95. Tom Bissinger's Fun House

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Adventures in Theater History, where we bring you the best stories about the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. Our original theme music is by Christopher Mark Colucci.

I’m Peter Schmitz, and I am very honored and pleased today to welcome Tom Bissinger to the podcast. Tom Bissinger is an artist, a director, and a writer, and a long time participant in the Philadelphia cultural scene.

If you remember his name, that’s because at the end of Episode 89, we read the chapter from my book about Tom’s direction of the show The Line of Least Existence in January of 1970, and the subsequent closing of the Theatre of the Living Arts. 

In fact, it was because of that chapter that I finally got a chance to finally meet Tom, who has stayed in the Philadelphia area ever since, and nowadays lives with his wife Kristin in a lovely farmstead/art studio/spiritual gathering place in the countryside to the west of the city. Tom invited me out there last month, and I was able to persuade him to come on the podcast and talk about things that didn’t make it into that chapter in my book.

I spoke to Tom over Zoom earlier this week - and I need to mention that much of our conversation is based upon his own 2013 book, a fascinating autobiographical memoir, called The Fun House: Memory, Magic and Mayhem, published in 2013 by XLibris.

I don't want to run over too much of what's in his book, because there’s much more in it than just his work in Philly theater. Anyway, I'd like to let Tom tell us himself! So here’s my recording of my chat with Tom, which I’ve edited down to keep it under an hour, and also for sound clarity and time. Here we go:

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Peter Schmitz: Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here.

Peter Schmitz: Well, it's been such a pleasure to meet and get to know you recently, and I hope you'll forgive me for taking so long to come and find you, because you've been here longer than I have, although both of us are arrivals to the area. You grew up in California, right?

Tom Bissinger: San Francisco.

Peter Schmitz: San Francisco. Yeah. And then you went to Phillips Andover and to Stanford and had a tour in the army, but eventually you end up around here. And now you live in a beautiful farmstead to the west of Philadelphia with your wife Kristen, and all your art. It's a lovely, lovely domestic scene there. I was very, very honored to be asked to come by there the other day.

But I wanted to start with sort of an apology. Because you're in my book. Now, one of the reasons I went out there to visit you is, I wanted to give you a copy of my book, and you were very gracious about it. But there's a chapter in my book in which I describe The Line of Least Existence, that musical which was sort of the last big hurrah of the Theatre of the Living Arts. And it's a great story, because it involves Danny Devito and Judd Hirsch and all sorts of amazing things that were going on there, as the Sixties came to an end and the theater came to an end. But I don't think I really did justice to your work in the Philadelphia theater, and certainly your work along the South Street area in the 1970s. So I'm so glad to get you on the podcast and give you a chance to talk about it yourself.

So you went into the Army after college. Why did you end up in the Armed services?

Tom Bissinger: Well, first of all, it was a universal draft system, so I had no choice, and I couldn't bring myself to try to get out on some kind of bogus excuse, and I had 6 months. Well, you know, I graduated from Stanford, went to . . .  lived in Paris for 6 months, saw a lot of great theater there which opened my eyes to my future in the theater. And then I got a notice, saying:  “You're going to be drafted 1-A, unless you get back here and enroll in some kind of reserve program.” Which I did. And it was a 6 months active/6 month reserve . . .  6 year reserve . .  and that was the best I could find. And it was in Fort Ord, California, near San Francisco. So, I just did it.

Peter Schmitz: But you said you had sort of a military heritage in your family . . .

Tom Bissinger: [My father was in] World War II, and he was in big invasions in Sicily, Salerno and Anzio and Anzio was a complete disaster, and my father suffered through that, they called “battle fatigue” then. So I've imagined I've written and read up on what it must have been like to be in those battles where the Germans are shelling you from the shore, and you're on a ship, and ships are getting blown up around you, and people are dying, and blood, and etc. Andt it had to be probably really awful and so. . .

Peter Schmitz: So you imagine he came back with some PTSD

Tom Bissinger: Yeah. And then, for some reason, and I was a kid, you know, in 1945, I was. . .  I turned 6 years old and he was appointed the Executive of the Morro Bay Naval base preparing for the invasion of Okinawa. So we moved to a naval base which I loved. That was exciting, you know, and all kinds of stuff, adventures there. And he loved the Navy. He truly loved it. He was a big man in politics and in the Naval Reserve in San Francisco, and so he kept all that up. But I was not a Navy man my brother was. He went in the Navy, too.

Peter Schmitz: Well, I bring up particularly the question of your father, because before this in his life he was a Broadway actor.

Tom Bissinger: He was a Broadway actor and stage manager  a show called The Little  . .  Little Show  . . . Little Review . .  Little Show with Fred Allen and Clifton Webb and Portland, Hoffa, and I have pictures of him glossies of him escorting, you know, beautiful showgirls on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, where . . 

Peter Schmitz: Libby Holman was in it! The great torch singer!

Tom Bissinger: So it was . . it was a hit .  . . and then his father said, “You’ve got to come back in the family business” - which was hides, wool, and tallow - a far cry from theater.

But he always loved theater. He shared it with me. He belonged to a Concordia Club which put on shows every year that they wrote. And I remember his two friends, Sloss and Glickbart and him in our downstairs living room writing the show, and I thought, “God, this is glamorous, this is really neat.” And then, when I'd go to the Concordia Club and see the show and every musical that came out from New York with the firs-irun cast, and it was always the first-run cast, in the Forties and early Fifties. We saw every single one. So . .  and when I was eight he took me back East . . . took us all back East, on the “City of San Francisco” train, and we saw High Button Shoes directed by, I think, Jerome Robbins - or he did [the dances].

Peter Schmitz: Yeah!

Tom Bissinger: And I just was smitten, like, this was the greatest thing I ever saw in my life! So, bless my father for giving me that opportunity! I have to bookend it by saying that when I left the theater in 1970, after the TLA closed . . the year before, while I was at the theater, my father died. But he had been ill for quite a while.

Peter Schmitz: Right. We'll get to that. It was during the rehearsals of Recruiting Officer he passed away.

Tom Bissinger: Oh, yeah, I mean, it was brutal, and I was, you know, not on great terms with him at that time, because I was a hippie, and he was, you know, more conservative.

Peter Schmitz: Right . . . straight-laced . . .

Tom Bissinger: He wasn't, like, a hard-right conservative, anybody. But in the way you dressed, like, appropriate attire, and hair, and all that . . .

Peter Schmitz: Right. And what did you look like in the 1960s?

Tom Bissinger: I had an afro. I actually had an afro. It was just because my hair gets curly, and it just was a big bush.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: And, you know, I mean we went along with, you know, the prevailing, you know.

Peter Schmitz: You’re a very tall man, and slender and very striking-looking, right? So you also had, you know . . you describe yourself in the book wearing bell-bottoms and beads.

