Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders Playing To The Crowds Welch’S Role Is Behind The Scenes, But He’S Part Of The Reason Cda Theatre Plays To Full Houses

Roger Welch shared a dilapidated house with 17 people, six refrigerators, two stoves and a mysterious, awful odor his first year in Coeur d’Alene.

“It was the best summer of my life,” he says now, grinning like an overgrown boy. “It was heaven and hell at the same time.”

Heaven was on stage at the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, where Welch debuted professionally in “West Side Story.”

The hours and pay were hell. Welch earned $70 a week as an ensemble player and $5 each time he helped change sets after a show.

He fell in love with Coeur d’Alene that summer, and found himself drawn back year after year to play larger roles and invest more of his artistic talent.

Now he’s the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre’s artistic director. His salary has multiplied eight times and he’s working year-round. Reviewers routinely praise his stage direction as clever, imaginative and creative.

Summer theater ticket sales have skyrocketed since Welch took over artistic direction. General manager David Hollingshead expects to sell 25,000 tickets for this summer’s four musicals.

This month, audiences packed North Idaho College’s 1,100-seat Schuler Auditorium seven times to see “Hello Dolly,” which Welch directed.

“Roger’s raised our artistic standards to the absolute highest,” says Jim Speirs, the Summer Theatre’s board president. “Just when I think we can’t go any higher, he pushes us up again.”

Welch was skeptical about a stage career until his first season with the Summer Theatre in 1986. His concerns were practical.

“The statistics are awful,” he says. “Only 1 percent of those who call themselves professional are actually working.”

But he was happier on stage than anywhere else. He learned early that people enjoy being entertained and like people who entertain them.

Welch mimicked John Wayne and Carol Burnett for his parents and two older brothers when he was 6.

“Mom made me do them all the time,” he says. “It was a powerful feeling to make people laugh.”

A kindergarten role as Santa Claus sold him on acting.

“I got the part because I was the fattest kid in class,” he says. “But it was a leading role, so I didn’t care.”

By high school in Milwaukie, Ore., Welch was a regular in the spotlight. The school’s high-energy choir performed 300 times a year. Welch sang bass.

The school’s sad drama program pushed him into community theater, where he realized he needed to dance. Welch took lessons in jazz, ballet and tap, then used his skills to produce “Grease” at his high school.

The school planned no musical that year. Welch was crushed. He was sure he’d play a leading role because he was a senior. He lobbied his principal and PTA and won approval to produce his own show.

He directed and choreographed “Grease,” and won rave reviews from students and staff.

“That drama program forced me to find my own way,” he says.

Still, he was unsure about a career in theater. Welch enrolled in drama in college with plans to teach.

“I didn’t like the idea, but it was practical,” he says.

Each winter, the drama program took students to a regional conference, where they competed for awards, attended workshops and auditioned for summer stock companies.

Welch was working as a singing waiter in a German restaurant and prepared the song “Oom-Pah-Pah,” from “Oliver,” for his audition in 1986. He knew Bob Moe, founder and director of the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, was in the audience and liked the season Moe had planned.

“I was nervous and did poorly,” Welch says. No one offered him work. “I knew I was better than that audition, so I wrote to Bob Moe.”

Welch was in “A Chorus Line” at school that winter. He sent Moe tickets. Moe watched the show and hired Welch and two other cast members for his summer season.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Welch says.

His $500 Ford Pinto blew up halfway to Coeur d’Alene. He took a bus to Spokane and found a crowded tenement waiting for him when he finally arrived in his summer home. He was 19 and thrilled with it all.

Speirs spotted Welch’s potential immediately.

“He was a wonderful performer, very funny,” he says. “He obviously had a lot of talent, ability, knew a lot about the theater.”

Welch returned for three summer seasons, then moved to Seattle to start a musical theater company with friends.

He quickly discovered that running a company was exhausting. He let it dissolve and found work with other companies until friends pulled him into the Missoula Children’s Theater.

“I used to call that the Peace Corps of theater,” he says. “We did everything. It prepared me for this job.”

The children’s theater traveled to cities throughout the western half of the United States and Canada, putting on full-scale shows with local children in each place.

Welch performed during the summer of 1992 in Coeur d’Alene, then headed to Portland to help a friend start a children’s theater. That company took him to Guam for a month, and to Ashland, Ore., famous for its Shakespeare Festival.

Welch couldn’t resist auditioning in Ashland. He won a part in an Elizabethan song and dance show, and learned how to fight on stage with swords, daggers, rapiers and fists.

He might have stayed, but Coeur d’Alene called. The Summer Theatre needed an artistic director.

“It was a huge choice. Ashland has one of the best Shakespeare companies in the country, and they’d asked me back,” he says. “Or I could come here and build something like Ashland.”

He arrived in Coeur d’Alene in 1994 ready to create. He called his professional theater friends and asked them to work in Coeur d’Alene for little pay but for a good company. They came.

He found new set designers and costumers.

“It was fun, exciting, frightening,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

That season, the Summer Theatre sold out its first show ever - “The Sound of Music,” which Welch directed. Word spread. Every season, attendance grew. Most of the nonprofit theater’s earnings went toward higher quality performers, sets, equipment and costumes.

“Roger is absolutely good at what he does,” says Hollingshead, the theater’s general manager. “He attracts people to work here and he makes them feel good about themselves.

“When they leave, they’re tired, but they’ve played to full houses and know what a standing ovation is. Our product is wonderful, and that’s a direct reflection on Roger.”

In 1997, Welch spent the off-season in New York, interning with Broadway director Tim Childs, who had directed a Summer Theatre production. Welch gorged on learning, and has returned to New York every off-season since.

“I need to be challenged,” he says.

In 1999, he performed as a juror on the television show “Ally McBeal.” Last year, he performed off, off-Broadway in a show he’d rather forget.

“It was ridiculous, and a great lesson,” he says. “Just because it’s in New York doesn’t mean it’s good. I realized our shows here are so great.”

He’s 33 now and his contract with the Summer Theatre expires after this season. He doesn’t know if he’ll stay. He wants to finish college and try script writing.

He also wants to expand the Summer Theatre’s season and move it to its own space - a new theater complex with two stages and classrooms.

“Sometimes I think I want to do this forever,” he says. “And other times, I know there’s more out there.”