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"A happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life" - Kinky Friedman
You may have heard of a show called Always...Patsy Cline. Now, for 10 points, who wrote it?
Since it first hit the stage of the Ryman Auditorium (original home of the Grand Ol' Opry) 16 years ago, and in spite of the 8 productions since then and the fact that everybody in Nashville has seen the show at least once, even folks here, including theatre folks, don't recognize the name Ted Swindley. That's the Nashville equivalent of loving Hello, Dolly! but having no idea who Jerry Herman is.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Ted made his "acting debut" at the age of 5, when he recited the Christmas story from the King James version of the Bible for his grandmother's garden club. Grandmother decided then and there that he would grow up to be a preacher. Or at least a politician. But the theatre bug was going to bite, 
though it would take a while.
In high school, Swindley was the drama teacher's assistant, serving as A. D. on high school productions, but in college, at Furman University, he majored in Political Science, intending to study law and, indeed, go into politics. "Theatre in college was a dirty little secret," he says, which included playing Tartuffe in Tartuffe and a major role in Bertolt Brecht's Good Woman of Szechuan and directing an extravaganza called The Furman Follies in 1973. Then, after graduating, he took a year of theatre courses at USC Columbia, where he played the role of Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Eventually, Swindley made his way to Huston, Texas, where, in 1978, he founded Stages Repertory Theatre, which this year celebrated it's 33rd anniversary. It was during his Stages days that he happened to write the show that catapulted him (or at least the show) to fame. "I wrote Patsy, because a singer came to me and wanted to do a revue of Patsy Cline songs." He wasn't taken with the idea of the revue, and barely knew who Patsy Cine was, but he did take the records the singer gave him and spent an entire weekend listening to them. And fell in love with Patsy.
In a biography of Cline, he discovered an interview with a Huston woman named Louise Seger, along with a letter from Patsy to Louise. Louise, a great Patsy fan, had actually met and hung out with Patsy when the young singer had played a gig in Huston. Because it placed Patsy in a Huston context, he decided to develop Always...Patsy Cline as a piece for his theatre, with no expectations that it would ever go any further. But somehow it made its way to Atlanta, where it was seen by some Nashville ladies who immediately got on the phone and insisted that their husbands come to Atlanta to see the show. Apparently these were the right folks - the ones that every playwright dreams of having in the audience - because it wasn't long before Patsy hit the Ryman stage in Nashville, Tennessee, and assumed almost mythical proportions.
Patsy's success has been huge, to the extent that it has overshadowed Swindley's other works, and to some degree even the author himself, but that is about to change as he turns his eyes to Texas and legendary Texas Jewish cowboy-musician-author-
In 2007, Swindley went to the 30th anniversary of Stages Rep in Huston, and it was there that he first met Kinky. They had a great conversation, but that might have been that if the Chairperson of the event hadn't called Swindley the next morning. She was having breakfast with Kinky and suggested that it might be the thing to write a play about him. It wasn't long before Kinky's sidekick, Little Jewford, had a package of books and CDs in the mail. Again, Ted did the research and, as had happened with Patsy Cline, became fascinated with his subject.
Becoming Kinky is a compilation of writings, sayings and songs by the Kinkster, developed over the past three years into a giddy and irreverent entertainment with 3 actors playing Kinky at three different stages of his life and career. I first heard the script read in Ted's living room in Nashville in the fall of 2009. That reading led to a public reading at The Post Depression Theatre in East Nashville in January 2010, which unfortunately coincided with one of the worst blizzards ever seen in this Southern city, where just one snowflake closes schools for days and residents won't drive to the grocery store, much less to a "reading" of a new play. (A "reading" - what is that, anyway?)
In June, 2010, there were two readings in NYC, as part of this year's Midtown International Theatre Festival. The New York audiences made it clear that this show had hit potential, as did two subsequent readings in Texas for Kinky & Friends.
Last weekend, December 9 - 12, four public readings of Becoming Kinky played to packed houses of Nashville's Kinkyfans, both those who have appreciated the Kinkster for a long time, and those who were enthralled to discover him for the first time. The outstanding cast included Ryan Brennan, a sophomore in the musical theatre program at Belmont Univesity who just closed in the fantastic Belmont production of Anything Goes, as Kinky in his early 20's; Daniel Moore, who just arrived in Nashville a mere three weeks ago, tackled the Jewish Cowboy in his late 30s; and Alan Lee added the role of present-day Kinky to his already impressive resume. These Kinkys were joined by another phenomenal Nashville talent, Mr. Patrick Krammer, as Kinky's sidekick, Little Jewford (he's little, he's Jewish and he drives a Ford.).
All of this went down in the Theatre Upstairs at Bongo Java, one of Nashville's legendary intimate theatrical venues, which has served as the launching pad for many independent productions, including the incredibly successful Doyle and Debbie Show. Given the tremendous audience response, there is little doubt that we will be seeing more of Kinky in the near future.
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