ne recent winter, Norman Leger was directing a community theater play in Enfield when there was a cold snap. The company was rehearsing in the old town hall, heated only with a woodstove, when temperatures plummeted to 20 degrees below zero. "We had to wear snow boots and mittens and overcoats while we rehearsed," said Adele Warner, who knew and worked with Leger for nearly 25 years.
But the cold weather never dampened his enthusiasm. "He loved that play. He thought it was one of the best times that we had," she said.
Leger, who died Friday at his New London home, owned the New London Barn Playhouse for more than 50 years. He acted and directed in countless community theater productions across the state and sat in the audience in the off-season. He never tired of the theater.
Warner saw him last week at a production at the Newport Opera House. During his 50 years of ownership, Leger turned the Barn Playhouse into a local institution, producing around 10 plays a summer with the help of the young casts he hired each season. He also became a fixture of local theater, performing with companies across the state.
He worked with colleagues at the Barn Playhouse to found the Sunapee Kearsarge Intercommunity Theater, a local theater company that produces plays to benefit local charities. The Barn Playhouse will celebrate its 75th anniversary this summer, making it the oldest continuously running summer stock theater in the state. Leger did not found the playhouse, but he made his mark on it early.
After completing his training as an actor at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, he acted in several playhouse productions before borrowing money from his father in 1955 to purchase the barn with partners, from whom he ultimately bought sole ownership. He only recently sold the theater and stepped down to become producer emeritus after he suffered a debilitating stroke. As owner, Leger worked nearly every job at the theater.
He selected the shows. He traveled to New York auditions each year with his casting directors to pick his company. He directed plays.
He often performed in his favorite shows. He repainted the chairs, until they were replaced last year. As Van McLeod, the state commissioner of cultural resources, recalls, Leger couldn't resist cleaning the dressing rooms at someone else's theater when McLeod invited him to take a small part in a production of Our Town he was directing in Lincoln.
"It wasn't, 'I'm a big producer and I'm running the theater,' " McLeod said. "He was a gentleman of the theater." His varied experience could make him curmudgeonly about certain production details, friends said, but it also gave him an adept eye for diagnosing problems and suggesting subtle, effective changes.
"If you knew something was wrong and you couldn't put your finger on it, he could pull it out immediately," said Jack Tate, who first came to the playhouse to watch a friend perform and became a lifelong volunteer and employee. "He could see what was wrong and he could fix it immediately." On Leger's watch, the Barn Playhouse offered young actors, directors and technicians an opportunity to get a start.
Many playhouse rookies spent their first summers with the company as teenagers, living in dorms down the street from the barn and serving a number of roles throughout the season. Leger loved working with young talent, friends said, and not just because their salaries were affordable. "They all had an energy, and Norm fed off that energy and he added to that energy," McLeod said.
Stephen Schwartz, the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musicals Godsend, Pippin and Wicked, remembers his first summer at the playhouse fondly. At 17 years old, he thought he would be there as an assistant musical director, and before he knew it, he was in charge of shows - musical directing, arranging, staging, and directing a play. He also met his future wife there and sent his son for training with Leger years later.
Schwartz even was drafted to perform in a production of Kiss Me Kate when the lead actor couldn't remember the song lyrics. It was a typical Barn Playhouse experience, he said. "I don't know that there's any place like it left in America - there were few of them left when I went there," Schwartz said.
"It was like summer stock in the movies. . .
. It was kids in a barn putting on a show. And some of them looked like kids in a barn, and some of them were pretty good.
" Leger's repertoire included mostly musicals. The playhouse's program typically included six of them, along with three dramas, designed to make the most of the shared staff and bring money into the for-profit theater. Like the interns who bunked up next door, Leger also lived close to the theater and could often be seen walking to work.
An animal lover, he often brought his dogs to the theater and even cast them in plays when appropriate. Leger grew up in Burchard, Neb., served in the Navy during World War II and graduated from the University of Nebraska before starting his theater career.
After school, he left for New York, where he studied dance and trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse. In the years between his fateful first part at the playhouse and his move to buy it, he worked for a number of theater companies and the occasional odd job, including one as a typist for the United Nations. In February, Leger received a lifetime achievement award at the New Hampshire Theater Awards, held at the Palace Theater in Manchester.
When Warner saw Leger in Newport last week, she "got to ruffle his crew cut one last time." "I said, 'Enjoy the show, and let's do another play,' " she said. "And he grinned ear to ear.
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