Tom Bissinger: Oh, yeah, the whole thing.

Peter Schmitz: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Bissinger: You know, today would be a complete caricature, but at the time it was . . .  everybody else was doing it.

Peter Schmitz: It had integrity, I think. I think you were being One With The Moment. But after you leave the army, now, in 1962 you arrive in New York City. You arrive about the same time as a young Bob Dylan's arriving . . 

Tom Bissinger: “A complete unknown”!

Peter Schmitz: Yes.

Tom Bissinger: A complete unknown, Peter! And that's true. I had no.  . . . I had no connections, you know. There's no one to say, “Oh, yeah, we'll give you a boost.” And so, you know, I saw the thing was to take a lot of classes. I took a class. I took classes with Alan Schneider, Harold Clurman. Oh . . 

Peter Schmitz: Some veterans of the Stanislavsky . . . Right, you said some of some of Stanislavsky's old Russian  . . 

Tom Bissinger: That when I was in the theater out in Palo Alto, a guy from The Actors Studio, who was a trip - I'll just leave it at that. And, uh, but it was. . . You know, we did a Brecht play. It was really fun to do. But he was a brutal director. I didn't like his tactics. But yeah, the . . . you know, The Actors Studio was the I was okay with that. But I mean, I never was there. I wasn't, you know, a complete, like, aficionado of The Method. But at the same time, yeah, man. I was just for good acting. However . . 

Peter Schmitz: But the type of theater you seem to be most attracted to - and which would be typical of the time - is not realistic theater or Broadway-type theater, but Absurdist drama, Brechtian drama, highly theatricalized and subversive texts. You end up working at La MaMa, where Ellen Stewart was forming . ...

Tom Bissinger: At La MaMa. Yeah,  at La MaMa. The Trial of Julian Beck and Judith Molina.  . . and I forget what else I did there. But yeah, that was cool, and you know . . .

Peter Schmitz: In your book you say that you, as you were walking into La MaMa, you'd pass these two high . . . . these two stoned hippies on the stairs, Jerome Ragni and [James Rado]. . who were working on Hair . .  

Tom Bissinger:  Oh, yeah, yeah, they were right hanging on there. Yeah. I was. I was. Well, I was part of the Open Theater led by Joe Chaikin.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: So I went to their workshops. And I wasn't close with Joe, but I definitely knew him and Ragni and those two guys were yeah, sitting out there, writing Hair.

Peter Schmitz: Right. So you also  . .  you start working at the American Place Theater, which is sort of a . . . later, ended up in the Times Square area, but that, and again another sort of off-off Broadway.

Tom Bissinger: Saint Clements Church on, like, West 55 th or something.

Peter Schmitz: Right

Tom Bissinger: It was well regarded. And the play . .  I had so much fun with that play! But, my God! The audience left in droves. They just detested it. It was very sexual, highly sexualized. And all I could tell you, New York audiences, for all their sophistication, man, it's a veneer and a lot of these very hip people. . . .  You can scratch the surface and they'll bolt out of their seats. You know. They're not quite as discriminating, or whatever.

Peter Schmitz: Well, what I found about New York audiences is that what they really don't want to be associated with is something that's not a success.

Tom Bissinger: Right.

Peter Schmitz: Right. So if it looks like, “Oh, this isn't where it's happening”, they get out right away. They're not going to invest their time in something that gonna not [let them] say, “Oh, I was there. I was there when that great thing happened.” If it's not going to be Hair, or Hamilton, or whatever they're like. “Okay, we're out. We're not here to be associated. . .”

Tom Bissinger: If you want to hear an anecdote from that play, I think a funny one, maybe sort of sums up what I just previously said, which was one night Wayne Tippett, who was pretty well-known actor, got sick, and they said, “Tom, you’ve got to do it! Take the lead role.” And you know I didn't know the lines. I held a script, . . it's called The Young Master Dante  so at one point Dante's lying down on a table, and there's a trap door behind his behind, and I reached, and he's naked, but you don't see. You can see that his buttocks are revealed, and you reach down, and I was pulling out hamburgers and coke bottles and palmolive oil, whatever you know, just commercial product. But I had never done this because Wayne had done it. So I reached down, and I grab his testicles by mistake, and he's going “WOOOOP!”.

Peter Schmitz: “Those don't come off!”

Tom Bissinger: I let go of them, but it was, like, unexpected. You know, that kind of thing happened, but you know the audience was revolted, I guess or amused, whichever way you want to see it by that kind of thing.

Peter Schmitz: But you were working on a Sam Shepard play La Turista, one of his early plays, which is set in Mexico, which involves a live chicken, and we'll come back to that. But did that start in New York, and then go to the Theatre of Living Arts? Or did you go down to Philadelphia to. . . 

Tom Bissinger: No, I had never been there, and somehow they contacted my agent . . and would I like to direct La Turista? And of course, I said, yeah. And I very much admired Sam Sherpart's work. I love it. Anyway, I went down there and directed the play well enough, I guess, so that John Bos, the producer at the TLA, hired me to direct. Be the artistic . ..

Peter Schmitz: But this was your first real time ever spending time in the city of Philadelphia?

Tom Bissinger: No, no. I went down one time before when I was with a theater group, and we did. You know, Thornton, I think it was Thornton Wilder, wrote these 27 little plays, or a whole lot of very like five minute plays, and one was about Mozart. The Death of Mozart, and I remember we went down to the Bellevue-Stratford, and I don't know the I don't know why we went there, but we went there. We performed these plays, and I remember walking down South Street just for something to do. And this is like, let's say, ‘67 . . . and it was like a bombed-out nothing. There was nothing moving, I said, “this is so slow, nothing moves here!” And there were just a bunch of mostly elderly Black people and some old Jews. And it was like surrealistic. And then, a year or two later, I end up living there.

Peter Schmitz: Yeah. So. . . You were hired to do this play called Scuba Duba, right? Because it was starring Dick Shawn, who most people might know if they know the movie The Producers, he played the Hitler character in “Springtime for Hitler.”

Tom Bissinger: Wonderful. Wonderful.

Peter Schmitz:  Yeah. Amazing comic actor. What was Scuba Duba about?

Tom Bissinger: Scuba Duba was about sort of Political Incorrectness as best I can recall, and you know he's flopping around in scuba gear, and I guess, on an island. He has a wife, Jennifer Warren. I think her name was . .  I mean the actress. And then this sort of nymphy really, hot babe that I fell in love with, called Judi West. . . anyway. So we and we actually played at two places. We played in New Jersey in . . .

Peter Schmitz: The Paramus Mall, or something.

Tom Bissinger: One of those theaters there. We took it there and then we went to Philly with it. It was a big hit, I mean, people loved it, and Shawn was excellent.

