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Real Jobs, Real People

Blue Ridge Community Theatre Presents Musical Working July 31 to August 3

Story by Anna Oakes

Full time, part time, nine-to-five, third shift—just about everybody has a J.O.B. Going to work is a common activity uniting all of us, and maybe that’s why it’s a good subject for the stage. The Blue Ridge Community Theatre will perform the musical Working, based on Studs Terkel’s book of interviews of American workers, Thursday through Sunday, July 31 to August 3.

Show times for Working are 8:00 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3:00 p.m. on Sunday at the Valborg Theatre on the campus of Appalachian State University.

Working debuted on Broadway in 1978. Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso adapted Terkel’s book for the play, with music by Schwartz, folk artist James Taylor, Micki Grant, Craig Carnelia and Mary Rodgers. The play explores the American workday—from “the Monday morning blues to the second shift blahs”—in the original words of a few dozen workers, including a parking lot attendant, corporate executive, newsboy, teacher, housewife, waitress, millworker and supermarket checker, to name a few.

The workers sing and speak about their daily routines as well as their hopes and aspirations.

“I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people,” Terkel wrote in the introduction to his book, published in 1974.

The musical is fitting for the Blue Ridge Community Theatre—a nonprofit theatre company comprised of everyday community members of all ages and professions. Auditions are open to anyone, and no professional actors are paid to perform. When it was founded in 1976, it was the only theatre in town, said Kathleen Rowell, Community Theatre Board of Directors president.

Trimella Chaney, who taught theatre at Watauga High School for 30 years and is now retired, directs the musical. The ensemble cast is 33 people with an additional 17 in the children’s choir.

“We have a few veterans, but we also have lots of new faces,” said Chaney. “It’s just a real varied ensemble.”

The cast includes Phyllis Templeton, who performed in some of the Community Theatre’s earliest productions; Freda Smith, a local accountant; Nancy Jones, an attorney; Tommy Brown, a campus minister; Jonathan Shine, Ariel Nicastro and Thomas Rowell, recent high school graduates; Buzz Berry, a local game show host; and Andrea McDonough, an insurance agent; among many others.
“The audience will probably see some names that they know—neighbors, church members,” Rowell said.

The play lasts about an hour and a half, with two acts and an intermission. Rather than a continuous narrative, the musical moves along more like a revue, with each worker or group of workers performing their own monologues and songs, Chaney said.

“It’s really unique—it’s a show about people who are never in musicals,” she said. “It’s loosely connected and really woven together pretty seamlessly.”

With several different composers, the production features a variety of musical styles. James Taylor, songwriter of “Carolina on My Mind” and “Fire and Rain,” wrote several songs for the musical, including tunes about a trucker and a millworker. Other songs are in the styles of jazz and swing, Spanish ballads and waltzes.

Of course, while the characters are singing, they’ll also be moving. Lauren Greene and Shauna Godwin are choreographers for the musical.
The summer performance is something new for the Community Theatre that historically has produced a spring musical each year. “Everything seems to happen in spring, so we switched gears and said we’ll adjust to the summer,” Rowell said.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students in grade school through college. For tickets or more information, click to www.brctnc.org or call the Valborg box office at 828-262-3063.

“I think this will be a very entertaining piece. It’s kind of a blue-collar musical that just fits with where we are right now in our economy,” Chaney said. “It’s so fun to see local people in these roles.”

Want To Go?
Date: Thursday to Sunday, July 31 to August 3
Time: 8:00 p.m. Thursday to Saturday/3:00 p.m. Sunday
Location: Valborg Theatre, ASU
Cost: $15 adults/$10 students

Working: The Interviews

Story by Anna Oakes

Working the musical is based on a book of interviews by Studs Terkel. The book’s full title is Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.

Described by NPR as the “quintessential book about Labor Day,” Working was published in spring 1974 after Terkel, a Chicago radio broadcaster, oral historian and author, conducted more than 130 interviews with people around the country about their occupations.

The book is divided into nine books, loosely categorized by occupation type. Terkel interviewed farm workers, a strip miner, a telephone operator, a professor, a model, a prostitute, actors, a garbage man, a janitor, policemen, a plant manager, cab drivers, a car salesman, a barber, a dentist, a pianist, a bank teller, a gas meter reader, stockbrokers, athletes and a coach, retirees, a department store salesman, a hospital aide, an occupational therapist, a gravedigger, a carpenter, a librarian, a nun and many others.

Work, Terkel wrote in his introduction, “is about a search … for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book.”

One of the workers Terkel interviewed was Nora Watson, an editor.

“I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job,” she said. “Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.”