He’s breaking into show biz with cultural relevance in mind
By Jane Holahan
Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:40
He took film courses but dropped out when he didn’t like the direction of the program.
He won first place in a campus-wide comedy contest back in the early 1990s, but then never pursued a life of laughs.
Instead, he went into his family’s business.
“We used to own Kountry Kitchen, and we own some hotels and manufacturing (plants),” the Lititz resident says. “I worked with our managers in marketing and sales.”
A lot of people can tell a similar story. Life goes on, their dreams fade, and the entertainment world is left to others to pursue.
But Stillman is giving himself another chance. At 34, he’s breaking into show business.
He is the associate producer of “The God Committee,” which just opened for previews at Lamb’s Theatre in New York.
The ensemble piece is about a group of doctors who have to play God and decide who gets an available heart.
And Stillman says he is working to develop a movie about the Scopes monkey trial with Stephen McEveety, one of the producers of “The Passion of the Christ” and “Braveheart.”
“Everyone knows ‘Inherit the Wind,’ ’’ Stillman says. “They fictionalized the trial, but everyone knows it was supposed to be the Scopes trial. The thing is, it was not accurate with what really happened. We want to make it true and tell the actual story.”
Stillman says they’re scouting locations for the film.
His desire to get back into show business stemmed from an idea he had about developing a musical.
“I wanted to take the music from Bob Dylan’s Christian period and tell the story of the Apostle Paul,” Stillman says.
But he soon discovered just how hard it is to turn an idea into reality. Legal rights for the songs were hard to get, and nobody was going to look twice at a guy with no resume. Especially a guy from Lancaster.
While pitching his Dylan idea, Stillman met Carolyn Rossi Copeland, who is the producing artistic director of the Lamb’s Theatre in Times Square, the oldest theater club in America.
The place is steeped in theatrical lore. It’s said that Richard Rodgers spent a lot of time there working on music for a show that ultimately would become “Oklahoma.” And Frederick Lerner and Alan Jay Lowe first met there.
In the mid-1970s, the theater club was sold to the Manhattan Church of the Nazarene as a mission in Times Square, and in 1978, the Lamb’s Theatre Company was born.
The theater is committed to presenting new works that explore social issues in a positive and family-oriented way.
That fit well with Stillman, who has been active on the drama team at Calvary Church on Landis Valley Road. Last year, he helped write a passion play that was performed around Easter.
“I want to do stories that are uplifting and have certain values,” he says. I miss movies like ‘Hoosiers,’ ‘Chariots of Fire’ and ‘Gandhi’.’ They seem to come fewer and farther between.”
Stillman read “The God Committee” and liked its debate between logic and emotion as six people determine who will live and who will die.
“I raised money and brought in half the budget. That’s how I got a co-producer credit,” Stillman says. “Part of what I try to do when I’m raising money is show a cultural relevance, tell them this is a story that needs to be told beyond profit and loss.”
“The God Committee” will officially open on Wednesday, March 29.
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Jane Holahan is a New Era staff writer. Her column appears every other Wednesday.
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