Joshua Chamberlain was going places and he knew it. In fact, everyone knew it because he exuded a quiet confidence and intelligence. He had come a long way since the fishing expeditions to Chickasaw Lake. His mother had sponsored the local Boy Scout troop but by the time the boys had made it to middle school, everyone else had lost interest. This is what made Josh special. He continued with the program to become an Eagle Scout and earned a scholarship to the engineering program at the University of Tennessee because of his work in community service. Josh dreamed of becoming an engineer at Zollicoffer Incorporated because it was the best and he made sure that he was on the right track to achieve his goal as soon as possible. Tracey Cox, his high school history teacher, said “I never taught anyone who was so sure of what he wanted to be and who possessed the drive to get there in a few short years.”
One of the ways that Josh committed his time to community service for the Scouts was by working in the theater at Farragut High School. He liked to build things so he became a member of the stage crew. By the time that his junior year, he became so adept at building the sets that Mr. Bragg, who ran the theater program, had tapped Josh to become the chief electrician. He combined his passion for engineering with his need to volunteer be becoming responsible for hanging the klieg lights, wiring them, and then manning the stage lighting control panel and was the only person allowed to touch the switches and dials. At a very young of seventeen, Josh was widely recognized as the quiet leader in the theater. Unlike the actors, who always marched to a different drummer, David was respected because of his ability to construct the sets and doing the grip work of maintaining the lights. Also, he was well liked because he wasn’t above doing the non-skilled jobs like spending his Saturdays building the sets and painting the flats.
Farragut High School had been built in the 1950s when there was no thought or budget for a theater. The school improvised by making a micro theater out of a converted classroom, a closed off hallway, and an unused storage room. The end of the long hallway on the third floor was sealed off and it became the backstage, the classroom was the main stage, and there were three rows of seats for an audience that could hold no more than one hundred people. Everything in the theater was painted black; walls, flooring, ceiling, even the seats were black.
On the back wall of the improvised theater room was a large hole in the wall. It had been cut out at the very top, right next to the ceiling, and a window had been jerry-rigged into it. On the other side of that window was the converted storage room. Mr. Bragg had a platform built up about five feet off of the ground so that he could watch the production without disturbing the audience members. It was also built as a light booth for Josh so that he could watch the stage productions to control the lighting. A path had been made from the door to the platform and, aside from that, the storage room served as a place to put all the props and costumes. The cast and crew could see Josh and Mr. Bragg through that little window at any time during a production.
When the plays were being produced and the cast needed a place to change into their costumes and apply their make up, the adjacent classrooms were used as dressing rooms. In theory, there was one dressing room for the boys and a separate one for the girls, but that rule was often ignored. Literally, the cast could have spent the morning in science class and the evening getting dressed to star in the musical and it all happened in the same room. The improvised theater was too small and completely inadequate for the job, but for the actors and stage crew, it was magical.
The reason as to why the students liked the theater so much was that it provided an escape from home and school. It gave them a cause and a place to hang out with like-minded people. Josh came into his own in the theater because he felt needed and he really thought of the stage as a second family. The theater was a safe place; it was like a protective cocoon because you weren’t involved with the stage production then nobody knew that you were a theater kid. Josh spent every Saturday there and, when the production was getting closer to opening night, he spent every afternoon and many evenings there as well. Sundays were for church and family.
Clearly, Josh was never going to get along with the actors because they were all a little strange. The boys, especially, were weird but there were several girls who were beautiful and Josh probably worked so many hours so that he could spend some time with them. He made excuses to work on the sets or hang the lights when the actors were rehearsing. On the weekends, when no one else was in the building, the theater kids had the whole school to themselves. They felt like Farragut High belonged to them and them alone. To add to the mystique of the theater, Josh had rigged up a little button to a wooden block and lowered it from outside of the third story window. When the actors or stage crew wanted to gain access to the building where the theater was located, they pressed the button and a buzzer would go off in the light booth and Josh would run down three flights of stairs to let the actors in. It was such a simple contraption but it made the theater kids feel like they were in some sort of clandestine secret society. Josh acted as a security guard and he made sure that whoever wanted in to the building was a member of the cast or crew. In effect, he was the bouncer who made everyone else feel safe inside of their theater home.
