2007-2008 Season
Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical
Adapted: by Erica Schmidt
Music by: Andrew Sherman
Conceived by: Susan L. Schwartz
Based upon the Film, by arrangement with VCX, Limited
Additional Music and Lyrics by Tom Kitt and Jonathan Callicutt
Originally produced Off-Broadway by the Araca Group, Jam Theatricals, Waxman-Williams Entertaiment, in association with Susan L. Schwartz
Director: James Yost
Choreographer: Ashley Bradford
Music Director: Ryan Stamey
Starring: Heather Leanna, Kristen Jones, Greta Marie Zandstra, Rachael Roberts, April Leanna, Chaz Pofahl, Josh Looney & Ryan Stamey
March 27 - April 12, 2008
Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm
Sunday, April 6 at 2:30 p.m.
at the Duke Power Theatre in Spirit Square
345 N. College Street in uptown Charlotte
$5 parking for theater patrons in the Bank of America Corporate Center parking garage
Tickets: Thursdays & Sundays $15 adults & $12 students/seniors
Friday & Saturday $20 adults & $15 students/seniors
Purchase ticket by phone (704) 372-1000 or on-line at www.carolinatix.org or walk up to buy tickets on the day of the show; box office opens 1 hour before curtain.
March 28 is Pay What You Can Night for walk-up patrons.
The Film: In 1978, the mob-funded Buckley Brothers produced the adult film Debbie Does Dallas to cash in on the sexy image of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders squad. It starred previously unknown "'Bambi Woods" in the lead role, who in real life had tried out for the Cowboys cheerleaders but hadn't made the cut. The movie had a spare plot, amateurish cinematography and abysmal acting... so naturally it became one of the most popular adult films ever.
The Musical: Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical premiered at the New York Fringe Festival in 2001. The story, dialogue and characters are mostly faithful to the original film, performed as tongue-in-cheek spoof, with a musical score of memorable (and memorably raunchy) tunes. After playing to sell-out crowds Off Broadway, it's played to packed houses around the world. Directed by BBTG Founder & Artistic Director James Yost, Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical is the must-see show of the season!
A wild comedy in the vein of previous BBTG hits Psycho Beach Party and Mr Marmalade, Debbies Does Dallas: The Musical is not just BBTG's first musical - this show marks our 10th Anniversary!
Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical chronicles the coming of age of small-town sweetheart Debbie Benton who dreams of making it to the big time by becoming a Texas Cowgirl Cheerleader. When she receives a letter informing her she's qualified for the professional squad, the only thing that stands between her and her dream is the bus fare to the big city! Debbie enlists the help of her friends, and together they will stop at nothing (and do just about anything) to help raise enough money for Debbie to go all the way... to DALLAS!
DEBBIE DOES DALLAS: THE MUSICAL contains adult situations and language - it's theater just the way we like it, as only BBTG can present. Join BareBones Theatre Group for the Charlotte premiere of this Off-Broadway hit!
Want to bring your group to Debbie Does Dallas? Call (704) 332-5300 x 2 and leave a message.
This production is made possible by the generous support of our patrons; please consider a gift to BareBones!
What They Said About It...
It's edgy. It's sexy. It's exhausting. Is it more than Jim Yost can take?
By Julie York Coppens, Charlotte Observer
April 4, 2008
What's a dream worth?
If you're an aspiring Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in a porno-flick- turned-stage-play, wish fulfillment will cost ... your innocence.
For a fringe theater artist in Charlotte, the going rate is a bit higher. Ten years. A marriage. Friendships. The family back in Pennsylvania. Sleep.
And for what?
So you can spend your after-work hours rehearsing in a borrowed art studio at Spirit Square, giving actors directions like this: "Now get up like you're gonna do something sexy, and then spit in his face."
Jim Yost graduated from Queens University in 1998 with a degree in English and theater, a passion for the great contemporary plays, and enough like-minded buddies to start putting up shows in an alley behind Fat City Deli in NoDa.
The deli is gone, most of his cohorts have moved on, but Yost is still here. He makes his living as a theater teacher and technical director at Providence High School, running BareBones Theatre Group out of his back pocket. On March 27, BareBones opened "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical" with an attractive young cast, some seriously raunchy choreography, and all the artistic integrity Yost can muster.
"It's campy and it's stupid," shrugs Yost, who hopes "Debbie Does Dallas" will do gangbusters at the box office -- like "Psycho Beach Party," a BareBones hit from September 2004. "That was supposed to be like a bad 1960s movie. This (`Debbie') is just bad. It's one of those things where you leave and you say, `Oh my God, I can't believe they did that on stage.' "
R-rated musical numbers
"Well, we are all good girls. And we will do anything you want." -- Lisa, in "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical"
Yost has never actually seen "Debbie Does Dallas," the 1978 adult movie, though he's watched a version on YouTube with the sex edited out. "It's about 20 minutes long," he says.
