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New Kensington Civic theatre

" Entertaining the A-K Valley for over 60 years"

SEPTEMBER, AN UNKIND MONTH…

This past month took from us two very special members – Steve Pastrick and Sam Burford. Both made enormous contributions to the theater, Steve dominated every aspect while Sam quietly worked in the building, making flat docks, putting in a water line, hard wiring the microwave. Wait. He never got to that.

While Steve oversaw the complete orchestra, so to speak, Sam was happy to work in the wings or in the fly loft. They were both good friends and made our lives richer and the theater the liveliest and most interesting place to be in the valley.

Walter Stokes Sam Burford Steve Justham

Valley HS fly loft

It’s impossible to put into words the enormity of Steve’s impact on the Civic Theater. Rex Rutkoski’s obit in the Valley News and the Tribune Review noted the influence Steve had on so many Civic Theater people.

One dimension of his many talents was his sets. Back then the curtains were closed. The lights dimmed and the curtains open, invariably followed by pleased ahhh’s and appreciative applause. With a start like that the play, the players, the whole evening exuded theater at its best.

For a long time Steve was the only set designer. He had, for instance, a unique method of creating rain on stage using big PVC pipes, drilled at certain angles and rotated with fine rice coming through. It was featured in Theater Arts Magazine.

Steve was all things to the theater. The notes he gave as a director was a learning experience in itself and on stage he was the consummate actor of varied roles – Willy Lohman in Death Of A Salesman, the acerbic role playing husband in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, the weasel-like Jockster in Juno And The Paycock, the primitive Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar named desire, and the complicated repressed Brick in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. These are just to show his range – he played oh so many other parts.

DEATH OF A SALEMAN ... Steve Pastrick and Dottie Holleran

When Steve opened the door in Room Service and saw the new actor, his first time ever on stage, wide eyed and ashen as he stuttered that he was ‘la la looking for Mr. Davis’, Steve fought hard to repress a smile in a moment that seemed frozen. The scene was in imminent danger of deteriorating when Steve casually put his arm around the shaking fellow and told him to come in, come in and led him down to center stage. The contrast between Steve’s bravado show of friendliness (ad libed) and the newcomer’s wild eyed apprehension (for real) made it one of the funniest scenes in a very funny play. Lord knows how it would have turned out if it wasn’t for Steve taking charge at that moment, making an incidental scene into something memorable.

But it wasn’t his acting, his directing, and his sets that were the greatest attribute. It was his striving for good theater and making it the height of enjoyment in the process. In a preface to a book, Alexander Wolcott once wrote that “when he met anyone who hadn’t read this book he not only felt sorry for them but he didn’t quite like them”. We feel the same way about Steve as Wolcott did of the book. No one who didn’t know him couldn’t imagine the force of his personality, his humor and his love and enjoyment of theater. His was the standard by which most aspects of the theater are still measured. Steve will be missed. His influence, though, is still among us.