'Oliver' takes the stage at Peoria Players

Bryan Blanks believes the best musicals, whether they are classic or modern, are those that not only entertain you, but open your mind.

He has both with "Oliver!," the smash classic musical that opens Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Peoria Players Theatre at University and Lake streets. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Feb. 12, 13, 14 and 15 and 2 p.m. Sunday and Feb. 16.

Blanks, who is fast becoming a veteran director in local community theatre, said "Oliver!" ranks among his favorites for that reason. "When I look at my favorite classic musicals "Oliver!," "Fiddler on the Roof," "Carousel" among them there is a common thread. Musicals ahead of their time explored some very serious issues and themes, but were clever enough to couple the story with a beautiful score and interesting characters that keep the show entertaining," he said.

"In my opinion the best musicals entertain, but still force you to think," he added.

Based on the novel "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens, the musical, with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, tells the story of the title character and other ragamuffins in London in the early 1800s. After escaping an orphanage Oliver hooks up with the Artful Dodger and the other boys who are taught to be pickpockets by the evil Fagin.

Songs from the show include "Consider Yourself," "I'd Do Anything," "Where is Love," "Oom-Pah-Pah" and "As Long As He Needs Me."

The 14-piece orchestra for the Peoria Players production is directed by Holly Haines, a music teacher in Washington who is in her first stint as musical director for a main stage show.

"Oliver!" is energetic, from the opening song "Food Glorious Food" performed by about 30 children portraying orphans waiting for their daily gruel. Blanks choreographed the number himself.

"I had a clear vision that having a large number of kids all synchronized in step as subjects of the oppressive leadership would have a strong impact," he said. "These kids were treated like machinery, or animals if you may. Having a large number of kids shows the mass of children who were affected by poverty and child abandonment during these terrible times."

Blanks split the choreography with Dedra Kaiser and there are several large dance numbers in the show, with "Consider Yourself" chief among them.

He praised the orchestra, as well. "It's phenomenal; the best I've worked with, and much of this is to Holly's credit. The orchestration for our show has never been heard on the local level. We re-orchestrated many of the numbers to match the London revival," he said.

Some of the pieces are far from easy, including the last solo, "Reviewing the Situation," when Fagin mulls his future.

The character of Fagin drives this musical and Blanks cast local veteran performer Chip Joyce in the role of the elderly bad guy. Joyce is in the early 30s.

Said Blanks, "Fagin is ultimately the male character role of all character roles. I decided before auditions it was more important to have a strong actor who could handle the balance of Fagin's mystery and subtly coupled it with his energy and vocal ability. As long as a young actor could get lost in the role of Fagin, the audience will forget his age.

"Chip has truly become Fagin. It is eerie sometimes to watch, which is perfect."

The title role of Oliver is portrayed by Julien Rouleau and his friend the Artful Dodger is portrayed by Jake Trueblood. Both were familiar to Blanks, who has worked with children's theatre for several years. But it did not make his task of casting the show any easier, he said.

Because of his experience with children's theatre, he said, "recruiting wasn't as difficult as it may have been for other directors. However, there is so much talent to choose from. With close to 150 people auditioning for the show I had to cut many performers I had worked with in the past."

Ayana Pankey portrays Nancy, a friend to Fagin and his boys, and Deric Kimler plays Bill Sykes, the man she loves despite his evil ways.

Others in the cast include Laura Miller-Monsoori as Bet, Curt Rowden as Mr. Bumble, Wendy Blickenstaff as Widow Corney, Anita Rowden as Mrs. Bedwin, George Maxedon as Mr. Sowerberry, Ahava Pyrtel as Mrs. Sowerberry, Susan Knobloch as Charlotte Sowerberry, Aaron Elwell as Noah Claypole, Jim Willard as Mr. Brownlow and Jim Babrowski as Dr. Grimwig.

Soloists in the song "Who Will Buy" are Melissa Blain, Catherine Barnett, Emily Rusk and Jeremy Kelly.

Tickets for "Oliver!" are $18 for adults and $12 for 18 and under. Adult tickets for the Wednesday, Feb. 12 performance are $15.

Towery on Fiction: A good rule to live by

Authors note: This is one of an occasional series of articles on fiction writing by Peorian Terry Towery,
a novelist and journalist. His debut novel, the psychological thriller "The Final Victim" is about to go on submission, which means it will be pitched by
his agent to acquisition editors at the New York City publishing houses. Wish him luck. He's going to need it.

I found something recently in my first "plot notebook" dating back to when I was beginning to write my first
novel in February 2007. I don't even remember writing it. It was scribbled in the margin, and it said, simply:

"Remember, failure isn't the end of the world; giving up is."