The story: A sweet, all-American girl dreams of going to Texas and joining the NFL's best-loved pep squad. Her enterprising girlfriends raise the money for the trip through an after-school business called Teen Services. We follow their exploits at the local carwash. The public library. A candle shop.
"Of course, those odd jobs become sexual in nature," Yost says. "Everything that happens in the movie, happens in the play" -- except that the X-rated scenes have been replaced with R-rated musical numbers. "It's all innuendo, which I think a lot of times is funnier."
Yost's first full-blown directing effort while he was still at Queens, David Mamet's capitalist fable "Glengary Glenn Ross," was more high-minded. But that show never happened; after a series of administrative hurdles, Yost and company had to give up.
"It taught us, Jim particularly, that if we wanted to do the kinds of productions we wanted to, we couldn't rely on other people," recalls Chad Calvert, another Queens grad and BareBones stalwart, who has a day job directing for Opera Carolina. "We had to do it on our own."
BareBones has been doing its own thing and mostly paying its own way ever since. The company gets small project grants from the Arts & Science Council, and support from individual and a few corporate donors, but the bulk of its budget -- roughly $90,000 in an active season -- comes from ticket sales.
And so: box-office-catnip shows like "Psycho Beach Party" and "Debbie Does Dallas," mixed in with headier titles such as last fall's "Orson's Shadow," featuring Calvert as film icon Orson Welles. The formula has worked for almost a decade now, with solid, often outstanding artistic results: BareBones repeatedly upstages the bigger-bankrolled troupes at the annual Metrolina Theatre Awards, among other coups.
The company even had its own home for a few years, in South End, but finally got priced out of the neighborhood. Since the spring of 2006, BareBones has been working out of the 99-seat Duke Power Theatre, with help from the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. The move uptown has helped BareBones build a more mainstream audience and raise its production values, while remaining true to Yost's spare, actor-focused aesthetic.
But at 32 -- today's his birthday -- Yost is getting tired. He begins his day at Providence High before 7 a.m. and often rehearses with BareBones, or other local companies as a director-for-hire, past 10 p.m. And most weekends. The theater work earns him a few thousand dollars a year, over his teacher's salary, and it comes at the expense of what most people would consider a normal life.
"You hit that point where you question, `Why am I doing it?' " says Yost, whose "family," for the time being, is the up-for-anything company of "Debbie Does Dallas." They're having fun, and so are the rowdy crowds at Spirit Square, but it's a script Yost would have disdained at 22.
"That's what those girls in that show are doing -- they're selling themselves," Yost says with a shrug. "That's the position I'm in right now as an artist. ... After `Debbie Does Dallas,' we'll really need to re-evaluate."
Personal relationships
"I can't believe I have so much money! And it only cost my soul! Just kidding." -- Debbie, in "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical"
As theater dreams go, Yost's was late to develop.
He grew up in rural, conservative Bucks County, Pa. He left for college just as his parents were splitting up, leaving his dad and two younger sisters to deal with the fallout. He hasn't talked to his mom in 10 years.
When he was a kid, though, she encouraged his creativity, told him he'd grow up to be a writer. So he majored in English. One of his requirements was an introductory theater course. He started reading plays and got hooked, seeing himself in modern classics like Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," whose narrator, Tom, is haunted by the family he left behind.
Teaching, too, was a happy discovery for Yost. At Providence High, where he works under theater department head Paula Dean, Yost is known as a fun instructor and a cool guy.
"He can make the kids laugh," says Chuck Sloop, a senior in his fifth semester of technical theater study. Like a lot of Yost's students, Sloop "kinda got dragged into this class" by a friend, but found he liked the work -- and Yost. "Sometimes you can't tell if he's being serious or sarcastic. Most of the time, he's being sarcastic."
"He really cares about what he does," says Courtney Carlton, a junior. He's a joker, she says, but "he makes sure we're on task."
Until a reporter showed up early one morning to talk to them, most of the students had no idea that while they were working with Yost on "The Sound of Music" by day, he was staging porn by night.
"We know he's passionate about his outside projects, but he's also very passionate about `The Sound of Music,' " says sophomore Andrew Fishkin. When Mr. Yost caught some kids ducking out at intermission, Fishkin says, he made them go back another night to see the whole show.
"I feel like for the first time in my life, I'm able to balance my job at school and my life with BareBones pretty evenly. My job at Providence High School has filled me with creative energy," says Yost, who directed a memorable, MTV-style student production of Edgar Allan Poe tales last fall. Next year, he'll direct the big spring musical.