Mr. Bragg ran every aspect of the theater. He was the A.P. English teacher for Farragut High School and he was known and feared for his quick wit and even quicker temper. He was a small man, short and overweight, but built like a bullet with the same pent up energy. Always dressed in slacks and a LaCoste alligator shirt; no one had ever seen Mr. Bragg him in jeans or even a tee shirt. Over worked a full time teacher and running the theater program by himself, Mr. Bragg became bitchy when he was tired. And he was always tired. That is why he was never without a Diet Coke in his hand. The constant flow of caffeine fueled his energy, especially after his classes had been difficult. To make matters even more complicated, Mr. Bragg was a gay Black man in Knoxville, and he liked to say that he was one of two that existed in East Tennessee. Really, though, the fact that he was a gay Black man did not factor into his relationship with his students or the cast; his color and his sexuality were beside the point. What was remarkable about Mr. Bragg was his passion for his work. He crackled with intelligence and talent oozed from every pore. Every year he produced a drama in the Fall and a musical in the Spring and sometimes he produced a third play around winter break. Some of the other teachers at Farragut wanted to act so the third play was produced without the students and sometimes Mr. Bragg would take a role. When the school year was over, Mr. Bragg moved to New York for two months so that he could act in a summer stock production. This endeared him to his students even more because it showed his commitment to his craft. The highlight of his career was when one of his former students became a successful director and flew Mr. Bragg out to Los Angeles so that he could act in his new movie. He only had one line but got to share some screen time with Harrison Ford.
A new production began with Mr. Bragg picking out what play he wanted to do. He had to clear it with his principal, order the scripts, and then audition the cast. The dates of the auditions were listed on the glass encased bulletin board that Josh had put up outside of the theater. When the roles were assigned, the theater kids immediately knew that the list was up and they ran to theater hall to see if they made the cut. There were both shrieks of happiness and tears of sadness at the sight of either being given a lead role or being assigned to the chorus line. The early rehearsals were for the principles only but the whole cast would rehearse for the long sessions on the weekends. Because the Saturday sessions went all day, Mr. Bragg had the actors do some warm up activities to loosen them up. Everyone would lie on the floor and listen while Mr. Bragg lead them through some meditation exercises. And yet, these were teenagers after all, and three of the prettiest girls at Farragut High School shared the lead. They couldn’t help to think that Destiny Ryan was literally on her back and only a few feet away from them. The girls liked the attention and made sure that heir hair and make up were done for the Saturday long sessions. The stage crew worked in the early mornings and looked for reasons to hang around so that they might also steal a glimpse of the girls. Josh had to shoo them away but did it gently because the crew was made up of volunteers and he couldn’t afford to lose them. Irv McDowell was on the stage crew, although he and Josh didn’t recognize each other from their Camp Van Dorn experience together. Meanwhile, Destiny looked like an angel to the stage but she was a senior and they knew that nobody in the theater had a chance to date her. She only dated college boys now.
After meditating, the actors broke out into groups, one to warm up their singing voices with the musical director in the hallway, another to practice improvisation with the acting coach in a classroom, while the third group, the principle actors, ran through their lines in the theater. Fr. Jubal Early was present for the Saturday sessions. He was friends with Mr. Bragg and helped out on the weekends by volunteering to videotape the rehearsals. The recordings were made available to the cast and crew so that they could make adjustments after watching the tape. Acting as the producer, Fr. Early organized the fund raising and paid the bills. It was a thankless job but the priest did it because the theater, and his friend, needed him. He raised and spent thousands of dollars and made sure that every penny showed up on the stage.
Mr. Bragg like to say that “No one sees us do our job; they don’t see the struggle, so they expect a lot from us.” He would yell and throw tantrums but he got by with it because he productions were so professional. All of his charges hated him and loved him at the same time; hate because he was so demanding and so loud, love because he made the actors proud of themselves. There was almost a cult of personality around Mr. Bragg. His laugh was uproarious and genuine, but he was a tyrant and his dark moods ran deep. His actors and crew knew when to stay away from him, which was often. If there were one example as to why the kids admired Mr. Bragg so much was that, on the weekends, after a long day of rehearsing, they would party at someone’s house. At 10:00 or even 11:00 at night, they drove past Farragut High School and could see the lights on on the third floor. They knew that Mr. Bragg, after the cast and crew had left, was still there, sewing the costumes or doing one of the other thousands of tiny things that needed to be done before opening night. The story of the third story light made its rounds among the high school seniors and it only added to the esteem that the company felt for its leader. A gay Black man in Eastern Tennessee had become a beloved role model for a bunch of white, middle class theater kids.
Opening night was always the highlight of any production. Josh had made sure that the lighting complete and the sets were built. Fr. Early had the programs and tickets printed and there was even enough money left over to pay for the ushers to wear a tuxedo on the first night. The cast had memorized their lines and thrown away their scripts because they weren’t needed anymore. Several of the mothers had volunteered a couple of Saturdays to sew the costumes and they looked spectacular. Now the moment had arrived. The greatest compliment that Mr. Bragg could give the theater kids was “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a show!” They had waited for weeks to hear it and, on the last night of dress rehearsal, Mr. Bragg beamed with pride as he said it. Actors and crew puffed out their chests with pride and dreams of moving to Hollywood to become movie stars began to swirl in our heads. And then, when the production earned a standing ovation after the last act of opening night, Mr. Bragg turned to Josh as they were watching from the window box at the back of the theater, and he said, with tears in his eyes, “this makes it all worth it!” Josh smiled but the two didn’t say anything for awhile, content to bask in the glow in all that they accomplished. They knew that they still had six more shows and two matinees and could only hope that the company could keep their energy up for another two weeks
