Suddenly, Seymour

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Oct. 13, 2017

Suddenly, Seymour

HUHS grad lands his dream role in Musical Masquers’ production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

ndettmann@conleynet.com 262-306-5043

Matt Beier has been crafting, perfecting the role of Seymour since he was in high school.

That was 20 years ago and the wait has been worth it.

“It’s a dream come true,” he said.

Beier will lead the rest of the cast and crew in Musical Masquers’ final production of the 2016-17 season with “Little Shop of Horrors,” directed by Steve Paykel. It opens at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at the University of Wisconsin-Washington County theater in West Bend.

The additional shows are: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 21; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 and 1 p.m. Oct. 29 — all at UW-WC.

Tickets are $17-$19 and can be purchased by calling the UW-WC box office at 262-335-5200, visit www.

musicalmasquers.org or go to State Farm, 410 Hawthor n Drive, West Bend.

“This is a role that I’ve wanted to play since I first came across the music early in high school,” said Beier, a 1997 graduate of Hartford Union High School. “It’s on my bucket list of roles to play.”

The story focuses on Seymour, who has an admiration for exotic plants. But one plant in particular is more than what he and others expected: It’s an alien that feeds on human blood and flesh, and wants to take over the world. After that realization, a string of hilarity ensues.

“I’ve been crafting this character in my head for a long time,” Beier said.

Sesha Bell plays the lead female character, Audrey. While also fascinated with this plant he discovered, Seymour is also trying to win Audrey’s heart.

Graham Killeen plays a flamboyant and sexually driven dentist named Orin and Mr. Mushnik is played by John Sancomb.

Mushnik is the owner of the flower shop where Seymour works — Mushnik’s Skid Row Florist. Mushnik also took in Seymour, an orphan.

“It’s a spoof on B-rated movies from the 1960s,” Paykel said.

According to Wikipedia, “Little Shop of Horrors” was composed by Alan Menken — who also wrote the scores for Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” — and written by Howard Ashman, and it was based on the 1960 film, “The Little Shop of Horrors.” The music is in the style of the early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown.

“Even though it’s a comedy, some of the songs are really beautiful,” Paykel said. “The harmonies ... these are some of the most difficult harmonies that we’ve come across in a lot of shows.”

“The music, as it is written for this show, is very intriguing,” Beier said. “It’s stuff I enjoy. I like all musical theater kind of music. But this, the doo-wop ... it’s got a unique sound to it.”

Beier has never had the opportunity to perform this show until now. When he heard it was going to be done by Musical Masquers, he told Paykel,

a good friend, he was going to audition without any hesitation.

“I was over the moon,” Beier said when he heard about the opportunity.

“It’s a show a lot of high schools do,” he added. “You don’t see it done in community theater. I’ve been waiting 20 years.”

In that 20 years, Beier checked off several other items from his performance resume.

One of his favorite roles was in a show called “Noises Off” with Jim and I Productions in Hartford.

“I played the role of Gary/Roger,” Beier said. “It’s a show about theater folks putting on a show. It’s a British farce.”

Other roles he has enjoyed in his career include the donkey in “Shrek.”

“My best friend played Shrek so that was a very special experience,” Beier said.

He’s been involved with local theater since he was in fifth grade. In all, this is the 25th show he’s performed in, but has nearly 50 shows he’s been involved with, whether it is acting or behind the scenes.

“My dad was into it when I was growing up,” Beier said. “I just kind of went along with him. I enjoy dressing up in costumes and entertaining people.”

And the timing for “Little Shop of Horrors” is perfect, Paykel said.

Seeking closure in Washington

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Oct. 12, 2017

Seeking closure in Washington

Vietnam vet going on Honor Flight on Saturday is hoping to heal old wounds

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

ndettmann@conleynet.com 262-306-5043

It didn’t dawn him until his sister, Mari, said it.

When it did, in a way, West Bend’s Mike Orban felt guilty, a bit selfish.

Thus, when Orban joins 12 fellow Washington County veterans on Saturday’s Stripes and Stripes Honor Flight in Washington, D.C., it’ll have a new meaning, a new purpose.

“I’ve been to Washington, D.C., many times,” Orban said from his West Bend home Tuesday morning. “I’ve seen the (Vietnam) Wall quite a few times and I do a lot of public speaking, but my sister mentioned several weeks ago, she made a statement. She said, ‘Mike, your family has to heal, too.’ That really sank in for me that this would be an opportunity, because I have so many brothers and sisters, an opportunity for my family to heal as well.

“I’m grateful and almost apologetic for not having thought about that for almost 50 years.”

