TOURS

The Things They Carried, starring Stephen D’ Ambrose, produced by The History Theatre, toured to five venues in Minnesota and two in Wisconsin. Including Worthington, MN which is Tim O’Brien’s hometown. The History Theater also had a school show run of the play, for 4 weeks, at the THT’s building in Saint Paul. TTTC has been produced in Minnesota, Nebraska, Virginia, three productions in three different theaters in the state of Florida and in New York City twice. 

Traveling Light had two tours. Just me and one other person. Shows in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana. Combining the two tours, at least seventeen different venues. Small town Art Centers, small colleges, high school auditoriums and the stages at small local theaters. The back room of a bar in Mountain Lake, MN where the first thing every local tells you is, “In Mountain Lake there is no lake and no mountain either.” 

Easy Eddie. The story of a big-time marijuana smuggler in south Texas in the late ‘60’s. Based on a guy I grew up with and who was a dear friend. Toured the southwest part of Minnesota. In a barn at the Minnesota Farm Implement Inventers Convention, a small-town Kiwanis Club where the audience sang for the performer, me. An old-folks home, as we called them at this time, where, after I spoke three sentences a white-haired man stood up and said in a loud voice, “That’s enough for me.” And he walked out. 

Pierre was performed at The Renaissance Festival of Minnesota during the festivals first years. I remember we were there for their opening season. I remember we performed every day of the Festival and probably performed 5-6 shows a day. We also performed at The May Day Festival in Minneapolis. The May Day celebration was one day and we probably performed 5-6 shows. We toured this play everywhere we possibly could. We performed at the IBM company picnic at some huge corporate park like area outside of Minneapolis and on asphalt parking lot for the opening of a carpet business. At that time, Pierrer was our money show. 

We did write to Mr. Sendek’s agent asking permission to adapt the play for the stage. We knew we could go on performing the play and Mr. Sendek or his agent would never care because they would never know. We wrote anyway and his agent, I think, answered back. The details of this are gone but I do remember we wrote and someone wrote us back giving us permission. We wrote and told them what we were going to do with the play. Not try and take it to Broadway but to local schools and parks and places like that. I do remember saying I thought they would say yes because we were strictly local and small time and as it turned out that whoever wrote us back was very nice and said they were delighted to give us permission.

Asi es La Vida. We toured this primarily to schools in and around the Twin Cities, because Asi was in Spanish and we paired it with a Cevantes one-act, spoken in English. Lots and lots of schools in and around the Twin-Cities. Both of these plays are comedies. At one school immediately before we started, the principle stood in front of the audience of students and said to them, “This is theater and is serious stuff. So, there will be no laughing!”

Church Basement Ladies. Written by Jessica Zuehlke and Jim Stowell. Produced by The Plymouth Playhouse, Plymouth, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis. There are four women and one man in the play. The figures I was given several years ago by The Plymouth Playhouse are, ten shows a week, for three years, approximately 1,500 performances, over 275,000 people and $3,750,000 in ticket sales. This play has had three national tours and five regional tours. The play has been performed in 31 states and in Canada so I can’t even guess how many venues it has been performed in or how many thousands of people have seen the show. One of the things about this play which makes me very happy is that it has provided work to many actresses from all over the country. The play has been in production somewhere for the last 20 years and is still going as of 2026. 

I was a cast member in two tours of the five-state area with The Children’s Theater Company, including the first tour in the history of the theater. 

Rio Bravo! Rio Grande! —The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. The Atlanta Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

The Desperados — Theater for the New City in New York City.

Close to the Bone — The Goodman Theater in Chicago.