Alumni Interview: Judy Rauch

Who: Judy Rauch
Years at Weathervane: 1985-current
Position: Musical Director, Conductor, Pianist

For 30 years my summers were spent at the Weathervane Playhouse in the role of Musical Director/ Conductor/ Pianist.  I worked under the auspices of Artistic Directors David White (who captured me from the Granville Players in 1985) Scott Keys, Tim Jebsen, Bill Kinkaid, Tony Amato, Don Warrick, Matthew Trombetta, Brice Corder and Adam Karsten. That covers quite a diversity of styles of creativity, not to mention, personalities.

From those decades, there are thousands of things I could relate, however, I’ll try to narrow it down to one topic:  examples of how the “weather” of Weathervane has played a fairly large role over the years. Even before I became musical director, I played for Li’l Abner, when the walls were still canvas. The set was comprised of minimalist individual stand-up pieces which kept blowing down as a violent storm approached.  The audience, which was minimalistic, as well, had to keep moving and scrunching together house left to right to keep from getting soaked until they were all hunkered down in a small corner, but persevered to the final bow.

Another challenge was during South Pacific when the weather was unseasonably cold.  The orchestra was housed in a separate room off stage right. They wore coats, hats and gloves (which made it fairly difficult to play their instruments) while they huddled around space heaters.  When Nellie Forbush came on stage in her short -shorts and halter and opened her mouth to sing “When the sky is a bright canary yellow, I forget every cloud I’ve ever seen”, you could see her breath as she shivered out the song.  It takes a real actress to pull that off!

To me, the most memorable storm threatened during Man of La Mancha, but this time it was a tornado. Really? What chance did we have in a tent in the middle of a field? We were on pause for about 45 minutes squished into the restrooms, but we obviously survived.  The action of the play picked-up where it left off; “Well, Sancho, likest thou adventuring?” “It’s marvelous, Your Grace, but it is peculiar…”. The actors delivered the lines without a hitch, garnering hardy laughs to break the tension.  Lest I forget…the rain had blown in from the air space above the canvas walls, drenching and blurring the music, so that the amazing orchestra was basically playing from memory.