WELCOME BACK, JOHN MACINNIS!

The name MacInnis means “unique choice”, and John MacInnis, Thoroughly Modern Millie’s director, certainly made one as far as his family was concerned when he chose to become a dancer. “I was raised in Boston, and my dad was a plumber,” he explained, “To this day my parents still are not into theatre.” He remembers being three and putting on his sister’s tap shoes, because he liked the sound they made. A few years later, he would watch the girls on his block practicing their dancing lessons on the lawn. The Lawrence Welk Show really did it for him, though, every week he would watch the tap dancers, mesmerized, trying to copy their steps. “Finally I asked if I could take dancing lessons, and my mother said if I still wanted to in a year, I could,” he said. “A year later she put me in a dancing class where I was the only boy in the school. I had to wear this ridiculous pink and purple leotard, but I was so happy to be dancing, I didn’t care what I looked like.”

His father was determined that if his son was going to dance, he was going to be the best dancer in the world, and MacInnis was put in a more challenging school, where there were other boys. He would sing all the way home from school at the top of his lungs, and would put his records on in the backyard to tap dance. He nearly got his big break at 11 when The New Mickey Mouse Club was casting. MacInnis made it as far as callbacks in Manhattan. “When I got to New York I was so inexperienced, I didn’t know someone would be there to play my music. I was too scared to ask. A kid sitting next to me had a tape of the same song I was doing, so I said I’ll use your tape,” he said. Of course, he had never heard the tape and gave a terrible audition. Encouraged by the producers to stick with it despite losing the Mouseketeer role, MacInnis earned his Equity card a year later in a dinner theatre, where an acting couple asked his parents if they could bring him to New York to be introduced to agents. He was picked up by the first agent he met, and began getting commercials. He didn’t do theatre again until he went to NYU for college.

Dropping out of school for a job with the Guthrie Theatre, MacInnis found it difficult to land work when he returned to New York. “I looked like I was 12 years old and they couldn’t use me. But I was determined to overcome my look,” he said. He went in to audition for everything, regardless of whether he was right for it, just so producers and directors would keep seeing his face. He got hired for a tour of The Tap Dance Kid. He auditioned for Me And My Girl on Broadway and was the last one cut from auditions. “I was 21 and devastated,” he remembered, “But great things came out of it - I got the National Tour of Sweet Charity and I got to work with Bob Fosse.” After the tour, he wound up in Me And My Girl anyway, as a replacement, and spent two years in the show.

MacInnis then performed in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway for nearly a year. In 1991 Gateway Playhouse cast him as Junior Dolan in On Your Toes. “It was the first role I’d really done. I ended up getting Guys And Dolls on Broadway because Chris Chadman (the choreographer) had a house out here, saw me at Gateway, and saw that I could do more than just be a chorus boy,” MacInnis.

He also performed in the original cast of Steel Pier, and in the Broadway revivals of How To Succeed In Business and Kiss Me Kate, and began working as a choreographer. Working in Kiss Me Kate was something of a lesson in time management, as MacInnis was choreographing the medals award ceremonies for the Salt Lake City Olympics at the same time. “I’d do the show Tuesday through Sunday, fly out to Salt Lake Sunday night, have meetings all day Monday, and Tuesday return back to New York in time for the show. I did that for six months,” he said. He has choreographed Beauty And The Beast currently running in Amsterdam and in Germany. He didn’t even audition for Thoroughly Modern Millie, he had just finished the Olympics. He was hired as a swing for Sweet Smell Of Success, when someone in the Millie cast broke their wrist, and he was asked to substitute in the original cast. He hadn’t signed his contract yet, so he took the Millie job, a lucky thing since Success closed a few weeks later! MacInnis finds directing somewhat easier than choreographing. “With choreography, I am showing them everything, every step,” he explained, “With directing, the actors find a lot of it on their own. I tease my director friends who haven’t choreographed – they have it easy!”

MacInnis was delighted to learn he has a connection with Patchogue Theatre. The downstairs seats came from Manhattan’s Imperial Theatre, and the last show before that theatre’s renovation was Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. “I’m going to go out and touch the chairs!” he exclaimed. He doesn’t need the luck - despite feeling that “every job will be my last” - his unique choice seems to have paid off.

Gateway Playhouse has come a long way from the early days when apprentices made their own costumes. Today, costumes are usually rented by the show from a costume house, and Costume Coordinator Marianne Dominy supplements them with new purchases or pieces from Gateway’s extensive inventory accumulated over more than 50 years. In an average season, Marianne will also build one show entirely.

Producer Paul Allan has developed relationships with National Regional Theatres renting sets back and forth, which is a mutually beneficial way to share the rising expenses of building sets and costumes. Upon viewing a recent production of Oliver! at the acclaimed Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre in Illinois, Robin Joy Allan, Artistic Director, made special note of the costume design, and felt “the pieces worn especially captured Dickens world, with much detail and texture.” She made a couple of phone calls to see if they were available as a complete set. Fortunately, they were, and having just been built, late 2005, they were also in great condition. Gateway has also rented Marriott’s packages for Thoroughly Modern Millie and La Cage aux Folles. Marianne designed The Fantasticks, and Costume World will do Urinetown with the costumes from the Broadway show.

The stage manager goes through the show and writes the costume plot – a list of what characters need to be wearing in each scene. Marianne will meet with the scenic designer to make sure the costumes will work onstage with the set. On the first day of rehearsal Marianne and her staff take cast measurements and either send them to the costume house to be altered, or if the costumes are already on hand, begin cataloguing, fitting, and accessorizing. Costumes are made so that they can be altered to fit nearly anyone. “Inside the costumes there are large seams; you can get another four inches if you need to,” explained Marianne. She tries to fit the actors for shoes as quickly as she can, so they can rehearse in them.

Costume Parade is held before the final dress rehearsals, so the actors can be lined up in costume for the artistic staff to see, it’s here that some costumes may be cut from the production. At the first dress rehearsal, Marianne takes notes to see how well the costumes work under the lighting and for the actor, and may change costume pieces or jewelry. She has one more chance to see the work at the final dress rehearsal the following afternoon.

Once the show has opened, the costuming is set, but Marianne and her assistants still have work to do to maintain the costumes throughout the run. And Actors’ Equity dictates that theatres provide actors with clean undergarments per show. “That includes t-shirts, stockings, socks. We do a lot of laundry, as many as five or six loads a day,” said Marianne. When a show is in Patchogue, she and her staff will bring the laundry back to Gateway each day. At the end of the run, the rented costumes are catalogued, packed, and shipped.

This year, the huge costume inventory that Gateway has been gathering since the 1950’s is being moved from the former barn loft to a much larger space in a building behind the costume shop. The loft will now be used exclusively for storing props. “Every year we get more clothes. Just from last year we have The Full Monty, The Jungle Book, and the Christmas show,” Marianne said, “You even add to shows that come with lots of pieces! For example, Sugar came with a lot of hats. But none of them looked right, so we ended up buying two.” However, the new building is a former sound studio, where there should be room to accumulate costumes for another fifty years.