It's hard to believe it's been seven years since I quit my cushy newspaper job and started down the long road toward becoming a published author.

What a schmuck, I remember thinking. I'm sure many of my friends and colleagues thought the same thing.

I'd dreamed of writing novels since I was a kid. It conjured images of smoking a pipe while wearing gray tweed, maybe sipping some green tea in the parlor. What a job it must be, I remember thinking. Just the word novelist gave me shivers. Its ranks are littered with my childhood and adult heroes: King, Chandler, Grisham, Connelly, Updike (God, especially Updike), Faulkner, Salinger, and Block—far too many names to list here.

They were writers who magically transported me into new worlds, far from the one in which I was living. I remember curling up on frigid winter nights while stationed with the
Air Force in Grand Forks, North Dakota, reading The Stand or The Last Convertible and forgetting for a while my fear and loneliness, forgetting
the howling wind and sub-zero temperatures outside my depressing little barracks room.

When it came to escape, a great book beat booze and drugs every time. Well, some of the time, anyway.

When I left the newspaper, I left with a dream, the same one that got me into the job in the first place. See, I became a journalist to hone my writing skills. But I fell I love with
newspapering and spent 25 years of my life in that newsroom. After leaving, I immediately started a novel, a thriller that was a barely disguised autobiography. It damn
near killed me to write it (it took me more than two years), but I limped across the finish line in August 2009.

And I couldn't land the Holy Grail of publishing, a literary agent.

The rejections piled up. I think I quit trying after 32 rejections. I shelved the book and spent a lot of time examining my life. I wanted to quit. This was too freaking hard. The odds
of getting a literary agent are estimated at 1 in 10,000. And that's provided you can even finish the damned book, since the vast majority of aspiring
novelists can't even manage that. I'd be better off buying a lottery ticket, I remember telling my wife.

I applied at Starbucks, but never heard back from them.

A week after giving up on the first book, I started writing again. Fits and starts that never amounted to much. I still have half-a-dozen first chapters on my hard drive, just waiting
for their moment in the sun. I even have more than 20,000 words of a political novel that I really love, just lying there. But it was a first chapter I had
written some months earlier, one that was slated to become the sequel to the book I had just finished, that stayed with me. It started with a bang,
literally. It was about a school shooting, and it was quite bloody and dark.

I remember sitting on our front deck with my wife in September of 2009, talking about what I could do with this "shooting thing." I had no idea where I was going with it, but it felt
like it had potential. A few of my writer friends online had read it, and they thought it was rough but very good.

I spent a few late nights smoking cigars and listening to a lot of music on the headphones. Thinking. Writing ideas and thought fragments in my "plot notebook." That's how the process goes for me.

And then it came to me. The whole damn story unfolded in my mind one night and I sat up until 3 a.m. scribbling it all down in my notebook with shaking hands.

I had my story, but did I have the strength to try it again? Could I spend a year or two (or three or four) pouring my heart and soul into a manuscript, only to be rejected again?
Could I bear to be humiliated again before my friends, my ex-colleagues, and my family?

Have I mentioned that I have the world's most supportive wife? Jennifer has always believed in me, no matter what. Even during the numerous hard times when I no longer believed in myself.

"Write it," she said at dinner one night. "I have faith in you."

And so, I wrote it.

The book became my obsession, my white whale. When I finished the first draft in early 2012, I sent it out to dozens of beta readers, many of whom were extremely helpful with their gentle criticisms. Then I rewrote it again, and sent it out to another dozen readers. And so on, for another year.

When I started querying agents, I was fairly confident I had an amazing book on my hands. So when the rejections started pouring in, I was heartbroken. Here we go again, I
thought.

I knew that the query letter itself is the gateway to landing an agent. It's a 300-word sales pitch for your book and for you, as the author. I swear it's harder to write a great query
than it is write a great book. You get rejected for your query, not your book. It sucks, but it is what it is.

After 30 rejections and a dozen different query letters, I was ready to give up again. I was sick to my stomach most of the time and couldn't sleep at night. I could literally feel my
lifelong dream dying.

But before I packed it in, I decided to give the query one more try. I took my coffee and cigar out onto my back deck one beautiful spring morning last year and wrote the cheesiest query I could think of. I mean, I really hammed it up. It sounded like the drivel one reads on the back of a cheap novel.

What the hell, I figured. Nothing else has worked.

Then I employed the nuclear option. I had ranked all of my target agents from most desirable to least years ago. I decided in a fit of sheer frustration (or perhaps stupidity) to send the cheesy query to my top five agents, figuring I could at least go out in a blaze of glory.

