The poet Robert Frost famously wrote of two roads diverging and choosing “the one less traveled by” and such is the conundrum that faces every person nearly every day in life. For Scott Fitzgerald, this choice seemed innocuous enough when he graduated from theatre school at Indiana University and faced the option of going to Chicago with one group of performers or heading to San Francisco with another. In both groups, the goal was simple: Ply their trade in the acting world and move on to bigger and better things from there.
Fitzgerald, who now lives in Ocala and is a leading man for many of the Ocala Civic Theatre productions, chose to join the group headed to the west coast. There, a play never happened – the project bogged down in theatre renovations, financial pitfalls and earthquakes. From there, most of the company would set out for Los Angeles, but not Fitzgerald.
“Los Angeles terrified me,” Fitzgerald said. “I knew I wasn’t a leading man and I was self-conscious about that. I didn’t have enough confidence in myself at that point to be able to do that.”
Several of the actors who moved to LA, including Vince Ventresca and Thomas Watkins, went on to make a good living as actors on stage, the large screen and television. The group that set off for Chicago became a success, moved to New York and became even more successful. Among them was Eric Nightingale, who Fitzgerald describes as a “world class director” and who would later reunite with him to direct “A Tuna Christmas” in Ocala.
For Fitzgerald though, it was back to Cincinnati to reside in the long shadow of his father in the radio business.
A local celebrity of sorts, his father won a Marconi Award and was host of the Cincinnati Good Morning Show from 1968 until retiring in 2015. That set the groundwork for Scott’s career, not on stage, but behind a microphone.
“I followed in his footsteps,” Fitzgerald said. “I did not have the same sort of career he did – he got to stay in one town for the majority of his life and he was one of the best of the best. He had a much better voice than me.”
At IU, Fitzgerald began working at the local radio station and his career path seemingly set despite his major in theatre. He performed in his first play, Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” and the acting bug bit and never let go of him, all the while he earned his living on the airwaves. Fitzgerald’s disc jockeying at various stations up to 1995 led to work as a program director for five years before heading back to California to host a Top-40 show and later a talk-radio program.
“At that point in time, it became my life as a career that I chose,” Fitzgerald said. “I didn’t do any acting until 2004.”
That’s when the Cincinnati Fringe Festival came calling. Modeled somewhat after the more-famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe that brings edgy shows to the streets, the Cincinnati Fringe Festival offered Fitzgerald a chance to return to his first love: acting in the most organic means.
“A buddy of mine wanted to do a play on a bus, and I thought, that’s a cool idea! So, we sat down and did some brainstorming, and I interviewed a bunch of people that worked for the Cincinnati Metro and wrote the majority of that script with a couple other folks.”
The play consisted of three characters: a female passenger and two people who worked for the bus line. The audience sat on the bus and was driven through town as the actors performed the play. In the story, a woman’s son had been killed by a metro bus, and she tells that story and the changes that affected the metro. Actors would move up and down the aisle with what little staging a bus can offer.
“It was a big success, to the point where when it was over we had to stage two extra shows in a bar and just set up seats like it was a bus, and it sold out.”
Then, it was back to his career behind the microphone. The path of his radio career looks like that of a journeyman minor league baseball player: Dayton, Cincinnati, Louisville, California, back to Dayton, Raleigh, Birmingham, back to Raleigh, and finally, Charlotte. “My father’s timing was beautiful every step of the way of his career – mine was exactly the opposite,” Fitzgerald says.
Four times he started a new job in a new city and soon after the
company was bought by someone else, ultimately leading to his departure. Once his job ended in Charlotte, Fitzgerald turned from the radio mic and went into podcasting for Forbes. A year later he would break away with a partner to podcast on their own.
Then, in September 2021 in his move to Ocala with his wife, Fitzgerald turned to his old love – acting. On the drive, he placed a fateful phone call to the Ocala Civic Theatre to ask about auditions for “It’s A Wonderful Life,” but it was too late. Undeterred, when the spring of 2022 rolled around, he made certain he was there to audition for “Outside Mullingar,” and was given the role of Anthony Riley.
“I was fortunate enough to get in that,” Fitzgerald said. “It was my first show at OCT and it was a blast. I’d never done any community theatre before.”
