But he has a recurrent empty feeling.
“Come 8 o’clock on a summer evening, my body just kind of tells me, ‘Hey, aren’t you supposed to be doing something?’ ” he said.
That “something” includes the impassioned speeches, horseback riding and hand-to-hand combat that were part of playing a Shawnee war chief. Fitzkee did it hundreds of times for six straight summers.
Prompted by mounting debts, plummeting attendance and challenges to the script’s historical accuracy, the show’s closing has left a void.
“It’s my second summer out of theater. The emotions come and go. They go dormant for a while, but always come back,” he said during a break from renovating an apartment building near Central State University. “It’s a major loss for me and for the community.”
Another whose summers are emptier now is Mark Guinn, a professor of theater design and movement at Louisiana Tech University. Starting as a stagehand, he worked his way up to directing. He staged “Blue Jacket” for 12 of its last 13 years.
“It’s been two years since I’ve been north of the Ohio River. I need my Greene County fix,” said the resident of Ruston, La. “It weighs heavily on me at times. I blame myself for the closing. I wonder what we could have done to bring more folks to the show.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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