I knew that once they rejected me, I had nowhere else to go. The dream would die, unfulfilled. Like so many do in life.

The next morning, I got a request back from my Number Two agent, asking to read the book. The next day, I got a partial request to read the first fifty pages from Number Three.

And then, I got a partial request from Number One.

I was hyperventilating.

Number Three passed, but said it was a tough decision for her. Then Number Two declined because he thought it was too violent. He invited me to rewrite parts of it and resubmit it. I softened the violence a bit and sent it back.

Then Number One emailed me and asked for the full manuscript. That was on a Friday in early June of 2013.

On Monday morning, she called me.

She said she loved the book, but thought it had some structural issues. Would I be interested in hearing her suggestions and maybe spending the summer rewriting it again?

Does the Pope wear a tall hat?

But I had a decision to make. Two agents had my book, and both were interested. It was the kind of problem I had been dreaming about for decades.

I chose to stick with Number One and after a massive rewrite in which I deleted 61,000 words — words I had sweated blood, sweat and tears over for years — and replaced them with 62,000 new ones, I submitted it again.

And then I waited.

On October 21, at 9:03 in the morning, my first choice of all the literary agents in the world, Laney Katz
Becker, called me. She told me she loved the changes and asked to represent me.

I said yes with tears in my eyes.

I'm now on my second revision since that call, but it's getting close now. So very close. In a couple of
weeks, I will send it back, and Laney will begin shopping the book to the big publishing houses in New York. I still can't believe it.

Don't get me wrong. I could still fail. But the odds are in my favor now. And I know that if she can't sell
this book, I have what it takes to keep trying until I succeed. That's an amazing thing to learn about one's self, especially this late in life.

A couple of days ago, I found what I had written in the margins of my first plot notebook all those years
ago.

Remember, I had written late one night when I was so damned close to giving up, failure isn't the end of the world; giving up is.

That, my friends, is the absolute truth. If you give up on your dreams, they will forever remain just
that — dreams.

FrizziToons: So, what other predictions does the groundhog have?

Chamber names new president

An Ohio financial advisor with experience as a chamber of commerce leader has been named the new president of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce.

Jeffrey Griffin, 43, will take the chamber reins on Feb. 10, the chamber said in a news release. He replaces Roberta Parks, who resigned to take over the Methodist Foundation, and Mary Ardapple, who has been serving as interim president since last June.

Griffin was president of the Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce in Wooster, Ohio for four years until he resigned in late 2012 to work for Edward Jones.

Cal MacKay, CEO of the Greater Peoria Business Alliance, said Griffin's experience and leadership will make him a great fit for the organization. "His past experience as a successful chamber leader and commitment to community service will bring great vision to the Peoria area. His passion and work ethic along with his ability to collaborate with others will benefit businesses and foster economic growth in the Greater Peoria region," MacKay said.

As chamber president in Wooster, Griffin was influential in recruiting and retaining thousands of new jobs and developing a quality workforce in Ohio, Wooster and Wayne County, the news release said.

Griffin also served on the boards of the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Ohio and the Wayne Economic Development Council & Main Street Wooster; he also served on the City of Wooster's Finance, Public Utilities and Public Properties Committees while a member of the Wooster City Council.

Griffin said he is looking forward to his move to Peoria and building relationships with members, the business community, and community leaders. "Rosy and I are honored to join the Peoria Area Chamber along with our three children. We take this responsibility very seriously and look forward to many quality years in Peoria. The community is so strong now and we will work hard to grow our economy," he said.

Griffin was selected after a national search by Waverly Partners LLC, an executive search firm hired by the Peoria chamber. The chamber did not release how many candidates it interview for the position.

MacKay and the chamber board praised the work by Ardapple as interim president. "Ardapple stepped into the role as a small business owner; her experience and energy empowered staff to better understand the issues small businesses face. Ardapple's leadership was instrumental in launching tiered dues, obtaining member input on critical issues, and creating more opportunities for business leaders to connect with elected officials. Her efforts were successful in moving the mission of the Chamber forward during a period of transition," he chamber said.

Griffin received a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University and a master's in social work from the University of Texas at Arlington. His experience in social work includes the position of regional director for the Village Network in Wooster and as a social workers at Father Flanagan's Boys Home/Girls and Boys Town in Omaha, Neb.

Among his accomplishments as president of the Wooster chamber, he hosted Small Business Development training sessions that resulted in 485 new businesses started in Ohio, creating nearly 4,000 jobs.