Peter Schmitz: You’re booked into the Playhouse in the Park, which was not too far from where I'm sitting right now . . .  no longer there. I discussed it in the book and elsewhere on the podcast, but they were still doing so this is the play they sort of, brought in, the way that they brought in Marat/Sade, and other plays that came in at the time. But how did it go over in Philadelphia? This . . .  because it had a lot of very explicit language in it.

Tom Bissinger: People liked it, you know. There were a lot of m-f words in it and stuff, but Rizzo heard about it, and he didn't like it.

Peter Schmitz: Mayor Frank Rizzo.

Tom Bissinger: Well, mayor, or at that time Police Commissioner.

Peter Schmitz: That's right. He was Police Commissioner then. Yes.

Tom Bissinger: And he wanted to close the place unless we excised the words. Well, of course nothing feeds the box office like being censored, you know, and that just put us over the top. And Shawn would come to the words and say, “Why, you censored person!” You know, and he gets a laugh every time he said “censored.” And you know, the play went on. And you know we didn't need the words. It wasn't going to make or break the play. But Shawn made fun of it.

Peter Schmitz: And by that time you had already applied for the job of . . . to be the new artistic director of The Living Arts.

Tom Bissinger: I had already gotten it by that point.

Peter Schmitz: Yeah. But so, what was your understanding? I mean Andre Gregory, by that time, had famously left - been fired, eased out, and the theater had gone on for a couple of years now without him. What had you known about that whole story? What was your sort of. . .

Tom Bissinger: I knew almost nothing about it. I knew that Andre was, and I didn't. I've never met Andre. I knew he was a, you know, really interesting avant-garde director, you know, you know. And then he was very into Grotowski, and so he was a far-edge explorer. I admired him for that. And why he got fired, you know, evidently, you know, his plays were too far out. And I just, it seemed, like, I followed in his footsteps in a certain way. And - as I think I've told you elsewhere - that had I known a little more then what I know today, I might have changed things around a bit. But I was given complete license to do whatever I wanted to do.

Peter Schmitz: So John Bos was then the managing director of the theater, and you developed a nice relationship with him.

Tom Bissinger: He's a wonderful guy. He was a wonderful guy, a man, I think, of great integrity. He died like, you know, a couple of months ago, and he was able to talk to people, especially the Main Line board, who put up the money for the theater - and convince them that these were good things, and I was a good person. And they made a lot out of my coming. I mean, there was an ad, a full page ad in the Inquirer in 1969 - with me with dark glasses, my Afro haircut, saying: “This Man Will Give You Six of the Best Nights of Your Life.”

Peter Schmitz: [Laughs] Well! . . . Excuse me while I fan myself! My goodness!

Tom Bissinger: They built the season around me somewhat, and then, you know . . . and we had great actors, I mean it wasn't about me, but they had to start with something.

Peter Schmitz: Well, they had a company right? There were actors. You had people that . .  you didn't have to assemble a group from out of New York. There were people you did. Did you bring everybody in.

Tom Bissinger: I assembled, I brought in Morgan and .  . .

Peter Schmitz: Morgan Freeman, I should say at this point, yeah.

Tom Bissinger: Morgan Freeman and Judd Hirsch . .. . and Sally Kirkland was an old member, but had been there, Michael Procaccino might have been there. I don't, and . .  and now he has a new name, because he . . .

Peter Schmitz: Michael Christofer.

Tom Bissinger:  . . Cristofer, right. And then there were other people that were. Yes, there were some basic kind of regular. But the stars, you know. I ask them to come down.

Peter Schmitz: Was it? Was it hard to persuade New York actors to come down to Philadelphia  for a while back then? No?

Tom Bissinger: No. I don't think so. I think they liked the fact that they were gonna work. And they were, you know, hungry.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: And they hadn't achieved the fame yet.

Peter Schmitz: So do you feel like you discovered Morgan Freeman, in a little way?

Tom Bissinger: Nah.

Peter Schmitz: He was already . .

Tom Bissinger: No he was already, from Scuba Duba, well known and . . 

Peter Schmitz: Oh, he was in Scuba Duba, as well.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, but I was. I was fortunate enough to, you know, be able to get them to come down. AnI I very much liked working with them, you know.

Peter Schmitz: So you move down to Philadelphia and you get a little house there near the theater in this sort of bombed out area. What was that real estate visit like?

Tom Bissinger: Well, had I not gotten divorced while I was living there, I’d probably still have the house, although I don't think I'd be living there, but the house was. . .  I could have bought this wonderful old colonial house for $15,000 right on the corner of Monroe and Second Street, in Queen Village and  . .  but it was a bombed out neighborhood, I mean you walk . . . what it reminded me of was London in the fog, and Dickens, you know. I had been to London. But it just seemed like this lonely, desolate outpost, the South Street area, and even further where I lived it was in fog..

Peter Schmitz: It wasn't that far from Central Philadelphia? It's it's just . . 

Tom Bissinger: I mean. That's why I never understood. I said, “how could this be right in the center of Philadelphia, and it's a slum?” Of course they wanted to put the freeway through. . . .

Peter Schmitz: It was. It was that they expected a freeway to come through at any day, and nobody knew that that wasn't going to work. Yeah.

Tom Bissinger: As your life unfolds, and you maybe become who you didn't know you wanted to be. But your seed sort of unfolds. It’s that I became part of a neighborhood after the TLA closed, called South Street, in South Street, Renaissance, whatever you want to call it, where all these hippies showed up from around the world and said, Wow, it's cheap. Everything is really cheap. Here, let's just start a restaurant. Let's start a bakery. Let's start a . ., you know, let's deal dope. Let's play music, whatever. And it was like it just was right for me at that time, especially after the TLA closed.

Peter Schmitz: Right. Well, let's get through the whole of that story. So you arrive in town. You're the new . . .  promising everyone “six the most wonderful nights of their life,” or they could come more often than that if they want to. But you choose for your first play, this 18th century Restoration comedy, called The Recruiting Officer, by George Farquhar - F A R Q U H A R - for those of you following along at home. Now this is a famous play - and I happen to be teaching it right now, by the way, in my own class at Temple.

Tom Bissinger: Oh!

Peter Schmitz: Well, because Temple University is now staging a production of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, which is about convicts in Australia, putting on The Recruiting Officer, right. And The Recruiting Officer was the first play, the first play ever done in New York City, the way. It was such a standard work in the 18th century. That, of course, that's what you turned to. It was. It's a rollicking comedy. It's bawdy. It's got lots of good roles. And it's about a military culture that everybody would have been familiar with at the time it takes place in Shrewsbury or “Shrowsbury” in Western England, and it, basically . . .  I know you know the plot, but I'm reciting it for those of our listeners who might not be familiar with it.  . . It's about two men who are after two different women. But the women have agency. Unlike a lot of 18th and later 19th century plays, the women are also very active in seeking out their desires and wants.

