Why The Long and The Short Of It and why now?
A special message from Colin Cabot

Paula’s and my relationship with the Skylight is long and complicated.  I worked there for over 20 years, and Paula appeared in over 20 productions (with both the Skylight and the Chamber Theatre).  We both have, at one time or another, defined ourselves personally and professionally in terms of our history with the company.

For me, the fact that Clair Richardson, the Skylight’s founder, was my first boss and mentor gave me a unique and eccentric outlook on work and art which has stood me in good stead but definitely set me on a career path that no one had expected.  For Paula, the theatre gave her a home in a profession where most people live from job to job out of suitcases in places like, not to mince words, Milwaukee’s Plaza Hotel.  For both of us, our colleagues in the theatre, including performers, audience, and especially board members, became our friends and, in many ways we’d never expected, our family.

In the summer of 1986 my daughters Anne and Marie Christine (aged 9 and 5 at the time) watched every performance of our production of Little Me from the back of the house in the old tire-recapping garage on Jefferson Street.  I was in the light booth and couldn’t see that by the later performances they were executing their version of the choreography in the aisle to the delight and amazement of audience members sitting in the back row.  Only the Skylight’s audience could turn such a distraction into a bonus: “Two shows for the price of one!” is what one customer said to me on leaving the theatre.

People often ask us why we left Milwaukee in 1997, close to the peak of our game. My official answer got me into trouble. I had said that since my parents were getting on in years, it was time for me to return east to take care of family matters.  When my parents read the story, they sarcastically demanded to know when the care-giving would begin. The truth is closer to that fact that fund raising wears you down, and so does the process of auditioning for roles opposite women half your age. But the real reason we needed to get out of town is that the theatre needed us to go. We were running the risk of going stale and losing our effectiveness.  I firmly believe that it was the right thing to do and that institution that the Skylight has become since we left is the stronger for it.

When the theatre fell apart this summer, and Paula and I canceled the show we had been asked to do for the 50th Anniversary Season, I felt it was time to put things behind us and move on. Then, in an extraordinary sequence of events, I found myself sucked back into the tumultuous vortex that resulted in the theatre rising again, phoenix-like, under the leadership of Joan Lounsbery, and now, Amy Jensen. I have never felt so appreciated or welcomed in my life for being willing to help out.

So we reversed our decision and began winnowing  the piles of material we had worked on over the years, trying to choose songs and skits that we can perform without seeming ludicrously old and out of it, and without shortchanging any important theatrical moments in the interest of fitting everything in. 

We’ll be performing snippets of a play by Noel Coward, medleys of songs that Paula sang in shows, of songs by Stephen Sondheim and by Harold Arlen, and of songs that follow the life of an ingénue from the first blush of romance to the last vestiges of sanity.  We’ll also have special guests join us to reprise numbers from our collective past; each performance will feature a different guest in order to provoke audience members into coming more than once.  After all “variety is the spice of…”

Bill Theisen came up with the idea for us to do a show in the Studio Theatre as part of the Skylight’s 50th Anniversary Season. We were flattered to be asked and agreed against better judgment which should have decreed that our final farewell in June of 1997 (followed only by our appearance at the Skylight’s mortgage burning celebration in 2001) was indeed our last performance.  Who knows, maybe this is the start of something new.