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'Curtain up'

Barrington Stage's Renee Lutz

Renee Lutz is a professional production stage manager, with extensive credits in New York and regional theater. She has worked with Barrington Stage Company since its beginning. This summer, she stage-managed "South Pacific" and is now at work on "Falsettos," both at Barrington Stage. Other recent credits include "The Designated Mourner" with Wallace Shawn in Vienna, "Occupant" with Anne Bancroft at the Signature, "Book of the Dead" at the Public Theatre and "Bat Boy" at the Union Square Theatre. She is married to actor Gordon Stanley, who played the role of Capt. George Brackett in "South Pacific."

Are you a New Yorker? I'm really a New Yorker. Midtown, Hell's Kitchen. Two blocks from Times Square. I grew up outside the city, in Rockland County, and started cutting high school and running into New York to see matinees.

I love living in New York City. Nine months of the year I'm a New Yorker, with that marvelous onslaught of sound and smell and stimulation that N.Y.C. gives to you. But then you come up here and it's a whole different atmosphere -- the quiet at night, the trees, dodging the wild turkeys and avoiding the deer -- it plays to a different side of your personality. It's the best of both worlds.

This is my eighth summer -- I've been here from the beginning. I've been working with Julie for 24 years. She gave both me and my husband our first jobs in New York City -- different shows -- but she gave both of us our starts. And for that I will be eternally grateful.

How many shows have you done here at BSC? At least two every year, some years three.

Which was your favorite? I'd have to say "South Pacific." It was a dream cast, my husband was in the cast, which was part of what made it so wonderful. A wonderful story, great music, just a wonderful experience for a stage manager. Not a problem in the cast. Past of what made my job so easy was the wonderful interns. We have really, really good stage management interns this year, and there isn't one of them I wouldn't work with again.

What was the worst show you worked on here? I would say "The Diary of Anne Frank," because of the personalities involved, on and offstage. The show was an artistic success but the road to it was a bit bumpy.

What have you done most recently in New York? I did "Occupant" with Anne Bancroft. That was great fun. And she, of course, is married to Mel Brooks. Mel came every night, and kissed everyone. He's a very normal person. The highlight of that -- every show I do, I hold a potluck dinner at my house, and Mel Brooks came and ate my lasagna and he liked it! He was telling jokes and stories, and I just sat at the table thinking, Mel Brooks is eating my lasagna. It was wonderful.

Did you go to school to become a stage manager? I started out to be a veterinarian. And all through high school I messed around in the drama club, and I loved doing it, but I always loved animals. So I went to the state university at Delhi, to get my pre-veterinary medicine degree. And oddly enough, while I was there, they had a tiny but enthusiastic drama department, and I found myself scrimping on labs, where I would be doing fecal samples on cows, to run off to work in the theater. Then I had a revelatory event We helped take care of the animals at the shelter, and through some error, a large number of the dogs came down with distemper and had to be destroyed. As many as 23 puppies. That was so traumatic and so upsetting that I had to question whether I could do that as a profession.

So I found myself realizing that maybe I could make a living in theater. So I transferred over the hill to Oneonta and got a theater degree there. I saw an ad for costume interns at the Guthrie Theatre -- I went there and did a season, and then Iwent to Wolf Trap National Performing Arts Park in Washington. That was my first stage management internship, which was wonderful and a great education. Then I did some wardrobe work, which led to doing wardrobe on the national tour of "Annie," which is where I met my husband.

By that point, I wanted to go back to NYC. He said, 'I know this wonderful woman in New York, Julie Boyd, who gave me my first job, why don't you give her a call.' The next time I was in the city, I met Julie and we liked each other -- she was doing an off-Broadway showcase and I worked on that and that was the start of this long adventure.

