The Wurster Interviews, Part 5: The Early Years of PPE
Read previous installments: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
The Demise of Lion Walk
The two women who ran the Lion Walk Performing Arts Center, Trudy Scott and Anne Wyma, were also running the Pennsylvania Repertory Theater. In addition, both also taught at CCAC, and studied in a PhD program at New York University. They flew there twice a week to attend classes.
You can imagine what a workload that was. They finally gave up Lion Walk and the Pennsylvania Repertory Theater. They both wanted to live in New York and continue in theater. So they had to make a choice.
Trudy chose to remain at CCAC Boyce Campus and continue living in Pittsburgh, doing theater and so on. Anne decided to live in New York. It is so expensive to live there, she got a job in the stock broker field. Anne did very well in stocks. Last I heard, she was transferred by her company to London. She was doing stocks in London and theater on the side.
You may recall the building that housed Lion Walk was owned by Janet Gillespie, who had her dance company on the second floor. It made no sense to leave the first floor empty, so Janet tapped her husband, Peter Gillespie, to take over the directorship of Lion Walk. In order to generate income, they started having midnight rock 'n roll concerts on the weekends — they packed the place. Peter hired John Kram as the organizer. Along with the rock concerts, Lion Walk continued to host theater and poetry readings and workshops.
Subsequently, Janet and Peter split up and got divorced. So Peter left Lion Walk and Janet brought in Bill Royston. Bill had been head of the Pittsburgh Lab Theater, which had been located for quite a few years at Fifth and Craft Avenues in Oakland.
Bill and I had a meeting. Now, Bill was a theater guy and had no interest in poetry. I thought he was a real jerk. He made it clear we weren’t really welcome to stay, so we did one more poetry event and then we pulled out.
Shortly after that, Janet got a teaching position at a university in Oklahoma — teaching dance. Royston subsequently left town and went to the Pacific Northwest.
In 2012, my son Paul and I went to Portland for the Portland Jazz Festival. It was superb. We saw Esperanza Spalding, Joshua Redman, and the SFJazzCollective. The clubs were jumping with local groups. We had a great time.
When I perused the program, I noticed that the director of the festival was none other than Bill Royston. I wrote a letter of praise about the festival. I understand Bill retired from directing the festival after that year. We haven’t returned since, but it’s still a great festival.
Next in issue 8: Wobbly Joe’s, the Karen Marsden incident, and Operation Barbarossa
