Fiddler on the Road...

     Christmas in New York is really fantastic. But, the anticipation I felt during the holiday was extremely intense and I was really excited about heading down to Washington and joining my cast. The rehearsals in Toronto were wonderful and I knew that I was going to truly enjoy working with this very talented group of people. The original production of “Fiddler” opened in 1964 and had held the record for the longest-running Broadway show for almost 10 years until it was surpassed by “Grease”. It still is the 16^th longest running show in theater history. And I was going to be in that very show. Wow!

     The role into which I was cast, that of the Russian Tenor, also carried with it a production job of being an assistant stage manager. That was really cool because I was able to get to know the show inside and out. The “director” on the road is called the Production Stage Manager and is primarily responsible for each performance being true to the original. Audiences who come to a national touring company performance fully expect to witness a replica of the hit show that was still running on Broadway. The PSM has the primary task to maintain that honest replication, and of course the cast wants the exact same thing as everyone truly takes pride in their performances. I was truly impressed with this group of actors/dancers/singers and how they threw themselves completely into their roles. Professional Equity Theater is quite demanding in that you are doing eight…that’s right, eight performances each week. That’s a heavy load, especially when the role demands strong vocals or rigorous dancing. I learned early on that world-class athletes have absolutely nothing on a professional dancer. These guys are amazing. One of the classic dance performances in all of theater is the famous bottle dance that takes place in the wedding scene. Fabulous.

     My little part in the show was also personally exciting to me because every night I had to interrupt the wedding scene with this really loud high-G so I had to really take care of my voice. I have to tell you I was in absolute heaven.

     We were scheduled for either a week-long engagement or two-weeks in each of the cities. In the old days, they used to call the national theater tours “bus and truck” tours. The cast would travel by bus and the sets, lighting rigs, costumes and props would travel by large trucks. We would bus to some cities and fly to others. We started in Washington, then on to Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta,  Sarasota, Miami, St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Cincinnati and finally in Chicago. 

     When we were in Dallas, the company held a replacement audition for some of the lead roles and I decided to go for the role of Perchik, the student who marries the second daughter. It was a major role with a major vocal solo, so if I won the role I would no longer be in the chorus. Know, however, that being in the chorus was great fun as I got to play several of the other roles along the way. I u

nderstudied the Constable, and also got to play the Rabbi in one performance. But, being a lead singer in a Broadway musical would also be a fabulous opportunity. Miracle of miracles (that’s another song from the show) I was offered the part. But at the very same time, Tom Smith the Production Stage Manager, was leaving the company so his job was also going to be open and, amazingly, they offered it to me. Instant dilemma. What to do? Becoming the guy who runs the show on the road was a huge job but it would mean I would have to forego my acting/singing role to be totally focused on the production side of the theater.

     It actually turned out not to be a hard choice because the stage manager role paid $200 more a week than the acting job, so I made the decision based on the economics of the deal. Done. I was now running the show on the road. Yet another great big Wow.  

     As you are about to see, this little decision didn’t turn out to be so little after all. It truly changed the entire trajectory of my career path.

     The next stop for the show was Los Angeles. I reached out to some old friends at Disney to come see the show and have dinner with me while we were in town. You might remember the name Bob Allen. He was the General Manager of the Disney operation in Denver that had hired both the Hustlers and The Five Part Invention to perform in their swanky supper club, The Cart and Rib Room. He, his wife, and a couple more Disney execs came along and we had a great time together reminiscing about the “good old days”. Great fun to see them.

     So, the show wraps in Los Angeles and we are now up and running in San Francisco when I get a call from one of the VPs at Disney. Evidently, they saw me in a different light as a production guy now and they made an offer for me to come to Disneyland and become the production stage manager in the Park.

     Wow! That actually took my breath away. But after thinking it through, I called them back and turned them down with the explanation that I really was happy in the theater and was on a path to become a top character actor, like unto a Jack Lemmon (one of my acting idols) and that I was anxious to get back to New York after the tour and start pursuing that career, which was my original intention in going there in the first place.

     We had four more cities scheduled before we wrapped the tour, and the next stop was my home town…Denver.

