Aubrey Berg

Sometimes people have to travel the world to follow their dreams. CCM Musical Theatre Chair, Aubrey Berg began the journey for his education in Cape Town, South Africa, where he was born and raised. After getting his undergrad, he moved to England to get a master’s degree at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and then started his professional career as a director and teacher. He directed in England until he felt the need to get an advanced degree. In 1975 he finally moved to the states and attended The University of Illinois to get a masters and a PhD in Theatre.

There’s nothing like your first. Upon asking about Aubrey’s first directing project, he was filled with giggles and smirks. The project was at 16 years old and it was an experimental piece called Corks for the Brownings. He remembers it being edgy and contemporary for the time and if he knew then what he knows now, he probably wouldn’t have done it.  A poet who does most of the talking in the piece sets the scene of the play. The main character, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is in the middle of a battlefield in Vietnam where she is then saved by the swans of Swan Lake. Aubrey said, “There must have been a deeper meaning, I’m sure, but I don’t remember it.” It was entered in a theatre competition and actually won first prize. Aubrey, or Bubba as we call him in school, said this project really gave him the experience to think outside the box at a young age. He doesn’t think it was a very good piece by today’s standards but he is thankful for the lessons he learned while working on it.

It was this lesson that he had to bring with him to the States to bring the musical theatre program of CCM to life. His predecessor left two years before Bubba got the job as chair of the musical theatre program. So for two years the theatre department went without a head. As imagined, there was chaos. It was basically a voice program with requirements like one year of Ballet and two years of Acting. It was in no way the triple threat program it is today. His interview for the job included a few questions and a teaching assessment. Before Corbett Auditorium there was Wilson Auditorium. It was in the basement of Wilson that he directed students in two separate scenes: one dramatic and one comedic. He was hired and then he had the crazy responsibility to reshape a shapeless program.

His first decree as head of the program was appointing a resident choreographer/dance teacher. He insisted that the program be better rounded. He could see that Broadway was evolving and that the program had to get with the times. Bubba actually made equal emphasis on voice, acting, and dance, which is what the students desperately needed. Now students take a healthy mix of classes including: 4 years of acting, 4 years of jazz technique, 4 years of vocal training,, Pilates, audition techniques, musical theatre history, and music theory. Although his curriculum has changed over the years, it’s not due to lack of success. Rather because of the changing times in the Broadway scene. Whereas 25 years ago they focused theatre around an amazing voice or excellent dance technique, nowadays the emphasis is on acting. “Although a student may be a brilliant dancer and singer, without strong acting training the student will not be as successful in today’s theatre.”

When I asked Aubrey when he became aware that CCM had turned into a triple threat program, he replied, “You know, I just woke up one morning and decided it was.” This really shows his positive thinking approach to his teaching style. If someone sees himself or herself as a great actor, director, or person, eventually it will happen. He went on by saying that the success of the program is evident in it’s alumni. There is a CCM grad in almost every show on Broadway and in Tours around America. And since our school is very selective, only accepting about every 1 in 80 students when hundreds audition, we are able to provide the individual attention that a student needs to perfect their skills. Other top musical theatre schools such as Boston Conservatory and University of Michigan accept about 80 freshmen a year compared to our 20. With so many students it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Bubba really wanted to make an elite program with many opportunities for his “babies”.

This selective, small group nature is also brought into his directing work. Ironically, he really loves very small casts of people. I say ironically because he’s normally set up to direct the Corbett Main stage shows. Bubba said, “When I have a huge cast of people, I feel more like a traffic cop.” This makes so much sense because when you’re trying to make formations onstage with 40 people having separate conversations, you just need to be almost militaristic to get to the desired goal. Another one of his directing tips includes looking at visual images or art of the period that the play or musical takes place. He’s really moved and inspired by the artwork of the time. He says it informs a lot about what was going on socially and it can be great inspiration for a scenic designer as well.

