OUT OF THE WOODS

Doc Heide, Artistic Advisor & Co-Founder

What have those in the Northern Sky family been doing during this year of non-doing? In approximate alphabetical order of those we heard from: LEE BECKER writes that “my main focus was taking care of (son) Wilbur and being his main homeschool facilitator. Other than some Northern Sky online events and some videos, it was a strange, quiet year.” Moving back to Chicago, ALEX CAMPEA was involved in several readings with Zooming the Movies, allowing him to perform while live theatre has been unavailable. Some favorite roles have been Luke Skywalker (Return of the Jedi), C-3P0 (Verily, a New Hope), Voldemort (HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Ed Wood (Ed Wood), and The Master (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). RICHARD CASTLE wrote a 15-minute musical called Virtual Happy Hour, which was produced online by Theater Resources Unlimited. He adapted it into a play, which was produced by Left Edge Theater and is also part of the Geneva Theatre Guild new play festival. Both versions had readings at Northern Sky. After the 7-country tour of AMY CHAFFEE’s show and her teaching (at Tulane) were cancelled by the pandemic, she contracted Covid and survived. She then led a team of 22 voice teachers on 5 continents to gather cuttingedge research on vector-spreading of the virus. Together, they wrote a white paper on best practices for voice teachers. Then she coached a show shooting in England called The Girlfriend Experience for STARZ network. She just turned in her preliminary tenure dossier and is coaching Swedish accents on a Netflix film, The Tall Guy 2. Finally, she writes that, “More importantly, I got a dog. He is a handful. We have been together 5 months and he is ALMOST convinced that I am in charge.” After a successful run at Northern Sky’s Raise the Curtain last May, DOUG CLEMONS took his Dance Jam fitness classes completely virtual. He offered weekly classes for close to 200 global participants, including fundraisers for other Wisconsin theatres such as Skylight Music Theatre, Forward Theatre, Milwaukee Opera Theater and Sunset Playhouse. KATIE DAHL worked on a new play about midwives and moonshine, baked a lot for The Jeff & Katie Show, and started her own music/talk show called Katie Dahl Has Friends. JAKE ENDRES tells us, “Over the past year I’ve been up to mostly three things: 1) done everything I could to help keep my wife and daughters well-fed, safe, healthy, and sane (so far so good!); 2) taken a deep dive into the Shakespeare history plays, getting to know them all really well, along with the actual history upon which they’re based (and leading to a staged reading of Richard II on my backyard stage next month); and 3) gotten really really good at cooking beans.” LAURIE FLANIGAN has been serving as Artistic Associate at History Theatre in St. Paul, “where we’ve been continuing the development of new plays and musicals anticipating the day we can return to live performance. Having had several planned acting gigs canceled in the last year, JON HEGGE kept his creative juices flowing at a day job he loves, building exhibits for children’s museums and libraries around the country. Our aerialist daughter Celia continues to train with Circus Juventas in St. Paul.” After spending the last 37 academic years in the San Francisco Bay Area, DOC HEIDE retired from fulltime psychology teaching and moved back to Wisconsin a year ago, just in time to snuggle in with his wife Jody during the pandemic. In addition to supervising doctoral theses and getting a research article accepted by a professional journal, he produced virtual content for Northern Sky, headlined an online Winter Season concert in April, and worked on new songs for a forthcoming album. DAVE HUDSON writes that he “has kept somewhat busy on the writing front this past year. With DENVER CASSADO (Life on the Mississippi) and Jessica Penzias, Dave wrote the lyrics to The Show Must Go Online, a virtual musical for the youth market that was the most licensed show in the world in 2020. Dave and his wife Gigi also wrote A Year of Magical Drinking, a book of cocktail recipes inspired by the 12 months of the year we’ll never forget and the libations more than a few of us drank to help smooth out the rough patches.” CHRIS IRWIN shot the short film Hunters with DOUG MANCHESKI and started work on a new album. DAN KLARER has been in Door County for the pandemic. He helped organize and create content for Northern Sky’s Raise the Curtain and Home for the Holidays.

JOEL KOPISCHKE was delighted to be part of Northern Sky’s 2020 season, singing Milk of Human Kindness (cut from Dairy Heirs) and Taking the Leap from a forthcoming musical he is writing. He also accidentally became a dancing Santa (DanceSantaDance) social media sensation, with over 750,000 views on TikTok. STEVE KOVACS has been hard at work developing a new musical with RICHARD CARSEY, called Not Even Remotely. CORRIE BEULA KOVACS has been digging into her new role as a Small Business Advisor with WWBIC, taking a certificate program in Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership from UWGB, while teaching dance classes, workshops, and masterclasses remotely. Both Steve and Corrie have been able to continue teaching voice remotely and in-person, with studio modifications over the last year. Since the pandemic began ERIC LEWIS has enjoyed some down time from touring at home, played at church when possible, performed virtual or livestream concerts, created artwork, recorded tracks for clients from home with his new recording gear and started a fulltime job in December 2020 at Performance Distributors where he discovered he has other talents and shop skills aiding in the production of high-performance racing and ignition systems. PAUL LIBMAN has been working on two projects in NYC. One is a musical adaptation of Blaze, a 1989 movie starring Paul Newman. He’s also finishing up Big Shot, a commission from the Chase Brock Experience dance company. The score comprises 20 original pop songs inspired by the Golden Age of rock n’ roll (1960-1975) and is anticipated to be staged late in 2021. KAREN MAL has been writing songs and playing weekly musical broadcasts since the world changed. She also has a project with her partner Will Taylor: StringsInTheWoods.com, where they take folks on guided hikes in nature, with meditations and acoustic music. Though this past year was difficult, it was not entirely bereft of creativity for EVA NIMMER. Besides shooting a scene in a new Door County-based short film, Eva also wrote a monologue that was selected to be featured in Forward Theater Company’s 2021 festival. You can see her piece onstage this June 24-27.

ALISSA RHODE has edited over a year’s worth of audio and video for virtual church services in her capacity as Lead Music Director for the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. Alissa has also been collaborating with LACHRISA GRANDBERRY and AIDAA PEERZADA on Sunflowered, a new musical in development. BILL THEISEN has just completed his eighth year as Director of Opera at the University of Iowa. Because fully staged opera productions have not been an option, Bill has focused on staging professionally recorded aria events for broadcast nationwide, showcasing the talented vocal performance majors in the opera program. JAMES VALCQ reports that he “spent the year as part of the team supervising the renovation of Third Avenue Playhouse (TAP), where he is the co-Artistic Director. He was also hard at work on a new vintage musical comedy restoration for future production at TAP. And he watched Netflix in pajamas. A lot.” And finally, COLIN WELFORD (last seen doing music direction for Hamilton in Chicago) reports, “Aside from a brief visit to England to bid my dad farewell in November I’ve been in North Ephraim, or Ephraim-on-the-Hill, as we like to call it. Doing secret and creative things to my Green Gables property, practicing and playing the organ at Ephraim Moravian Church with ever-increasing fervor (and volume), teaching composition online and collaborating on the high school musical at Sevastopol School, playing virtual concerts with choirs in England, a Milwaukee Symphony trumpeter, and New York pianists. But most of all, I’m creating a large rock garden, with truckload upon truckload of huge quarry rocks. It will either turn out to be my artistic magnum opus, or my tomb. Or both.”