His performance in “Outside Mullingar” was followed by the two-person dramatic comedy “The Velocity of Autumn” before starring in the multi-role comedy “A Tuna Christmas.” In Tuna, Fitzgerald plays 10 different parts and has since been asked to repeat his performance when the OCT begins its next run of the play, December 3.
“I like comedy, but I like dramas, too,” said Fitzgerald, who will get his chance at drama in “The Crucible,” which runs October 30-November 16. If it’s a musical, though, forget it. Fitzgerald has never had a desire to be one of those “triple threats” over which directors drool.
“I’m more of a ‘straight player’ as opposed to a musical person, simply because I can’t sing very well,” Fitzgerald admits. “Me alone: I can’t sing. I used to do characters on the radio and they could sing – they could hold a key, but I can’t. I know it’s something that’s very strange.”
At some point one might think there is a crossover between being a radio personality and a stage performer. Both are in the entertainment world, where communicating to strangers is the central focus. Not so, according to Fitzgerald.
“They’re different skill sets and they fill different needs,” Fitzgerald explains. “I don’t need to be a star – I don’t want to be a star. The stage part… the ego is gone and that sort of happens to me where I go away and all the head space that gets screwed up by my thinking goes completely quiet.”
But to Fitzgerald, acting is not just reciting lines correctly; it’s also about gauging the audience and even the moves and mannerisms of the actor on stage with you. “Is there more than one way to play a scene?” he will often ask himself. That might mean going off-script or even improvising a bit, which he is not averse to doing.
Many times, Fitzgerald says he will come home from rehearsal, sit on the couch and drink a beer, thinking “how can I do it differently?”
“We may rehearse a scene six times, but I’m not going to do it six times the same way. Let’s figure out six different ways to approach it and maybe we’ll find one good thing.
“When you’re in the moment, whatever the right thing to happen is, you’re available to it. I’ve seen a lot of actors in a lot of different places and you hear them say that same line the same way every single time. It doesn’t matter how the person before them said their line; it’s by rote; they have a tune in their head by memory how they’re going to deliver it, and for some people that may be great. For me, it doesn’t work because it’s not based on the action of what’s in front of you.”
As an example, Fitzgerald notes how in rehearsal if an actor yells a line instead of whispering it and you whisper back as usual, it does not work. “Well, I just missed what you gave me and that would take it in a completely different direction – it may not be the right direction, but it is a direction. In the world of rehearsal, you try to say yes to everything.”
It’s all part of the dedication to a craft, and perhaps in no other play is that dedication put to the test than in Tuna. The myriad roles, the quick-changes, the comedic timing – all daunting.
“A Tuna Christmas” tests the actor’s versatility perhaps like no other performance. In Tuna, Fitzgerald’s parts include three female roles. “I’d never played a woman before and in this I play three. Still not a fan of high heels.” On the other side was Ocala’s own Hollywood star, John Allsopp, which made things especially intriguing and exciting.
“He got thrown into the fire and was absolutely amazing, and he’s going to be in it again this fall.”
As an actor, Fitzgerald must be prepared for any role and he’s proven his versatility at OCT with his many roles in Tuna, the upcoming dramatic role in “The Crucible” and even playing a “gay, stoner hippie” in “The Velocity of Autumn,” a role that to this day, he claims among his favorite.
It’s all part of his acting philosophy, which entails not just diligent and time-consuming preparation, but a willingness to try things in different ways. All the training he received in college then stored away for years he can now dust off and put to use at Ocala Civic Theatre, where he is quite content and proud to remain.
“This community theatre blew me away with how much staff they have,” Fitzgerald said of his first impression of OCT. “They’re so good at what they do. I can’t speak too much for other theatres, I just know I was blown away by the costume staff and the volunteers. I was thrilled, but not surprised (by the quality of OCT). Everything was a new development: ‘Oh, we’re going to be fitted for costumes?! Oh, they’re altering?! This is great!”
And those OCT audiences? How do they compare to elsewhere?
“It’s a good homer crowd, if that makes sense,” Fitzgerald states, using sports as a metaphor. “They always want the shows to be good and they’re very, very appreciative. You can just see the audiences saying ‘Yes!’ to more and more. They would wear the gear (like a sports fan) if it was available. There’s a lot of good fans.”