"Kids are so open," he says. "Any crazy idea I throw out there, they embrace it and build on it."
The adults in Yost's life, not so much.
Last year saw the disintegration both of Yost's marriage, to the talented actor Beth Pierce, and of his professional partnership with Anne Lambert, BareBones' managing director and chief fundraiser for several seasons. Both relationships, Yost suggests, generated more offstage drama than he wanted to cope with.
"Theater people, all of them are crazy. Bar none. That's why you do it. You find something in the work that represents where you are in your life," Yost says. "I grew up in a broken home. That's why I'm intrigued by plays about divorce and betrayal."
He's also quick to exit when those scenarios reprise in reality.
"We don't talk," Yost says of Pierce, who was once his greatest muse, starring in "Mr. Marmalade" and other hits. They performed together in Jon Tuttle's "Drift," in 2001, married in 2006, and split a year and a half later.
"Long time, huh?" Yost shrugs. "When you're dating or marrying someone you're directing, it becomes very difficult, because you want to be able to be critical, and you can't be. Obviously, there were lots of other personal things going on. Theater was just part of it."
Lambert, meanwhile, clashed with officials at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, and eventually with Yost himself, over City Stage, a promising but short-lived summer fringe festival at Spirit Square. Arguments over how the series should be programmed and paid for turned ugly. Still, Lambert and Yost speak of each other with respect and, at least on Lambert's side, a deep sympathy.
"In order to be a singular artist, sometimes you have to sacrifice," says Lambert, who's married herself -- but not to a theater guy. "All of us have difficulty maintaining personal relationships. All of us have to prioritize to make relationships work."
Reaching a crossroads
"... If we're not careful, we've (expletive) ourselves to get something we may not even remember why we wanted in the first place." -- Debbie, in "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical"
Debbie does, by the way, get to Dallas. So do all her hard-working friends.
The future of BareBones is less certain.
Yost is looking at scripts to produce in 2008-09, but no lineup has been announced. He won't know his budget for the next show -- probably Bob Glaudini's offbeat romance "Jack Goes Boating" -- until the last ticket for "Debbie" has been sold, and a hoped-for ASC grant has come through.
"Artistically we're strong. Community awareness is high. We're kind of at that burnout phase where the organizational structure is falling apart," Yost says. "You either reorganize and come out strong, or you die."
The company has been sitting on the bench for most of this season, in fact, as Yost, Calvert and other Charlotte fringe players have gotten some ASC-funded coaching from an outside consultant.
Terry Milner, former head of the N.C. Theatre Conference and now based in New York, says fringe troupes are bound to struggle in a town with no major professional theater for adults keeping the audience engaged, the donors involved, and the talent pool healthy.
"It's like an anchor store at the mall," says Milner, who wonders if we've got, in theatrical terms, too many Urban Outfitters-type boutiques pushing edgy product to the same niche audience. Recent seasons have seen the entries of Collaborative Arts, best known for Shakespeare on the Green, and Queen City Theatre Co., geared toward the gay audience, into a field already crowded by the prolific Carolina Actors Studio Theatre, the out-of-left-field Epic Arts Repertory, and others. Even a 10-year player like BareBones needs a clear identity and savvy leadership to survive.
"BareBones is at a crossroads. They're at a place where they could launch themselves into a new and really exciting period, with the right help," Milner says. "I do think they deserve it."
Yost thinks so, too.
"We're not in debt. We owe nothing. We pay our artists. We do good work, consistently, and we've been doing it for 10 years," Yost says. "What about that is not valuable enough to invest in?"
The grant-makers at the ASC would like to see BareBones get its organizational act together, develop a real board of directors, show that it can raise and handle more money.
Yost, though, questions whether a corporate-style board -- like the one that shut down Charlotte Rep -- is what BareBones needs.
"Why is that a model I want to emulate?" Yost says. "You get a board of businesspeople, you get people who think they know what is best for you.
"Look, I think I'm a pretty decent guy. I listen to the advice that's given to me. All we wanna do is produce good theater. We wanna work with artists in this community. I wish there was more weight given (by the ASC and other arts funders) to the fact that we've been doing this for so long, without their help. We could do so much better with their help."
And until it comes, Yost will keep chasing the dream, burning the candle -- to bring us back to "Debbie Does Dallas" -- at both ends.
"If I could be artistic director of BareBones and make a modest living, that's what I'd do. But I can't do that," he says.
"Yeah, 'Debbie,' for me, on a personal level, it's about the kinda (expletive) you need to do in order to be successful. It's not about how much training you have, or how smart or talented you are, or even how hard you're willing to work. It's about what you need to do to survive."
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