Jim Clark has spent his adult life and much of his youth involved working with theaters and productions. When he retires in April, he knows what he’ll do—sit through a full production.
“I don’t get to see a lot of the show,” he said about his job. “I hope to see more shows from beginning to end.”
Clark has been in charge of the Lutcher Theater for 27 seasons, more than half of the number of seasons the theater has had since opening in 1980. He will book the 2017-18 season and then retire after the last production in April.
He scheduled a perfect show for his last. It will be the Tony-winning musical “Once.” Clark said the show has a bar and the audience will be invited onstage to enjoy drinks.
The Lutcher Theater has gained a reputation with musicals and Clark said it’s a good niche. Since casinos opened in Lake Charles, people are not coming to the Lutcher to see individual entertainers as much as before.
“We’ve found an audience in big Broadway shows,” he said. Theaters in Lake Charles and Beaumont do not do the large touring performances. “New Orleans and Houston are the closes you can get to big Broadway,” he said.
Clark came to his career naturally. His parents were in the Air Force and booked entertainment for the NCO (non-commissioned officers) clubs. He recalls his father booked Chubby Checker overseas in 1966 and he got to meet him.
They moved every four years. “In eighth grade, we were living in a hotel in Paris,” he said. As a afterthought, he adds “France” to the city. Everyone in the hotel sat down to dinner in the evening and talked. They shared bathrooms on each floor.
Clark remembers walking out in the hall and seeing a girl wearing a Western cowgirl outfit with fringe in the hallway. She was practicing rope tricks. He found out she was from Canada and was traveling with a Wild West show. After talking to others in the show at dinner, he decided he wanted to be in show business.
His family came back to the U.S. and he went to five different high schools in Texas and Oklahoma. He participated in drama. When he was in Big Spring, he was impressed with the theater and the director, who flew in people from New York for performances.
He went to Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, and studied drama. He worked every position from the box office to technical director. He acted, too. And even though he was in a production of “Guys and Dolls,” he said “I don’t sing and dance.”
The musical was reviewed by the student paper in college. The review said “the dancing (in the production) points out the need for a dancing department at Cameron University.” Clark quips that a friend wrote the review.
Later, he took dance classes. “I just don’t have it,” he said. But the classes make him understand the rigors of the art. He doesn’t question when shows with dozens of dancers ask for large quantities of ice. “Their legs are so swollen they have to stand in barrels of ice,” he said.
After college he taught school and worked for theaters. While in Texarkana, he met his wife, Lynn, an art teacher who is now retired.
While managing the Lutcher Theater, Clark has worked with entertainment legends and acclaimed actors. Besides the musicals, the theater has had comedies, dramas, magicians and military troops. The Black Watch bagpipe band of the Royal Regiment of Scotland once required a bomb search of the theater because of a threat by IRA terrorists.
He loved hosting Hal Holbrook in his legendary one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight.” “His will go down as the greatest one-man show,” Clark said. After Holbrook’s most recent Lutcher performance, the staff of the theater joined him to eat at Denny’s. Clark said they got to listen to Holbrook’s stories of his years in show business.
Some of the performances have drawn criticism from audiences. Two are classics of Broadway. “Rent” was one of them and Clark said he was prepared for some of the complaints about the content. However, he was surprised at the comments about a version of “Cabaret.” “Even I was uncomfortable sitting in my seat,” he said.
He said movie versions of Broadway productions sometimes water down the themes. “Cabaret” is set in pre-World War II Nazi Germany. The version at the Lutcher showed that “humans are capable of being very terrible creatures,” he said.
Some plays and musicals don’t fit in Orange, he said. “The Book of Mormon” will not play at the Lutcher, he said.
Clark also misses the operas. For his first years as director of the theater, he made sure one opera performance was scheduled each year. The operas would sell out; so the audience is here. However, because of the personnel and other costs of a touring opera production, the shows have become too expensive, he said.
He loves drawing students and kids to the theater. After he took over the Lutcher, he increased the number of shows for children. “When I got here, they had one (children’s) show a year,” he said.
When schools take field trips to the Lutcher so the students can see the productions, Clark likes to watch the kids and listen to them. Some think the theater is a castle. Some have never been in a balcony.
Exposing students to theater is important to their lives. “There’s lots of kids who aren’t into sports,” he said. At the theater, some get to see acting or something like the changing lights or moving sets. They think “I could fit in with them.”
Touring productions love coming to the Lutcher Theater because of the local hospitality. The volunteer Theater Guild prepares home-cooked feasts for the traveling casts and crews. Clark recalls a production where the theater staff made sure the tech crew got boudain kolaches every day.
Under Clark, the Lutcher has also been a place for productions to practice before hitting the road. The recent “Mama Mia” spent a week in Orange before putting on two shows. All the cast and crew spent a week in a local hotel and ate at local restaurants.
After he retires, he has to attack some things. “I’ve got projects around the house that have built up for 27 years,” he said. He also recently got his boat out for the first time in about five years.
He figures he’ll take about a year off working and then become a theater consultant. After all, the business is constantly changing. As he strolls out of the front door, he talks about new changes in computer ticketing that he’s researching.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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