When the curtain comes down for the final time on Lancer Productions’ “Anything Goes” this Sunday, the cast and crew won’t be the only ones taking one last bow.
After a career spanning more than 50 years with the North Scott School District, longtime set designer, artistic director and auditorium house manager Tom Goodall is stepping away.
“I hate to quit,” said Goodall. “But I thought I better get out before they throw me out. You have to stop sometime. I’m getting a little older; you have to figure, sooner or later, you’re going to slow down.”
A native of Maquoketa, Goodall designed his first set when he was still in high school. “When I was a freshman, sophomore in high school, Harmon Tucker was the drama and speech teacher at Maquoketa High School. During a class, I was doodling away, drawing whatever, when I should have been paying more attention. And he said to me, ‘I see you’re doodling. I want to see you after school.’ I thought I was in really big trouble for messing around.
“But I got back and he said, ‘I haven’t got time to design our next show. Would you consider reading a script and trying it?’ It was ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and it was very nice.”
After high school, he graduated from the University of Northern Iowa. Although he didn’t do theater in college, he did come back to build sets and paint for Maquoketa community theatre, including the Peace Pipe Players’ first show – coincidentally, a production of “Anything Goes.”
Goodall began working with the North Scott School District in 1970, when he was hired as an elementary art teacher. He divided his time at first between Alan Shepard and John Glenn before settling permanently at Shepard. “When I went to college, I had decided I wanted to be an art teacher,” he said. “I was always going to be a high school art teacher, but I got my first job as an elementary one, and I loved it. I stuck around because I liked what I was doing.”
He didn’t become involved with Lancer Productions until after the auditorium was built, 13 years into his teaching career. His first show as set designer was 1985’s “Time After Time.”
“At that time, I went to work with Judith Jacobs and Diane Hall,” Goodall recalled. “We just had a wonderful team. Harvey Perrine was the technical director and the guy that managed the theater and did everything, and I was his assistant. Harvey was here for about three years, and then he bowed out.”
CCT Involvement
In addition to Lancer Productions, Goodall also became involved with Countryside Community Theatre shortly after its founding. “The second season of Countryside, Phyllis Green was the president at that time, and she said, ‘Tom, why don’t you come and design a set for us? I think you’d really enjoy it.’ So, I went on ahead and did ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and ‘Cheaper by the Dozen.’”
He retired from teaching after 33 years, but continued to be involved with theater at the high school for the next 20 years.
But now, after 177 shows with Lancer Productions, Goodall decided it was time to say goodbye.
The road to retirement actually began earlier in the school year. Goodall only designed the sets for the fall show, “The Play That Goes Wrong,” and “Anything Goes.” Student scenic designer Nora Glover designed “The Cat in the Hat,” marking only the fourth time in Goodall’s tenure he had not designed a set.
“Nora did the last one, and did a wonderful job,” he said. “It’s hard to do that, to let go. But I knew she could, so let’s do it.”
For Goodall, the collaborative process of building a set, which he describes as “like birthing a baby,” starts with the script. “And then you start mulling it around in your brain about what you can do with it.” The actual design process can take several months, with Goodall doing drawings, “then I always do a painter’s elevation, which is a painting of what I think it should look like, so when we’re working, I can say to the kids, ‘OK, this is what we’re doing now, this is what I want you to paint, this is how it’s going to look.’”
In the case of “Anything Goes,” Goodall had actually already designed two boats prior to this year’s production: a 1995 Countryside production and the 2006 Lancer Productions version. Both were two-story boats, and the CCT version featured the orchestra on the top level. This year, the creative team decided to go big, and Goodall added an extra level to the elevation.
Tom's favorites
While it’s not easy to choose a favorite from all the sets he’s designed, Goodall says a few stand out to him. Among his Lancer Productions’ shows, he’s fond of the 1986 set for “Ordinary People,” which he had to design to be able to transport to the International Thespian Festival in Muncie, Ind. “South Pacific” (1991) featured a 15-foot waterfall onstage. “Bloody Mary stood on top of the mountain and sang ‘Bali Ha’i’ and it was gorgeous,” he recalled.
More recently, 2016’s set for “Junie B. Jones” was a concept he was proud of. “Most people do ‘Junie B. Jones,’ she’s in a house, there’s supposed to be a table and a chair and a couch. But I decided, let’s try it this way, and we made huge five-foot letter, and the kids would turn these colorful letters one way or the other, and they’d turn into tables and chairs and couches. And the set became things, and that was fun.
“A lot of them, you start out with something, and it becomes something else. That’s the creative process.”
As for CCT, he enjoyed the set for 2019’s “Mamma Mia!,” but added the set for 1989’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” was particularly memorable.
“At the end, when Christ is crucified, he raises. It was all wood panels and stuff like that on the floor, very abstract. There was a rake (slope) on stage in the center. And at the end, they laid Jesus out on that rake and pounded into his hands. Then we hydraulicly lifted the cross; it came up out of the floor and lifted into the air. It was gorgeous.
“And I knew what I wanted it to look like, and I told them, ‘Here’s where the lights are, it’s got to be like this.’ And I knew what I wanted.
