Three years ago the Chocolate Church decided to produce its own major musical as part of the celebration of its 20th anniversry. They settled on Jesus Christ Superstar. Up til then I had never considered doing any theater but that play has always been a favorite and I auditioned on a whim. To my surprise I was cast as the Apostle Paul, not a major part but a good one. I had a great time, the play got rave reviews, and I was hooked. For those of you who have seen me, or pictures of me, you should recognise that I am somewhat conspicuous on stage due to my size and hulking walk.

The next year the major musical produced by the Chocolate Church was Tommy. This time I was cast as the minister. Once again great fun and a close family feeling in the cast. Many of the Superstar cast played in this one.

After that I played Don Alhambra in Gilbert & Sullivan's Gondoliers for Merrymeeting Community Players. Not a great experience but it provided great experience if you know what I mean.

This year we did Fiddler On The Roof at the Chocolate Church. My part was a very bit part partly because I had outside interests taking up some of my time (Roll & Go is working on recording our first CD). Still it was a great experience.

The Chocolate Church has gained, in these three productions, a reputation for quality and professionalism that is hard to find in community theater. The pit band for each of these productions started rehearsing 6 to 8 weeks out from when the actors step on to the stage. The music was as near to perfect as could be achieved. The costumes were well executed. The only place where each production suffered was in the dancing. As hard as they tried it was still difficult to impossible for the choreographer to turn us into graceful dancers. Having said that I would like to point out that the bottle dance in Fiddler was done without glue or velcro!

Funny(?) Story – While doing the last supper scene in Superstar we were each given a small piece of bread toeat because the pantomime wasn't working. During the actual performancve I got a piece of bread lodged in my throat and started to choke, literally unable to breathe. I was in some distress while the audience watched unaware. The Apostle song was coming up too! Fortunately the piece dislodged before I had to leave the stage but I was unable to sing in the first verse of the song.