. The other scripts had to be selected after complex calculations on how the makeshift ensemble could be deployed most efficiently in multiple sitcoms. Tansor will direct a Three’s Company episode, calling on Yost to be his Jack Tripper.
Lowther’s Golden fantasy had to be scrapped when too few aging actresses hobbled in to auditions. Instead, she found a zippy cast for Facts of Life. Then the real fun began as the budding director surfed the Web for 20 hours, zipping through three-minute “mini-sodes” and calculating which script would deliver the most laughs — with the fewest characters and budget busting scene changes.
Finally, the Holy Grail: the Halloween episode.
“In the opening credits of the 85-86 season,” Lowther confides, “there’s this shot of all the girls surrounding Mrs. Garrett with loaves of bread and brooms, like they’re going to attack her. That was the episode. I was like, ‘Oh, I remember this. Of course, this was when they thought Mrs. Garrett was a serial killer.’ And I watched the episode over again, and I was like, yes, this is it. It was iconic to me.”
Each 30-minute block, Lowther promises, will be broken down into precise segments, 22 minutes of sitcom and eight minutes of priceless commercial. After exhaustive research, Robot’s Sean Keenan has assembled a lineup that includes such vintage bombs as Calgon’s “Ancient Chinese Secret,” Tootsie Roll’s “How many licks does it take to get to the center?” and a true cable classic, the Life Alert ad with that heart-rending plea: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
Lowther wants me to keep the wraps on some tasty alterations she’s planning to pep up her Halloween adventure — and help you to recognize all the iconic characters. Tansor has more faith in the durability of Three’s Company, fervently believing that classic TV is not an oxymoron.
“No-no-no-no-no!” he protests when I intimate that he might mess with the Holy Writ. “There’s no text work involved. It is lighter, faster, funnier, and everything you say is an innuendo.”
Tansor is as new to directing sitcoms as Lowther is to directing anything, but he loves the challenge — and his cast, though he struggled to find all the bodies.
“It’s tough to have a bad time with Jim Yost in the room,” Tansor admits. “I’m usually leaving with a tear in my eye at the end of rehearsal — in a good way. And Joe [Copley] is in the show too, so it’s kind of fun to bang around with him coming out of Much Ado. He’s doing an awesome job as Mr. Roper, and Meg Wood as Mrs. Roper in those scenes — they’re good.”
Lowther adores her cast, too — and the fresh talent she encountered at auditions.
“Especially Dyanna Sorvillo. She completely embodies Natalie.”
This article appears in Sep 9-16, 2008.