In addition to Orban, also going on Saturday’s Honor Flight from the county are: Mark Cayner (Kewaskum, Vietnam War, Army), John Fenton (Jackson, Vietnam War, Army), Tom Landvatter (West Bend, Korean War, Army), Ronald Pollpeter (Germantown, Korean War, Navy), Ronald Pritchard (Germantown, Vietnam War, Marine Corps), Donald Pryor (Jackson, Korean War, Army), Hilda Rasmussen (West Bend,

Korean War, Army), Procopio “Nick” Sandoval (West Bend, Korean War, Army), Charles Sawyer (Germantown, Korean War, Marine Corps), Richard Schilter (West Bend, World War II, Marine Corps), Norman Toll (Slinger, Korean War, Marine Corps) and Anthony Wolf (Allenton, Vietnam, Army).

One of Orban’s sisters, Peg Knaus, who sat at his dining room table with her brother Tuesday, said the day promises to be emotional, likely with tears.

Orban served in the Army from 1969-72, including in Vietnam with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal.

“I’m so looking forward to it,” Knaus said of Saturday.

The Orban family needs the honorary day.

“We never had closure of the war,” Knaus said. “When Mike came home to all this mess at home. We never welcomed him properly or thanked him properly for what he went through. We didn’t have any idea of what he went through.”

When Mike was drafted in 1969 and went away to Vietnam, his family was starting to fall apart. His parents were already divorced and Dad, as Mike described it, disappeared, left the family to marry a secretary, several siblings either dropped out of school — some before the end of grade school — or were kicked out, succumbed to a string of drug and alcohol abuse by the age of 12 or landed in prison or all of the above. A brother also committed suicide.

When Mike returned home, he came home to a family in shambles, a group of friends who weren’t the same people anymore and a country not the way he remembered it.

“To say it was catastrophic is not even fair,” Mike said. “It was bad.”

Mike was in Vietnam for “11 months, 18 days and I used to know the hours,” he said.

“It was starting to go downhill,” Mike said about his home life before being sent to Vietnam, “but it was nowhere near what it was when I came home.”

It was almost like he was in another foreign country.

“My mother didn’t have a drinking problem when I left,” Mike said. “She was a great person, but was just overwhelmed.”

He was overwhelmed, too.

He lived in Knaus’ basement for years as PTSD started to kick in for Mike. Knaus said Mike often spent hours in the basement drinking and depressed.

Mike later fled to Africa to live in the jungle for nearly a decade. He joined the Peace Corps, but only did that as a disguise for what he was really doing.

“I had such a difficult time being here in America,” Mike said.

He added, “This made me look good to my family joining the Peace Corps, but I was going to isolate, just to hide.”

Had it been not for a war breaking out in Rwanda, Mike doesn’t know when or if he would’ve returned to the U.S. — alive or dead.

“I felt like I was in a foreign country here in America,” Mike said, adding he was surrounded by no sense of love or joy for anybody or anything.

The only reason he didn’t commit suicide was because he saw the devastation it caused the family when his brother did it.

“I was running from myself,” Mike said.

The siblings, despite all that happened, were close. Knaus said had it not been for Mike, she doesn’t know, or fears to think about, how different her life would’ve played out.

As for Mike, it was a similar sentiment, but he also gave credit to the staff at the Tomah VA hospital.

“Tomah saved my life,” Mike said.

At Tomah, he was given a sheet of paper listing 21 common responses to trauma — including anger, rage, guilt, panic attacks and nightmares.

“This was the crap that was floating around in here,” he said, pointing to his head. “I can’t pull out the anger because as soon as I pull out the anger, I go to the guilt. When I pull out the guilt, it goes to the shame.

“When they showed me the piece of paper, I could go to the rage and go, ‘What is the rage about? What is the shame about?’” He cited the overwhelming guilt for killing civilians by mistake.

“How does a 20-year-old get over that sort of thing?” Mike said.

When he saw the list, Mike said he was furious — not because the hospital gave it to him, but because he didn’t see it the day he left the service in 1972.

“When I came home, as an infantry soldier ... I was emotionally shut down,” Mike said. “The only way to survive as an infantry soldier is to numb yourself to what you’re doing.

“When I came home, I thought I was going to a home what it was before. I thought I was going home to my wife to my friends playing softball,

going to the bar on Friday night, restoring old antique cars.

“To this day, none of those things hold any interest to me. I was overwhelmed by these events. I lost a sense of who I was.”

In 2007, Orban released a book detailing his service and his bout with PTSD, “Souled Out: A Memoir of War and Inner Peace.”

Since then, it has been revised twice, most recently in 2014. That was an eyeopener for the family.

“Now that after reading his book, all this coming out about this terrible disease, we want to now appreciate, let him know how much we appreciate him and what he went through,” Knaus said. “We should’ve been there for him and we weren’t.

