Producers Working from the Ground

Day 9 - 1996-1999 Deeming Dreaming 30 Years

It’s hard to untangle one’s history looking back.  30 years and hundreds of projects and people later only certain aspects stand out.  Those beacons present an element that somehow informs one’s life, one’s work, one’s sense of why, otherwise they might be forgotten. 

In the space between 1996-1999 I continued working in media and three producers stand out.  Although their work output was very different, they all offered something real and tangible I could understand in the context of building my own artistic practice.  

They were Kathy Wickline (casting), Charlie Szoradi (Monsoon Microstudios) and Michael Nise (Dancin on Air/Omni 2000).  What I observed was that all three worked from the ground. They observed forensically what was around them and developed it and shaped it into their own thing and that thing was able to change and shift according to what was around it.

At a jobbing actor I came to know the inimitable Kathy Wickline during a casting session.  She was/is a Philadelphia Institution having cast thousands of actors in feature, independent and corporate films.  A woman who always had the ability to recognise potential she got me involved in running her youth casting, class and camp divisions.  Kathy always developed her business from a positive nurturing perspective.  I think to myself she asks ‘where is the strength in this’?  She had/has an extraordinary gift of bringing talent to the surface in a warm and welcoming way.  

When I first met Charlie Szoradi he was sleeping in a tent in a abandoned church in North Philadelphia which he had purchased for ‘a few pennies’.  A trained architect he had an electric sensibility about creating moments people could gather, whether it be in events in the church or in what was to become his multi-media studio running high end ad campaigns.  Charlie let me base my theatre company in one of the disused spaces in the church where I could observe this evolution.  Our conversations often circled around the idea of communities, of ‘stoop sitting’,  ownership of public space and how to better engage with people.  At the time the internet was new and Charlie was ahead of the game figuring how to leverage new tech within the context of media.  I was able to work with Monsoon on a pilot series Acorn 6 in this time.  It was visionary (as much of what he did) as it was targeted for what was to become the ‘tween market’.

I grew up watching ‘Dancin’ on Air’ the iconic dance show where kids would gather weekly… and dance!  It doesn’t sound like much but it was compelling viewing and it was incredibly popular.  Michael Nise was the producer.  The thing about Mike was that he just made stuff happen.  I worked on development for some projects with him through his company Omni 2000 and got to see the inner workings of the cable tv networks, which was fascinating. 

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