Theater director Gary Gisselman finds you can go home again

Gary Gisselman gets around pretty well for a guy who has more replacement parts in him than a 1993 Chevy.

After sharing a few rehearsal notes with his young cast in "Oklahoma!" the 70-year-old director ambled up on stage to work a few scenes in a show that would open in three days at Bloomington Civic Theatre. There he stood with his actors, shadowing their every move like a guardian angel as they looked back for approval.

"No, that's not it," Gisselman said of one actor's attempt at a stage laugh. "Let's do that again," he announced to the others, "until she gets it right."

In this moment, he sounds so warm and amused that one might think an actor would try to mess up, just to draw the director's attention.

Gisselman was 45 years younger and using his original knees and hips when he last worked at Bloomington Civic -- not on this stage, mind you. When he began as artistic director in 1964, the community players rehearsed in a church on the Richfield side of Interstate Hwy. 494 ("I'm not sure the highway was there -- 1964?") and performed in a Bloomington junior high.

But Gisselman's staging of "Oklahoma!" that is now playing at Bloomington represents a homecoming. "It's interesting that we're doing a show that took place in 1907," he said. "My grandparents settled here in 1910."

The old Gisselman strawberry farm was just a mile and a half down the road from where the dazzling Bloomington Center for the Arts now sits on Old Shakopee Road. Young Gary was raised in the Lutheran church across the street and he recalled smashing his arm in a bike accident at a nearby intersection when he was 13. Those were the days when he played in the cemetery -- memorizing verses on the headstones -- while his grandfather, the town sexton, dug graves.

Gisselman has accomplished a good deal since he left what was then the "village of Bloomington." He was the founding artistic director at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres in 1968. In 1980, he left that plum job and moved to Tucson and helped develop the Arizona Theatre Company, where he stayed for 11 years.

"They offered Gary the chance to do many other things," said Anita Ruth, Bloomington's music director. "Gary never regretted doing that."

He returned to Minnesota as associate artistic director at Children's Theatre Company, then directed the Opera Workshop at the University of Minnesota. Since 2000, he has taught theater at St. Olaf College while also directing in the Twin Cities, including eight years of "A Christmas Carol" at the Guthrie.

This coming season, he'll helm "Ragtime" at Park Square and "Sunshine Boys" at the Guthrie. At the same time, he's teaching a class called "Great Conversations," which surveys such lightweight stuff as Aristotle, Augustine and the Old Testament.

Why would he wedge a gig at Bloomington into this busy schedule?

"Anita asked me," he said. "I'm just a boy who can't say no."

Keeping things fresh

The morning after the "Oklahoma!" run-through, Gisselman was well aware of what he'd gotten himself into.

"Lots of things went wrong," he said by phone. "It was terrible."

For someone who has worked with countless notable actors in the Twin Cities, the Bloomington experience requires a patience that the young Gary Gisselman might not have had.

"He was known to throw his glasses," Ruth said. "Let's just say that Gary could have been an actor, too. There was a lot of drama and sometimes I think it was just to get people's attention."

Gisselman might have mellowed, Ruth said, but he has kept his standards high.

"That's why people want to work with him," she said. "He's one of the few people who don't say, 'Oh, it's just a musical.' He says, 'Wow, it's a musical. What can we bring to this?'"

Gisselman, who turns 71 this week, broaches no talk of retirement. In fact, he questions what that means.

"The line between the work I do and the life I live is very thin," he said.

That sense of avocation can provoke difficult decisions, such as the move to Arizona when his two sons, Sam and Ben, were young. His wife, Margo, is managing director at the Jungle Theater and has worked in the business for nearly as long as Gary. So she knows the demands.

"Theater is all-consuming," Ruth said. "I think his family life is different, but I wouldn't say it's been to their detriment."

In fact, Gary is now the Grandpa Gisselman in the family. He's not digging graves. He's still digging theater.