But it begins with a sergeant, a Sergeant Kite, coming in and recruiting the local yokels into the British army, which was beginning its sort of expansionist Imperialist mission in the world . .  and, you know, suborning them, bribing them, finding ways to trick them into being in the army, and eventually over the course of the play. One of the young women - these two young guys are going after these two women who have certain fortunes as well as physical attractions - and one of the young women disguises herself as a man (again, a very common, you know, 17th and 18th century theatrical trope) and pretends to enlist in the army in order to get close to this young man, and well complications ensue.

So by the end, of course, everyone is together with the person they're supposed to be together with. There is a comic moment where the young woman, dressed as a young man, ends up in bed with a young country girl. So there's a lot of, sort of, ribald jests throughout it, but it's delightfully constructed. And usually, if you can get past the 18th century language, works like gangbusters. 

But why did you pick it? Why did you go, “This is what I need to start with”?

Tom Bissinger: I picked it because it had something to do with war. We were in the thick of Vietnam and I wanted to address that issue. But I didn't wanna make it a polemic. I wanted to, you know, find a vehicle that could be witty and fun and sexy - and as it turned out musical - and see if I could get away with it. And without really knowing a lot of the pedigree of this play, I mean, I wasn't. I'm not a Restoration comedy . ..

Peter Schmitz: You're not a theater historian. 

Tom Bissinger: I hadn’t read a lot of that stuff.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: And so . .  but as I was reading it, I started to see, and unfortunately I don't have a copy or anything of the script. . .  I realized I could start juxtaposing and moving scenes around and changing the script. which I did - boldly, I would say.

Peter Schmitz: Well, it's  in the public domain. Farquhar’s been dead since 1709 or whatever. Yeah.

Tom Bissinger: Reckless, possibly, but for my purposes it worked perfectly. And then I thought, “Wow, there's music in there,” because I don't remember. But you know there's, you know, drummers and stuff. And I said, “Let's get some music.” And John said, “Well, there's this local group called Good News, consisting of Larry gold, and Michael Bacon and I'll talk. . .” “Bring them in!” And they bring . . they were young guys younger than me, a little younger.

And I said, "Guys, I want some music for this, and I've heard your CD. And I love this song."

Peter Schmitz: Well, you didn't say 'CD' back then, you must have said  . . 

Tom Bissinger: Well, it was something.

Peter Schmitz: Tape - it must have been a reel-to-reel tape, maybe a cassette.

Tom Bissinger: You're right.

Peter Schmitz: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Bissinger: But I had heard something, and so they said they were up for it. So I thought, “Okay, I've got the script and we'll juggle it around. I've got these actors. I've got music.” And Eugene Lee was the set designer, and Eugene was building a beautiful set with a sloped ramp, with enough lift from one step to another that the musicians could be under the stage, but they could look out and see the audience. They can't can't see any of the actors, but they could see the audience. And so they, the two guys, were down there. .. . , and it just was a wonderful cast that caught the spirit of the thing, and such were some of the idiosyncrasies that  . . We had  . . .Larry Block was one of the members. He: became a fairly well-known actor, and at intermission he delivered a diatribe about Vietnam, which actually alienated some of the audience.

Peter Schmitz: Yes, we'll get to that. That's mentioned in a review that I want to read to you. Yeah.

Tom Bissinger: I mean, you know, so, we tried all kinds of stuff and just had . . just broke a lot of rules, and it seemed, in this case, to just work perfectly - as opposed to maybe the last production. . . 

Peter Schmitz: All right, before we get to that. So you've got something that's working. Did you know, by the way, that Mr. Bacon was the son of Ed Bacon, the big city planner, the guy that was trying to drive this highway across South Street?

Tom Bissinger: I was told that, but it didn't really . . .

Peter Schmitz: Didn’t register

Tom Bissinger: Ed and I did . . I did get to become friends with Ed, because he loved the theater, and he loved what we were doing. Just loved it.

Peter Schmitz: But on the whole, you're coming in not particularly part of the Philadelphia establishment, with not really a lot of knowledge about the local scene. But you make a splash . . you have An Arrival. There was this huge spread in the Sunday Inquirer, which has got wonderful pictures from it, including close-ups of Sally Kirkland. 

There's an article from the Philadelphia Daily News which interviews you. You say: “‘The original play is largely unrecognizable,’ says Tom, who notes that while British dramatist George Farquhar's text has been cut, nothing has been rewritten. ‘We've added 14 new songs which run the gamut from rock to traditional martial airs.’”

“The lyrics were written after research into the writings of Farquhar and 18th century songs. ‘The comedy will not be played in its own period and style. We arrive at a collage of periods, and the multi-level set includes an arena and a circus tent, and the action will move with the audience,’ says Bissinger, who goes on to summarize the play.” . . So it mentions that in the cast is Judd Hirsch playing the part of the father, the local magistrate, and Michael Procaccino as a country gentleman. Marion Killinger and David Rounds as the recruiting officers, and Morgan Freeman as the recruiting sergeant. Sally Kirkland and Jeanne DeBaer as the ladies of fortune . .  But you say, in this interview, that “recruiting and war are basically sports in which all participants are spectators.”

What did you mean by that, or what? What do you remember meaning by that at the time?

Tom Bissinger: Well, it's something I dwelt with in my writing as well that there's a sort of the pornography of war that we, for instance, mostly well-fed Americans, get to watch the war in Ukraine and Sudan and in Gaza - you pick your poison - with impunity, you know. Really, unless we have relatives there, it's not really our war. And also, as you recall . . in the Vietnam war.

 they had the TV embedded in the war, which they never will allow after that, so that you got nightly news of total disasters every night. And so we were living with that  . . .

Peter Schmitz: No, I remember that as a kid you would watch, they would have like. “Here's the body count.” You know, of how many people we killed yesterday.

Tom Bissinger: So so. I think you couldn't not want to bring it forth, and sort of. . . and I was also very much in love with Brecht, and you know his . . um. . . I forget what they call his “distancing”, or whatever you know. I'm not sure I ever understood what he meant by that. I never . .  I don't think I ever saw a Berliner Ensemble show, but I love . .  I read his books and performed his plays. So I, you know . .  I don't know. There was just a stew of things that were occurring at that time that I wanted to take advantage of, if you will.

Peter Schmitz: Right. Well, it seems to have rubbed some local critics the wrong way, and I don't know if you ever saw this review, because it was printed not in a Philadelphia paper, but in a Wilmington paper - in the Delaware Morning News. A critic named Otto Dekom, D E K O M. Do you remember this? Did you ever see this before?

Tom Bissinger: No, no.

