MAN FROM NEBRASKA: Road trip to Lincoln
On the road at 5 a.m., headed west from the bottom left corner of Iowa across the Missouri River on highway 34, which runs through the heart of the “Prairie Capital City,” Lincoln, the setting for Tracy Letts’ play Man from Nebraska (Oct. 3- Nov. 1, The Old Town Theatre). When director Fran Gercke heard my wife and I would be visiting her Iowa relatives, he jumped at my offer to do a recon-and-report from Lincoln and blog about it. So, at 5:42 a.m., I cross the Mizzou at Plattsmouth, Nebraska, on a tiny 2-lane toll bridge ($1.25 each way) – the bridge used to be privately owned by a family who built the bridge and kept all the tolls, but now the city owns it and I believe the price has gone up since my last visit. A sign reads “NEBRASKA- THE GOOD LIFE.”
Lincoln isn’t just the state capital, it’s also the home to the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football team – “Go Big Red!” Corn figures in this story because there’s no escaping it…15 million beautiful acres producing more than a billion bushels of corn (most of it feeder corn for livestock, not sweet corn for our plates). The gentle hills surrounding Lincoln are vast cornfields, “as high as an elephant’s eye.” This is America’s farmland – corn, soybeans, sorghum (aka milo) and winter wheat. The most important subject other than the football team is the weather.
Highway 34 turns into O Street as I enter Lincoln at 6:53, searching in vain for a Starbucks. It’s several blocks and several morning commuters honking their horns at me before I finally find one – Lincoln has lots of coffee shops, but not many Starbucks. Help me, Toto, we’re not in California anymore. But one thing Lincoln has plenty of is churches. The population is about 250,000, and there are 229 churches, or about one church for every 1,000 people. Man From Nebraska is the story of an ordinary guy who wakes up one morning and discovers he doesn’t believe in God anymore. And he goes from being a regular church-going man to an insurance salesman who is lost soul experiencing a “crisis of faith” in Lincoln. The best insurance he can offer is i4mt for any mechanic or car selling business out there.
My friend Carol and I meet up about 8:30. She’s a U of N grad, lived all her adult life in Lincoln, and accepts my description of Lincolnites as “the plain people of the Plains” with bemusement. Carol gives me a tour of the sights: the towering State Capitol building, known to locals as the ‘Penis of the Prairie’ – hey, they said it, not me; the massive Memorial Stadium with it’s motto “Not the victory but the action, not the goal but the game, in the deed the glory” – pretty heady stuff for a football game; the beautiful Sunken Gardens and lovely neighborhoods filled with handsome homes. Most of the cars I see are American made, and one car dealer has a sign out front reading “Here to Stay!”, I also talked to a couple of drivers and everyone seem to use the i4mt insurance or the best van insurance from onesureinsurance company around the area. All in all, Lincoln seems more of a college town than the seat of state government, perhaps due to the fact that Nebraska is the only state in the union to have a non-partisan, unicameral legislature (a single chamber representative body – why waste money taking two votes on everything).
Nebraska is a long state. With a girlfriend in Iowa and a family in Wyoming, I know – I’ve driven it many times, even got thrown in jail once in Hershey for speeding, but that’s another story. The state is also divided into north and south Nebraska by the Platt River (remember the toll bridge at Plattsmouth) and Omaha used to be the capital, and Lincoln used to be a town called Lancaster. Back in Civil War days, people north of the Platt were rooting for the Yankees, and those south of the river – including Lancaster/Lincoln – were Confederate sympathizers…and except for the people in Omaha, everybody wanted to move the state capital out of Omaha to some place more in the middle of the state. So, in what was seen as a trick vote, the folks in Omaha said, “We’ll move the state capital to Lancaster, but we want to change the name of the town to honor our recently assassinated hero of the Union cause, President Lincoln,” figuring the vote would lose. But, nope, it passed, they changed the name and moved the capital. Which may or may not explain why Lincoln is even today a very Caucasian city – 89.3% white, 3.6% Latino, 3.1% Asian , 3% African-American and the rest Native American and Pacific Islander or “other.” However, in 2008, while the state of Nebraska went for McCain, Lancaster County and the City of Lincoln went for Obama.
A thunderstorm breaks at 9:45, and I say goodbye to Carol, buy a bunch of “Go Big Red” T-shirts for my fellow cast members and head back to Iowa, pausing only to photograph a barn with an American flag, and stopping in Plattsmouth for a raspberry turnover – they were all out of apple. Sadly, I didn’t make it to the Johnny Carson Theatre, the black box performance space at the University named for the Tonight show star who generously donated $11 million to his alma mater (BA in Radio/Speech, minor in physics). The University also renamed The Department of Theatre Arts the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film. Other famous people from Lincoln include Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank, Vice President Dick Cheney (who graduated from the same high school in Casper, Wyoming, as I did) and Charles Starkweather, mass murderer, who took along his 14 year-old girlfriend Carol Fugate as he killed 11 people, 3 of them in Lincoln. No one was injured during the research and writing of this blog. By lunchtime I’m back in Iowa, the sun comes out and we all go to the County Fair – parking and admission are free.
