New Trier PAD Stories: The Funniest Moment of My Life

by Duane N. Burghard

© 2020

(Author’s note: This essay is part of a larger project I am currently working on about my experiences in the New Trier Performing Arts Department. Eventually, I hope to combine these stories into a larger collection as a sort of love letter/homage to this incredibly special time in my life, and the unbelievably talented and special people who shared it with me. My current plan is for the first two paragraphs of each essay (the introduction) to be largely the same, with the last sentence of the second paragraph leading into that particular essay’s specific story … so if you’ve read the previous essay on this topic, you can skip ahead.)

New Trier’s PAD (Performing Arts Department) is well known, and for good reason. It has been producing major Hollywood and Broadway stars since long before I was born. From classic era stars like Charlton Heston (Class of 41) and Anne Margaret (Class of 59) to modern era ones like Oscar nominee Virginia Madsen (Class of 79) and Emmy winner Rainn Wilson (Class of 84), New Trier has consistently been a talent incubator for actors, singers, dancers, musicians, and artists of all kind. The Performing Arts Department was THE reason I wanted to attend New Trier, and I have always felt VERY fortunate to have been a part of it from the fall of 1979 until the late spring of 1983. 

I am, of course, NOT one of those Oscar, Emmy, Tony et al winners. In fact, while Performing Arts consumed essentially ALL of my non-academic time during my four years at New Trier, after I graduated in June of 1983, I never acted on stage again (although I have, and still do, use many of the skills I learned … and in ways I never imagined at the time). I joined the US Navy that summer and, while that was a “dramatic” change in my life, it was a very different kind of drama (for those interested, see the Jan/Feb, 2015 section of this blog). In any case, I never became the household name that I had dreamed I might be back then, but there was a reason for that too; I wasn’t that good. Now, to be clear, I’m not intending to be unkind to myself when I make that observation. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I was consistently thought of as having significant talent, but among the many important “life lessons” that New Trier’s PAD teaches all of its students are these two; first, show business is NOT, in ANY manner, shape, or form, a meritocracy; and second, simply having talent isn’t nearly enough to succeed. Those were hard lessons for me (and for many others who were far more talented than me), but I remain very grateful to have learned them so early in life. So what does it take to succeed? Well can’t just be good, you have to be very, very, very good … like top 1% good … AND then you have to be really lucky on top of that. I was good, but I wasn’t top 1% good … so yeah, no Oscars for me … but I did get a LOT out of my experience, including the single funniest moment of my life ……

It’s impossible to tell a story that involves New Trier AND Shakespeare (and this story centers on both) without starting with the late, great Dr. Robert Boyle. For THIRTY FOUR YEARS, Doctor Boyle (or “DB” as he was more informally known to us) served as one of the many, truly extraordinary teachers at New Trier, but he was also unique among them. In addition to teaching English and journalism, Doctor Boyle was a man on a personal mission: to bring his unique passion for and love of Shakespeare into the lives and experiences of as many people as possible. He did this in many ways, but none were as well known or impactful than his directing the annual Shakespeare play at New Trier.

Shakespeare was, of course, a truly unique and special playwright, and bringing his works properly and appropriately to life required significant interpretative skill and a unique vision. Doctor Boyle was the perfect man for that job.

Working with Doctor Boyle as a director was a VERY different experience from day one. Many productions at New Trier begin with a “table reading” of the script. Most of you have seen these sorts of things on TV; it involves the cast gathering around, usually in a circle of tables, and reading through the script … and the director maybe stops the action a few times to add a note or comment. It’s usually a “first day” activity and that’s it. Not in a DB Shakespeare production it isn’t. Table reads of Shakespeare plays with Doctor Boyle consume the entirety of the first WEEK of rehearsals and include the good Doctor rather constantly interrupting his performers to ask questions and make points. There was a very good reason for this practice: Shakespearean English is substantially more challenging to read and perform than what most actors are used to, and it’s basically impossible for an actor to convey the humor or the drama of a line if they don’t fully understand it and its broader context. Doctor Boyle’s relentless attention to detail and militant insistence that we get every nuance of every line not only made our performances infinitely more accurate and entertaining, they brought Shakespeare to life for generations of performers and audiences. As a teenage male, it was also great fun (you don’t realize how much sexual humor or how many fart jokes there are in a Shakespearean comedy until you’ve done a table read with Doctor Boyle).