Peter Schmitz: The title of this review is “Play’s Revival is Vulgar.” It says: “Director Tom Bissinger has presumed to ‘update’ and improve one of the classics of English theatre. These impudent puppies of the theatre seem to think they invented all human experience yesterday morning.”

“Any great play. Even one 263 years old, speaks the universal language of humanity. It does not need ‘modernization’ any more than the Mona Lisa needs a mustache,” and he goes on from there. You were actually called an’ impudent puppy’!

Tom Bissinger: I’ve been called worse!

Peter Schmitz: Well, if I don't know if I got that review, it must have been sort of like reading the reviews for Scuba Duba. “We're in. This is great. If this guy hates it so much, we must be doing this right.”

Tom Bissinger: And it's also, I think, what comes to my mind is the patriarchy reacting. You know the White Patriarchy saying: “This is not the way things are supposed to be.”

Peter Schmitz: Yeah, he mentions that speech in the lobby. And he's not at all happy about that.

Tom Bissinger: Boo!

Peter Schmitz: He also calls you a ‘sick hippie; as well as a ‘sick puppy’ by the way. “Political propaganda has been carried to extremes even during intermission. The audience is harangued by members of the cast with Viet Cong-type propaganda. We are told, among other things, that those who love America are idiots.” He was not not happy with you.

Tom Bissinger: Bye-bye!

Peter Schmitz: But yeah, well, so that's in Wilmington, and maybe defected. But meanwhile William Collins, who was then a fairly new reviewer at the Inquirer had been reviewing plays throughout the sixties, and when it would continue throughout the seventies and eighties, we've quoted him many times, and eventually the dear man actually, after he retires from being a critic, becomes an actor again. He works in Philadelphia theater in the 1990s as an actor, but he loved the show, Tom. He loved it, and he wrote this rave review, which, of course, the TLA with John Bos and put it right in the ads - amazing because his review starts. “Air of Celebration Prevails in The Recruiting Officer.”

And he says: ”The Theatre of the Living Arts cast off its season Tuesday night with a fresh and wildly newfangled production of the Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer, the company assembled by Tom Bissinger for his first production as artistic director at the South Street establishment, radiated a joyful energy as they tackled the classic with everything from gunpowder to rock. There was an air of celebration in the event, something in the nature of a shipboard party in a midnight sailing, what with Bissinger's promise to pilot us into uncharted seas of theatrical pleasure.” So that's what I call a rave.

Tom Bissinger: You know . . aside from that, Bill and I became quite good friends, and I really loved the guy. He was very, very positive for our theater, and a very nice human being.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Peter Schmitz: So, what was your experience of what the Philadelphia audience were like? They were. They're still coming to South Street after, you know, many times of being maybe discouraged. And they're showing up at this plate in droves. And it's it's it's you're having great.

Tom Bissinger: All I can say. Peter, it was excellent, so I take tremendous happiness and pride in the production, and you know, as they say, if you don't have it well acted and performed, I mean it's not me doing it up.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: But it was joyful, and every night we did. We sang some of the songs backstage before we went on stage, and you know the whole cast. They're just singing along with them, playing on the guitar. And I mean in rehearsals I would do Yoga with them, you know, like I don't even know if they could do that today. Maybe.

Peter Schmitz: I think so. Yeah.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah. But you know, I mean,” Everybody get down, we're gonna do 30 min on the mat of Yoga,” And, not that I knew that much about it, but.

Peter Schmitz: Well, it sounds like you were a spiritual leader of the production as well as the sort of artistic leader they were. They were with you. And did you look at some? You have a young Morgan Freeman there? Are you looking and going like? Well, here's a major actor of the world are you just going? Is this guy fun.

Tom Bissinger: And I can't even repeat the stories about his behavior off stage. They lived at some hotel, and evidently, you know, I mean he I don't know whether he left the water on and totally flooded the room, or did stuff. I mean, there was stuff I didn't know anything about. He was easy to work with, and he had a certain, you know, I would say a dynamic of being a Black actor, and I wasn't all that familiar with working with Black actors/actresses, you know. So I think there were a couple of times I kind of stumbled where maybe I didn't quite know or use the right words to. . .  you know, or maybe I was trying to assume a familiarity about something that, you know. But I mean he didn't rebuke me just so, you know, would look at me and he was a big guy, tall guy, you know. And I mean now you can't go anywhere without seeing me in some ad or movie, or whatever.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: But It was fun, and he was excellent. He was just excellent.

Peter Schmitz: And Judd Hirsch is playing the part of the Justice, and you remark in your book that he was a very professional actor.

Tom Bissinger: Oh, man, he's just so solid a real mensch! This sounds insulting on how else to put it. He was a businessman, meaning he was . . .uh, he is a wonderful actor, I mean, [he] can do anything, I mean excellent. But he also took care of his business. He wasn't like a starving guy. He had a house, a farm in Bucks County. He just knew how to keep his life going and maintain himself as well as you know, eating up every part he could get. So he was a mensch. You know, he was a real mensch.

Peter Schmitz: Right well. So, as we mentioned earlier in the middle of the rehearsal process for The Recruiting Officer, your father dies suddenly. He's on a trip to London with your mother, and he'd been ill, and he'd had cancer or something before that?

Tom Bissinger: He had cancer. Yeah, he had cancer. And then he had a heart attack, and then a stroke which rendered him unable to talk or do anything but blink his eyes, and then they flew him back home, and he died thereafter.

Peter Schmitz: Right. So you had to go back to California, to the funeral . . .

Tom Bissinger: I did not. I did not. I didn't go to London either. I mean, I had just started. I was there, like, I don't know. I think he died, like, the beginning of October, maybe, and you know we had started in September. I mean, I was two weeks into rehearsals, and, you know, and given the intricacy of this play, and how I rearranged it, there was just no way I could leave, 

And to compound matters for me, personally, I was not on good terms with him when he left. You know, the last time we met was a complete disaster in California that summer in which we were just screaming at each other. And “you're disgusting.” “You look awful and clean yourself up,” and “F you”, “What did my . . “ You know. Bah bah bah. And all I can say is, it took me many years of some therapy, and to work on myself to come to terms with his death and him and our behavior with each other. And you know . .  and then occasionally, through the years I've had dreams of him showing up, and . .  very strange dreams. You know the last one, which was a number of years ago, I introduced myself. I said, “Hi!” “Oh!” And he walks in. I know exactly who he is. I say, “Hi! I'm Tom Bissinger.” And he says, ”Oh, yeah, I know who you are.” And we hug. And then this . . . behind me is like a chorus of about twenty robed women, with my wife right in the center. So the lead woman. And they're singing, like, a hymn or some kind of thing, a very beautiful kind of spiritually directed music, singing while we embraced. But it took a long time and some gestalt therapy to really, you know, work my way through the pain and of a disastrous . . .