“Now we need to be there for him. This flight kind of gives us a chance to welcome him home like we should’ve done 50 years ago.”

Erin Hills still buzzing from U.S. Open

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Oct. 7, 2017

Erin Hills still buzzing from U.S. Open

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

ndettmann@conleynet.com 262-306-5043

TOWN OF ERIN — There are several reasons why John Morrissett, Zach Reineking and others on the Erin Hills Golf Course staff are eagerly awaiting the offseason.

For Morrissett, he has more than 40 hours of DVR-watching to do of all the coverage of June’s U.S. Open at Erin Hills.

“It’s clogging up my DVR,” he said with a smile.

Since the USGA packed up and moved out of town after the final round of the U.S. Open on June 18, operations have slowed at Erin Hills. But not by much.

The buzz among the staff and golfers who have come and gone remains high, and the course’s staff is still tightening up some loose ends, such as prepping the course for the winter before the season ends later this month.

With a little time to breathe Monday, Morrissett and Reineking, the course superintendent, reflected on what was a recordbreaking championship.

On the course, Brooks Koepka won the championship for his first career major, shooting 16under par to tie Rory McIlroy’s 2012 record for U.S. Open winning score relative to par. Koepka was one of 31 golfers to break par — a record for the U.S. Open.

It was also record-breaking off the course.

Janeen Driscoll, public relations director for the USGA, said there were a record number of transactions in the merchandise tent in a single day on the Saturday of championship week.

There 26,600 transactions that day, out of more than 139,000 for the week.

The USGA said after the championship the merchandise preview day was the second-best opening day in its history.

Since then, Erin Hills’ staff has focused its effort on returning to some sense of normalcy. For the most part, that has been achieved. Gone are all the tents, the grandstands, etc. Taking a look out the back of the clubhouse, the course looks close to what it did pre-U.S. Open.

“It has been a relief to see after the U.S. Open, you can look out the window and the course is back to its old self,” Morrissett said.

There are some reminders of the championship still hanging around.

The roads built for various reasons, including the shuttle dropoff area remains in place. Some of the secondary roads built on the edge of the property for on-site parking lots remain.

Several grass areas that were used for spectator viewing and walking are still trampled. But that has improved in the last several weeks.

“We were quite pleased that spectators and crosswalks in the fairways rebounded well on their own,” Reineking said. “Areas near rope lines rebounded well.”

As for the course itself, it looks close to what it did throughout championship week. And that’s been fun for all golfers that have come to Erin Hills since July 1, the day the course reopened for public play.

“A lot of the golfers that have come here, when they go around the course, they ask their caddies, ‘Where was Brooks Koepka when he did this?’ Or, ‘Where exactly was Justin Thomas in the 18th fairway when he hit that 295-yard 3-wood on Saturday?’” That shot, which Thomas eventually made for eagle to finish with a 9-under-par 63 that day, is still strong in the memory bank.

“So a lot of the guests, when the caddies point out to them in the 18th fairway where Thomas was, they just ... as 99 percent of the people that come in, they say, ‘I can tee up with a driver and not come even close,’” Morrissett said. “We have those memories out there. It’s pretty neat.”

❑❑❑

Superintendent: quality of course was important

The course got some criticism because of the low scores.

Traditionally, the U.S. Open bills itself as golf’s ultimate test. In most cases, only a few shots under par are the typical winning scores at a U.S. Open. Only twice in the previous 116 U.S. Opens had the winning score been 10-under or better. Tiger Woods accomplished the feat first in 2000 at Pebble Beach at 12-under and then McIlroy in 2011 at Congressional.

“I think, first and foremost, it was the first par-72 U.S. Open in 25 years,” Reineking said. “And I think that played well to these players.”

Reineking also said a fair amount of rain early in the week softened the course, allowing another opportunity to go low.

He also heard several rave reviews about the quality of the greens. Two years ago at Chambers Bay, a first-time host, several players complained about that course’s rough greens.

“Some of the interesting stats from the U.S. Open that came out on Saturday, the top 60 players, every player made every putt under 5 feet,” Reineking said. “I think that goes to prove that, highlight the purity of our greens.”

Reineking added the quality of the course was what

was the most important factor to him and his staff. For that, he believes they delivered.

❑❑❑

USGA reveals numbers from championship week

Eric Steimer, championship director for the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, released several numbers from the championship.