“Well, the first night, I catapulted Jesus into the second row. Not really, but he flew, and it was terrible. But then we figured it out. That was so beautiful when it was done, and it was exactly what I had here in my feeble old brain. But I sat out in the audience and cried like a baby. It was ridiculous. And part of it was sheer exhaustion by the time we got to that point.”
Taking his spot on stage
Building sets wasn’t the only way Goodall was able to use his creativity. He acted in two Lancer Productions shows, 2001’s “West Side Story,” where he played Doc, the grocer, and a brief part in the reunion cast of “Schoolhouse Rock Live.”
In 2002, he also wrote and directed a play of his own, called “Frost on Windows,” which he described at the time as “a sort of history of man, music, dance and theater all wound up in one production.”
Part of the joy of the job is working with the kids, said Goodall. “I love working with the kids. They’re really phenomenal people. Kids, they have problems like big people, too. But they seem to work it out. They are a big, happy family. They really are. They help each other out if somebody’s got a problem, make sure it gets taken care of. They’re just good kids.
“Part of that is the team that’s working with them. The people that are here. Stacie (Kintigh), Josh (Tipsword), every one of them. But the people that are here working with the kids care about doing the best job they possibly can. And they instill that in the kids. If you can’t do it, we’ll figure out a way you can. We just keep going and going and going.”
One of those “kids” is current Lancer Productions assistant troupe director Renae Mohr. A 1998 graduate of North Scott, she came to know Goodall as a child through her mother, longtime LP costume designer Jalois Crotty. She said, “It’s not a show without Tom.
“I don’t know theater without Tom, so I have no concept of what it will look like. Because everything I’ve ever done has been with him.”
Mohr said she’s grateful for the expertise Goodall has provided during her tenure. “He does whatever you ask. So, if I have an idea for a set, he does whatever he can to accommodate me. I always tell him, ‘Whatever you give me, I’m going to use,’ and he always said that he really appreciated that, because he would have directors that wouldn’t use a part of the set that he took time to build.”
Mohr isn’t the only Lancer Productions alum that returned to her home theater – most of the current team actually graduated from North Scott: speech coach Emily (Heyer) Hintze (2008); technical director Josh Tipsword (2007); assistant technical director Justin Walker (2011); and Maddie Harbour (2017).
“I’ve got them all over the country, still doing theater, and it’s such a joy to know that,” said Goodall, joking that he’d been with the department so long, he’s on his “grand-techies.”
“It’s just sort of fun, that we’ve got lots of people out there making the arts better.
“I’ve been so fortunate to be able to watch the kids grow and change. They come in here as freshmen – and sometimes we have elementary kids in our shows. And then you watch them grow to become adults. And even after, they’ll call and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to do such and such in college, do you want to come?’ Sure, we’ll get there if we can. So, you go to their shows and you see their concerts.”
Arts are alive and well at NS
Goodall says he’s grateful for the continued presence of arts at North Scott. “The reason that we can do what we do is – the school board is wonderful to us. It’s so wonderful to know that the superintendent and all those people are supporters of the arts.
“The arts are alive and well, living here at North Scott. Vocal and band are top-notch. You hit the writing skills, the visual arts, theater, speech. Everything is wonderful. And that’s because we have support from them. But the set that you see on the stage, and the costumes, and all the makeup and hair and wigs, is all paid for by ticket sales.”
He’s also quick to point out the success of the other arts groups at the high school.
“When people walk in this door, they want to work. It’s just what we do. Theater people, the band people, the vocal people. Mrs. Potts is phenomenal at what she does. And the band guys. I was in vocal and band in high school. I never learned a fourth of what they learn right now.”
He also gives credit to his wife, Joanne, whom he married in 1974. Their three children, who grew up with Lancer Productions, are still involved in the arts. Son Joe works with IATSE Stagehand Local No. 85 and oversees stagehands all over the Quad Cities. Daughter Kate lives in Madison, Wis., where she works as a physical therapist and has stage managed for local theater and the Madison Opera. And youngest daughter Christine is currently on the national tour of “Disney’s Aladdin,” doing props.
Neither Goodall nor his colleagues are completely sure what the future holds.
“It will be a very, very different future,” said Mohr. “But it’s time. We have to pass the baton. We have to move in a new direction. I don’t think he’ll every be gone. I think if somebody said, ‘Hey, would you do this?’ Especially with our kids’ camps – he always loved Tech Time with Tom. And he just loves those kids. That’s his heart.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. I think we’re just going to ignore it,” laughed Mohr.
“I don’t know what Joanne and I are really going to do,” said Goodall. “We’ve been fortunate, because this was a part-time job for me after I taught for a living. We could schedule vacations around the theater.
“We do the best we can, and that’s all you can do. Life’s what happens when you’re living. And you have to live it. We enjoy traveling, and we’ll be doing more of that. I’ll look forward to coming back to the shows next year. They’ve already told me they might drag me in if they get behind. We’ll see.”
He added that he’s confident his co-workers will continue to do well in the future. “Josh is really, really good at lighting. He’s excellent at building things, too. If I give him an idea, he and Justin can make it work.
“It’s been a gas. I’ve enjoyed every second of it. But there comes a time when younger people should take over. My art studio in my basement has all kinds of empty canvases that need filled.”