Andrea Rutledge

In 1973 my parents had purchased a house in East Lansing two years before and in order to make the front room more spacious had removed the plaster and lathe from an interior wall leaving the two-by

Richard Colopy as MacBeth Summer 1973 (State News photo by Jim Keegstra)

four studs. In 1973, a year of shortages at Summer Circle, these studs were removed (everything in
our attic was moved to the other side of the house) and used in the set for The Scottish Play.

Later that summer, I went to Calumet with You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running. Under the custody agreement between my parents, I was supposed to spend August with my dad. Since he couldn’t leave me in East Lansing (my mother was away finishing her dissertation), he took me with him to Calumet, where I spent my days reading and my nights as an ad hoc stagehand on the show. I often accompanied him to Shuty’s Bar after the show. This was a grand old place left over from the boom days of copper mining. In addition to old wooden booths and an ornate wooden bar,

over the bar hung a copper nugget the size (and shape) of a healthy adult Coho salmon. In this place, closer to Milwaukee and Minneapolis than Detroit, the Tigers were the team of choice. The TV in Shuty’s was often tuned to a Tiger game and the fans were enthusiastic in their support.

t was a long time ago, 1974 to be exact, and the SCT performances were staged in the Court between Fairchild and Kresge. That year, Dr. John Baldwin decided that his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream would begin in the Court and then, for the woodland scene, the crowd would move to the site of the current bleachers and the scene would be played on the slope of the hill in and among the evergreens. At the end of the woodland scene the crowd would return to the Kresge Court and the

Bill Helder

final scene would be played there. I was Bottom. Bottom comes to the scene late and his fellow actors in the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play are beginning to worry that he will miss the performance.

Because Bottom knows he is late, my entrance was at a full run from behind the bleachers. At one performance, when I rounded the corner, I found the aisle completely blocked with audience members who hadn’t been there during the first scene. Some, at the back, were standing, some in the middle were sitting in folding chairs which they had brought and some were sitting on the ground. Still at a run, I jumped at the people standing closest to me who picked me up and passed me to the shoulders of the people standing in front of them. Some of the people who had been seated stood and continued passing me over their heads until I hit ground at the edge of the stage. It was my first

(and only) experience in crowd surfing and it was a memorable one. This production also gave me one of the best reviews I ever got. It was Edd Rudzats’ writing in "The Michigan State News." He said, in part, "The third section of ‘a Dream’ is a delight. Clearly the highlight of the production, it moves the audience to genuine laughter and merriment thanks to the superb skill of Bill Helder as Bottom the weaver. Whenever Helder appears, "Dream" shines with the glow it was obviously intended to have. Armed with a natural relaxed manner and an outstanding comic delivery, Helder even surmounts the amateurish look of the ass’ head costume he must wear."

I continue to be grateful to John for casting me in that show. It’s one of my happiest theatre memories.But John was also responsible for one of my
most nightmarish stage experiences.

There are probably actors who can ad lib Shakespeare. I am not one of them. After what seemed like an eon I waved my sword, swirled my cape, mumbled something and stumbled down the escape stairs. It didn’t help that an undergrad cast member was standing at the foot of the stairs and greeted me with a comment that

John Baldwin Director

I remember as, "Boy, you sure made a mess of that!" Fortunately, our son, Richard Helder, was also in the cast. He walked down to the river with me and gave me sufficient moral support to make it possible for me to go back on that stage for my next scene.

So, for me, the SCT has been the source of some of my most exciting theatre experiences and some that still give me a knot in the pit of my stomach.

Frank Rutledge

My memory of Summer Circle theatre goes back to July of 1974 under Frank Rutledge’s chairmanship when we performed Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I played the part of Francis Flute, who in turn was given the role of Thisby to perform for the wedding feast.

Not that my performance was all that memorable, but I’ll never forget performing "au naturel" as it were – the wood scenes were performed in the woods, the palace scenes on the front steps of Fairchild, and the audience moved from scene to scene instead of the sets. The university PBS station WKAR thought it was distinctive enough to record the performance for broadcast, cementing SCT a place of honor in my memory as my debut television appearance.

1974-1998 Between summer camp, adulthood, college and a developing career, I drifted away from Summer Circle.

My stepmother’s (Gretel Geist’s) adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, entitled The Boys from

St. Louis, was produced while I was at camp. The stage moved to the riverbank. There was commitment to American plays. I lost touch. Summer Circle became a point of conversation with my father, but I didn’t really have the same connection to it, especially after I began working in other summer theatres and festivals. Nevertheless, it never strayed too far from my personal radar screen and recently has found a new place of importance

I performed with the outdoor Summer Circle Free Theatre right from its beginning until 1984 (I might have skipped a summer) and also in 1987. In the first season I was a suicide parlor hostess in Welcome to the

Monkey House, a series of short plays taken from the Kurt Vonnegut book. The production budget was very, very small; my hostess insignia was cut from a colored postcard. In my last SCFT season I was Amanda Wingfield in Joyce Ramsay's production of The Glass Menagerie, down by the Red Cedar.

In the early seasons I had strange and interesting roles because Frank Rutledge often scheduled plays that wouldn't’t be done elsewhere: Crawling Arnold, Play Strindberg, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (I was Glumdalca the Giant Queen in that one). As for later shows, I have especially good memories of The Rivals directed by Jon Baisch (I was Mrs. Malaprop). Those plays were all done in Kresge Court, my favorite theatre space in spite of the mosquitoes which swarmed out every time we made an entrance or exit. In Kresge Court I could feel the audience breathe with me, feel their intense concentration on the show. No other theatre space has ever felt so good.