Part 63, page 132

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

[illegible] est tradition of musical theater, h[ad] just completed the final one [a] week or so before opening.

[illegible partial line]

"I have a background in piano," he [said], "but I haven't composed much. I did do some small film scores and some commercial work, but not much. The one song last year in 'Louisville Harem' was my first theater song. I don't think I can really describe my style. I look for theater music, songs that are scenes in themselves. I like a lot of early Kurt Weill music, but I'm still exploring. This piece is scored for two pianos, harp, and either percussion or strings. Not sure yet. I had a tuba in there first, but when the harp came in [I] dropped it. The harp was an amazing instrument, perfect, ethereal flying music."

Orlock is a native of Philadelphia and has taught at both Penn State and Boston University. He set out to become an actor and director but about nine years ago took a playwriting course that showed him to be a writer of some skill. He soon won a Shubert Playwriting award to study at Penn State, where he wrote his first full-length play.

"I felt the great satisfaction of hearing an audience respond," he said, "and found out how nice that could be. I wrote only off and on for a while but I was getting more and more reinforcement and finally in late 1973, when I began 'D.B. Cooper,' I made the commitment to playwriting."

He came to Minneapolis in 1975 because he was tired of teaching and had heard the theater scene was promising. He and his wife loaded up a U-Haul and breezed into Minneapolis on Labor Day. He spent the first year selling calculators at Dayton's, by day, teaching theater at the Guild of Performing Arts at night. He wrote and directed a few shows there and finally, a year ago, was named a playwright-in-residence at the Playwrights' Lab.

"It is a very, very useful program," he said. "I'm still involved with it. It's an opportunity to take good [actors] and [a] director and say 'All right, I'd like to present this work.' And then work on it and see how it plays. Out of the Lab work I can hear the piece, rewrite it and work it out. I still like to work this way. The Cricket's works-in-progress series has worked out the same way. It's a very nice way to bring a play along."

Starting next fall, Orlock will become the Cricket's literary manager in charge of reading new, scripts, helping with play selection and, of course, writing.

"Above all," he said, "it will be a steady salary. I'll phase out most of my teaching and be able to concentrate on professional theater. In fact, until they asked me to take that position I had seriously thought about going back to college teaching, just to put bread on the table. I wasn't too happy with those prospects. Believe me, it feels much better to be in the theater."

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