■ 5,266: number of volunteers

■ 120,000-plus: number of volunteer hours

■ 200,000-plus: number of fans who attended the championship throughout the week

■ 15,000-plus: number of grandstand seats used

■ 26.5 million: number of television viewers around the world

■ 235: number of buses used to shuttle fans to and from the course

■ 442,403: number of U.S. Open logo merchandise sold

■ 840: number of credentialed media

■ 250-plus: number of individual tents of all sizes

■ 350,000-plus: amount of square feet of tented space

■ 32,000-plus: number of perishable and nonperishable food donated to the Hunger Task Force of Wisconsin.

A second chance to make a first impression

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Oct. 4, 2017

A second chance to make a first impression

Richfield’s Hannah Mrozak makes a 2nd debut on a reality singing competition

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

ndettmann@conleynet.com 262-306-5043

Richfield’s Hannah Mrozak, now 19, believes she is ready to show the world how far she has come as a singer, a performer and as a person, while also using tragedy as her motivator to hopeful stardom.

On Monday night’s episode of NBC’s “The Voice,” the Slinger High School graduate selected Adam Levine, the lead singer for the pop-rock band Maroon 5, as her coach for the show’s 13th season.

“I remember vaguely being on stage,” Mrozak said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Seeing myself on stage and national television was surreal. It’s hard to describe. I have a lot of emotions going through my head right now. I’m very grateful; super blessed.”

“The Voice” is a reality television singing competition. The twist on the show compared to Fox’s “American Idol” is the aspiring talent is judged by their voices. Each of four judges — this season the judges are Levine, Blake Shelton, Jennifer Hudson and Miley Cyrus — face the crowd, only listening to the voice on stage. When they hear a voice they like, they hit a button and their chair spins around. From there, the talent on stage, like Mrozak, selects a judge who they believe will best teach them the ins and outs of singing and performing.

The winner receives $100,000 and a recording contract. Past winners include Cassadee Pope (Season 3), Danielle Bradberry (Season 4) and Chris Blue (Season 12).

The blind auditions were recorded several weeks ago. The live competitions, Mrozak said, start in late November.

During Monday night’s episode, which included Mrozak’s blind audition, three of the four judges turned around as she sang “Starving” by Hailee Steinfeld. Those judges were Shelton, Levine and Hudson. Shelton was the first to turn around, 18 seconds into her song, quickly followed by Levine and Hudson.

“I wasn’t expecting them to turn around,” Mrozak said. “I was hoping one to go around.

It was absolutely insane.”

“It was two emotions,” she added. “Now they can see me and now, ‘Oh my God.’ It was craziness. My mind was blank. But, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulder. I let loose a little bit.”

After her song, Levine, Shelton and Hudson each shared their critique of Mrozak’s performance.

“You could be a really proficient, skillful singer, but still not have tone,” Levine said during the episode. “But, because you have both, that’s what really sets you apart.”

Hudson said Mrozak has a beautiful voice, while Shelton commended Mrozak’s comfort on stage.

That took some work, Mrozak said.

The last time most of the world saw Mrozak, she was a 15-year-old with big dreams, appearing on “American Idol.”

On Tuesday, she admitted when she looked back on that experience, she wasn’t ready.

“I was so young when I did ‘Idol,’” she said.

Mrozak made it to the top 48 out of the auditions, but failed to advance to the top 24.

But it was a rewarding and lifechanging experience for her.

“It kind of molded me into the performer I am,” Mrozak said. “I grew into my own skin. I just got another sense of confidence I didn’t know I have. It gave me more stage presence.

“There’s no doubt in my mind I’ve matured as a performer and a person.”

This year’s attempt on “The Voice” is her third attempt.

“I’m grateful didn’t make it the last two times,” Mrozak said. “I don’t think I was ready.”

And a big step for her in the maturity process happened with the sudden passing of her 15-yearold brother, Mason, in February. He committed suicide. Hannah learned he did because he was a victim of bullying.

“It has been very hard,” Hannah said.

Hannah and Mason, she said, were close. Mason was her biggest fan and No. 1 supporter. Hannah thought she lost a piece of herself with Mason’s passing.

“I was definitely not motivated,” she said. “I went into quite a funk.”

It wasn’t long until she got back on stage. However, when she did, it was awkward.

“It felt awkward especially knowing that I can’t be my true self,” Hannah said. “It was like an out of body experience.”

She continued to do some soulsearching. Then, about two months after Mason’s death, Hannah had an epiphany.

“I finally realized this is what he wanted. I have to pick myself up,” she said.

Suddenly with a surge in confidence, Hannah was back on stage. It felt great.

“It was just so reassuring,” she said. “I knew that this is go time. This is what I have to focus my life on. He believe in me. I believe in me.”

Armed with confidence, Mrozak believes the time is perfect to inch closer to her dream of being a recording artist.

“I’m very excited to show America my progress,” Mrozak said.