The Youngstown Playhouse and my production of “Remember Idora”

“What’s something that needs to be said?”

I must finally tell you how I produced a Broadyway-style theatrical production in 2003 with $96,000.00 and a cast of 186 volunteers. Here’s the unusual story of how I produced a spectacular show for my hometown called Remember Idora!

Idora Park was a charming amusement park in Youngstown, Ohio. It was first built in 1899 and it burned down in 1984. The people of Youngstown were devastated. They tried many times to get the funding to rebuild Idora Park, but it never happened.

I have a very unique connection to Idora Park. My parents owned the basketball stand and the pizza stand within the park. From the ages of 9 to 17, I operated my parents’ basketball stand. I also had the freedom to roam the midway as a kid, ride all of the rides for free, and eat all the cotton candy, etc., that I wanted — for free. I loved Idora Park and it saved me from a very dysfunctional and abusive childhood.

There was a woman who operated that cork gun game booth who had a huge influence on me as a kid. I wrote about her on my Quora here:

Angela V. Woodhull · Updated June 1, 2018

Who was the most memorable person of your childhood?

[“Who was the most memorable person of your childhood?” She wore a big, blue bouffant wig, with matching blue nails, blue eye shadow, and she toted a blue cigarette holder. She also kept her pet skunk, that wore a pink rhinestone collar, inside her cork gun game stand.]

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Which leads me to this story I want to share with you.

In the year 2000, the most unusual thing happened to me. I had never had an experience like this before (or since). It was a very spiritual experience.

I would wake up in the middle of the night, and entire songs — original songs — complete with all of lyrics were playing in my head. Night after night, this continued to happen. I quickly found out that I had to turn on the light, grab a pen, and scribble down the lyrics that would be pouring out of my head, or they would be lost forever.

Night after night, this experience, that I must call spiritual, happened to me. In all, 32 songs poured out of my head in this manner in honor of the extinct and beloved Idora Park.

I truly felt this was a gift from the Divine, as I had not consciously planned to write an musical that honors Idora Park.

My husband at that time, “King Ira,” took the project quite seriously. He was always quick to learn new things, a very talented guy. Soon, we had set up a music recording studio in our home. The two of us took this project quite seriously. For the next two years, we spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours producing on CD a complete musical titled “Remember Idora!” Now that I had all of the songs, it was just a matter of writing comedy vignettes that would transport audience members from one part of the park to another.

Hundreds of amateur singers and speakers came to our house and performed so that we would have the variety of voices to make it sound like an actual trip to Idora Park. We included midway ambience. We even took a camcorder with us and rode a wooden roller coaster in Tampa, Florida so that we could add the sounds of a roller coaster descending, with the riders gleefully screaming during that first big descent.

At the end of two long years of working multiple hours a day on the script and CD, we were ready to tell Youngstown, Ohio that we had something they could cherish. I remember there were tears in my, and King Ira and I hugged and cried tears of joy at the completion of this long, tedious project.

“Oh, honey!” I told him. “We are going to bring so much joy to the people of Youngstown, Ohio!” Through theatrical illusion, we would soon be bringing the beloved and well missed Idora Park back to life.

Then there was that fateful day when I phoned the Youngstown Playhouse and asked to speak with the managing director, Robert Vargo.

“You don’t know me, but my name is Angela Woodhull. I grew up in Youngstown. I grew up in Idora Park. My parents owned the pizza stand and the basketball stand in Idora Park during the Sixties. I have written a 2 ½ hour musical about Idora Park.”

“You’re kidding me!” he replied.

I could tell by the enthusiasm in his voice that he was quite intrigued, quite interested. Yes, he wanted me to send him the script and the CD.

Soon, a contract arrived in the mail. I was living in Gainesville, Florida — far from my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio.

But there seemed to be something very odd, very weird about the contract. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but my gut told me that something was not right.

I went to see the managing director of the Hippodrome State Theatre in downtown Gainesville, Florida, and he looked over the contract with me. He looked absolutely floored. It was jaw dropping for him as he read the contract.

“You don’t want to sign this,” he told me. “You really don’t want to sign this!” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, it gives the Youngstown Playhouse permission to write a derivative of your musical. They can take your ideas, switch things out, and create their own musical about the park. Do you want that?”

I was so disheartened. I went home and cried. For a week or two, I simply did nothing. I went home and I cried.

Meanwhile, without my signature, and without my permission, the Youngstown Playhouse was casting for an Idora Park musical! When I found this out from old friends I still had in Youngstown who had read about the auditions in the Youngstown Vindicator,

I was absolutely floored.

A friend of mine went to the auditions and verified that my script had been altered. My songs had been used to create derivative songs, which is copyright infringement.

I didn’t know what to do.

I called the Youngstown Vindicator to tell them what happened.

They wrote up a story about the controversy, pretty much stating that some unknown “woman from Florida,” as though I had no ties to Youngstown, had allegedly written some musical about Idora Park, but Bob Vargo was now claiming that he had originally written his own musical waaaaay back in the 1980s and was now staging it.

I contacted several attorneys in Youngstown. Some had been former board members of the Youngstown Playhouse over the years and were reluctant to do anything to assist me. This was a true case of copyright infringement, and yes, my materials had been copyrighted.