Doctor Boyle was also a man who truly believed that Shakespeare was timeless … and by that, I mean that he believed that Shakespeare’s stories were relevant and could be told in any moment of human history. To prove this, in odd numbered years, the annual Shakespeare production was performed in a historical timeframe of Doctor Boyle’s choosing (in even numbered years, it was performed in the traditional time and place of the original work). As a result, in 1981, I had the opportunity to play Oliver as a post US Civil War, reconstruction era General, in the play As You Like It (you think performing Shakespearean dialog is challenging? Try doing it with a deep southern accent). And in 1983, I played Lord Longavile as a Roaring 20s New York City socialite, in Love’s Labour’s Lost. But regardless of the show’s temporal setting, Doctor Boyle also retained a deep and abiding respect for the original work, and following the last performance each year, he would gift all of his performers with copies of the play, printed in the original, Shakespearean English. I still have all of mine.

As director’s go, Doctor Boyle entered each production with a very specific vision of the final result (generally speaking, he was not a “collaborative” director, he knew what he wanted and your job was to learn and do it), but he was also extremely patient and tolerant with his performers … and with me, well, his patience would be tested. I had the incredible privilege of working with Doctor Boyle on 3 major productions in my four years at New Trier (I missed out Freshman year), and in each of those years, I was somewhat infamous for going into dress rehearsals with a script still in my back pocket (I may have even referred to that script once or twice in dress/tech rehearsals). I did NOT do this with the intention of stress testing either Doctor Boyle’s heart or any of the medication that he almost certainly needed to survive working with us … no, my penchant for memorization at the last minute had more to do with a childish adrenaline addiction and the fact that I was a young man whose primary focus in school was … well, girls. Also, in fairness to myself, I have always had a very powerful memory and the ability to capture anything I’m exposed to repetitively (like lines in a play) pretty instantly once I commit to doing so. In three years of working with Doctor Boyle, I blew exactly two lines in twelve performances. Once he knew this about me, we were fine … you know, mostly ….

One more general note about performing Shakespeare at New Trier before I get to my funniest moment ever: each year the show was performed “in the round” (audience on 3 sides) in the M182 theater. Unlike New Trier’s incredibly impressive Gaffney Auditorium, which seats over 3,000 people, has a roughly FIVE STORY TALL cyclorama, and was at the time run by Mr and Mrs. Gill (a couple who had run a theater on Broadway for many years and who were also responsible for teaching generations of students how to be professional backstage technicians), the M182 theater was essentially an old, converted, former double size classroom, with just 300 seats on removable risers and a small “traditional” stage on the north end (which we did not even use for the Shakespeare production). I did a number of shows other than Shakespeare in this theater, and while I came to New Trier dreaming of performing in Gaffney (and I did enjoy being on that stage in front of thousands when I was there), the fact is that I quickly grew to substantially prefer performing in M182. While much smaller, the audience was on three sides of the performance/stage area, and they were CLOSE to the actors. The level and type of feedback that you get from an audience, in a setting which is that intimate (the end of the stage was the first row of the audience), is VERY different, and frankly, the energy I got as a performer from those experiences was FAR greater than anything I ever felt on a larger stage.

So let’s tell my story now; OK, here we go, THE funniest moment of my life. It is the early months of 1982, and, because it is an even numbered year, we are performing Twelfth Night (which is, in my opinion, Shakespeare’s best and funniest comedy) as a “traditional” Shakespearean production (i.e. the play is set in Illyria at about the turn of the 17th century, and our costumes and accents etc. reflect this setting). Despite having worked with me the year before, Doctor Boyle showed either surprising confidence or terrible judgment in casting me in another major role, this time as Duke Orsino, but beyond this wonderful/curious decision, the play was also performed by nothing less than the best, most talented, most cohesive, and most fun overall cast that I would ever have the privilege of performing with, including some truly extraordinary performances from some incredibly talented people. Among them was my friend Laura Ebert (now Laura Brenner), who in addition to being a fine actress, was (and is) a very accomplished viola player (how good? she played professionally in an orchestra for Disney for many years … so … THAT good). At the time of the play, Laura is already a key figure in my high school experience due to her matchmaking skills (having introduced me to a truly wonderful young lady who I dated for some time) and is well known for her joyous nature. Also in the cast is John Sherman as the wonderfully bombastic Sir Toby Belch. John’s naturally booming stage voice was the only one at New Trier which I felt either rivaled or exceeded my own (I was many things as an actor, but the ability to project my voice was not EVER one of my problems). And then there was the wonderful Jon Lehman, a young British national who played Sebastian. Jon was probably the most universally liked member of the cast (and all the girls were in love with him because he was a relatively good looking guy ... plus the accent). We ALL enjoyed teasing Jon for weeks (if not months) after the show was over because of a rather idiotic review in a local newspaper (the Winnetka Talk … the (clearly inept) drama critic took significant exception to Jon’s performance because of his “obviously fake accent” … which we all thought was hilarious … no that’s NOT the funniest moment, keep reading). Finally, there was Tim Walsh as Malvolio. Tim was easily the purest and best actor among us. Already a dedicated and professional performer, his perfect Malvolio made it incredibly obvious to all of us that he was going to be one of the few to go on and make a living as a professional actor (which he did).

