Memories of Melody Top: Remembering Milwaukee's Summer Stock Theatre

Born in Madison and raised in Milwaukee, Tracy (Borger) Friedman's Melody Top career began in 1968 when she was eighteen. Tracy appeared in the ensemble, and in supporting roles, for seven subsequent seasons, with the exception of 1969 when she was touring with the musical CABARET; a total of forty-five shows. After moving to Chicago in the late 1970s, Tracy's interests expanded to include choreography, directing and writing. Her award-winning work in Chicago opened doors in New York, which led to three off-Broadway shows and a couple of national tours. In 1988, Tracy entered the third phase of her professional career. She moved to Los Angeles where she spent ten years writing episodic, one-hour television. She has been writing ever since. See below for Tracy in her own words.

BITTER SWEET at Melody Top Theatre

Clyde Laurents (Vincent Howard), Tracy Friedman (Dolly Chamberlain) and Ann Blyth (Lady Shayne) in Melody Top's production of BITTER SWEET (1975).

The Life of a Dancer

"Nothing can compare to the sight of endless rows of upturned faces lurking in the shadows just beyond the footlights."

That was the opening line of an essay I wrote when I was a junior in high school. My English teacher had it published in the school newspaper. If he hadn't, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't remember it now.

The Melody Top didn't have footlights, it was a theater-in-the-round. The audience rose up and away from the stage, no one was lurking in shadows, at least not in the front rows. Nevertheless, my youthful enthusiasm, expressed in that opening line, was reinforced by the many seasons I spent dancing, singing, and, yes, when called upon, mugging, at that big, impressive 2,000 seat tent out on Good Hope Road.

After the CABARET tour in 1969, I might have stayed in New York, but I decided I wanted to be more than just a dancer. So I returned to Milwaukee and enrolled in the acting program at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where I was given many extraordinary opportunities. The year I graduated from college, the Milwaukee Sentinel did a cover story on me. "Let's Go!" See below.

In the summers, I continued to work at the Melody Top. I had the good fortune to be cast in numerous supporting roles, both comic and dramatic. I wasn't a leading lady or an ingenue. I didn't sing well enough to be featured in singing roles, but I pretty much got to do everything else.

I have so many fond and foolish recollections of my Melody Top years: Orson Bean in his skin-tight, leopard-skin bathing suit as the Jack Lemmon character in SUGAR (a musical adaptation of SOME LIKE IT HOT). The show was set in the 1920s, but it wasn't a 1920s bathing suit! Or how cold it was dancing in "Too Darn Hot" in KISS ME, KATE; we almost froze to death in our short-shorts and bare, midriff tops. Or how hilarious Arte Johnson and Karen Morrow were in LITTLE ME; it was almost impossible to get through rehearsals because we were all laughing so hard. I cherish those memories and will always be grateful for the opportunities I was given.

But back to the essay. Here are the closing lines, "The stage manager bangs the five-minute warning on your dressing room door, you stick one last pin in your hair for good measure, then take a long look at your theatrical self in the mirror. Show business is the greatest reality and the greatest fantasy. On stage you can be the real you... or be anyone else you choose."

I was sixteen when I wrote that. I'm 75 now and I stand by it.

Let's Go Section from the Milwaukee Sentinel