A writer returns to Clearwater to open a musical in a theater where he finds memories of his father still take center stage.
By KELLEY BENHAM
Published May 11, 2003
It's a little white wood-frame theater, so close to the ocean the air smells like salt.
When he returned to it, it hadn't changed. It probably hadn't changed for decades.
He stepped out of the sun, through the back door into the Green Room with its scattered couches and aqua walls. Around the corner, there was the old yellow flowered sofa he remembered. It had been in the living room when he was a kid, until one day it disappeared. Things were always disappearing from the house and turning up at the theater - rows of books, pieces of furniture, anything Dad could borrow for a set.
He breathed in the musty smell, like an old attic. It smelled like 70 years of sawdust and sweat, and something else.
Flip Kobler could have chosen a lot of places to open his latest play. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York. But he brought his play 2,500 miles from his Los Angeles home to Clearwater, to the Francis Wilson Playhouse on Seminole Street.
It's his dad's old place.
Fred Kobler was a constant presence at the theater for 15 years. Flip used to visit his father there, watch him perform, help him build sets. But since Fred died in 1997, Flip hadn't been back.
He returned in April, script in hand, and found the same old carpet, worn flat. He found the same old paint-chipped seatbacks, the same dusty piano.
It's the kind of place some people keep coming back to, and some never really leave.
Fred Kobler had Hollywood dreams long before his son did. He took parts in local theater while he worked in advertising in Minnesota and then as an interior designer in Largo. He dreamed of bigger roles. He even had a stage name picked out: Adam Lucas.
But they were only dreams. Marriage, four kids and a career held him steadily to his responsibilities and kept Adam Lucas locked in his imagination.
Flip grew up in the dark hallways of community theaters, watching his dad.
Mostly, he loved it. But when he was 8, Flip saw his dad in I Never Sang for My Father. His father's character died in the play. Flip ran outside into an alley, looked back at the theater and cried and cried.
When he was old enough, Flip started acting, too. He traveled with Largo High School's Mime Time group, performing in senior centers and mobile home parks. His dad was always there, watching.
When he turned 18, Flip wanted to go to Hollywood. Other kids' dads told them to find sensible jobs. Fred, or maybe it was Adam Lucas, told his son, "Go."
So Flip packed the 1971 Oldsmobile and went, knowing he could always come back.
He worked as a page, then answered phones for a casting agency. He got a few acting jobs but wasn't happy with the roles: always a thug, a punk, a psycho killer.
He started writing his own roles, in his own plays. Turns out he was a better writer than actor. His work started to sell.
He met his wife, Cindy Marcus. Together they wrote for Star Trek Deep Space Nine, were published by Samuel French and wrote the sequel to Disney's Lion King, called Simba's Pride.
Whenever he returned home, Flip found his father at the Francis Wilson Playhouse. Fred started volunteering there just after Flip left home. Eventually he quit decorating homes and apartments and worked on theater sets full time. He used radical colors like pumpkin and purple, and was a perfectionist about fabrics and patterns.
When Flip would visit, he helped his father with the sets and props. They would work at a long paint-splattered bench backstage. They worked in perfect sync, not talking, not needing to talk.
Fred was the quiet, meticulous one. Always dapper, he kept the paint off his Dockers while he worked. Flip was messier, always forgetting to put the paint lids back on the cans.
Fred acted in 15 or 20 plays, stage-managed, served as the theater's vice president. One Christmas he asked his son to do a play at home. Flip presented his own original Wild Dust at the theater in 1992. His father was stage manager.
Flip knew his dad was proud of him, even though Fred didn't say much. His dad would put his hand on his shoulder, look him in the eye, and just nod.
Flip always wanted to act with his dad, so in 1995 he wrote A Ghost of a Chance with a part for Fred.
He named his dad's character Adam Lucas.
In the last scene of the play, a ghost leaves his family behind and goes to the hereafter. A light shines down on the ghost on stage. The ghost looks into the light, at all the people who have gone before him. He calls out to one person in particular.
"Dad," he says.
Flip can't go back to the play now. Just thinking about that last scene makes his eyes wet.
"I see my dad," he said.
The scene didn't mean much when he wrote it. He could have had the main character call to his mother in the afterlife. That might have seemed obvious.
No, Flip said. "I picked Dad."
A Ghost of a Chance was Fred's last play. Toward the end, he had trouble remembering his lines.
He died two years later, at age 78. The family cremated him, bought space for the urn.
Flip, now 41, hasn't gone to visit the urn. If he wants to see his dad, he goes to the theater.
"He's here," Flip said at the playhouse last week. "If my dad is anywhere, he's here."
Getting ready for his latest play, a musical sequel to Wild Dust, Flip sees his dad around every corner. The set backdrop has one of his dad's purple creations painted on the back. Climbing a ladder in the prop room the other day, he saw a table he and his dad had painted together at that bench years ago. Not far away, a chair his dad had covered.
"A piece here," Flip said, "a piece there."
There's even a large portrait of Fred on the prop room wall directly behind the stage. He's wearing crimson robes, a costume from one of his performances, but it's unmistakably Fred, with his thick white hair and razor-straight mustache.
Morning glories make him remember his father's daily greeting to his children: "Morning, glories," Fred would say. Flip wears a ring made from his dad's melted down jewelry.
He sees his father in his son's face. Finn, 4, never met his grandfather. But he uses the same gestures, pointing when he tells a good story, massaging the air with his fingers. He didn't get the habit from his mom or dad. It came straight through the generations, from Fred.
Finn knows his way through the theater's dark hallways, up its creaking stairs. He is writing a play for his school friends. They will play guitars, he says. Pianos too.
He squeals when he watches Dad act and Mom direct, his eyes wide, his fingers grasping the seat in front of him.
On this day, Finn watches as his father stands on stage, wearing a cowboy hat and pointy-toed boots.
He's a cowboy driven into a saloon by a ferocious dust storm. He is alarmed to find three pistol-waving hookers eyeing him with suspicion.
"Where's your horse?" one says.
"Dead," he says.
"Where's your sidekick?" says another.
"Don't have one."
He's just acting. It's campy and silly and fun. But the truth is, his sidekick is right there.
Over his shoulder, through a gap in the back of the unfinished set, you can see all the way to the prop room, to the picture of Fred on the wall. From the stage it looks like he's part of the set, part of the show, like always.
When Cindy notices it, she clutches her hands to her chest, and tries not to cry.
The cowboy sings:
"While the storm rages on this will be my sanctuary,
A perfect refuge for a nobody . . ."
"Okay," Cindy says, "Let's try that again."
A few weeks left until the show. It's coming together nicely. The actors, all volunteers, don't forget their lines much anymore. They're working on the timing, and this tricky opening dance number.
The set won't be completed until the final days, and then Fred's portrait will be blocked from view. But no one doubts that he will be there. Flip and Cindy will place a morning glory somewhere on the set, even if it's only a plastic one.
Flip works late some nights, tinkering with the set in the empty building. He could put on some music, but the quiet doesn't bother him. He listens to the creaks and groans of the old building, and he never feels alone.
Dad never talked much while they worked, anyway.
If you go:
Wild Dust The Musical will be presented at the Francis Wilson Playhouse, 302 Seminole St., Clearwater. Shows are at 8 p.m. May 22-May 24, at 2 p.m. May 25, and at 8 p.m. May 29-31, and at 2 p.m. June 1. Call 446-1360.
