Open Book Board Posting
Hammie Award Winner Joins Open Book Board! Bob McIntire has joined the Board of Open Book Players. This isn’t new news. He has actually been serving in the role for several years. It is only recently that the organization admitted it. McIntire has a checkered storied theatrical background. He began acting in middle school when the Mechanical Arts teacher and drama coach/director recognized in him a unique talent but as yet untamed. The teacher/director threw caution to the wind and cast the young McIntire as Lord Fancourt Babberley in a musical adaptation of Charley’s Aunt. This late 19th century farce is about a college student who is persuaded to impersonate an aunt from Brazil. This was just the kind of role he could sink his teeth into, a 9th grade cross-dresser. He is shown in the center of the production promotional snapshot. His memorable performance resulted in the director bestowing upon the young thespian the first ever, somewhat coveted Hammy Award.
This role launched McIntire into a variety of productions including his first nude scene in a Parkersburg Actors Guide presentation of Stalag 17. Having, as a young man, never met a milk shake he didn’t like he apparently cut quite the figure. Fortunately, no photos of that production remain. McIntire experienced early pattern baldness which served him will in the high school production of Look Homeward Angel where he played Will Pentland. His mother was heard to say, “He reminds me of my brother, William. I never remember him with hair.”
Even then he was intrigued by readers theater. “Long ago and far away when I was young and impressionable the first performances, I remember were during church services when my uncles, who took turns being the preacher in the little congregation that worshipped in the church across the driveway from my grandmother’s house, would read from the scripture. Even as a youngster I was impressed that these farmers from the hollers of West Virginia with their unique hill-grown accent could be so possessed by the spirit that they sounded like Shakespearean actors as they read. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the King James version of the Bible, from whence they were taking the verses, was written at the same time as the Bard was busy toiling over his plays and sonnets. This is why the uncles behind the pulpit sounded a bit like Ian McKellen, with a little Appalachian twang, but I digress.
“I was also captured by the romance of radio. I was given a crystal radio kit as a child. I somehow managed to actually assemble it and tune in a local radio station. The transmitter tower was visible out my bedroom window. Sometimes when the atmospheric conditions were right you didn’t even need the radio. You could receive the signal with fillings in your teeth, assuming that you had fillings in your teeth. None-the-less I was swept away by the romance of broadcasting.”
After miraculously graduating from high school McIntire turned down a scholarship to a reputable college just outside of Washington, DC where he would have gotten into significantly more trouble more quickly. He chose instead the bright lights of Morgantown, West Virginia, and the theater department at the state’s flag ship university. He quickly realized, however, that he wasn’t cut out for that program. He was intrigued, however, by one particular course entitled Oral Interpretation that whet his appetite for reading out loud. Then there was the fledgling broadcasting program. He lasted just two semesters in academia before bailing and heading east to begin a career in radio, thus ending his relationship with the stage that was not to be rekindled for over forty years.
“While working at the Maine Department of Education I happened to see an announcement for a readers theater presentation of a radio drama at the University of Maine at Augusta. Following the performance, I learned about Open Book Players from some of the actors. Fast forward another couple of years and I saw a casting call for a production called Worlds Afire in 2008. I read and was given several parts in the production. The cast was great. The script was compelling. It was a great experience. The next production was on my bucket list, Under Milkwood. I was thrilled to get a chance to read that play. Then there was Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, The Importance of Being Wilde and A Cheever Evening among others. It is always great fun to work with the actors.”
Recently life’s schedule has kept McIntire from performing on stage with the troupe, but he looks forward to getting back in sync with the production schedule. Until then he serves on the Board and strives not to cause too much trouble. He also performs with Marti Stevens Interactive Improvisational Theater and produces local history programming in his hometown of Hallowell.
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