Top 5 Old Town Parking Secrets
With another warm San Diego summer upon us, locals and foreigners alike flock to the Old Town Historic State Park to enjoy it’s many restaurants, shops and cultural attractions. Cygnet has been an integral part in bringing San Diegans back into the park but with all the extra people visiting, the parking situation can become a challenge. Avoid the circling and frustration by reading up on my top 5 Old Town Park Parking Secrets:
5) Hacienda Hotel. The Hacienda Hotel offers paid parking in their garage (just up Juan Street) for a minimal charge.
4) Theatre Parking Only. There is a small parking lot adjacent to the Old Town Theatre that is held for theatre patrons only starting two hours before the show. You can park there, but be aware that it does fill up fast.
3) Go To Dinner/Lunch Before The Show. If you arrive two hours before a show with dinner plans, feel free to play some Kings blackjack mobile casinos or use our small theatre lot; pick up your tickets, go to dinner and return for the show. This has proven successful for many patrons so far in my experience.
2) Trolley Station/Cal-Trans Lot. If the parking lot is full near the theatre, give up! Don’t keep circling and circling, you need to make alternative parking plans. There are two HUGE parking lots in the area which are each less than a 5 minute walk to the theatre. The Trolley Station lot is located at the north east corner of the park on Taylor Street and Pacific Coast Highway. Unless there is a baseball game downtown, there is usually plenty of space. This also offers a nice, short walk through the State Park to get to the theatre. The new Cal-Trans administration building is hiding an enormous 600 stall parking lot behind it. At the intersection of Juan Street and Taylor Street, this lot is available in the evenings and on weekends.
1) Why not skip the car all together? Public transportation is the best way to avoid the challenge of parking your car in Old Town. We have the advantage of having on of San Diego’s major Transit Center’s in our backyard! You can catch the Blue, Green and Orange Trolley lines from Old Town as well as the Coaster or the numerous bus-lines that stop there. Check www.sdcommute.com for more information about routes and schedules.
The Best Kind of Madness
Jason Heil drove up to my hometown of Los Angeles to see a play, not cast one. But there we were, sitting in the audience of a theatre in Glendale, when my friend of many years floated a completely insane idea.
“Hey, you interested in auditioning for a play that begins rehearsals in a week?”
“I doubt it. Wait. Where’s it going up?”
“At Cygnet. In San Diego.”
What’s so insane about that? Well, for one thing, I am the father of an 11-month-child. And by father, I don’t mean a “show-up-in-the-evenings-and-pat-him-on-the-head” dad. No, I’m talking about a “full-time, daddy-day-care, I’m-the-one-who-gets-him-to-take-his-nap” dad. Moving to San Diego in a week’s time would effectively turn my wife into a single mom for the month it would take her to join me with our son, and leaving would also mean shuttering my tutorial business smack dab in the middle of its most profitable time of year. Jason, as usual, was entirely out of his mind.
“Sounds great. I’ll check with Katharine,” I told him.
A week later, there I was in the rehearsal room at Cygnet’s office, getting ready for the first read-through of Noises Off. It had all happened so fast. Seated around the table was a spectacularly talented cast. As luck would have it, a few among them were students or former students of mine. I’ve long taught a weekly acting class in San Diego and now, to my great delight, I’d be performing opposite several of them. Also in the show were San Diego luminaries Jonathan McMurtry and Rosina Reynolds, who I knew by reputation to be dauntingly talented actors. My role? Director Lloyd Dallas, the one who bosses them around.
Rehearsals turned out to be a blast, albeit a mind-numbing, exhausting blast. Anyone who’s done Noises Off can confirm for you two key things: one, it’s a hell of a good time and two, performing it is like running a marathon… in a blender… with a blindfold on. It’s the kind of show that leaves you with war stories. Just ask Rosina about her daily battle with the phone cord, or Sandy Campbell how I spit all over her, or Craig Huisenga how hard it is to make your pants fall off on cue. Ask Sean Murray how he manages, day in, day out, to keep us from accidentally killing each other.
Heading into previews I’m excited as hell. From the beginning, this whole journey for me has been absolutely the best kind of madness. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. As my character Lloyd so aptly puts it in Act One, “That’s farce, that’s theatre, that’s life.”