By KATHI SCRIZZI DRISCOLL

March 24, 2011

Large camels need to lumber down the aisle of the Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center, so John Sullivan needs a sewing machine that works on thick fur. He consults with a team of volunteer seamstresses backstage during a rehearsal of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” then will put out a Facebook all-points bulletin late that night for more help.

As dozens of students sing in the background, Sullivan talks about spray-tanning plans briefly with one, approves another’s sandals, debates fabric color with a third and helps another set up a schedule to rehearse a dance. All while discussing that, after 34 years, this will be his final Barnstable High show.

Sullivan – who retires as drama club coach after “Joseph” and as technical director and art and animation teacher in January – wonders who will replace him and how the job will evolve.

THROUGH THE YEARS

1958: Joyce Elinor Arlington, a Barnstable High School junior from Osterville, pushes to start a drama club, which is first coached by Elliot McSwan, then Charles Howes.

1966: Jim Ruberti begins a 16-year tenure as coach and starts the school’s huge success with musicals.

1977: John Sullivan becomes assistant drama coach to Ruberti.

1978: Sullivan stages the first Haunted House.

1979: Sullivan becomes drama coach after Ruberti steps away, and soon stages his first “spectacular,” “The Hobbit.”

1985: Sullivan starts Barnstable Summer Family Theater, focusing on whole families working on a show with students.

1990 and 1994: Sullivan takes leaves to study at CalArts, then works on “The Pagemaster” animated film before returning for good. Peter Crosby takes over the club in his absences.

1995-98: With Barnstable High undergoing major renovations, Sullivan has drama students stage shows at Our Lady of Victory Parish Hall, Cape Cod Mall and an elementary school.

1999: The club christens the new performing arts center – the largest for any New England high school – with “The Wizard of Oz,” with a cast of 350, ranging from second-graders to faculty and community members. Also that year, assistant drama coach Ed O’Toole starts annual Shakespeare shows.

2004: Sullivan is inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

2008: The Barnstable High School Drama Club celebrates its 50th anniversary with “The Wizard of Oz,” which becomes the subject for “High Drama: Against All Oz,” the first Web-only series created by Warner Bros. The club is also named best high school drama program in the Northeast by Stage Directions magazine.

He describes himself as “a one-man band”: He puts his hand in pretty much every aspect of one of his trademark extravaganza musicals, including direction, set and costume design, choreography, lights and poster design.

It’s been consuming work as the club’s annual schedule has expanded to his two large-scale musicals, his massive Haunted House fundraiser, a Shakespeare show (directed by assistant coach Ed O’Toole), and Christmastime appearances. The pay hasn’t exactly compensated for the hours.

“I’m just a workhorse and I understand that,” he says. “If I put in the hours at Cumberland Farms, I would have made more. But I wouldn’t have had as much fun.”

Sullivan turns 60 in May and says it’s time he moved on. He’s written 35 pages of tips for the next coach and will be happy to answer questions, but says, “I don’t think anybody should have to live in anybody’s shadow.”

Now, he says, “I will do what I want to do.”

But what is that? He mentions a children’s book on dragons he is writing and illustrating, that two people have approached him about directing local movies, that Boston’s Emerson College is expanding its animation department and may need teachers.

He jokes about lying down for a year, but Sullivan, whose days have always been full, won’t likely stay still for long. The children’s book came about when he got bored not doing theater last summer and now he says he needs to learn to paint in Photoshop. He also will stage one last show – “The Reluctant Dragon” – in July to close out 26 years of Barnstable Summer Family Theater. (And he might try to get shows published that he’s co-written for that group.)

Meanwhile, he and the Barnstable High kids have a show to do.

“Joseph” is a musical-comedy retelling of the Bible story of Joseph, his father’s favorite who can interpret dreams and has a coat of many colors. But Joseph has 11 jealous brothers, and they sell him into slavery. After various adventures, including hobnobbing with the Pharaoh, Joseph is able to reconcile with his family.

“Joseph” wasn’t Sullivan’s first choice for a swan song. “I would have picked ‘Wizard of Oz’ because you might as well go out with a bang, but I just did that,” he says. “So I’m going out with something meaningful instead.” Sullivan fell in love with the album as a teen and saw several stage incarnations before mounting it at Barnstable High in 2001. He dedicated that show to his late mother, who called him her “dreamer.”

Students in this final show will be among thousands involved with the drama club with Sullivan. He says he’s still in touch with “a lot”; he estimates hundreds have gone into some entertainment-related field. Two previous “Josephs,” in fact are now professional actors. Some of those alumni may now be connections to Sullivan’s future projects.

