Post 157 - August 15, 2020

Aug 15, 2020

Day 157…

As we all move through these strange times there are so many things happening to us and around us that are strange and remarkable. Our news is full of events being reported that would have been impossible to imagine even six months ago.

While all of these daily ever more bizarre and extreme stories unfold, the seemingly more mundane aspects of our lives haven’t stopped. Bills are being paid or being put off. Homes are being moved out of or into. People are getting married. People are breaking up. Children are being born and friends and family are passing away.

Earlier this week, my Aunt Barbara lost her fight with cancer in Johannesburg, South Africa. My sister’s kids who got to meet her a few years ago on a safari trip we all took down there, call her Sister Grandma.

Barbara was two years younger than my mother and, like her, was born in India. Several months ago, when we knew that her illness was getting serious, I had proposed to her that she let me interview her about her life, but she didn’t respond so I didn’t push it.

Like my mother, she moved to London from South Africa when she was old enough to go on her own. Unlike my mother who had planned on being a nurse, my aunt went there to study acting. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. I so wish that I’d had the opportunity to hear about what that was like.

As far as I know, she never actually acted professionally. Instead, she met and married my Uncle Carlo, a dapper man from Naples who always reminded me of a somewhat less-surreal Salvador Dali.

They ended up settling and raising their family in South Africa.

My mother and my aunt were close in later years but that wasn’t always the case. I remember when my sister and I were still quite young, that we all went to stay with them in, I want to say, Durban. At some point, the sisters fought about something and my mother packed my sister and I up and we left the house. I don’t think that they spoke after that for several years. Thankfully, they eventually moved past it.

Towards the end of the run of Jersey Boys in South Africa, my mother took Michael and me along with my sister and her family on an epic safari trip. Along with my Aunt Barbara, we all went to a private game reserve called Thula Thula. It is a reserve that was established by Lawrence Anthony who wrote the wonderful book, The Elephant Whisperer. We had an amazing and memorable time.

With my family being so scattered around the globe it’s never been easy for all of us to gather together. I’m grateful that we all had that time to spend with Aunt Barbara and that my niece and nephew got to meet her and get to know her a bit.

The international roll-out of Jersey Boys really allowed me to reconnect with most of my family including all of my first cousins. I’ve been able to spend time with my Australian uncle’s children in Australia and well as with my aunt’s two sons - one who lives in South Africa and the other who lives with his family in Toronto. We are hoping, at some point, to be able to figure out a time when we can all meet up in one place.

Jersey Boys, in addition, to bringing me together with my family, has also brought me together with an incredible team of truly creative and wonderful people. One of those people was our Tony Award-winning lighting designer Howell Binkley who lost his own fight with cancer just yesterday.

Howell Binkley lit some of the most successful shows in Broadway history. When we shut everything down five months ago, he had four shows running in New York - Jersey Boys, Ain’t Too Proud, Come from Away and a little show you may have heard of called Hamilton. His list of credits is absurdly long and awe-inspiring. He never stopped working and was usually doing many productions at more or less the same time.

I was lucky enough to be able to work with him on two different shows - Summer, the Donna Summer Musical, and Jersey Boys. We teched Summer together twice and Jersey Boys… so many times I couldn’t possibly be able to come up with a number.

For everyone who has watched Hamilton on Disney Plus, I would urge you to go back and watch it again and just look at what he does with the lights. His work, like all of what we do in the theatre, was of the moment, but Hamilton captured it on film. He won an extremely well-deserved Tony for that too.

The set of Jersey Boys, like that of Hamilton, is basically just a wide-open space. You remember specific multiple locations and rooms purely because of the work of Howell Binkley.

I am completely sure that he prepped and prepped a lot, but in the room, he seemed to make it all up on the spot. He was fast. He never wanted to be the reason why things weren’t moving forward. I can hear his concerned voice saying, “Are you waiting for me?” over the headset in that great southern drawl of his.

Anyone will tell you that you never stop talking when you are calling a Howell Binkley show.

I’ll explain. When you are watching a show, the lights change constantly. Even if it is just lights-up and then lights-out, those looks are programmed in by the designer into specific cues. Within those cues each lighting instrument is programmed to point in a specific direction and be at a specific intensity.

Each “look” is called a cue and is numbered. During a performance, the stage manager sits backstage or our front in a booth and “calls” those cues so that they land exactly on the beat of the music or with the movement of a performer.

Say an actor is onstage and they snap their fingers and the lights change. Backstage, I would be looking at the actor’s hand and anticipating when they were going to snap. A beat before, I say “go” and the lightboard operator pushes the button, firing the cue so that the lights change right on the snap.

Jersey Boys has hundreds of lighting cues. Hamilton and Summer have thousands. Each lighting instrument has to be individually programmed for each individual cue. It is a time-consuming process. For everyone, apparently, except Howell. He, with the assistance of some of the most amazing associates on the planet, flew through every single one of the techs we did together.

His shows are fun to call because there is no down time. You never stop saying, “go”. Performances fly by as you try and execute the verbal gymnastics necessary to get through them.

In recent years Howell started posting pictures of paintings online - some well-known, some more obscure - that struck him in some way. Every day he’d post a different picture.

All of the paintings were united in their celebration of light. He loved light. When Howell “liked” one of my photographs I would feel like I really accomplished something.

I miss those daily paintings. More than just his artistry, though, Howell was a kind, generous and gentle man. We were supposed to work on a new project together in the spring. It saddens me more than I can say that we won’t be doing that now.

Losing both my Aunt Barbara and Howell within days of each other is sadly overwhelming.

In this same period of time, however, two of my friends have given birth to beautiful baby boys. Life goes on.

These new babies will likely never know a world without COVID-19. They will never know either my Aunt Barbara but maybe one day they will meet her Canadian grandsons. They will never know Howell but maybe one day they will see one of his shows.

People are entering and exiting this world as they always have. Making their debuts and taking their final bows. It’s a never-ending performance.

On my phone, I found some random pictures. Those with my Aunt Barbara are from the Thula Thula game reserve trip. My brother-in-law in the beard is trying to spit Impala poop farther than my nephew (don’t ask). My mother looks horrified!

Those with Howell are from an absurd and hilarious 36-hour trip that he, our associate sound designer, our associate director and I took to the Great Barrier Reef during our Jersey Boys tech in Sydney, Australia.

I am grateful to have been able to travel through this life for a bit with both.

R.I.P. Barbara and Howell.

And, welcome to the world kids. Sorry it's a bit of a mess at the moment, we forgot you were coming. We are a bit distracted these days.

Hang out for a second while we try and clean it up.

Thula Thula Game Reserve (L to R: Barbara, Nephew Wyatt, Mom, Brother-in-Law Will)