“Reminder -- auditions for the musical comedy Anything Goes is after school today. Students should meet at the stage and bring tap shoes. Be prepared to tap,” announced the principal of James Madison High School over the loudspeaker during my first hour biology class.
As soon as I heard the word TAP, I asked my classmates near me what that was all about. The girl sitting in the desk behind me explained our school was putting on a show that involved a lot of tap dancing and described it as a 1930s The Love Boat. It was my first year in high school, so I was still making my way but was certain I had to be part of that show. I had been dancing since the age of seven and tap was my favorite. After performing Ronnie the Robot Who Can Rock & Roll on the stage of my first dance recital, I was hooked! Dissecting frogs was the furthest thing from my mind and all I could think about was approaching my choir teacher, the musical director, to inquire about the audition. First hour bell rang and I ran into the Girl’s Glee choir room. I needed to speak to Mr. B before we started singing the notes to the Sound of Silence.
“Lynn, we already had auditions the past couple days. Today is the callback.” I am sure he could see the look of devastation on my face as I pleaded and shared my tap dancing experience, so he promised to try to work it out. “Well, I know you can sing so you passed that part of the audition. I’ll talk to the director. Just come to the theater right after school and I’ll introduce you.”
Seventh hour accounting class could not come quickly enough. The minute the school bell rang, I scurried through the halls, dropped off my books in my locker, flew down the flight of stairs and swam through the sea of students to get to the lobby.
Mr. B was already in the auditorium leaning over the middle row of seats whispering to the director and choreographer. They both turned around to size me up which made me nervous and a bit uncomfortable. Pam, the choreographer, led me to an area in the hallway to see if these feet could truly move. She asked if I knew the time step and when I replied which one, a smile from ear to ear graced her face. This moment was the turning point in my high school career. In my life!
The next morning the cast list for Anything Goes was posted near the office and the wannabe Broadway stars were flocking around the bulletin board searching for their names. Under the lead role was a list of six angels and there was my name. I did not even realize that I was given this great part. All the girls who were cast in the ensemble were praying to be one of Reno Sweeney’s Angels. Chants of “Who is this Lynn Bertoni?” echoed the hallway and I looked around and played dumb. Nobody knew who I was because I never set foot on that stage to audition, but once we learned our first number and I aced the shuffle ball change flap heal step, they understood. Rehearsals were my escape from the hustle and bustle of school. My theater friends became my second family and I have never encountered such a kind, caring and accepting group of peers in my life. I belonged!
The following year I was cast in the lead role of Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Sugar in the musical version of Some Like it Hot my senior year. Our school was chosen to perform at the Pabst Theatre for the City Wide Theatre Festival. Only three schools were selected so this was a huge honor.
All my life, I wanted to become a performer as I pretended to be on a Broadway stage with the living room curtains as my entrance. My dad would play cards at a local tavern and prop me up on the bar to sing Raindrops keep Falling on My Head; Geyser cheese popcorn and M&Ms served as my reward. We often would sing for nearby nursing homes during Christmas and I relished those times.
My father was known as the singing fireman and sang the National Anthem at numerous Brewers games so performing was in my blood. Big dreams of moving to New York or Hollywood swirled around in my head for as long as I can remember. However, finances did not allow me to attend NYU, so I had to settle for UW-Milwaukee as a theater major.
After the first couple weeks of my freshman year in college, I realized this was not the life for me. After working as an usher at Melody Top, I saw backstage and did not want to make the sacrifices one makes in show business. Family was important to me and soon I was looking for a profession that had more security. I took a year off of college to find myself and during this hiatus, I waited on tables and worked in community theater. That year I played Miss Adelaide in Guys & Dolls and met my first and former husband. As I did four years earlier, he missed the first audition and a mutual friend, who felt I would get a callback, persuaded me to ask the director to allow him to audition at callbacks. He did and was cast opposite of me as Nathan Detroit. During that year, I did a great deal of soul searching and knew I needed to earn my college degree. My advisor informed me that all my theater credits could be applied to an area of concentration for a BS in Education. In order to see if this was a good fit, I had to serve 80 hours of observation in a classroom. The minute I set foot in Ms. Brown’s 4th grade classroom at Hartford Elementary School, I knew it was where I needed to be.
