Spotlight: David Gotwald

In 1970, David Gotwald was a teenager growing up in Cleveland Heights who felt the pull of the theatre. He started in Cleveland Play House’s Curtain Pullers Youth Theater program where he got to know the director, Stuart Levin. Levin resigned from Cleveland Play House in early 1971 and became Fairmount’s first theater director with David and other theater students trailing behind him.

The Fairmount building, with its iconic turret and stone facade, was in the process of being built, so the group would meet at the Chesterland Presbyterian Church on the weekends. “We became this family of misfits who met in the church and ran around and did crazy things,” David reminisced.

When the building was finally opened in March of 1971, the room that was designated as the theater space was built more like a dance studio. The group quickly went to work painting the walls and ceiling black and covering all the windows to create a small theater on the second floor (now Studio D).

“We did everything on a shoe string [budget]. I invented and jerry-rigged a system of lighting with house wall dimmers in that little room that I think is now a music practice room that looked into the theater space. And I think it was an office for three people plus a lighting and a sound board... so it was a little cramped.”

David graduated high school in spring of 1971, and continued to work at Fairmount for $0.35/hr doing everything related to the technical components of productions. Ron Kumin, co-founder of Fairmount, lent him an old pick up truck that was used to haul scenery and set supplies around so he could commute to and from the center. David remembers that the truck had a rather ineffective (maybe non-existent) muffler that would cause a racket and upset his parents and neighbors when he would come home at 12:30 in the morning from a long day of work.

He had found a home under Fairmount’s roof. “Being around a bunch of adults who would treat you as peers… it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it is very nurturing,” he says.

“I had unbelievably fantastic mentors who figured out that I was a misfit in education, but had a skill set in this other place. When you find a kid who is so passionate that they can’t do anything else - for me that was the key to my success. I lived, breathed, and ate the theater.”

According to David, it was the season of 1972-1973 that put Fairmount on the map. David recalls selling out The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie before it even opened among others such as Fables, Metamorphoses, Tales of Ovid, The Grass Harp, and Berlin to Broadway.

For three years David not only produced Fairmount’s theater productions, but was also hired to light the dance performances. At the time, Fairmount had three performing companies: a modern dance company, a ballet company, and the Spanish Dance Company that would tour throughout the area.

Bill Evans, a dancer and choreographer from Utah, was brought in to choreograph on the Fairmount modern dance company and took a liking to David. In 1975, Bill called him up and asked if David would like to move to Seattle to be the production manager for his dance company. “Being naive and having no idea what that meant, I said, ‘Oh, sure!’”, remarked David.

So off David went to the West Coast where he toured for 32 weeks a year visiting every state in the continental US and Alaska with the Bill Evans Dance Company. He also helped build the Bill Evans Summer Dance Institute that would attract over 300 students each summer from all over the country.

“The advice I give to all of the students that I mentor, everybody that asks how do you do this — the answer is to say yes to everything regardless of the challenge.”

With all of the experience David had procured, he set his eyes towards New York. “The dream was always to go to New York in the back of my head, so I saved up some money and went. A friend I met on tour with Bill Evans was a lighting designer and said, ‘ya know, if you ever come to New York…’ and well, that’s all it took.”

He laughs as he explains how he didn’t have an apartment or any job prospects when he first arrived. He started out doing freelance work lighting dance shows and Broadway shows which eventually led to his great success mixing Broadway musicals including A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls, Sweet Charity (revival), Jerome Robbins Broadway, Crazy For You, Passion, A Gentleman's Guide To Love and Murder, and many others. He designed the sound for the Tony Award winning Jay Johnson - The Two and Only and the Off-Broadway hit The Musical of Musicals at the New York Theatre Company.

“A lot of it is luck, a lot of it is being the right personality, and having people sense that passion that you have, you know, that sense of enthusiasm.”

He jokes that he doesn’t have it so much anymore, and that he is happy to be completely retired now living in Glenshaw, PA with his husband.

When reflecting on his time at Fairmount, David remarks:

“It was transformative, that’s for sure.”