On Peter W. Culman's 10th birthday, his godmother took him to see his first Broadway show -- "Where's Charley?" -- the musical in which the late Ray Bolger sang "Once in Love with Amy" with the audience.
"There's a story there," Mr. Culman says, launching into one of many tales he tells over lunch in the sunny kitchen of his Roland Park home.
About a decade ago, he explains, he picked up a magazine profile of Bolger in a dentist's office. "The interviewer asked him what prompted him to sing 'Once in Love with Amy' with the audience, and he said, 'Well, at a matinee there was a young redheaded boy who stood up and started singing with me.' "
Slathering peanut butter and jelly on pumpernickel -- his favorite sandwich -- Mr. Culman, 53, laughingly admits he can't be sure Bolger was referring to him, but at the same time, he does have red hair, and he distinctly remembers that he stood up and sang, "and [Bolger] stopped the show and the audience joined in."
That epiphany may have led Mr. Culman to choose a life in the theater, a life whose last quarter century has been spent as managing director of Center Stage -- a longer tenure than any other managing director in the history of American regional theater.
But above and beyond the impact of Ray Bolger, Mr. Culman ascribes his dramatic leanings to the inherent theatricality in his Irish-American upbringing. "I came from a family of Irish raconteurs and they were all telling stories all the time," he says. And when he describes the house in which he grew up, he might just as easily be describing a stage set -- a pair of connected East Side Manhattan brownstones that also housed the family bridal gown business and his uncle's doctor's office.
Nor can he discount the influence of the Catholic Church on his career -- not the pomp and circumstance, mind you, but the spirituality that is always with him. As Donald N. Rothman, a former Center Stage board president, puts it, Mr. Culman's faith extends beyond Catholicism -- he also has faith in the theater.
For Mr. Culman, theater is a vocation. The most obvious proof is his 25th anniversary as chief administrator of Center Stage. This past Monday the event was honored with a surprise party whose lineup of speakers was headed by the acclaimed South African playwright Athol Fugard. And, as part of the tribute, the nearly 400 guests were treated to a rendition of "Once in Love with Amy" -- though this time Mr. Culman didn't join in.