     We started in January of 1971 and we would finish in Chicago sometime in June. It really was a fabulous experience. Bob Carroll was our star, our Tevye, who with his vast theatrical experience had earned his name “above the title” and Fritzi Burr, who had been on Broadway in “Funny Girl” played his wife, Golda. They were really wonderful people who taught me a lot about being in the theater. The entire cast was extremely talented and, happily, they were also terrific people. It was truly one of the highlights of my professional life to have been in this company and to perform in this classic show.

     The tour comes to and end and we get back to New York and whaddya know…all the upcoming shows were cast and there were no acting jobs available. Needing to work, that led me to make a call to the good folks at Disneyland to ask if their offer was still on the table. Amazingly, it was. So, a deal was made and I packed up my car and started my second cross-country driving trip in less than a year.

     What a whirlwind I had just been through these past 10 months! I came to New York in October of 1970, actually made it into a major Broadway show, toured all over the country, became a production guy along the way, and now early in July of 1971, I was headed back out west into what would become giant part of my professional life for the next several years.

     Disneyland…here I come. 

The Denver Post – April 30, 1971

“Mike Wuergler Back in Denver” by Madelene Ingraham

     Late last October, Mike Wuergler arrived tired and bleary-eyed in New York City. Well known in Denver as a singer and comedian, he had decided a few weeks earlier to put aside this successful career and try his hand at acting.

     This week, Mike is back in Denver as stage manager of the touring company of “Fiddler on the Roof” playing through Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre. To say that he has “made it” in theater in this short time would be an overstatement. But events in the last six months of Mike’s life tell a tale of happy improbability that is a giant step in that direction.

     Mike Wuergler is perhaps best remembered as the lead singer and bass player with the Hustlers, a folk pop trio that played club and concert dates all over Denver, Aspen and the Midwest from 1962-68. Later he put together the Five Part Invention that headlined at Taylor Supper Club and on the West Coast.

     “Theatre has been in my blood and my family since I was a little kid,” the stocky, dark-haired, blue-eyed Mike said in a recent interview.

     “My grandmother was Dorothy Dean, the silent movie star, and my mother sang with the big bands in the 30s.

     “Somehow I had gotten off into the music field, though, and it wasn’t until last year when Bill McHale cast me in the Country Dinner Playhouse production of ‘Oklahoma!’ that the acting bug really bit me again.

     “I was 28, had little actual theatre experience outside of college and knew the odds were against me. But I just had to try New York…”

     Two weeks after his arrival in the Big City Mike had a job. He was hired as stage manager for the Off-Broadway production of “The Immaculate Misconception.”

“It was a terrible show,” Mike confessed. “It closed after one night. Even Clive Barnes walked out.”

     Undaunted, Mike next signed with the Children’s Theater International, a professional company that toured the city presenting quality children’s theatre productions from around the world. He was featured in “Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates.”

     Two weeks later, he auditioned for and won the role of the lead Russian tenor in the national touring company of “Fiddler on the Roof.” His first professional performance was at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. less than two months after he’d left Denver.

     Then, early this year, while still on the road, the stage manager left the “Fiddler” company and Mike fell into that job.

     His duties are the actual technical running of the show, keeping it moving calling the cues and lights and keeping the production true to the original direction.

How does Mike feel about the technical end of theatre a opposed to acting?

     “It’s a great discipline,” he said. “My theater experiences at the University of Colorado brought me a discipline which I used in my night club work and music. Backstage is even more. Everything has to click and be just right. I’m enjoying it, plan to use it, and most of all I’m learning by it.”

     “That’s the lovely thing about this business, you’re always learning from it,” he said.

     From Denver, Mike and “Fiddler” go to Houston, Cincinnati and Chicago. From there he doesn’t know where because the new Broadway strike deadline in June 1 “and we may all be out of a job.”

      “I’ve got several options, however,” he continued. “One is to stay in acting return to New York and go back to auditioning. Or, I can stay in production, stay where I am with the Harold Prince people. I love touring and living out of a suitcase. I had an uncle once who ran off with the circus in 1910. I think that’s in my blood too.’

     “One of the things I think I would really like to do is take a job that was recently offered me by the Walt Disney studios in Los Angeles. Then again I could go back into the music business.

     “And old friend, Peter Martin, in out in L.A. writing for television and wants me to come out there and do some song and comedy writing.

     “I’m really very loose on the whole thing. But then I’ve always been very loose. I’ve had a little angel on my shoulder that just always seemed to have floated me off in the right direction.”

     Angel, luck or just plain determination, Mike Wuergler seems to have the magic.