But let’s come back to Jon Lehman for a moment. In Act 5 of Twelfth Night, there is a moment when Lehman’s Sebastian comes … well, frankly, explosively bursting on to the stage and loudly addresses his friend, Antonio. Doctor Boyle made it clear to Jon that his character is supposed to be genuinely out of breath as he runs in from offstage (he literally races between sections of the audience and leaps into the stage area). As Jon is a sincere “method actor,” he takes this direction very seriously and spends his last moments before his entrance (in the area offstage) doing vigorous calisthenics. 

Each Shakespeare production at New Trier had four performances; Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and Friday and Saturday nights. It is now Friday night. As we begin Act 5, the performance has gone mostly flawlessly so far, but that is about to change … in a spectacular way. Evidently, Jon was unhappy with his efforts prior to his big entrance during the Wednesday and Thursday performances (clearly he felt inadequately exhausted), so before his entrance on Friday, he was apparently backstage giving himself a workout that would challenge Stallone (and not Stallone now, Stallone in 1982 ... Rocky 3 Stallone). The result is effective in that he is in fact red faced, sweating and actually out of breath as he quite literally flies into the scene with reckless abandon, leaps onto the stage, points at Antonio, and shouts … “SEBASTIAN!!! (long pause, as the realization of what he’s just done hits him, then he points again) … ANTONIO!!”

The entire audience (and this was a SOLD OUT show) … LOSES. THEIR. SHIT. The laughter is so loud that it is actually deafening for a moment. Now, as actors, we know what to do when an audience reaction is so awesome that it would drown out the scene … you freeze in place and give them a moment to settle down … except they don’t … in no small part because several of the cast members have also now lost it as well. Words like bedlam and pandemonium don't come close to describing the subsequent scene. The entire theater is in hysterics, but no one is “gone” quite like Laura (as Lady Olivia). It quickly becomes very clear to me that Laura (who I am nearest to on stage) is laughing so hard that she is literally having difficulty getting enough oxygen into her body to breathe. I lean in to look at her face (she has a parasol over her head on stage) … it is turning purple. As the laughter between the audience and the cast goes on, it becomes an infectious feedback loop; a massive, collective case of the giggles, and it is obvious to me that we are going to have great difficulty getting from here to the end of the play (which is, thank God, only a few pages away). I look up at Doctor Boyle, seated in the corner of the top row (nearest the main exit to the theater … this is where he sits for every performance and makes notes for us). He appears to be contemplating either how far his car is from where he’s sitting (and how quickly he might get to it) … or perhaps how many years he has until retirement is an option. Clearly there is nothing he can do to help me. I look back at Laura, she is still vibrating, shaking with laughter … her ability to speak much less deliver a line is gone. This is a BIG problem for me because, just at this particular moment in the play, she and I have quite a bit of dialog together. Knowing that the show must go on, I get an idea. In fairness to me, this really did seem like my only option at the time. I lean in to Laura and then loudly say something like, “what sayest thou Lady Olivia?” and then I deliver her lines for her, so that I may deliver my lines in response and that, maybe, somehow, we can reach the end of the play. My plan backfires spectacularly as the audience can obviously and plainly see Olivia’s current state and finds my solution just that much funnier because of it. The laughter, which had finally begun to subside, rises again, and I too am having some difficulty ignoring how ridiculously absurd and just plain hysterical the situation is.

We never did entirely get our composure back. My recollection is that Tim, ever the most professional and capable of us, was able to deliver Malvolio’s big speech at the end of Act 5 with enough of a straight face to return the cast and audience to the best level we were ever going to reach. After that speech, I have the last word, and the performance comes to merciful close … which included a rousing standing ovation from the crowd (many of whom are still wiping tears of laughter from their faces).

So, once again, no Oscars for me, but it’s been almost 40 years since that day, and I have never, before or since, laughed that hard, or for that long, in my life … not even close.

Author’s note: Dr. Robert Boyle sadly passed away on May 12, 2019, at age 86. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for everything he taught me, and I am especially grateful to have had two opportunities (in his last years) to thank him for all he did for so many of us, and to chat with him about this and other experiences he had in his more than THREE DECADES of directing Shakespeare productions at New Trier. I owe the entirety of my love and affection for Shakespeare to him, and I am FAR from alone.