Best Bets, The Post-Herald Entertainment Guide. Friday, September 15, 2000, p. B1, B6.

'Dining' Moment

About two-and-a-half years ago, one very nervous Tom Wofford sat in the lighting booth at Birmingham Festival Theatre, too jittery to audition for his first production at the Southside landmark theater.

But the lighting technician encouraged him to try. So he got up his nerve and did just that. He wanted the role of Mansel, a drunken redneck in "Second Samuel." He got the part.

Much has changed since that day. In July, Wofford, 37, won a new role at the theater-its new president. "I did not think it would be me," he said, sitting in a comfortable audience seat before the final rehearsal of A.R. Gurney's "The Dining Room." The production starts the theater's 27th season. The two-act play focuses on six actors who play a myriad of characters around a dining room table. It runs through Sept. 30.

Birmingham Festival Theatre's 12-member board of directors selected Wofford to succeed Robyn Allers, who moved to Orlando recently when her husband became dean of Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. Wofford has served on the board three-and-a-half years.

"From the time that he joined the board, I've never seen anyone jump into involvement as much as he had, in every area," Allers said by phone from Florida.

Wofford plans a few additions in the theater's future and has started his not-so-glamorous presidential duties. He has to check the theater's telephone message for 20 to 50 reservations and such left daily, find actors to fill the open roles in "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" opening in November and design tickets. The board member who served as ticket designer moved away.

Just before evening rehearsal earlier this week, he asked actors Martha Summery and Beth Kitchin separated about performing in "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

"The president catches everything that falls through the cracks," Wofford said of this volunteer position, which took 30 hours of his time this week. (He's expecting it will slow to about 10 hours a week after the season ticket drive ends and the season begins.) "I already have the circles under my eyes to prove it."

Wofford is well-known around town. He's written for numerous publications, from Black & White to Birmingham Weekly. He graduated from Sardis High School in Etowah County in 1981 and went on to get a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Auburn University in 1987.

He's doing what he always dreamed about - working as a playwright and acting in BFT roles from Crooked Finger Jake in "The Threepenny Opera" to Sir Edward Clark in "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde." He's been an assistant director, a stage manager and a sound technician at the theater.

"I never really thought about responsibility, and now I'm starting to feel it here," he said.

Wofford wants to offer more shows each season, perhaps securing a different location for rehearsals (when one show is going on, it's too cramped to rehearse another production).

The theater offers six productions, with 10 shows each, each year.

He wants to see the theater host more premieres of plays, and he wants a workshop at the theater for plays in progress not quite ready to debut.

Don't expect the theater to move to a new location any time soon, as he said has been rumored. The theater may someday have needs beyond its current space, he said.

But be ready to make reservations at a BFT Web site on which Wofford has been working.

"A lot of people are appropriately attached to this theater emotionally," Wofford said. Personal donations have helped the theater, which works on a $60,000 annual budget, become more financially stable during the past three years. For example, donations paid for the new air conditioning system. Most of the theater's funding comes from ticket sales.

"We run the entire theater on not much more than an accountant's salary," he said on his way to returning a few more late evening reservation calls. "I have an incredible emotional attachment to this theater. I want to maintain the continuity the theater's had."

Photo captions:
Members of the cast of "The Dining Room" rehearse the play at Birmingham Festival Theatre in Southside. Rom left, they are Shannon Neil, Martha Summey, Bety Kitchin, and Sam L. Landman. (Phillip Holman/ Post-Herald)

Tom Wofford has taken over as the new president of Birmingham Festival Theatre. The first production he is overseeing is "The Dining Room" buy A.R. Gurney.

Martha Summey, left, and Shannon Neil run through the dress rehearsal of "The Dining Room." The six-person cast plays 56 different characters during the two-hour play.