Sullivan has acknowledged his style hasn’t gone down well with some students (he can be tough, and yell) and that he’s clashed with administrators, teachers and community members through the years (including getting thrown out of offices). “It’s been a challenge,” he says with a laugh about his time at Barnstable, but a “creative challenge,” and says arguments have largely stemmed from belief in what he does, in “the kids” and in the value of this experience for the students.

“When you talk about kids learning and the kind of education you can get by doing this, it’s worth the temporary (wrangling) to give them those opportunities. I’m an educator first and foremost and … I want to know I’ve taught somebody something.”

It’s probably a good sign, then, that alumni came back to hang lights for “Joseph.” Junior Molly Kirk, painting sets backstage, said experience with the drama club is making her strive for a career in production design. “You do this and see what can come out of it.”

Tom Myers, a senior and club president who’s playing the Elvis-like Pharaoh, was thinking about architecture before drama club became the center of his student days and he decided to pursue a BFA in musical theater and acting. But acting skills aren’t all he learned with the drama club.

“I’ve definitely learned self-responsibility; you have to pull your own weight,” he says. “And sometimes, here, you have to pull other people’s weight as well as your own.”

Senior Catherine Macallister similarly learned skills useful far beyond a stage. “It’s a big collaboration, and you get what you put into it,” she says of a Barnstable High drama club show. “You have to be able to work with other people and you have to have patience sometimes.”

Myers is glad his final senior show is a Sullivan blockbuster – with giant sets, for example, that include meaningful hieroglyphics – and notes Sullivan has “a signature touch” that is “unexplainable, but it just comes across.” Music director Kris Lariviere Hill jokes with Sullivan about being “a brand.”

Sullivan doesn’t know what will happen when that brand goes away, but he is confident about the future: “The drama club has been here and I think it will always be here.”

He notes the 53-year-old group changed with each new coach. “I expect it to change after me. But as long as there is a group of kids getting together to put on a show, whether it’s a musical or a nonmusical, and putting on a good production, I think the drama club is a success.”

And whatever happens next for Sullivan, it will have to be fun. That’s been a mantra for his drama club work, and he’s not abandoning that now. “There’s no reason to do something,” he says, “if it isn’t fun.”

Article Posted on Cape Cod Online

CAPE COD —

Go see this show!

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is a testament to the amazing Barnstable High School Drama Club and how they can mount a musical that can rival a Broadway production in all respects.

The moment you enter the theatre you know you are in for an evening to remember. The stage is a colorful collage of Egyptian paintings, artifacts and hieroglyphics. Overhead a mirror ball rotates, reflecting light on the audience and giving you a feeling that something wonderful is about to happen.

Then you look at the program with a cast listing of 23 named characters, nine wives, 14 choir members, 13 female servants for Potiphar, 16 male servants for Potiphar, 16 attendants for the Pharaoh, ten guards for the Pharaoh, 32 prisoners, four camels, two baby camels, and four Ishmaelites and you think, WOW, this is really going to be something to see, and hear.

And it is. By the time of the grand finale you are searching for words to describe what you have experienced. How about stupendous? Or colossal? Or simply, how in the world could a high school drama club produce a show so magnificent?

One name comes to mind: John Sullivan, the director who is retiring after 34 years as the innovative spark plug for the drama club. But that would only be a partial answer because so many people have been involved making this happen. First, the high school members of the drama club who have put in countless hours in rehearsals and backstage, constructing and painting the sets. Second, the friends and alumni who produced the 137 costumes required and helped with lighting design and set construction. And third, perhaps most important, the spirit that pervades everyone involved: this is what the Barnstable High School Drama Club does!

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the music and Tim Rice wrote the lyrics cued by Genesis, chapter 37: “Now Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors,” and it goes on to tell how his 11 brothers were jealous of him because of his coat that would give him prophetic dreams and they planned to murder him. But luckily they changed their minds when a traveling band of Ishmaelites came by and they sold Joseph to them and they sold Joseph as a slave to Potiphar, a wealthy Egyptian. Mrs. Potiphar tried to seduce Joseph who was then thrown in  jail. While in jail he had dreams that redeemed him in the eyes of Potiphar and the Pharoah and he became number two in Egypt. His dreams were that there would be seven years of feast and then seven years of famine which he has Egypt plan for. But back where he came from everyone was starving and his brothers came to Egypt for help. Joseph didn’t let them know who he is until he was sure they regretted what they did to him, then he revealed himself and everyone was happy.

The story is told by six singing narrators, by the choir and by the songs of all characters. The singing is wonderful, the choreography very well done.

