The Springer says this is final year for popular holiday play ‘A Tuna Christmas.’ Here’s why
A holiday tradition like no other, the Springer Opera House is preparing to produce “A Tuna Christmas” for what it says is the final time. And it will include a popular actor reprising his role in this farewell performance.
It’s the 22rd year the 152-year-old historic State Theatre of Georgia in downtown Columbus has performed the zany two-actor show depicting 21 characters in this quick-change comedy set in a fictional Texas town named Tuna during the 1980s.
The plot is centered around Tuna’s annual Christmas yard display contest, a highly competitive event regularly vandalized by the Christmas Phantom.
Paul Pierce, who retired this year after 35 years as the Springer’s producing artistic director, has performed in 18 Springer editions of “A Tuna Christmas” and directed the others.
Now, he will act in this show along with Ned Bridges, a Tuna rookie but a veteran of six other Springer productions. Pierce, Bridges and Ron Anderson became friends during the 1970s at the University of Georgia
Anderson, a beloved actor and associate artistic director at the Springer, died in 2016 from pancreatic cancer. Seven years later, his spirit remains very much alive at this arts venue.
Pierce and Anderson were the Springer’s original acting duo in Tuna. With the return of Pierce to the stage for this show, the new director is another theater professional significantly influenced by Anderson: Springer associate producer Katie Underwood, who attended the children’s theater academy Anderson founded.
Pierce, Bridges and Underwood took a break from rehearsals for an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer — with a portrait of Anderson in the background.
‘One of the biggest thrills of my life’
“Ron is still here,” Pierce said. “He’s very much in this theater. We quote Ron all the time. Sometimes we do comic impressions of Ron. Ron is alive around us. Ned is a saint for listening in the rehearsal hall to sometimes me saying, ‘OK, here’s the way Ron did it.’ I try not to do that, but he’s such a good friend, I feel he won’t absolutely hate me if I say it.”
Bridges choked up as he explained what acting in this play means to him.
“I’m touched just talking about it,” he said. “For Paul to have called me and invited me to do this was huge. It was one of the biggest thrills of my life. To be able to honor Ron’s memory and to be able to work with Paul on stage again after 48 years, I can’t put into words how much it means to me to have this opportunity. I’m overjoyed to be here and absolutely respectful of the opportunity I have to join the long Tuna line.”
After he retired, Pierce was compelled to return to his role in Tuna one final time.
“I felt like I kind of needed a swan song,” he said.
Pierce said he probably wouldn’t have put Tuna in the Springer’s season this year if Bridges hadn’t agreed to act with him.
“There’s no way I could just go on stage one more time with just a very good actor,” he said. “I had the pleasure of working with some incredibly talented actors in my career, but this is a special experience for actors. Just being on stage and just being directed into the characters and the action oftentimes is not enough. You’ve got to have a special chemistry. … If I’m going to say goodbye to this show, I want to do it on stage with Ned Bridges.”
‘I trust her implicitly’
Pierce noted Bridges wears some of Anderson’s costume pieces in Tuna.
“Ron and Ned are two actors and friends that I was very close to for a very, very long time, but they’re two different kinds of actors,” Pierce said. “Both of them very funny, both of them very inventive, but Ned is Ned. I tell people that Ned was Jim Carrey before Jim Carrey, and I still believe that.
“When we’re in rehearsal together, we’re as close as actors can be. One of the things I enjoy about this, similarly to enjoying doing shows with Ron, is we get a kick out of each other in rehearsal. Sometimes it’s hard not to break character in the middle of some of these scenes because we’re just enjoying what the other is doing on stage.”
Underwood appreciates the chemistry she sees between Pierce and Bridges.
“The first time we ran a scene, even before Ned was off book or had his blocking, they were making those connections,” she said, “and you could see those sweet moments already coming to life.”
Pierce, who has known Underwood since she was a child attending the Springer Theatre Academy, called her “one of the most talented, insightful, smartest, most effective theater-makers in America. … She is very detail-oriented. She looks over the horizon at potential challenges in whatever project it is. … I trust her implicitly.”
‘Low cost, high return’
Since 2001, approximately 65,000 folks have seen this small-scale show with a big impact in the Springer’s smallest performance space, generating more than $1 million in sales, Pierce said.
“Low cost, high return,” he said. “That’s a rare situation.”
So why is this the Springer’s final year producing “A Tuna Christmas” — at least for the foreseeable future?
“As Keith (McCoy) has taken over with his artistic leadership, he’s got some ideas and dreams of some fun things we can do, some shows that might be the scale of this room, rather than our main stage,” Underwood said, “and we want to be able to have an opportunity to throw some new things in the rotation and shake it up a little bit and give the community some new things for Christmas. We’ll see which things resonate with our audience. Maybe we’ll hear people want to see Tuna again.”
Underwood has been part of the Tuna crew since 2006. She started as a board operator, running the sound effects, when she was a senior at Northside High School and continued while attending Columbus State University. She also worked on the crew as a stage manager.
Asked why folks keep coming back to see Tuna at the Springer, Underwood said, “I think people love it because they can see their selves and their families in it. It gives them a chance to feel, to express those maybe Christmas grumblings that people have, not being all the way in the cheery Christmas spirit but still remembering the joy of the season.
“It lets them reflect on all of those sort of day-to-day struggles, of trying to get your family together for a Christmas picture and getting all the things prepped for the Christmas party and making all the cookies and all of that just sort of hustle and bustle of the day, and then you still get to stop and reflect on the joy of the season.”
Pierce put it this way:
“Christmas is a big season, but there’s also some brokenness that goes on within families and communities at Christmastime,” he said. “This play recognizes that. We like to say ‘A Tuna Christmas’ puts the fun in dysfunction. What people will experience is seeing Christmas dysfunction that they can kind of relate to at this time of year. Yet, it’s a love story, and it ends with peace on Earth.
“So audiences get to laugh at themselves. They laugh at the people they know. They look at all of these 21 different characters, and they say, ‘Oh, that’s my Aunt Susie. Oh, that’s my Uncle Bobby. That’s my dad. Oh, my goodness, that’s me.’”
IF YOU GO
What: “A Tuna Christmas”
Where: Springer Opera House Dorothy McClure Theatre, 1016 First Ave., in downtown Columbus
When: Dec. 14, 15, 16, 21 and 22 at 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 17 and 23 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: Available online at SpringerOperaHouse.org, by phone at 706-327-3688, or at the box office, 103 10th St., 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays and two hours before showtime.
