3+ Passages of Life & Death in the Arts.

A Kinda, Sorta Uplifting Holiday Story.

Dec 19, 2024

A Christmas Past

It was a few weeks before Christmas back in 2020 when I heard my wife and 9-year-old daughter in the family room laughing at the TV. I went in to find them watching a Disney Christmas special. They said it was great and I should stay, but I had brooding or napping to do, or something, so I didn’t join.

For the next few days my daughter kept telling me I should watch that show, it was really funny, and my wife said it was surprisingly funny, and both said there was an even better Disney Halloween special that they’d binge-watched after the Christmas special.

So one day I gave in and watched both with my kid. Halloween House Party and Holiday House Party did turn out to be good. Both were kid-appropriate sketch comedy shows performed by Disney actors on Covid-19 hiatus which doesn’t sound promising—and the host segments were pretty lame—but the sketches were actually great. Tight and interesting enough that I did something I rarely do. At the end I watched the credits.

And the name that popped up was Trevor Moore.

Trevor Moore I

In 2000 I was working for our local theater company, Live Arts. Now a giant silver non-profit on Water Street, then it was a squat brick non-profit warehouse space on Market Street. I was one of two “dramaturgs” who would also run what was called the “LAB.” I’ll come back to the LAB.

Dramaturgs assist playwrights in commissioned works, read submitted scripts, and aid productions with research. At Live Arts these were brand-new positions created because a donor wanted to support new works. At least that’s what I heard. In the world of non-profit corporations, much like the world of for-profit corporations, one never knows the truth of such rumors. I hadn’t studied theater in college but since the 90s I’d had a lot of experience with new works both as a playwright and a producer in Charlottesville’s theater scene. (Shockingly, back then Charlottesville had one.) My fellow hiree was K____. K____ had little experience in hands-on theater and none with new works, but she had a degree and a lot of experience with non-profit organizations, so the Artistic Director, hoped K____ could help Live Arts bring in grant money.

K____ was organized, competent, and friendly and I liked sharing the job with her. We split support work for the season’s mainstage plays (I worked on Cripple of Inishmaan, Candide, and Teresa Dowell-Vest’s new commissioned play, Vinegar Hill). The rumored new works program was taking time to materialize so while K____ concentrated on the grants, I concentrated on booking shows for our 40-seat black box theater called the “Live Arts B” space, or LAB. I loved the LAB and loved programming for the year I held the keys.

The LAB

Live Arts shared that squat brick building with offices, a small hippie school, and lots of apartments—all surrounding a courtyard. The layout meant the LAB could share the building’s lobby and bathrooms with a single counter just inside the LAB entrance to both sell tickets and serve concessions—and even make a few bucks from the tip jar. (Shout out to Brooke Plotnick who worked a lot of shows that year!)

Most non-profit theaters have these secondary spaces created for alternative, intimate, and cutting-edge programming. That’s the pitch to donors when raising money but due to the realities of the theater world these second spaces usually end up being just the smaller venue for the season’s plays that alternate with the bigger venue. (That’s how the smaller space, no longer called the LAB, mostly functions in the silver Live Arts of today.)

The LAB was new enough that it hadn’t yet made that transition. So I had a lot of freedom. I created three different types of contracts. Experienced performers could rent it outright and keep the profits. Complete newbies could ask Live Arts to produce (in which case Live Arts kept the money) and we would keep the profits. Or the performers and Live Arts could split responsibilities and profits 50/50. I hung a fixed lighting grid and the space had a solid, versatile backdrop so acts could load in and out quickly.

The result was a busy and productive year: Russell Richards staged a satirical puppet show, Stevie J reprised his popular one-person show, local songwriters recorded a live album called King of My Living Room, I hosted and produced a variety program as part of the Festival of the Book, a new UVa group called Third Man produced a stripped-down version of Glengarry Glen Ross,1 Amanda McRaven produced Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologs, and the LAB was one of the venues of the first ever Summer Theater Festival, which I was privileged to play a role in designing. And I did all this with no grants or external budget—mostly just word of mouth—since the shows paid for themselves.

About halfway through the year my friend Aer Stephen called to tell me there was a high-school kid who had a cable access show that would be perfect for the LAB. The story I remember Aer telling me (which may not be what he told me) is that he’d heard that Trevor Moore had a sketch comedy show on a Christian cable network because the idiosyncratic owner of the network thought he was funny. But viewers complained so Trevor Moore moved his show to Charlottesville’s cable-access channel. I’d never seen the show–didn’t even own a TV till decades later when my wife ruined me—but this seemed like what the LAB was made for.

