“Hey Guy”, six little letters, so many meanings. Maybe it’s a question…maybe it’s a criticism….maybe it’s happy…maybe it’s sad.
You meet those that are less ordinary when you step behind the scenes of live theater. A trade that is still steeped in tradition, and decidedly old school no matter how many televisions you put on stage. Don Lillie was a throwback to summerstock internships, nothing but peanut butter for lunch and fixing things in ways that would make MacGyver blush. As a college professor of mine he was a mentor, a teacher and in a way I never saw coming, a role model.
In the rush of youth you often want to be done and move on, set construction was no different on shop days. Don was the sort to make you stick around and put another nail in it just to be safe. Now, the location of the nail or the head sticking out a quarter inch may not be the safest features of that fix, but the wall wasn’t going to crush you unless you slammed the door too hard. Don wanted you to be safe from happenstance; the safety that comes from keeping an eye on your surroundings…well, that was up to you.
Some would say in times such as those he was being a bit careless, or cutting a corner. But it was just Don being a teacher again, the set had to be done, but the set had to be safe, safety can be defined in many ways. For a guy that went to Vietnam and was taken prisoner I can see where safety was best defined as protection against the unknown but keep your wits about you. Don had little patience for bubbleheaded actors that couldn’t watch out for a nail but could slam the door. Don said I was built to take the punishment of theater but I was too lazy to fix a hinge so I never slammed the doors. I think that’s the closest he ever came to paying me a compliment.
I butted heads with him more than any other professor or supervisor I ever had. I probably drove him nuts. I was impatient and wanted to do everything, he’d already seen it all and knew it best to slow things down a little. Every time I thought he had it out for me and was closing a door he opened another avenue. He taught me some of the old secrets, the black magic’s of that Rose on the other side of the River kind of theater.
And now I must rat him out…
Given that he passed away today I can now share the tale of the time he broke Theater Tradition. He cast me in a play that opened on the same weekend as it turned out my first daughter was due during; he made me take a phone on stage and told me something I’ve never shared with anyone. “I will deny it to my grave that I told you it’s ok but if that phone rings you turn around and leave, we’ll send someone on with a script to read your lines. There’s only one excuse for missing a show and that’s your funeral but put your family first.” But 4 years later I had forgotten that lesson, until he taught it to me again.
I had recently completed a scouting trip to where I’d be heading for Grad school. I wasn’t sure if me and Valerie would stay together, I wasn’t sure it was the best decision for Ariel’s quality of life, but I wanted to be a Chicago star so I was going no matter what. My sister suddenly dying of cancer delayed those plans, a week after she passed I talk to Don and he said again, “I made some mistakes when I was younger, put other things first, but Katie (despite having a few decades on me he had a daughter only a few years older than my own)…you gotta take care of the kids first, Otherwise whose going to come see your shows that you care about?” Valerie and I were in a real rough patch, she’d skipped the last couple of shows and it was something that immediately hit me when Don pointed it out. Grad school was out of the question, it was time to get the house in order.
I ran into him just a few months ago, Ariel was going to Artscape and I ran into Don in the hallway. He was a little taken back by how big Ariel was, we shared a good laugh about the Plaza story. He then got a little serious and told me I had a bad habit of letting things I couldn’t control get out of control around me. I can’t remember quite how he worded it but it was very Zen and very right.
Don Lille came of age when the world was getting real big in a hurry. Wars, Media, Chemicals, but he stayed very much loyal to an older way of living. He left America a boy to become a Soldier and a Man. He went to Hell and when he came back he grew out his hair and spent the rest of his life trying to make people smile. He often lost his glasses and his keys but could always remember if you owed any shop hours. He knew how to kill a man but the only knowledge he treasured was how to make a flat and where the screws went in a triscuit. I swear he tried to electrocute me once, he swore he was just trying to teach me voltage.
Don was a good professor, but his kids are awesome and that means he was an even better man. The jokes on you guys when his son Matt becomes the worlds first actual Superhero. One day I will bring Shakespeare to this town and it is because of people like him. This is his chapter from The Book Of Greatest Men Who Ever Lived.
