I'm going to start this post with a very blunt statement: Bid was the whitest black person I ever met. I will explain that a little bit later here. Bid was a year ahead of me and came to Eastern New Mexico University from Chicago, IL. In addition to his involvement in theatre and choir, he was a jock. I know he played baseball, but I don't know if he played other sports.
I first became aware of Bid around February of 1982, when my Drama Club went to the ENMU Drama Festival. I remember seeing this tall, black man walking around the theatre from time to time. He really stood out. Unfortunately, I never got to see him perform because the ENMU production we got to see that year was "Arsenic and Old Lace," which consisted of mostly white people in the cast.
When I started getting involved in the Theatre department in college, I got to know him a little better, but in isolated fragments. I have to admit that coming from a town with very few black people, I found him rather intimidating at first. But I really became familiar with him after he was cast as Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera." He was absolutely phenomenal in that role and had complete command of the stage, despite attempts by one of the other actors to upstage him. He proved to be an extremely versatile actor and dancer and was someone I started looking up to.
The main reason I refer to Bid as the whitest black person I ever met is because his tastes in the arts are not strictly tied to his connection with his being African-American. Most other black actors, if you ask them who their favorite playwright is, will likely respond with August Wilson. I think Bid's favorite was David Mamet. Bid also listened to country music. Bid did listen to a lot of R&B, but he had very expansive tastes and also had a flair for theatrical music and opera.
Bid was one of the go-to people for the Theatre department's professors. He choreographed numbers for our musicals and the Dance department's annual stage presentations. My junior year, we did a production of "Mother Courage and her Children." Bid was called upon to write a musical score for the lyrics that Bertolt Brecht wrote. It seemed like there was almost nothing he couldn't do.
However, this appeared to have all gone to his head at one point. During his senior year, he was asked to choreograph one of the numbers for "HMS Pinafore," in which he played Deadeye Dick. It was a piece that involved the entire male chorus. The few days before he was to present the choreography, he, Chud, myself and some other Theatre students went to audtion at the Southwest Theatre Conference. The main goal of the conference was to land a summer job with any number of theatrical companies that were hiring. Bid got a lot of offers. He was really riding high because it meant he would have something to go to after he graduated.
The Saturday after the conference, we showed up for rehearsal. Bid started showing us the choreography and took us through it step by step, very slowly. However, when we attempted to do the choreography at full speed, we found that even the Bolshoi Ballet Company would have had a great deal of difficulty trying to properly execute it. During one of the breaks, a few of us cast members were talking and we came to the conclusion that Bid was making it up as he went along. Afterwards, I saw Bid sitting and talking to the director, Dr. R. I could not hear the conversation, but Dr. R did not appear to be pleased with what Bid had come up with. I don't know if Dr. R called him on the possibility that he made it up on the spot, or if he thought that the complicated choreography was going to interfere with us being able to sing the number properly. At any rate, we had new choreography the next week.
Bid became one of the very few people I knew from the Theatre department who graduated and was actually able to become a professional actor. While other students in the department envisioned a life of fame and fortune after graduating (including myself), Bid was probably the only person from our group who had a realistic view of how a life in the theatre was supposed to be after college and he accomplished a great deal.
There will be more on that in tomorrow's post.
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