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Bill is known to the many thousands of loyal P.D.Q. Bach concert goers
in New York and around the globe as the irascible and irritable stage manager
for Peter Schickele’s attempts to foist off his own music as the work of an
obscure son of a Bach. With his impatient good grace, he was the
ever-present voice of reason in contrast to the wild and unpredictable Professor
Schickele. Amidst waves of affectionate hisses from fans at Carnegie Hall,
Avery Fisher Hall, Symphony Space, The Kennedy Center, and many more performing
arts centers around the world, Bill carried out his duties: setting the
stage, moving pianos, dropping music stands, and making excuses for the always
tardy Professor.
His pre-concert chore was to stall for time while an army of backstage personnel
supposedly searched for the missing soloist. He had to explain to the
seemingly unsympathetic and hostile audience an increasing series of implausible
reasons for the delay. At the same time, he took the opportunity to harass
the late-coming stragglers in the audience. This ritual became such a
tradition that at almost every concert, some people would purposely delay taking
their seats in order to be insulted by the alert Mr. Walters. The process
served a fourfold function, however. One: the prudent, less masochistic
concert-goer would never again be late to a performance; two: after
Mr. Walters dealt with his latecomers, the audience was warmed up and ready for
anything; three: since Mr. Walters appeared exactly at the
advertised curtain time, the concerts technically ALWAYS started on time;
and four: once he got done with the latecomers, the performance could
start with the entire audience in their seats.
Despite his on-stage persona, however, Bill really was the backstage heart of
the Evening of Musical Madness. He was the technical coordinator,
production manager, road manager, and the REAL stage manager of the concerts.
Starting in 1966, and for many years of bus tours, one-night stands, airport
departure lounges, and appearances with every major (and most minor) symphony
orchestras in the United States, he was the person who coordinated all touring
logistics, handled the advance technical arrangements with each orchestra
management, and designed the special props (including such unlikely concert hall
items as an exploding piano bench, a collapsing conductor’s podium, and a
“chamber” calliope, among others). He once said that he felt like Sky
Masterson, the gambler-hero of Guys and Dolls, who noted that:
“There are two things that have been in every hotel room in America: Sky
Masterson and the Gideon Bible.”
Bill was born in Columbus, Ohio in December of 1937, and attended Grandview High
School and the Ohio State University where he was a fine arts major hoping to
get into advertising or cartooning. He drew cartoons and parody ads for
the campus humor magazine, SUNDIAL, hoping to follow in the footsteps of former
SUNDIAL staffers James Thurber and Milton Caniff. Among his mementos are a
sheaf of rejection slips from The New Yorker and Playboy. He was the staff
artist for both the Ohio State University Department of Motion Pictures and the
University PBS affiliate, WOSU-TV. Contrary to legend, he did not dot the
“eye” during Script Ohio. He was introduced to the theatre by
volunteering to design the set for a friend’s student production. “What’s
a set?” he had naively asked. He acted in and designed plays and musicals,
performed a TV puppet show for children, and in 1963, after the usual summer
stock assignments, he arrived in New York City, where he worked at NBC as a page
and as a production assistant.
He rapidly gave up the idea of being a stage designer or actor, and instead
became a backstage jack-of-all-trades with The New York Shakespeare Festival
(where he was the assistant props manager under Steven Shaw), and The Playhouse
of the Ridiculous, and many other off-Broadway groups. He became a stage
manager, and after being hired by Peter Schickele for P.D.Q. Bach, continued in
the off-season to work in concerts, theatre, television, and film. He
worked at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland during the eruption of Mount Saint
Helens, and spent seven seasons as production manager with The John Houseman
Acting Company of New York, coordinating all their technical and touring
activities.
Besides Peter Schickele and the many super-star conductors and soloists who
insisted on performing the music of P.D.Q. Bach, he worked with many of the
other major and minor luminaries of the show business world. Uta Hagan,
Sam Waterston, David Shifrin, Serge Luca, Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Tripp, and
Charles Durning were among the many beneficiaries of his knowledge and
experience.
In 1998, he was asked to oversee the design and installation of the lighting and
sound equipment and stage machinery for The Falaki Center, a new theatre and
performance space at The American University in Cairo. He spent much time
in Egypt, supervising the project and visiting the monuments he had only seen in
his art history textbooks in college.
Recently he has been giving a series of walking tours of the Broadway Theatre
District, dabbles in extra work in movies and TV, and has written lots of
unproduced plays and film scripts, and has taught film-making and video for
children. As an actor, he has many movie and TV credits under his belt:
Law and Order, Law and Order: SVU, Law and Order: CI,
Gossip Girl, Life on Mars, The Wackness, The Interpreter,
Midnight Cowboy, Rent, Across the Universe, The Wrestler,
August Rush, Fame, and 30 Rock, among others.
He is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, Actors Equity Association, The
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Transport Workers
Union. He also works once in a while for Gray Line New York Sightseeing as
a tour guide riding around on the top of a double-decker bus telling lies about
New York City to gullible and unwary tourists. But the ever-ubiquitous
P.D.Q. Bach has always remained an annual event for him. He looks forward
to the insulting of concert-goers as much as they love booing him.
In the Spring of 2000, Mr. Walters achieved, what was for him, the high honor of
being elected to the Players, the Gramercy Park association founded by Edwin
Booth. He can be found there many an afternoon, shooting pool on Mark
Twain’s billiard table and trading endless theatre stories with anyone who will
listen.
He is married to the actress Donna Browne. Their daughter Samantha
Browne-Walters is also an actress. They live in New York with their eight birds
and three cats. |