With the huge cast space limitations prevent listing all who should be praised for their work but Jeremy Peacock who played Joseph the night we were reviewing (Joseph is double cast, Dylan Byrnes is the other) and Tommy Myers who was the Pharaoh (Greg Gianno is the other) were top notch. Myers plays the Pharaoh as an Egyptian Elvis Presley and the real Elvis, wherever he is, must be proud.

And who could be a better Jacob, Joseph’s father, than John Sullivan who, strangely, wasn’t listed in the cast of characters. But the program did have a special thank you, “As Mr. Sullivan says farewell to the Drama Club, he would like you to remember the words of someone smarter than he: Dr. Seuss… ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.’”

If you go…

What: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Where: Barnstable High School Drama Club

When: March 25, 26 at 7 p.m., March 27 at 2 p.m.

Tickets: Call: 508-771-624

Copyright 2011 Wicked Local – Cape Cod. Some rights reserved

Read more: Barnstable Drama Club’ ‘Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ – - Wicked Local – Cape Cod http://www.wickedlocal.com/capecod/archive/x614800507/Barnstable-Drama-Club-Amazing-Technicolor-Dreamcoat#ixzz1HaZR4rKT

By Alison McCall

The Register

______________________________________________

After 34 years of staging stunning productions at Barnstable High School, drama coach John Sullivan will retire.

“He’s a great teacher, a great mentor,” says Tom Myers, a senior at Barnstable High School. “The way he teaches the most is by making you figure it out yourself.”

Sullivan produces five shows each year at the high school, as well as between one and three shows each summer with his Barnstable Summer Family Theatre. The shows are famous for their impressive sets, costumes and professional performances. A production of “The Wizard of Oz” cost $85,000 one year, and the students even managed to get a live, green horse on the set. The show made back $95,000 in ticket sales.

“We build our own scenery, we make our own costumes. We have full orchestras,” says Sullivan, who personally fronts the money before ticket sales reimburse him. “I want [the kids] to have some ownership of it. Each of these kids will be able to look at this and say ‘I did that.’”

Sullivan designs all the costumes, sets and props himself, as well as choreographing the dances, writing the scripts, coordinating the music and casting the actors. But he says he only lays out the basics – students are free to come to him with modifications, improvements and refined details on all aspects.

Shows are double and sometimes triple cast, allowing more students to act onstage, With actors, as well as offstage workers, like set and costume designers and lighting technicians, every aspect of the show is student-run, resulting in 90 students in the upcoming production. “The Wizard of Oz” employed 300 students.

Students begin to build careers in Sullivan shows. The drama club website lists alumni who have gone on to catch breaks as actors, lighting or set designers and animators. Sullivan uses his former students, along with the contacts he has made in Hollywood and at various film schools, to help graduating students follow their dreams.

“He’s a very good person to know if you’re trying to get into this business,” says alumni Matt Kohler, who is going to school for directing at Keene State University. “This is where I gained the love for theatre. This is where my career path began.”

Last show

Sullivan’s last high school show in Barnstable will be “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” an interpretation of the Biblical story of Joseph, which teaches the importance of being kind and following your dreams.

After school in the weeks leading up to the show, Sullivan is the center of a whirlwind of commotion in the high school’s Performing Arts Center. Students group around him, waiting to ask their questions, while music plays, hammers pound away at the set on stage and actors recite or sing lines. Giant pillars, a pharaoh throne and massive platforms are arranged onstage, painted with hieroglyphics and blue, gold and brown stripes. A Sphinx-like cutout looms 15 feet tall over the seats in the back of the auditorium.

“It’s going to be really sad to see him go,” says Chloe Brunfield., who is only a freshman, but has been in Sullivan productions since she was in first grade. “You can talk to him about anything.”

Sullivan dishes out orders in quick succession. He tells a student costume designer, with fabric slung over her shoulder and scissors in hand, to even a hemline and shorten a belt length, then reels off a color scheme to a set designer covered in paint, before he addresses a student holding a horse made out of PVC piping. A set of keys is thrown to yet another student, a request for more wood from Home Depot is approved, and gold sandals are chosen over brown. The dance instructor onstage squints through the lights to yell a question about the choreography, and Sullivan’s voice booms out, demanding all actors learn the routine.

“There’s never a down day. It’s always going, going, going,” says Barnstable sophomore Taylor Melchiono. “This is like a family to me.”

Sullivan is retiring from Barnstable High School in January 2012, but will leave the drama coach post in July. This means that his final show will be with the Barnstable Summer Family Theatre, though “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” will likely be the last of his famous huge productions.

He will still help students achieve their career goals, if he can.

“There’s no way they’re not going to be a part of my life,” says Sullivan of his students. “There will just be less new ones.”

Barnstable High School Principal Pat Clark says the vacant position of drama coach will be advertised in the spring.