Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL KUCHWARA ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
She has put those tribulations onstage in this affectionate account of her trials by fire, mostly as a fledgling teen-age folk singer in Lawrence, Mass. Trott was the kind of young performer who favored morose songs of the Leonard Cohen school. ``The sadduh, the darkuh, the bleekuh, the longuh, the bettuh,'' she says during the show in a very specific, molasses-strength Lawrence accent.
In person, Trott is anything but mournful. She's a cheerful, enthusiastic woman of French-Canadian ancestry, an experienced actress who has appeared in such Broadway shows as ``Barnum'' and ``Strider.''
In ``Springhill,'' Trott relives her life as a performance klutz - a master of the fumbled lyric, the missed cue, the overdone gesture, the recalcitrant musical instrument and the embarrassing remark. There's a universality to her missteps that's both predictable and comforting. Haven't we all been there and played the same role with great success?
Yet, why bring up the past, especially a constant reminder of life's foibles, in a one-woman show?
``I think I've reached a point in my life where I've started to see the humor in it,'' Trott said during an interview. ``The interesting process has been taking all of these disastrous events in my life and suddenly turning them into something funny - which has taken their power away.
``When I hear people laughing at them, it's a laughter of recognition because everybody knows what it's like to feel foolish. It's become such a transforming experience.''
And a lengthy one, too. The show - its title a twist on the epic folk song ``The Springhill Mining Disaster'' - began life in the early 1990s as a 20-minute, first-person monologue.
Its centerpiece - then and now - is Trott's experience as an earnest eighth-grader, attempting to sing ``The Springhill Mining Disaster'' at a school coffeehouse. Naturally, she forgets the lyrics and has to rely on pop pap like ``Georgy Girl'' to get her through the mortifying moment.
``The Springhill Singing Disaster'' has evolved significantly since its first performances at an arts collective in Brooklyn and on through other venues, including the West Bank Cafe and Ensemble Studio Theater in New York; the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn.; and Actors Theater of Louisville, Ky.
Along the way, the author-performer enlisted the help of director Norman Rene, best-known for his collaborations with playwright Craig Lucas. Rene suggested the biggest change.
``Norman was the one who said, `I think this should be a play. Instead of telling us all everything that happens, let's see you go through it,''' Trott recalls. It became a play, complete with other characters, including Trott's aunt, a nun known as Auntie Sister. She suggests her niece become a singer.
The desire to write came from within. Trott says she always was an amateur writer, an avid diarist and a fanatical letter writer.
``One of the other reasons I did this play was to establish myself as a writer,'' she says. ``I had worked as an actor all of this time. It's very hard to make the transition. To find a way to present a body of work and have it suddenly be accepted as the work of a writer is a very hard thing. I was hoping this would do it, and I was lucky.''
Trott originally had decided to write about her 99-year-old French-Canadian grandfather, but music and musical instruments - particularly her collection of guitars - started dominating the story. She decided to save her grandfather's tale for another day.
``The play became a piece about the musical instruments that had been crowding the music room in my apartment,'' Trott says of the home she shares with her husband, Peter Herdrich, the senior producer on television's ``Inside Edition.'' ``It's actually called the guitar room because it seems that's all that's in there.''
There are seven instruments in the show, according to Trott, including a theorbo, a baroque instrument that was used in opera.
``One of the other reasons for doing the show was trying to find a way to use all the instruments again,'' Trott says with a laugh. ``What a thrill that I get to play them every day. They were just sitting in the room.''
Trott, whose father was a quality-control manager for a plastics company, grew up during the peak of the folk music craze. She was swept right into it.
``I think it was a period of social consciousness, and what better music to reflect that?'' she says. ``It was music in which the lyrics were telling stories as myth, legend, lore and protest. Folk music served as anthems for a whole generation.''
Trott still listens to folk music, particularly Portuguese fado music, which is ``even sadder and darker than anything Leonard Cohen ever wrote. Right now my favorite is Jane Siberry. She is Canadian and actually sounds a lot like Joni Mitchell.''
Despite her love of singing, Trott says she has no desire to be a songwriter, although her first effort - a parody song for a ``Godspell''-like collegiate musical - is included in ``The Springhill Singing Disaster.''
``I was always performing other people's works,'' she says. ``I was playing songs by my idols, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins and Joan Baez. And I kept trying to write songs, but I was just never satisfied. Everything I wrote seemed too confessional or just self-conscious, so I would always put it away.''
It was through the albums of Judy Collins that Trott became interested in the theater. Many of them contained theater songs, including pieces by Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim.
by CNB