We met in the LAB one afternoon sitting on folding chairs with the sun streaming in the metal windows. Trevor was very tall and thin with teenage skin, and a tranquil demeanor. So tranquil he barely seemed to blink. But what was unusual was Trevor came with an entourage. There was a middle-aged husband and wife who identified as Trevor’s writers, I think. (Who ever heard of a cable-access show with writers?) Also there was another teenager who was as short as Trevor was tall, and as jumpy as Trevor was placid. He looked back and forth at Trevor to gauge his reactions to everything I said. He seemed exactly like the Ed McMahon guys who sit with the late night talk show hosts before the celebrity guests come out, and I always wonder if they really like their jobs. He seemed to like his. Anyway, I went over the rules and talked through the options. Trevor never appeared nervous, curious, excited, or surprised. He just gazed at me in his tranquil way. So we booked a date, signed a contract–—I think it was a 50-50% split—and awaited what was probably one rehearsal on Saturday morning followed by two shows back to back.

The Trevor Moore Show

On show days I usually came by to open the building and set up the box office. I never sat to watch rehearsals from beginning to end because I felt the performers had enough to worry about without the landlord around. But I always hovered in the wings a bit to answer any questions and make sure there was some sort of actual show and that it wouldn’t bring death, injury, or future lawsuits.

Trevor’s show as I remember it was a mix of live skits, short video segments, and parody songs. The best bit was a fantastic impersonation of Steve Irwin, the late Australian TV host of Crocodile Hunter. Trevor Moore really embodied Irwin’s manic joy and recklessness with precision, generosity, and a decent Australian accent. The rest was more forgettable. I do remember not liking some of what I took as mean-spirited (I think he was making fun of homeless people or something like that). I find a lot of entertainment pointlessly mean-spirited (Pinter, Mamet, South Park, anything Bill Maher has ever done) but I know that most people feel differently. I never expected LAB shows to abide by my tastes.

Come showtime the house was packed, which is a producer’s pleasure, and the audience loved it, which is a producer’s dream. Plus they looked like newcomers to Live Arts which sated the staff member in me. They delighted in Trevor and he in them. It was another successful show in a year of successful shows. When it was over we settled whatever needed settling, I congratulated him, and that was that. I would have invited him back for the following year, but my time at Live Arts didn’t last.

Unfortunately…

Corporations are a mess, and that’s just as true of non-profits as for-profits. Corporations are legally governed by boards that over time lose hands-on connection with what the organizations do, while the work is done by employees (and/or volunteers) who have little direct knowledge of what the boards do. So executives (Artistic Directors, Managing Directors, etc) must bridge the gap to hold it all together, which often means playing both sides against the other. This (IMO) is what fuels the culture of cheerful mendacity that dominate American life. Individuals do all kinds of wonderful things in both kinds of corporations, but that’s despite, not because of, the organizational structure. Corporations (IMO) aren’t a mess because they’re greedy; They are a mess because the people who are responsible on one end (the Boards) have no direct contact with the people who responsible on the other end (the workers).

Anyway I accomplished what I accomplished that year because I was prudent and discreet. I could never tell the Artistic Director we were staging a live version of a teenager’s cable access show that I had never seen because this guy I knew told me it was great. I couldn’t risk rocking the boat should the money for the new works program ever come in. Instead I would just produce the shows and report them matter-of-factly at meetings.

Meanwhile I talked about the long awaited new works program often and the Artistic Director. He seemed sympathetic but was hard to read. We sometimes had other conversations that were also hard to read. Once he handed me a copy of a thin hard-cover book with an aged green-brown cover. McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader, it was titled. I’d heard of the book—It was a 19th century reading primer—and I knew the author had some sort of Charlottesville ties.2 The A.D. asked what I thought of it. I leafed through it reading some of the stilted century-old language. “It’s interesting.” What else could I say? The A.D. nodded and strode off.

But maybe we were becoming friends because some weeks later he approached me. “Joel, if you’re free why don’t you come to the board meeting this week.” He’d never invited me to a board meeting, and I beamed my what-a-good-boy-am-I glow imagining the public acknowledgment I was to receive for the months of exciting, dynamic, and varied programming.

The board met in the main black box theater. When I arrived the members were still coming in. They stood around a table making small talk. The theater was set up for a play rehearsal with the table temporarily occupying the stage. I headed toward a handful of other non-board-member attendees sitting in some chairs along a riser. I sat beside K____ and we swapped hellos but her smile was thin as if she were distracted. I thought about asking her if she was okay, but the meeting was called to order. Chairs screeched, binders opened, important people laughed in their important way.

Preliminaries transitioned to minutes and reports. Then the Artistic Director was called to report on a new project. He rose and announced that, as everyone was aware, our dramaturgical department had been given a donation of several thousand dollars several months ago to develop new works. My eyes shot to K____ but she avoided my gaze.

