PYT Producer Brian Burns Breaks Record for Pirates!

What record does veteran producer and long-time PYT volunteer Brian Burns hold?

Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s get to know a little bit about Brian!

Brian started volunteering at PYT in 1996, when his daughter Anna was in her first PYT show, Charlotte’s Web. Two years later, he produced his first show, Babes in Toyland, and even after Anna grew out of PYT, Brian kept on producing because he enjoyed working with our actors and their families. His wife Cathy also did costume designs for a few PYT shows, and she and Anna each spent a summer working as PYT’s front desk receptionist. Brian served on PYT’s Board of Directors for over ten years, including terms as President and Vice President. Brian genuinely lost count of the number of shows he’s produced over the years, but these days he tries to keep it to one per season!

Professionally, Brian worked in the music business for many years, then the nonprofit world, and recently he made a late-life career change: he got his insurance licenses, and now he works at a State Farm office in Sunnyvale.

Brian has always said that producing for PYT is a great hobby because “it’s not expensive, and relatively safe”. In addition to volunteering with PYT, a couple of years ago he started playing guitar again, after being away from it for about thirty years, and he is gradually working his way up to be listenable. He also wrote music reviews for an entertainment blog a few years ago, and those columns have been collected in a couple of (really cheap!) e-books.

So, what’s the record? Brian has produced The Pirates of Penzance for PYT for a record three times! He remembers he first did it at Cubberley Community Theater, in 2005, with Holli Hornlein directing and choreographing. More recently, Michael Champlin directed, and his wife Katie O’Bryon Champlin provided the choreography– that was at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in 2013. Both versions were the original classic version of the show (not the Kevin Kline-Linda Ronstadt-Rex Smith Broadway adaptation), as is our current production which he is co-producing with Lyn Healy and Barbie Koch.

Asked what he liked about the show and if he had any fond memories of producing “Pirates” over the years for PYT, Brian reminisced, “my mom was a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan, so I grew up loving the music. As I got older, though, I paid more attention to the words, and found that much of the British humor that I came to enjoy, like Monty Python, and the writing of P.G. Wodehouse, comes from the same basic premise as Gilbert’s scripts: having characters react to absurd or outlandish situations with a very British matter-of-factness.”

Brian is excited about the show and said, “I think this will be a pretty unique production. The third time’s a charm! The singing, of course, is lovely, thanks to vocal direction from Meg Fischer Venuti, and from what I’ve seen so far, our director, Gary Gerber, and Choreographer Jenn Tipton, are putting a lot of emphasis on the humor and energy that a young cast can bring to the show.  Those earlier PYT productions, like this one, were just brimming with young talent, and members of those casts have gone on to work professionally in everything from opera to improv comedy. Seeing this production you may well be getting a glimpse of some stage stars of the future.”

The Pirates of Penzance sails into the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on May 11-19, 2019. Tickets are $14-$26. The Gilbert Cast performs: May 11 @ 2 pm, May 17 @ 9:30 am (tickets $8), May 18 @ 7:30 pm and May 19 at 1 pm.  The Sullivan Cast performs: May 11 @ 7:30 pm, May 12 @ 1 pm, May 16 @ 9:30 am (tickets $8), and May 18 @ 2 pm.

Blog by Barbie Koch

Photos by Brian Burns and Lyn Healy