In 1986, I was hired to teach 5th grade at Cedar Hills for the Franklin/Oak Creek School District and continued my teaching career in the district for the next 36 years. The arts brought so much richness to my life that it was my calling to do the same for my students. Stated at the top of my resume was my mission statement with my plans to implement the arts into my teaching, so when I was asked to organize the talent show, I was elated.
Besides the typical acts of singing, playing an instrument and baton twirling, I choreographed a dance number for every grade level and would rehearse during my lunch period. My principal even became part of the show and did not hesitate when I asked him to wear coconuts and a grass skirt to perform Honey Bun with me from South Pacific. The talent shows were a smash and became an annual tradition. During my seven years in the elementary classroom, I had my students performing in Thirteen Colonies plays, Revolutionary War Newscasts and Westward Movement Silent Films. I wrote and directed interactive US History lessons and was asked to teach Social Studies in middle school and implement the same lessons for the World History curriculum. My new principal took notice and offered me the drama and speech position and 8th grade is where I spent the next 29 years. I hit the floor running and was so enthusiastic to bring theater into the lives of middle schoolers. They were not as enthusiastic. It took awhile for my reputation to follow me. At first, kids were screwing around and could not follow a direction to save their lives.
Drama class was considered a blow off class and the attitude of how hard could it be to say some lines and move on stage was evident. Getting them to attend after school rehearsals was a joke! My passion and perseverance finally prevailed and my two drama classes put on quite the show. It took a few more years and with strategic scheduling to avoid track, basketball and cheerleading practice, drama class became very cool. After five years of buying the rights of shows and placing so much responsibility on a few students with the leading roles, I decided to write and create shows for more kids to shine in the limelight. Thus, students would audition for a skit in the overall production and not feel the pressure of learning so many lines. It provided more roles and opportunities and ultimately spread the theater bug. I would coax theme ideas from students and write skits to create an hour long production. We produced Laugh In-a 60s Show, Friday Night Live, Vaudeville, Hooray for Hollywood, Night at the Improv and my last was This 70’s Show in which I developed a skit based on Cheech & Chong’s Sister, Mary Elephant. Each student portrayed one of the teachers in the school and when Sister Mary Elephant said roll call, the audience roared.
My favorite and very heart-wrenching show was written in 2001. The year before I planned to write a show titled Salute to America to incorporate some of my skits from my elementary days and this theme could not have been more timely. I also wanted to teach my little thespians about war, poverty, immigration, and discrimination. They learned much more while playing the roles of Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, Franklin Roosevelt, Linda Brown, Martin Luther King Jr, and Cesar Chavez because they got to live it. The production ended with a slide show to honor those who lost their lives during the attack on America. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience during the encore when the entire cast sang America the Beautiful and gave their final bows to This is My County.
In addition to teaching drama and speech, I taught two sections of math. I recruited the toughest high risk kids who were failing my math class to work lights and sound for my shows. The first year I taught drama, I had this student, Paul, who adamantly claimed there was no way I was getting him on stage, so I assigned him to lights. I had no clue how to operate the light board and this kid figured it out in 20 minutes. During tech rehearsal, I made sure the actors on stage knew how important Paul’s role was to the production as he had the power to turn the lights off at any moment. That following spring, I encouraged Paul to grace the stage at our talent show by playing Abbott in Who’s on First?. Not only did he memorize the lines, he nailed it. His deadpan humor was hilarious and the praise he received from his peers was priceless. I instilled in my students that every job in the theater was critical to the overall production and it wasn’t long before the actors, stage crew, and tech crew became one big happy family. Students of all archetypes: shy, cheerleader, jock, tough guy, gothic, nerd- they became great friends through the theater. And Paul, with a number of others, raised his grade from an F in math class to a B in one quarter. The arts can do that and often are not given the credit they so deserve. T-shirts were made with the show logo with students’ names on tha back and were worn the day of our show. It was such a source of pride in our school that it became the event of the year. Those early rehearsals of me pulling out my hair became rehearsals of pure discipline in which one could hear a pin drop when I gave directions. What my students learned by putting on a show is that after curtain call, everyone is on a natural high and there is nothing like camaraderie.
