"There's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you,/ When we treat you. Which we many not do at all./There's an Iowa kind, a special chip on the shoulder attitude/ We've never been without that we recall."

This year The Light Opera Group of the Negev (LOGON) went to America's Middle West for its production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man. The musical tale of a con man selling musical instruments and band uniforms, descending on small-town people to outfit boys' bands on a promise of teaching members to play, has become part of American folklore.

So Rosa, what's it like directing your own husband? And for a second year in a row? LOGON director/choreographer Rosa Howden laughs, but admits that it hasn't been easy directing husband Stephen who played Harold Hill, the con man, in this year's production. But, she says, it was a lot easier than last year, when Stephen also played the male lead.

"He didn't take direction from me very well last year; I got irritated, and it was very tough. This year, Stephen had decided not to go for the part," she relates. "But one evening we sat over a bottle of wine in the garden and discussed it for hours. His soul said he wanted to do this part, which he knew he could do very well, but there was this conflict because of last year."

In the end, to LOGON's gratitude, Stephen took the part. "We've worked very hard at this," adds Rosa. We've managed to keep LOGON out of the house – at least the emotions connected with it, and it's been much easier this year. Now, my daughter..." The Howdens' daughter Victoria also appears in The Music Man, playing the mayor's ditsy daughter.

LOGON lost several members of the company that had performed last seasons, but gained a few new recruits. One veteran who returned this year was Amiel Schotz, famous for his G&S roles. Amiel had worried that he could

no longer sustain a singing role, but he was enticed back to play the mostly non-singing role of Mayor Shinn. His portrayal of this pompous character was hilarious, making him something out of a 19th century-type melodrama.

"This was a nice, comic role I could give something to and have fun with," says Amiel. "When you've been a group for so long one never retires from it."

There were fewer adults on stage this year, but lots more children - fourteen of them - from ages 8 to 14. The children had heard about the show by word of mouth, and some 25 showed up to audition, some of whom had appeared in last year's Carousel. The Music Man group was a combination of children with American, Russian, French and native Israeli parents. The parents agreed to a quite punishing schedule – late rehearsals that multiplied as opening night got closer and VERY late nights when the troupe was performing on the road. The parents signed slips agreeing to this, and rotated as resident mother hens. The presence of the kids on stage was one of the appealing aspects of this production, though having them underfoot was at times trying.

The Beersheva and Arad conservatories provided the instruments that were used on stage. These are not instruments that one can actually play - they were alte zachen dug up from the bottom of the storerooms. But with a case of Brasso, the stage crew managed to make them look like they were the new brand new instruments ordered for the children's band of River City, Iowa, brought by the Wells Fargo wagon.

Organizing the buses to bring the actors and musicians and the truck to bring the props and scenery for the out-of-town performances was - as ever - a logistics nightmare. And, as in every year, there was the problem of where to store the props between shows.

Last year the props had to be stored at Bromine Compounds in Ramat

Hovav, which meant a smelly loading and unloading for our unhappy volunteers. This year, gratefully, the director of the Beer Sheva Psychiatric Hospital where LOGON rehearses allowed the company to store the stuff in their facilities.

Our first out-of-town show was in Haifa, at the Nesher community center theater, a journey of about 3 1/2 hours from Beersheba. The bus made a pit stop at Bet Kama and several people got off to use the facilities. Somehow, the bus took off without Gail Greene and Lisbeth Kressel who had gone to buy chocolates, and had left their bags and cell phones on the bus.By the time co-producer Frieda Gilmour realised they were missing, the bus was halfway to the Kastina junction and had no way to turn around. Thank God for cell phones. She finally got the number of Burger Ranch, telling the employee who answered to look for two distraught ladies on the parking lot. He found them, and the two hitchhiked to Kastina.

When the Haifa performance finally began, the theater's electrical system overheated and all the lights blew. For a few minutes we all continued doing our big opening "Iowa" number in the dark, feeling rather foolish dancing about knowing full well we couldn't be seen. At last the lighting man announced there would be a ten-minute break while the technical fault was ssen to. And it was, and we continued - this time without a hitch. What none of us knew was that in the meantime the manageress of the theater had blacked out herself. Frieda found her on the floor surrounded by theater staff. She, too, recovered.

The company is aging, most of the members are over 50, and LOGON has launched a search for new blood. "We're missing that age group of the 20 to 30-somethings, people in the army or studying or

building up their careers and families, and are too busy to take time out for amateur productions,"

explains Bob Gilmour, producer and LOGON chairman.

Assistant producer Paul Hare, whose memorable old fogey line "Resist sin and corruption!" never failed to crack us up at rehearsals, comments that "until this show, the average age of the cast was only slightly lower than the average age of the audience - we are getting on, after all. But with the introduction of 14 children it brought down the average."

Usually, people waiting in the wings haven't much to do if they're not on stage, so they're busy chatting with each other. But at LOGON cast is also crew - which means special rehearsals for scene changes, and there's hardly any time for talking because everyone has to be alert for set, furniture and prop cues.

In contrast to earlier days when a whole crew of dancers - high school kids or kibbutz groups – would perform during the shows, this year we had only one actual dancer in the troupe. Thus in The Music Man there were a great many people moving all over the stage simulating dance. How do you teach people who are not dancers to move? Fortunately for LOGON, Rosa could probably get a potted plant to dance. The Music Man is about 'normal' people who get so enthusiastic about show biz in their town they begin to dance and carry on themselves. So what the audience sees is normal people, portraying normal people who are dancing. Somehow it worked.

"I'd had big hopes for the musical numbers in the show, but when I understood I had no dancers I panicked," recalls Rosa. "So I had to fit everything to people who can't dance. When I choreography, I choreograph the music. Every step fits the music. And I make it as fun as possible. I'm very patient, and the company over the years has caught on to my style. I can't get annoyed at my dancers if they can't do it since they aren't professionals. What counts, I think, is sparkle and life, particularly in musical theater."