What is the funniest thing that has ever happened during a show? And the worst? On "South Pacific," during the hair washing scene, we used a can of mousse instead of shampoo. And for some reason, the mousse erupted and wouldn't stop. There were these great gouts of mousse all over the place, and Christiane Tisdale just started laughing and giggling and it was infectious. We were in tears in the booth. The follow spot was shaking. That had to rank as one of the top silly moments. The worst was when I was an intern at Wolf Trap during the opera "Hansel and Gretel." There were 40 little children in it and someone thought, "Wouldn't it be lovely, if while they are falling asleep, if glitter was falling from the heavens" -- so they loaded up the overhead cradle with glitter, and all the kids looked up and glitter went in the eyes of 40 children. They were all hysterical. It brought the tech rehearsal to a screeching halt.

What is the difference between working here and in the city? To me, here in the Berkshires, I think the quality is exquisite, and I think in some ways, it's better here. Because in N.Y., you have so much pressure to be a commercial success that the decisions are often driven by money, not by art. You get something that will appeal to a broader base of people because you want those tickets sold. And it's not necessarily better theater -- its more of a mass draw. Here you're liberated to make some of the more daring choices. I think you see more adventurous theater. I think theater here is so interesting and so viable.

Do you ever get to see the other offerings? When the final show is up and days are free, I can go to Tanglewood and see a rehearsal, and that's great. But by and large, I probably work longer hours here than in the city because with the interns and younger stage managers, I act as a source, as a trouble shooter. I feel a great pride and responsibility for this organization. I'm so proud of what we do here, that I try to be more than a stage manager -- I try to be a problem solver.

Where you in New York in September? Yes, I was.

Has that event changed things? I think we are very much still seeing it and feeling it. I was doing a show called "Steel Magnolias" at the time, which involves the death of one of the central characters. We couldn't ever get through the show in the rehearsal hall without breaking down. Because Sept. 11 and that play reminded you so much of what's really important. For a lot of us it's given a different perspective. When something goes wrong in the theater, if a set piece doesn't work, for example -- okay -- it's a show. You do your job as well as you can, as honorably as you can, as thoroughly as you, can but if it's not perfect, it's not the end of the world. We've seen the end of the world. It was a horrible time. We watched the buildings fall from the top of the building we live in. We're surrounded by three different firehouses. One of the firehouses lost 15 people, one of them lost 10 people, and one lost 12. It was so sad and in another way, affirming, you'd be standing in front of the firehouse, looking at the pictures and crying, and someone would come up and say, "Are you all right?" To total strangers. It's a big city, but it's a lot of small communities. It was a horrible time.

The effects are still showing, even up here. Maybe our funding may not be as great, but our audiences will build over time. Theater is a wonderful escape. I think people are starting to realize that the insular experience of sitting in front of a TV screen watching a show and being basically isolated from the rest of humanity is not a particularly rewarding one. And being in a theater, being with other people, having that mass empathy, being moved by what's on stage, laughing with other people, it's such a joyous and rewarding experience. And that's why I'm in theater. I am part of the wonderful adventure that makes people forget they are watching an actor -- to go with the empathetic joy of just losing yourself -- experiencing that joy or sadness or violence that happens on stage and experiencing it with other people -- it goes back to sitting around a campfire and listening to storytelling and getting lost in it. That's why I think people are going to want to turn away from the TV, get out of their houses and be part of a community again. It's exciting.

Is it challenging working in the theater with your husband? I have been really lucky, in that I married a fabulous man. He is the rock that I anchor to. He's an actor -- and I think it's more difficult being an actor than being a stage manager. As an actor you have to have a certain look, sound a certain way -- there are all these external criteria. As a stage manager, you just have to be good at your job. It's been an advantage, because we understand each other's problems, but we are not in direct competition. It's been tremendously supportive. And I just love what I'm doing.

What would you like to say to finish? Go to the theater, and don't just go to stuff you know. Go to something new. Go to the theater as a blank slate and be open to the experience. Lose yourself in the storytelling. See something live, and take the kids.