The AD continued: “We have just commissioned a dance troupe for a piece exploring through movement a 19th century book called The McGuffey Reader.”

He named the amount of the commission to be given to the troupe. I noted it was the entire several thousand dollars cited as new works donation mentioned earlier. I knew the dance troupe. To my knowledge they had never done work involving texts or historical materials. I looked around but everyone else in the room seemed to know what this was about. My boss had given my entire budget to a dance troupe without even telling me, and my partner K___ had gone along with it, also without telling me, and I’d been invited here for the sole purpose of making it look like I knew and approved

I don’t remember the rest of the meeting.

In the following weeks I made to myself all the excuses one makes when working in these situations, excuses for K____, for the AD, for the system, for me being so blind and stupid. But I couldn’t shake a sort of slow-burning shame and disgust.

I stayed in the job through the first Summer Theater Festival and to finish the shows I’d booked. Then I gave notice and left. K____ also didn’t continue. I don’t know if she was let go, or if she stepped down on her own.

The LAB sat empty for several months until a playwright named Todd got permission to use it for a Saturday open mic called No Shame Theater, and another volunteer, Jessica, got involved as well. As little as K____ and I were paid, Todd and Jessica worked for free so my quitting helped the bottom line, I guess.

That commissioned dance piece ran in the following season but title changed to Primer. It was an exploration of the dancers’ own memories of childhood education with no trace of the McGuffey Reader text or any historical material. We could have commissioned the same piece for 1/3 of what Live Arts spent and used the rest of the money to commission scripts.

Trevor Moore II

Flash forward to 2009.

I’m living in Astoria, Queens and performing at the Magnet Theater on 29th Street in Manhattan. Magnet Theater was and is a small, comedy improv theater, that along with Upright Citizens Brigade and People’s Improv Theater, operated completely differently from the non-profit world I knew in Charlottesville. Being able to compare and contrast those two worlds was endlessly fascinating.

I loved the Magnet, the intimacy of the small black box space with a simple background wall—that I built3— reminding me of the LAB. For my pre-show routine I usually got off the N train at Harold Square and strolled down. But one day I’d come early to run and errand or something, and I was walking toward the theater down 8th Avenue. It was summer, so not yet dusk, and I happened to look up and notice a giant billboard several blocks farther south with a strangely familiar face.

Beneath the title “The Whitest Kids U Know” were five young geeky young men in slouchy alt-band poses, but with shorter hair, no middle fingers raised, and their names printed. Next to the strangely familiar face was printed “Trevor Moore.”

Sure enough, he looked like an older version of the Trevor Moore from a decade ago.

I still didn’t own a television (my future wife and I had just started dating) but I recognized the IFC logo as a cable network. That kid had got himself a show! Good for him! He’d been so organized, industrious, and agreeable. I wondered whether that sidekick kid was one of the other kids in the picture, and if not, where was he now and how did he feel about his friend’s success? I felt bad that I’d never learned his name. And were the older couple writing for the show? I should have remembered their names too.

Speaking of names, I hated Whitest Kids U Know. I get that it’s a joke, but it seems lazy. And impractical. What if they saw a brilliant black comedian and wanted to add him or her to their lineup? Whitest Kids U Know reminded me of that casual meanness I felt back at some points in Trevor’s LAB show. But again, I know that I’m more picky than most people. I told myself when I got to Magnet I would ask the other performers, all younger and more TV-literate, if Trevor’s show was good and/or if it was successful. Also I should check out clips on YouTube. Also I should keep Trevor in mind should I ever get back into non-profit theater and need donors. I’ll track him down and claim I was instrumental in his success.

But as soon as I got to theater and started thinking about my troupe, and the audience, and the space, and the wonder of it all, I forgot all about Trevor Moore.

Trevor Moore III

Flash forward to 2020.

I’d been living back in Cville for eight years with my wife and daughter. We’d started Big Blue Door, a theater company, mostly an improv company, based on Magnet (with permission) plus ideas of our own thrown in and moved into a studio in McGuffey Art Center.

We had a good eight years and then the pandemic hit.

My wife was trapped working from a desk stuffed into the small bedroom of our very small house (with a computer table I’d screwed together from 2x4s), Big Blue Door was defunct, and schools were closed which meant my daughter, a spirited and outgoing child, was especially hard hit. So my wife bought an Amazon Firestick, and signed us up for Disney Plus.

My daughter immediately started watching a lot of Disney. And I mean A LOT of Disney. Which meant—given the tiny size of our house—I listened to A LOT of Disney.

