Joe Cook and Bradley Jones co-founded GSC circa 2007 and served as its artistic director and chief costume designer, respectively. GSC provides free theater to those who attend the various productions.
I started shooting GSC shows in fall 2010, and was the archival photographer for the troupe's next 12 productions, which went through 2016. That was when Cook and Jones decided to step aside, and it was when I decided it was time for me to do the same.
After I moved to North Carolina last summer, I learned that Cook had been hospitalized with pancreatic cancer. In late 2017, Cook posted a blurb on Facebook to update his friends on his health ... and to express a sincere hope that 2018 would prove to be a lot better for him and Brad (who in December spent time in the hospital himself after suffering a heart attack).
I hadn't heard anything about Joe since then until this morning, when I learned that he had passed away today.Joe was a friendly guy who loved to talk about theater ... and usually did so excitedly. Nicole Davis of The Southside Times in Indy did a nice feature on Joe as he was finishing work on his final show for GSC, Romeo and Juliet. I provide the link to the article in this sentence.
In the years I photographed GSC shows, Joe appeared unmasked in the cast of only one production -- The Tempest in fall 2013 -- and that was not by original design. The play was snake-bitten by cast defections in the rehearsal stage, so Joe decided to step into one of the last-minute open roles (Gonzalo). That's Joe as Gonzalo in the photos leading off the post and above right.
I said "unmasked" because he was the booming voice of the ghost of Hamlet's father in Hamlet. I think the actor in the costume (see photo at left) may have been Tony Van Pelt, but behind the curtain GSC put Cook on the microphone to deliver the lines.The main reason I enjoyed shooting GSC shows is because Joe gave me the run of the stage to do my photography during dress rehearsal. No restrictions. He trusted my instincts. Performers were warned ahead of time that I'd be all over the place so they wouldn't be surprised if I crept in to get closeups. I think most of them appreciated that such freedom translated into decent-quality images, and they adapted to the distraction.
Below is a mugshot I took of Joe to use on a board outside Garfield Park's MacAllister Amphitheater to introduce the cast and crew to audience members as they arrived to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in fall 2012. When I started to help the troupe promote its shows (as well as take pictures), Joe invited me to serve on the GSC Board of Directors (also all volunteer), which I did for a year in 2013-14.
As artistic director for GSC since its inception in 2007 to 2016, Joe produced or co-produced most of the troupe's shows, and he directed all but about five of the 19 productions.
Beginning with 2011's Pygmalion (by Bernard Shaw), he introduced an occasional contemporary show to GSC's annual schedule. In 2014, GSC marked a first with a full season of all-contemporary shows -- Jean Anouilh's Antigone in the spring and, in another GSC first, its only musical, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Camelot in the fall. In one of his last seasons with GSC, Joe confirmed something I had observed in my exposure to the annual GSC programs: He tried to balance GSC's annual program by offsetting a serious play in the spring with a comedy in the fall, or vice versa.
If you browse through the list of annual GSC productions, beginning with 2010 -- As You Like It and Macbeth in 2010, Pygmalion and Hamlet in 2011, Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream (2012), The Matchmakers and The Tempest (2013), Antigone and Camelot (2014), The Merry Wives of Windsor and Othello (2015) and The Importance of Being Earnest and Romeo and Juliet (2016) -- you can that see he succeeded in that objective.
Perhaps most amazingly, Joe Cook and Brad Jones accomplished all this on bare-bone operating budgets that consisted of whatever the two men could raise in donations -- almost entirely via pleas at the beginning of each show or in response to contribution requests included in the printed programs distributed to people in the audience as they entered the venue before each show. Those donations were hardly enough to pay for all of the costs, so it was not unusual for Joe and Brad to make up shortfalls in show expenditures with cash out of their own pockets.
On May 22, 2014, just a few months before opening night of Camelot (the costliest production in the troupe's history, primarily because of the expensive rights and royalty fees), GSC hosted an open house. The event was designed partly to raise community awareness of GSC. But it also was intended to help raise the extra funds needed to make Camelot possible. The open house did bring in some revenue, but it wasn't nearly enough to cover all of Camelot's expenses. Late in Joe's tenure as artistic director -- and definitely after Camelot -- GSC's Board of Directors finally secured 501(c)3 status as an IRS-recognized charity for GSC, enabling donors to claim any contributions as tax deductions.
Before founding GSC, Joe taught history and Spanish at Ben Davis High School for many years before retiring in 1997, so there are Ben Davis alumni who remember him. Oddly, Joe never got involved in theater productions in his many years at Ben Davis. When I asked him about that in 2014, he told me that with his considerable involvement in community theater, he didn't want to overextend himself by doing more of the same at the school.
I take a moment here to thank Joe for letting me sharpen my theater photography skills at the troupe's expense, trusting me to not interfere with the performers while I was running around getting my shots, getting me interested in Shakespeare, teaching me about the Bard (we would chat about Shakespeare on a few occasions, and it was always a situation where I was a student, and he the teacher) ... and for just being a good friend. RIP.
No comments:
Post a Comment