When asked about his favorite show to direct since coming to CCM, he didn’t give a straight answer. He talked about having the amazing opportunity to direct shows twice in his career. Evita was the first show he directed at CCM and my freshman year he revived it in Corbett Auditorium. Along with Evita he’s done Into the Woods and Hair twice. Bubba is really looking forward to directing Les Miserables in Patricia Corbett Theatre this spring. He’s waited a long time to do this show.

Directing is definitely a perk of the job but there are also some parts that aren’t all sunshine and rainbows. He isn’t very fond of the paperwork that comes along with the job. Also sitting through hundreds of auditions a year has its ups and downs as well. Sometimes a prospective student will give a questionable audition and then their mother will find Aubrey in the lobby, send him an email, mail him a gift, or a combination of all three. This gets to be overwhelming when it comes to the amount of people seen in one day of auditioning. Most of the auditions are videotaped for further viewing by other faculty not present at the audition. These videos are also a teaching tool in Bubba’s audition techniques class. Some of the tapes go back as much as 20 years and are excellent bases for hysterical horror stories in the class. Bubba lists them as some of his favorite memories at the school.

The school and its students have been his family for so many years. He refers to his students as his babies because they really are. He is truly our wise old grandfather her at school. His wisdom and advice are so precious to us as students because he has lived through so many eras of theatre. Not many instructors have so many years under their belt. Although sometimes this wisdom is stubborn when it comes to adjusting with the ever-changing times, it’s ultimately an asset. He is retiring soon and it will be interesting to see how CCM with react to a different director once he’s gone. Maybe the program will undergo another transformation like with Aubrey’s entrance. Only time will tell. 

You Are My Sunshine

“You are my sunshine; my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

Over 200 people met on a cloudy February afternoon in southern Louisiana in 2011 to celebrate the life of Barbara Claire Bourgeois Schexnaydre, my grandmother. We chose to celebrate instead of morn because for all the years of her life Barbara always chose to be uplifting. She always focused upward and out and she did that through the power of music.

            Although she was never quite classically trained in any instrument or harbored any prodigy-like voice, she always spread the most important part of music; love. From early in her childhood she was addicted to the joy that music and dancing could bring to life. She was one of thirteen children. Growing up in the 1930’s with thirteen siblings wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, but Maw Maw would tell me stories of her childhood that would turn even the most fortunate child green with envy. Her brothers and sisters would gather in the family room around the record player and pair up into “couples”. The most popular dance in the south at the time was the jitterbug. It’s a mix between swing dance and the shag of North Carolina. Now with thirteen kids it’s obviously not even. The odd one out would get the opportunity to dance with the doorknob. Yes, the doorknob of the front door. I asked, “Well, who had to dance with the doorknob?” She replied, “Me! I didn’t care because when I closed my eyes the music was still there and I was never terribly tall so the knob was the perfect partner for me.” It’s amazing that she was so content to “take one for the team” and it didn’t seem to bother her. Her love for the beat and her siblings made her kind enough to choose the option that most deemed undesirable. When she grew a little older she began working in her father’s local grocery store. This is where she met Vernon “Coon” Schexnaydre and the rest is history. 

                

              Barbara and Coon at Holy Rosary Church

(Front Left to Right then Back Right to left)

Angela, Ellen, Lorna, Verna, Iris, Larry, Lamar, Kent, and James

A courtship, a marriage, and 9 children later, the music in her veins was still pulsing stronger than ever. My father, Larry, is the youngest. He vividly remembers putting on living room shows for his mother. The kids would all get together and perform a 10-minute version of the Sound of Music. The crazy thing was they actually had the perfect amount of cast members for the job living under one roof. Maw Maw would sit on the couch in awe and at the end of the performance, no matter how brilliant or horrible, she would give them a standing ovation and shuffle them into the kitchen for her famous chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies. 