One day, I received the weirdest phone call from some guy who claimed he was calling me from Chicago. He said his name was Bentley Lenhoff.

“You don’t know me, but I used to be the managing director of the Younstown Playhouse. I hate that Playhouse! Let’s sue them! I have a free attorney for you!”

Apparently, the word had gotten out in this small cliquish town of Youngstown, Ohio, that I was attempting to find an attorney and have an injunction placed upon the Youngstown Playhouse for copyright infringement.

The “free” attorney that Lenhoff directed me to go see just happened to be his son-in-law, Attorney Marc Dann. (I didn’t realize that at the time.)

Dann, I noticed, was not taking any notes when I spoke to him about what had transpired so far, and he did not seem to be really listening. I decided to not use his “free services,” which was a wise intuitive move, since it turned out that Bentley Lenhoff was actually coming back to Youngstown to, once again, becoming the managing director of the theatre he told me he allegedly “hated.”

I was inundated by emails from young people who told me, “Don’t sue the Playhouse. It’s all we have here in Youngstown.”

The next day, armed with about 1,000 copies of my CDs and scripts, and a back seat filled with clothes, a few pots and pans, and my two cats, I drove to Youngstown. I decided that somehow, some way, I was simply going to put on my own show, my own way.

You see, I had hired a private investigator who had videotaped one of the rehearsals at the Playhouse. It was uncanny how they had taken my content and reworked it, twisted it, and made it worse. I mean, if you’re going to take my original work, please make it better, not worse.

My musical showed actual people from back in the day walking around, talking, riding the rides, etc. It also included a special little girl who ran around the park collecting jokes and poems from the ride operators and game booth carneys. This little girl is a teenager who attends the sock hop during the second half of the show. Yes, this little girl was me.

Instead of making the musical a whirlwind experience about real Idora Park patrons from back in the day, The Youngstown Playhouse took the concepts and had midway barkers relate the history of Idora Park. For instance, they mentioned that Ethyl’s French Fry Stand burned down during the Fifties and had to be rebuilt. So, their version was a history lesson and then songs about the park, derived from my songs. For instance, my musical shows a couple with the man proposing to his girlfriend on the top of the Ferris wheel. The song is sung by a barbershop quartet. Their version also show a barbershop quartet singing to a couple sitting in a Ferris Wheel car.

I wrote a song about Big Band Night at Idora Park.

They too, had a song that ended with the same, “Ole!”

When I arrived in Youngstown after decades of being away, everything looked pretty bleak. I rented an old warehouse above an ambulance station, and there I lived, in one of the rooms, with only a mattress upon the floor, a space heater, and my two cats.

Every day, I would get up and face the snow. I had thousands of fliers made up.

Every day, I would accost strangers — in parking lots, in bank lines, at the supermarkets, in the mall, and tell them, “I am Angela Woodhull. I wrote the real version of the Idora Park musical. I will be holding a meeting at Leonardo’s Restaurant on Saturday. I would like you to be in my show. Can you make it? I’ll be playing my songs at that time.

Please come

The first meeting I held, six people showed up. Three of them, I had known from my childhood. They listened to my CD. There were tears in everybody’s eyes. “Oh, my gawd,” Darlene said. “We have to put this on.”

“Well, there are six of you here today. Now, each of you, come back with six more next Saturday.”

And they did. I continued to accost people in parking lots.

I also starting contacting local dance studios. I thought, “If each dance studio could take two or three of the songs, we’ll have a spectacular musical.”

The first dance studio to come on board was Sandy Bee in Struthers’s Ohio, a suburb of Youngstown. Her teenage dancers were excited to be in an upcoming show about Idora Park. Momentum was growing.

Soon, I had a kiosk inside the Southern Park Mall in Boardman, Ohio (another suburb of Youngstown). I dressed up as a cup of French fries, in memory of Ethyl’s French fries, and passed out fliers, selling tickets in advance. I desperately needed advanced ticket sales in order to fund this huge project.

As the momentum gained, so did the tension between me and the Youngstown Playhouse. One day, a group of about 12 older men all came by my kiosk in the Southern Park Mall, where I was clad in the French Fry costume, and took my fliers, announcing my show, Remember Idora, which was going to be performed at Powers Auditorium in Youngstown, Ohio (the biggest, baddest theatrical venue in Youngstown), had been cancelled. Soon, the word spread, all over town that my show had been cancelled.

Members of the Playhouse also vandalized my car. I had bought a car from the Sixties and had paid to have it painted “Remember Idora” with the dates of the show also listed on the car. Twice, members of the Playhouse spray painted and vandalized my car.

In the end, the Judi Conti Dance Studios came on board. In the end, I had a cast of 186 cast members, which was no easy feat, and my show was a sell out. About 6,000 people saw my show Memorial Weekend, 2003 at Powers Auditorium.

The Playhouse then decided to put on their derivative of my show a second time. At that point, I did obtain an attorney and we prevailed in an out-of-court settlement. The Playhouse was given a permanent injunction.

Staging “Remember Idora” was the biggest moment in my life. Perhaps, in the future, my musical about the park will be re-staged and will bring life back to Idora Park, through theatrical illusion.