Part 78, page 374

Transcript

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

best tradition of musical theater, he had just completed the final one a week or so before opening.

"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 the- ater song. I don't think I can really describe my style. I look for theater music, songs that are scenes in them- selves. 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 playwrit- ing 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 hear- ing 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. Coo- per,' I made the commitment to playwriting.

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He came to Minneapolis in 1975 be- cause 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 Minneap- olis 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 ac- tors 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 be- come 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 concen- trate on professional theater. In fact, until they asked me to take that posi- tion I had seriously thought about go- ing 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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DB Cooper-34251