She was their number one fan. My dad told me that Maw Maw was the reason he decided to start doing theatre in high school. He continued to pursue theatre in college, and then he met my mom in a performing group, married her, had three children, and ultimately started a performing arts academy when no such academy ever existed in south Louisiana. The seed of this idea to spread music to the minds and hearts of children was planted at age 4 while singing, “so long, fair well…” in the living room of a shotgun house, south of Baton Rouge. My dad’s life, as it is, wouldn’t be a reality without the love and encouragement for music that Barbara Claire provided in his childhood.

                                      

 Larry (third from the left, in the back) Linda (on the Floor)

This was the Jamabalaya Singers, a musical group that toured around Louisiana performing at fairs.

 

 Linda and Larry today

Center Stage Performing Arts Academy began in 2000 with 14 students. Today we have over 500 students and some alumni on Broadway and in National tours.

            My time with Maw Maw seems pretty short compared to the time span of her life, but the memories and lessons I learned from her are something I wouldn’t trade for the world. I only wish I had comprehended she was sick sooner so I could’ve held on to everything she said. Barbara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few years after I entered elementary school. I could strain to recall important quotes that she once said and I could also make up some meaningful things to drive my point home, but honestly all that’s coming to me is a video I have of my first birthday. My dad wrote a lullaby, Little Emily, and performed it as I crawled around the red brick floor of Maw Maw Barbara’s house. The camera is focused on my dad for most of the video and sometimes it would scan the floor in the attempt to find me paying attention. Then finally, towards the end of the video, the view is on my dad and in the corner of the frame Maw Maw is standing on the steps watching him sing to his child. Watching it brings me to tears because I know how much that meant to her to see her son share the music he created with his first daughter.

            Home videos show Maw Maw holding me and calling me by name. She would sing You Are My Sunshine to me all the time. It was her favorite song. She would sing it note for note, word for word, without missing a beat. Flash forward ten years and I’m outside swinging with her on the porch on a windy November afternoon. She asks me if I am there to sit with her. At this time in her life she had frequent sitters since her short-term memory was gone and her long-term memory was fading. I decided to play along as to not embarrass her by correcting her mistake. She looked slightly distant for a while and then began to tell me about her wonderful son, Larry. She informed me that he is married to the most wonderful woman, Linda, and they have a studio where little kids come to sing and dance. As she described the story that I knew as my own life, I began to appreciate hearing my story from her perspective. She described three children that Larry and Linda had and ultimately how proud she was of her son. As the “sitter” I felt honored to hear such a story and as a part of the story I felt the need to tell her that I was one of those children. The only problem is that she wouldn’t remember that fact in about 5 minutes after me telling her. Then something amazing happened. She began to sing You Are My Sunshine while staring off into the yard. She sang it note for note, word for word, without missing a beat. As she slipped more and more into the abyss of her own mind throughout the years there was one thing she never let slip and that was music. It’s amazing what the body is capable of doing when the passion for it is so deeply imbedded.

            At her funeral there were many tears and many words shared between loved ones. Quite a few stories made their way around the room of the funeral home. I traveled from group to group to distract myself from the loss. Every single story had a theme. It was all about some time that Barbara entered their life and music followed. Sometimes it was actual music and sometimes it wasn’t so literal. Maybe it was just a sense of harmony that entered their lives after meeting her. I began to think about my life and the impact she’s had on me. I discovered that if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t be doing musical theatre today. My dad would have never met my performing mother and the love of music would’ve never been instilled in me. That was a lot for me to take in. At that moment we were summoned to the funeral grounds to bring her to her final resting place. As we walked I held the hands of loved ones and I started to sing subconsciously. “You are my sunshine; my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.” I only got through a few words when a group of my cousins joined in with the tune. Within seconds the entire congregation of about 200 people were singing the song as a tribute to the life of Barbara Claire Bourgeois Schexnaydre. She touched me with the love and passion for music and I am confident that with 200 strong voices, we touched her back in heaven.

“Please don’t take my sunshine away…”