CALIFORNIA DREAMING Doc Heide, Artistic Advisor & Co-Founder “Ho, boys, ho! To California go! There’s plenty of gold, so we’ve been told, on the banks of the Sacramento!” These lyrics from a folk song in the 1983 Heritage Ensemble show Badger 49ers capture the thrill generations of Americans have felt seeking their fortunes in the Golden State. At the end of a summer performing in that show at Peninsula State Park, I joined their ranks. I was launching a new career, teaching clinical grad students at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Though I left that job last spring and moved home permanently to Wisconsin, what we now call Northern Sky Theater is still being significantly shaped by the Land of the Setting Sun. By 1983 I’d been in the Ensemble for a decade, having joined during college at UW-Green Bay and returning here most summers from my Pennsylvania doctoral program to perform in it. In fact, I loved it so much that I negotiated with CSPP to let me leave a month early each spring so I could drive home to rehearsals. The CSPP job was ¾ time, which proved fortuitous when Ensemble founder Dave Peterson asked me to write yearly shows starting in 1984. Working part-time allowed travel for show research to Wisconsin, Colorado, New England, Ireland, Belgium, and Scandinavia, as well as to conduct New York City auditions. California itself held riches such as the John Muir National Historic Site, useful in creating The Mountains Call My Name. By the end of the 1980’s, Ensemble member Fred Alley moved to Berkeley to produce a CD of my original songs, which became
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Northern Sky Theater