Peter Schmitz: Well, it's interesting because we just talked to Mary Robinson, who was the head of the Philadelphia Theater Guild in the nineties, about how she was dealing, not only with the birth of her young son when she started work there, but her own mother was ill and passing away - who she had a good relationship with. But it was. . .  it was something that she had never really talked about at the time, but she felt that she needed to get on with the you know the work that she was doing, and and you felt a commitment to the work you're doing at TLA. In fact, you opened a new space behind the theater right. There was a  . . .you wanted an alternate space. And you . .  What did you find to work in?

Tom Bissinger: There was an old garage right behind. There's an alley, and then an old garage, 2 floor garage. And I said, “I want to stage a play in here.” John Bos . . 

Peter Schmitz: Did it belong to the theater? Was it part of the building complex? Or did they have to rent it?

Tom Bissinger: Good question. I think it was. I think we did own it, and maybe we stored stuff there.

Peter Schmitz: Okay.

Tom Bissinger: I think we stored our.  . . Yeah. I think it . .  actually, yes. The downstairs was where we worked on the flats and built the scenery. So it was a scenery shop downstairs. Upstairs was just a big empty floor, was all. And I said “I'd like to direct this Gargoyle Cartoons there that really interests me” - by Michael McClure. And so we just went ahead and did it. And again it was a big, big hit. A very psychedelic kind of play. The plays themselves were short, cartoonish plays, very brilliant. Michael McClure was a beautiful poet, and. . . 

Peter Schmitz: From San Francisco.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah. I went out. I met him. Very sweet guy, very fine writer. And he was delighted that we were going to do these plays, you know. Very few professional theater companies were interested in doing these plays. And I had my sort of second-string actors, the ones that weren't the big names like Judd or Morgan. In these plays, and they were terrific.

 And I'll just tell you, because I thought this never would be allowed again. We . .  and it was a very big space. We created a . .  like a stretch cloth. There was maybe. . .  let's say it was 30 by 60 feet, maybe. and we've had slits in it. And the audience went in and put their heads. They sat. We had mats. Everyone sat on a cushion with their head through this billowing thing. So it was resting on your shoulders. And then, there were certain things were marked for the actors, for the five actors in this one play. It was all supposed to take place in Heaven or out in space, or something like that.

And so the whole play was done with great lights and them popping up, maybe right next to you or across from you and doing this wonderful dialogue, and very spacey, you know. I mean, you can imagine. And so that was kind of one of the  . .  one of the plays.

Peter Schmitz: But it was shut down . . . but the city got after you. The building Inspectors decided that this is a fire hazard?

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, the rats! And oh, they weren't rats . .  but they were rats.

Peter Schmitz: Well, they made a lot of trouble for a lot of avant-garde theater companies. I've seen that story before . . “L&I” It was called, “Licenses and Inspections got after us and shut us down” . . 

Tom Bissinger: And then, Larry Magid, of the Electric Factory, invited us to stage it over there. So we went over there and did it.

Peter Schmitz: Wow, so and so this is . . .and this is also sort of a success d’estime. Perhaps it's not so much in the box office. . . . But in your book you say your big mistake was allowing The Recruiting Officer to close. That you felt like  . . .  It's the common dilemma of repertory theaters, and that you set up a schedule of shows, and they're meant to run for three to six weeks, and then you move on to the next one. But if you've got a show that is selling out every night, you feel like, “how can you close it”? More people want to see it. You could keep people coming in. But you felt like you stuck to the model and allowed the show to be over. And in the book, you say, “I never should have done that.”

Tom Bissinger: Anyone who's listening in this podcast, who is a director, a theater, artistic director, going to be one: Keep that in mind. If you have a hit, extend it, run it, do not close. You'll deal with the rest of it later, but, you know, do not close a hit.

Peter Schmitz: But instead, you moved on to the . . .  well, the infamous The Line of Least Existence right, with this, and we described that in the book. So at this point I'm just going to [say]: “Read the chapter in the book. Find the book there it is.” And of course that's got not only Judd Hirsch, but Danny Devito in it. How did you get Danny Devito to come down to Philadelphia to do a show?

Tom Bissinger: Danny was back to the American Place Theater, and the play was called Young Master Dante, and Danny was in that. And I guess that's where I first met him.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: So he seemed. You know, you needed someone to play a part of a talking dog, a personality, a wise-acrering dog, and . . 

Peter Schmitz: Yeah.

Tom Bissinger: Danny seemed to fit the bill, and I guess he was free.

Peter Schmitz: All the reviews, they all loved him. If people hated The Line of Least Existence, they all said: “But this guy, Danny Devito - playing the dog. That was hysterical!”

Tom Bissinger: He was hysterical, and Judd was, of course, good, and the rest of it was. . there’s a French word, degolas. It was just  . . It was pretty much a disaster, with some unbelievable, memorable moments that, like, . . . 

Peter Schmitz: Well, I see that you had a large, you know, like, six-foot tall penis that erupts at the end. . . 

Tom Bissinger: It was more than six-foot. It was 10 feet.

Peter Schmitz: More than six, okay!

Tom Bissinger: That was about two feet wide, and ejaculated, all these soap suds all over the floor at the end of Act One, and which, in a way, was really a metaphor for the whole show. You know I don't know what it was. It was  . . . It was what it was. And I . . And also it was fine as a little Off-Broadway show at a La MaMa something . . .

Peter Schmitz: And previously  . . it had a New York run before that.

Tom Bissinger: To be on a big stage in Philadelphia or any stage, big stage. It just exposed it . . . it didn't have the bones to be, you know, solid like that.

Peter Schmitz: Well, the idea was that it would be the next Hair - that maybe it could go on if it was, if it was enough counterculture, if it was crazy enough, if it was chaotic enough, it would repeat the success of that show, maybe, but that seemed to have been the hope, from what I can tell.

Tom Bissinger: I needed a handler at that time, too. “So, Tom, let's see, what other choices could we make here?” And I was . . 

Peter Schmitz: Well, I'm wondering, though, looking back at it now, if you say you recently experienced the loss of your father, and you had had a very, you know, complex relationship with him. If this was all beginning, sort of, to settle now. You're now three or four months on, and you're that that was there was you were trying to keep so many balls in the air, emotionally and professionally, that there's just there's too much going on. Sometimes we ask so much of our artists who, you know: “Create something! Okay, that was great and do it again right away. No matter how you're feeling, you have to keep this on this production schedule!”

Tom Bissinger: Yeah. And I was in love with this Judi West, who was in the play before which we haven't talked about Harry, Noon and Night, which I didn't direct, which was a disaster as well for other reasons. And so I was, you know, one hour-long distance calls to LA, or wherever where she might be working, you know. And, like, stewing in my juices that way. And you know there were all kinds. I mean, that's not an excuse. That's just part of the gestalt of where I was at. But yeah, it all came to a head.