Things I hate about Disney TV: the broad farcical style of the adult actors/characters; all the geek and nerd characters; the moral dubiousness of child actors in general. It’s hard to completely enjoy a show wondering how many of the cast will end up dead at 24 from drug overdoses or alcohol-induced drowning on houseboats in Sausalito.

Things I like about Disney TV: girl lead characters (for my daughter); talented teen actors; the writing of some of the shows. Shows I appreciated most (watching with my 9-year-old daughter) included Sydney to the Max, Liv and Maddie, and particularly Just Roll With It, a live studio show in which a buzzer sounds part-way through and the audience votes on what happens next. It was goofy but funny, and it reminded me of improv and the Magnet and Chicago somehow. Best of all the parents are less ridiculous than the parents of say, Liv and Maddy.

Meanwhile the world was a mess. Charlottesville was in many ways still in tatters from the Alt-Right protests of 2017.4 During the lockdown Live Arts, not able to use its stages, ran a series of video retrospectives put together for fundraising. One season per episode with Live Arts luminaries being interviewed. When my year as a dramaturg was being reviewed, I was somewhat surprised that the invited guests were Jessica and Todd, since they didn’t get involved in Live Arts till the following year. I was more surprised when, as discussion turned to the LAB, the interviewer assigned them credit for all the shows that I’d produced. And downright shocked when they basically accepted it. (Jessica was reluctant at first. Todd not so much.) My wife was listening and was gobsmacked. I was just glad my daughter had refused to listen because the videos were ‘boring.’ I had bragged to her about my LAB program; she would have assumed I had been lying.

So that left us feeling even more isolated. I’d hoped to bring back classes in the fall but the Covid Epsilon variant killed that.5 I worried about money and my future and my sanity. Then in December I heard that laughter, and my daughter made me watch the Disney Holiday House Party and the Disney Halloween House Party. And they were good. And they were written by Trevor Moore, and the two lead adult host actors were the lead actors from Just Roll With It. So I google their names: Tobie Windham and Suzi Barrett.

Both are really solid actors, conveying genuine, relatable emotion despite the broad Disney style, with strong choices and great comic timing. In the House Part(ies) they get to show some range. Windham nails a skit about a bittersweet monster hiding under a bed. Barrett nails a skit about a ghost who tries to haunt newcomers in a house only to end up doing their laundry.

But most surprising, when googling them, I discover that Just Roll With It was also written by Trevor Moore!6

I couldn’t have been prouder. Seeing him on that billboard as a successful performer I was happy for him, but discovering that he was a skilled writer of something as uncool as Disney shows, I was happy for everyone.

Giving work to actors like Tobie Windham and Suzi Barrett and writing something my own kid and I can enjoy and think about and feel together—that’s what life and art are about. That’s why I ran the LAB and quit the LAB, and went to NY and left NY, and started Big Blue Door. I wanted to yell out the window, Hey everyone, that kid grew up to be writer skilled enough he can throw together a funny sketch show for out-of-work Disney actors!

I thought of Aer Stephen (who’d connected Trevor to the LAB). He’d recently moved to Los Angeles, and I wanted to call him and ask him if he remembered Trevor. But I’d lost all my old phone numbers when I dropped my first I-phone in a cup of water. I could write to him through Facebook. Yes, I’ll do that.

But things came up and I never did.

A Life in the Arts

Flash forward to 2021.

Aer, it turns out, did remember Trevor. In the summer of 2021 he wrote me on Facebook to ask if I remembered Trevor Moore. He asked if I knew that that kid from back in the day had been very successful. And that he had died. He sent a link.

Trevor’s death was referred to as an “accident,” which in Hollywood could mean dying by heart attack while snorting cocaine off a Vegas prostitute or being shot while buying cocaine from a street dealer. The vagueness wasn’t reassuring. Aer said Trevor was married with a child, and my first hope was that his kid, growing up without a father already, wouldn’t be double-burdened by some shameful death. I hoped the truthfulness of Trevor’s old Steve Irwin impression came from a reckless instinct of his own, and his death was truly an accident, maybe some stunt like trying to jump off a roof. It’s a weird thing to hope, I suppose, but that’s how I felt.

My second hope was for all the performers who relied on him as a writer. Outlandish young men willing to do outlandish things are not rare, but when a capable writer dies, people lose good jobs, jobs on the shows where everyone can enjoy what they’re doing and feel some satisfaction in it. For the child actors in Just Roll With It I hope they don’t end up dead at 24 from drug overdoses or alcohol-induced drowning on houseboats in Sausalito.

As for Suzi Barrett and Tobie Windham, I hope the only hope worth anything to a good actor: I hope they keep getting work.

Thanks for reading Blame Cannon special holiday edition!

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