Paul Russell |
A Free Man of Color | Oliver | The Scarlet Pimpernel | Mamma Mia | Bat Boy | Rocky Horror | Footloose - Barter | Footloose | Guys and Dolls |
Footloose - Barter Theatre: Paul Russell, director
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I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was yesterday.
Shortly after MAMMA MIA! re-opened at the Barter I returned to FOOTLOOSE in Barter’s rehearsal halls but 13 years past my directing FOOTLOOSE for Plays-In-The-Park. The show was known territory to me. Unlike with MAMMA MIA!, FOOTLOOSE was a yet to be charted journey for my colleagues. If we were to be successful I had to re-align my thinking that what was once FOOTLOOSE for me must be kept in its place of my history. There’s a new cast. Different design team. Different creative team. Fresh input from colleagues for whom everything is discovery. Through their exploration what I thought I knew of my yesterday FOOTLOOSE matured with each new day of this today’s FOOTLOOSE. What could only be Barter Theatre’s FOOTLOOSE which broke the box-office records that MAMMA MIA! shattered. And should a tomorrow’s FOOTLOOSE come I hope to grow smarter than I was yesterday, and the day before. 
By my 17th year my family had moved nearly as many times as I had had birthday candles. Always, I was the outsider to every new school and community. One uprooting planted my family in a rural town in which my school had been plopped in the middle of a cow pasture. During spring classes herd members would poke their heads into open schoolroom windows. The peeping Bessies were welcomed. I, as an outsider, wasn’t. To be considered a local of Blairstown your family had to have been an original settler who farmed the rolling hills of the hamlet. With each move friends and home were lost. The foundation for who I was—transformed.
Not until I first directed FOOTLOOSE a dozen years ago did I realize that in these unfamiliar towns like Blairstown my presence also brought a change to my new neighbors and classmates. In FOOTLOOSE’s main character Ren, the outsider, I saw reflections of my past self. And within the residents of FOOTLOOSE’s Bomont were reflections of my Blairstown neighbors. Each of us strangers approaching the other with firm convictions. But in getting to know the other, there was a rejuvenation.
Change fosters growth. Even a variation we may perceive as a negative, from that shift positive results can follow—if we allow ourselves to embrace an undoubtable hope for renewal. FOOTLOOSE, while tuneful with iconic 80s music, the story itself is not a simplistic bubble gum confection about a ban on dancing. It’s a journey of self-awareness during change. A transformative tale of how people of firm convictions come to each, and then discover themselves anew.
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Paul Russell |
A Free Man of Color | Oliver | The Scarlet Pimpernel | Mamma Mia | Bat Boy | Rocky Horror | Footloose - Barter | Footloose | Guys and Dolls |
Footloose - Barter Theatre: Paul Russell, director
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