Peter Schmitz: Right.

Tom Bissinger: And you know, as old Mr. Epstein, who ran the lingerie store on 4th Street - which I later rented and turned into something called WPCP - He said, “There must be a reason. There must be a reason!” I never know what the reason is, but there must be one. And so.

Peter Schmitz: Well, the one saving grace is that you've begun to get involved with this neighborhood. I mean, for instance, there was a neighborhood chicken dealer where you could get live chickens to bring in for The Recruiting Officer, because I read in the review: “live chickens on stage,” which is always a challenge. But there's neighborhood poultry dealers who can supply you with live chickens. And there you are, living in this historic house in this neighborhood, and the Theater of the Living Arts essentially goes bust. The board of directors decides to shut it down. There's a sort of a huge auction you hold sort of a mass. I read, a . .

Tom Bissinger: A black mass, yeah.

Peter Schmitz: . .  sort of ceremony where you sort of bid goodbye to it, and the items of the set pieces and costumes are auctioned off, you know, and members of the you know, the Main Line are coming in and buying these set pieces and weird costumes from The Recruiting Officer and Line of Least Existence, and walking away with them. And then you're . . . but you're still there. You don't leave. You stay in town. Why do you stay?

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, well, that's a question for the psychiatrist I don't have. But I would say that there was something blossoming in front of me, of something new, of a neighborhood. And I loved it. I loved being part of a scene that was just burgeoning. I liked the people. They were great people. It was . . . everybody had time for you. You could, you know, you walk down the street, you run into someone. You spend half an hour talking to them. No one was in a hurry to do anything, you know, it seemed in those days. And it was all new and fresh and adventurous, and everybody came with very little baggage, and even I had little baggage. Even though I had been the director, it wasn't: “Oh, you know he was the director.” No, no one, even 90%, didn't even know about the theater.

Peter Schmitz: The people who are living just a couple of blocks away from the theater just never strolled in to see the play?.

Tom Bissinger: Probably not. No, it was like, “Oh, that's theater, and I'm rock and roll, you know, and so I don't do that.”: So, and I didn't mind. That was great. And so it became Theater of the Streets. And all of a sudden that was very real.

Peter Schmitz:  And when you say “theater of the streets” . . . describe this big plastic structure that you created.

Tom Bissinger: O god, that was so great. Well, we had these “South Street Days,” and there was a guy named Al. Johnson. He had a company called Alley Friends, pretty well-known architect with Woody Stange . .  Strange . . Stange? . . and he blew up this huge ride on Passyunk and 5th Street. There's a triangle there. I think there's a cleaners there now, and it was an empty lot, and we put  . .  blew up a huge balloon that was big enough that you could put maybe a hundred people in it . . .

 and we had this band, and on the South Street day we blew it up. The cops came and said, What are you doing? You have a permit for this? “Oh, yeah, we're covered by the South Street Renaissance. Buhbuhdbuhbedde. Okay? All right, don't worry. We're . .  it's all good.”

And we had a lot of spray paint because there was the 5th & South Street Gang and we did not want any trouble or anyone slashing this membrane. Just a membrane inside. They're playing rock and roll. People are coming in and dancing. There are drunks, there are tourists, there are society ladies, there are hippies. And when the gang came around, we gave them spray cans and said, “Here, you know, tag it - tag the thing.” So they thought that was cool, and they did. That probably was toxic, you know, but no one got hurt. That was always the motto: “No one gets hurt.” That'll be a success.

And it was mind-blowing. And so, if you want to follow the trajectory of my career, so to speak, you know, to do The Recruiting Officer, and then to do a balloon on South Street, which is just a thin membrane that anyone, anyone could destroy and didn't and have the time of their life. Man, that's a success for me.

Peter Schmitz: Yeah. Well, you did a couple other directing gigs. You mentioned in your book doing a gig at the Academy of Music, called The Black Experience of Philadelphia with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. How did you get involved with that?

Tom Bissinger: Sam Evans was the godfather at that time of black godfather of artistic things in Philly. And, you know, he put on distinguished events, not rock and roll, but you know, classical, and whatever . . .  as best I know, I don't really know much about his resume right now. But he called John and said, “I want you and Tom to, you know, manage getting this Black Experience in Philadelphia.” We have a script, but we need a director to just, you know, handle it.

So I went in, and it was only a few rehearsals, you know, and I mean I was pretty awestruck, you know. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee . . . I wasn't going to tell them very much, and especially it's “The Black Experience,” and I'm some white hippie like, what the hell do I know?

Peter Schmitz: Well, you had a little cred. Let me say at this point that you had gone down to Selma during the height of the demonstration, that you had demonstrated. You had been there when Martin Luther King was there. You had put your body on the line.

Tom Bissinger: So, so I hope I mentioned that lightly to Ozzie . . . or whatever I might have done. And mostly I kept thinking as I'm directing. And I'm standing in the Academy of Music, and I said, “Man, I've played the Academy of Music!”

Peter Schmitz: Yeah. It's a great place.

Tom Bissinger: So grateful and awed to be in there as a . . 

Peter Schmitz: It’s quite different than the Theater of the Living Arts, quite different than South Street.

Tom Bissinger: And I could tell you nothing about the play. I mean, it was a historical recital of stuff, and you know, the people came out to see the stars and . .
Peter Schmitz: Of course.

Tom Bissinger: It was what it was, and frankly, I think, you know, why was I hired? Well, they never told me why I was hired, but I think they figured I could, you know, keep it together.

Peter Schmitz: The logistics. They just wanted somebody to handle logistics. And you can do a big complex show. Yeah, if you can put on The Line of Least Existence, you can put on this show. Well, anyway, about this point in time, though, we're now in the early 1970s. You leave the theater in a certain way . . .  you move on, personally and artistically. What was  . .  Did you make a conscious decision? Or is it just the way your life worked out?

Tom Bissinger: I think it was both. It was a conscious decision, because I felt I don't ever want to work with a bunch of neurotic actors again, and in The Line of Least Existence there were plenty . .  not the stars that we've already mentioned in the way Danny and Judd and . . 

Peter Schmitz: Well, it's about 50 people in the cast. As I'm looking at this huge  . . . 

Tom Bissinger:  . . .and you know, and all of a sudden I realized. God, I don't know who I am. Why am I trying to work with other neurotic people? I'm as neurotic as they are, and I just don't want to do this anymore. And so I happily just sort of abandoned that. And I was invited. I mean, that year I was invited to . . . I think they had Shakespeare out on the Main Line. I forget what it was, but a pretty well known guy was running. They invited me to direct there, and I said, “No, I don't want to do it.”