Unfortunately, due to budget cuts and a new superintendent, who wanted to make her mark and implement remedial math and reading classes, drama class was no longer. After 14 years of proving the impact the arts had on these kids, it meant nothing to the administration. A new middle school was built in 2008 and clearly there was no consideration given to building a stage. There was a black box placed between the gym and cafeteria. No lighting board, no make-up room; no costume room. No drama productions. The only space given to the theater department was a storage room that was filled with wrestling mats.
Still, I managed to keep the arts alive in our school through drama club, talent shows and field trips.
I have been in contact with former students through phone calls, letters and Facebook. One student, Sobe, contacted me 23 years later through Messenger to tell me when she was a student in my 5th grade classroom, I helped give her a voice. Another student, Summer, who was struggling with self-esteem, sent me a card to let me know she was attending college that Fall as a musical theater major and my words inspired her. I held her after class and insisted she sing as an audition for the talent show during lunch. Summer sang “All of Me” in that talent show because I told her she had a gift she needed to share with others. At my retirement party, my daughters surprised me with a video of my former students' testimonials. They shared their memories of playing Thomas Jefferson, tap dancing with umbrellas to Singing in the Rain, performing with future community theater groups, twisting in a poodle skirt, loading the bus to Chicago to see Motown, watching inspiring films, YouTube videos of young performers, along with a host of artistic moments they recalled as part of my daily lessons.
The arts have truly changed my life and put me on the path to such a positive and incredible journey. Not only did the arts bring joy to my life and spirit in my soul, the confidence I gained led me to win Mrs. Wisconsin-USA in 1994 and Mrs. Wisconsin-America in 1998. With this title and the pageant world, I was able to bring attention to the importance of the arts in education. As I reflect on my life of 59 years, it is difficult to imagine those years without my involvement in the performing arts. I did not flee to New York or Los Angeles as originally planned, but I still was able to make the arts an integral part of my life as well as my three daughters’. I sent my girls to the Milwaukee School of Arts which was not in the best area of town. They may have been secure in a little suburb school, but I knew in my heart my children needed exposure to all of the arts. To this day, they remind me that attending a school which centered around the arts made them more worldly, empathetic, and stronger human beings. My first leading role in the musical South Pacific as Ensign Nellie Forbush even holds some connection to all three of my daughters. Courtney is a nurse, and my twins, Natalie, married a Frenchman and Nellie bears the name. All three girls have taken the creativity the arts offer into their own lives. Courtney has a side cookie business called, Life’s a Batch. Natalie lives in France and works as a translator for her own business as well as a copywriter for a company and Nellie is an art teacher and is active in the Milwaukee art culture. They are by far my finest production. The arts are in all of us and if we, as a society, do not embrace and support the arts, life may only be noise coming from the loud speaker, just making another announcement.
Lynn Bertoni-Shaw is an actor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and has earned a Bachelor’s in Education with a minor in Theater from UW-Milwaukee along with a Masters from Aurora University, Illinois. During the past 43 years, she has worked in both professional and community theater in the Milwaukee Metropolitan area and Chicago. Although Lynn loved performing on stage, she dedicated her life to the classroom as an educator and recently retired after 36 years of service. She has earned the titles of Mrs. Wisconsin-USA and Mrs. Wisconsin-America and this led her to an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show in which she agreed to spend a night in the Boone County Jail, Indiana to talk about her pseudo booking experience for the episode “Avoiding Arrests.” Retirement offers Lynn the flexibility to develop her craft while pursuing greater involvement in theater, film and motivational speaking. In addition to Lynn’s life as an actor, teacher and mother, writing has been another passion and she plans to write her novel in the near future.
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