If you’ve attended a music or theater performance at the Middle School or at the High School, then chances are you’ve heard the name Chuck Tisdale. He’s the man in the booth whom teachers credit at the end of each performance for ensuring that the show went off without a hitch.
While Mr. Tisdale’s role might seem to be suited for someone who prefers the anonymity of the backstage life, he is comfortable anywhere in a theater—whether that’s on stage acting, working as a director (as he most recently did for the High School’s production of Macbeth) or designing and maintaining sets. Mr. Tisdale, who is equal parts quick wit and gentle soul, has been an actor since he was a young boy growing up in Lakewood: what started as an interest in pretend play developed into a lifelong passion for theater. His career has included work in Cleveland, Jupiter, Florida (where he worked with celebrity instructors Charles Nelson Reilly and Burt Reynolds) and Vermont.
Read more about the District’s Auditorium Manager and Technical Director Chuck Tisdale.
How young were you when you first became interested in acting?
I started taking acting lessons at Beck Center when I was about nine. I would watch Starsky and Hutch or the Six Million Dollar Man and I told my mom, “I want to do what they were doing on TV! How do I do that?” So she signed me up. And I loved it. Not only did the class get me out of Saturday Ukranian school, but it also gave me the chance to run around and pretend play. I ended up doing Children’s Theater at the Beck Center for my entire adolescence. My dad was like, “Couldn’t you watch a football game with me?” and I was like, “Sorry, dad, I’ve got tech rehearsal.”
When did you join the District?
I was hired in 1996 to replace Walter Boswell, who had been one of my Baldwin Wallace professors in tech theater. I actually don’t have a tech degree—my undergraduate degree is in acting and my masters is in directing—so shhhh...don’t tell anyone. I ended up doing tech because I realized early on that acting didn’t pay, but tech would allow me to still be a part of the production and be creative.
I actually started out for one year at Wright State in acting and then the following summer, I did a summer show with Berea Summer Theater, where I met a Baldwin Wallace instructor who convinced me to transfer. It’s funny because if I never did that summer show, I never would have gone to Baldwin Wallace and I never would have met my wife, Leslie, who I met there and have been married to for 30 years.
What was your first job after you graduated college?
As soon as we graduated, Leslie and I got married and then headed to Florida to cut the apron strings and to start our own lives. We both found jobs—she got a job as a teacher and I got a job as a theater tech, since I’d done that in college. I ended up working at a few theaters down there, most notably the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theater Training in Jupiter. Burt didn’t sign my paychecks, but I did meet him a few times. I also got to meet Charles Nelson Reilly. He’d left the lights on in Burt’s car once and I had to jump it for him. A lot of people know him from Hollywood Squares, but he was a huge Broadway star and was a very good director. He was the kind of guy who would start talking in a corner of a room and everyone would slowly gravitate toward him. He was a sweet guy. Also, the cast of the show The Evening Shade were around quite a bit—Charles Durning, Marilu Henner, Ozzie Davis—it was a lot fun.
After five years, we decided to come back and I got my masters in directing from the University of Akron.
Do you miss playing pretend? When was the last time you were on stage?
I do miss it. The last time I was on stage was in 2008. My younger brother Michael is an actor-playwright in New York and he wrote a play called Goldstar, Ohio. In 2005, my dad passed away and in that same week, there was a group of soldiers who were killed by an IED who were from the same battalion out of Brook Park, so that was the headline when my brother came into town. My brother started cold-calling the families because he thought he was going to do a film or documentary on the soldiers. Four or five of the families let him interview them and he put this show together with their words. He went to Cleveland Public Theater to premier it and they brought in Andy Parris, who was the director who’d done The Laramie Project, and they were asking for people to come and read, so my brother asked me to read for a part. I ended up playing the part of the interviewer, who was really my brother. The play had a lot of accolades and was extended for a week, which was nice.
Tell us about your experience with Macbeth this year.
This was the first time I’d directed at the high school. Last year, Scott Sumerak wanted to go to a two-show season. It’s really hard to mount two full productions, but we’re slowly moving to what most high schools do, which is to have a non-musical in the fall, since your musicians are participating in marching band, and then you do a musical in the spring because you can start before winter break. So, Scott will be doing Rent in March. So we’ve given the kids two big shows to do and the kids get to work with two different directors.
Macbeth was also a good experience because I got to work with the kids in a different way. I told them that the thing they had in their favor was that I didn’t know them. I cast who I felt was best for the roles and I didn’t come in with any preconceived notions of who should play which role.
I was nervous a few days before the show, just like everyone was. But there’s a thing in acting where you go from trying to remember the lines and you’re not thinking about the acting yet, you’re literally just trying to remember where you are on the page. And then it transitions to where the actors start to listen to each other and it becomes natural. With Shakespeare, it’s harder, so I told the students not to worry about their lines in the beginning, just remember what you’re there to do. I told them that when the words fail you—and they will—you need to know how to finish. And they did.
What do you love most about your job?
I get to work with everybody. So, for example I might close Macbeth on Saturday night, then we had the football banquet Sunday afternoon, on Monday, there was a guidance meeting and then on Tuesday, there was a PTO meeting. But I like helping people. It’s very rarely the same day twice, which is the same reason that I liked theater. There’s always a new set of circumstances and another set of problems to solve. It keeps things interesting.