Peter Schmitz: You were asked to do a Broadway show, as well.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, I turned down a Broadway show, absolutely. Three times. I mean, I felt like Peter denying Jesus, you know. And . . . not that the guy around The Music Fair, Lee [Gruber] whatever his name was. Married to Barbara Walters. Yeah. He asked me to direct this play . . uh, uh. . . .about the Rosenbergs!

Peter Schmitz: Right

Tom Bissinger: And I read it, and I said, “I don't like this play. I don't think it's a good play.” I don't, you know. I mean, I can't get enthusiastic working on a play I don't believe in, and then try. And just because I'm going to get a Broadway credit, I'll probably be fired before that, by that time . .  but I just couldn't go for it, you know. And so I turned that down. I turned the Shakespeare down, and kind of never looked back. And then I you know, I staged things in. . . .  I wrote a musical about South Street, called Abie's Last Stand, and that was very popular, you know.

Peter Schmitz: Where did you perform that? Where was that staged?

Tom Bissinger: Painted Bride Art Center.

Peter Schmitz: Which is just a small storefront . . . .

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, with maybe 60 people, or you could get in there or something like that. And we ran it for a weekend. It was a big hit. It was wonderful and funny and celebrating the local characters, the real local characters, I mean. I disguised their names a little bit, but Isaiah Zagar was there from the Ice Gallery, and the Snydermans from the Works Gallery. And David

what's-his-name from the famous delicatessen, and you know, and I changed their names and stuff, but it was just having a lot of fun, and it all pivoted around Abie, whom I played. Who was this real old fruit peddler and  . . . I don't know. It was just fun. I was living in the country at that time. I drove in every night to Philly - or every other night.

Peter Schmitz: That time you had bought the place where you're living right now, where you're speaking to me from.

Tom Bissinger:  . . drive in and work with Joe Spivak, a friend of mine, and afterwards, and you know, look and rewrite the script a bit, and come back the next day, and we did it, and so, you know I did. I kept my hand in. I started writing plays and had them performed in different places. But it was . . . Peter, you know this better, far more than I do. It takes so much work to put on a play. To get everything together, to be able to produce it. And it was like, “I'm not up for that anymore,” you know, just not up, and if I am up for it, I want it all laid out on a silver platter. I want a great set. I want great costumes. I want it all. But, you know, I'm at this point in my life. Now I'm not. . .  I'm not interested, and I wasn't even much then. 

I got a little tempted, occasionally. Once I went to New York and humiliated myself sort of trying to go in and say, “You know, I'm a theater director” or something. This was 10 years on, afterwards, and, you know, these elegant women in black dresses, who are about 28 years old, barely look at you. And yeah, [they said] “Well, leave your name” ?And [I thought] “What am I doing? Who do I think I am?”

Peter Schmitz: What you did, you became something else. You become an artist in so many different ways.

Tom Bissinger: Yeah, I just I guess I feel like, if I had to say anything, I've been very fortunate and privileged in my life that I can afford it and do it. That to self-express, you know, it gives me the greatest joy. And I love collaborating when it's possible. I love collaborating. I'm in a troupe called “Playback for Change,” which is an improvisational theater troupe, right now, and I love the people in that. And there's about twelve of us, and . . .

Peter Schmitz: Yes, I went to go see a performance of it.  .  you weren't there.

Tom Bissinger: That’s right! You were there . .

Peter Schmitz; Kristen was there, and they were doing these improvisations and therapeutic  . . . .. They were drawing stories out of the audience, and doing therapeutic improvisations about them, and there were musicians, and there was a sense of welcomeness and openness and just joy at creation and community that is so different from the commercial, even the nonprofit theater world. 

Tom Bissinger: And every time we do a show it's completely different, because depending on the stories we get and the mood and all that. So, anyway, I do like collaborating, but I'm in the improv mode at this point. And you know, for my 80th birthday I got together and rehearsed about twelve songs I had written, with a guy who was brutal with me to get me to learn how to play it right, because I'm not a very good piano player. And I had a little band, and we played, and that was fun. But I can't keep that up. .

Peter Schmitz: Oh, wow!

Tom Bissinger: I just can't. It's . . I just . .  I like playing. I like . . I just like playing.

Peter Schmitz: Well, you just will close with the sort of central metaphor of your book which is The Fun House . . . you talk about, the sort of carnival funhouses you knew as a kid, on the San Francisco wharves and everything that you've found as being enjoyable and worth exploring in your life. You likened it to a fun house, a place where you can play, and then, you know, enjoy, explore, and then walk out of again. Does that suit you, even today?

Tom Bissinger: That said, I want to add the component of sharing it with others. When I make a fun house I definitely want to share it with others. It's not not just about me or for me, but it has to be for me and about me to start it . . .  because you've got to create. You've gotta tap into what you personally can contribute. And once that happens, then, yeah, invite in the world and share, I think it's very important, especially in this time we're in right now . .

Peter Schmitz: Yes!

Tom Bissinger: If you have the ability to share and bring people together, do so.

Peter Schmitz: That's a wonderful note to end this conversation on time. Thank you for bringing us to that moment. It gives my heart a little happiness to leave it right there. It's wonderful to see you . . .  hopefully, we'll have something that we can again share with other people. I think that's such a great way to think about it. You're not just enjoying yourself. You're enjoying to spread it around and to create a new community with it, with what you've created. All right, Tom Bessinger. Thank you so much for being on Adventures in Theater History.

Tom Bissinger: Thank you. Peter.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

So, that’s my conversation with Tom, which I’m so very glad to get into the public record. By the way - there’s a LOT more great stuff in that book of his, The Fun House, for aficionados of Philly history - including Tom’s account of his acquaintance with the infamous Ira Einhorn, the evil guru of the Philly counterculture scene during the 1970s - you know the guy who once ran for mayor, the guy who claimed to have invented Earth Day, and who eventually murdered his girlfriend and stuffed her dismembered body in a trunk, and then went on the lam for decades? - yeah, that guy. It’s all in there. 

But that, and much more  besides - like Tom’s childhood years, his journey down to Selma in 1965, his time in the South Street Scene of the early 170s, and his eventual marriage and the raising of his lovely family were all far outside the province of this podcast, so I recommend the book to you, if you want to know more I’ll put a link to how you can get a copy in the show notes.

Finally, thanks to all of you who wrote to me after the last episode of the podcast, and who shared with me their own thoughts and fears about the ongoing terrifying current historical moment we all find ourselves in. I appreciate, so much, your words of encouragement. I’m hoping to keep going on with the work of this podcast, and I have some other interviews on tap to share with you - I’m hoping in particular to talk about the histories of both the Freedom Theatre, the Philadelphia Company, and the Wilma Theater in the coming weeks and months. I don’t want to be more definite about when episodes will come out at this point, because much remains uncertain - both here, and well, everywhere . . . . 

But thank you, as always, for listening and for supporting this podcast, and thank you for coming along on another Adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia.