Finger Lakes Art Council: Joanne O'Connor's Ferris wheel ride back to Auburn (2024)

Heidi Nightengale, special to The Citizen

As a school-ager and teenager, Joanne O’Connor often heard her mother calling from the top of the stairs in their Auburn home to “turn off the TV and get to bed.” O’Conner was an early aficionado of old movies, classic films. Her favorite actress was Una O’Connor. While her mother dreamed of her becoming a secretary and working in town, O’Connor had early dreams of theater and the stage. She describes herself as a shy child, but in eighth grade as a student at Blessed Trinity, she auditioned for a role at the Women’s Union with Sam Kennedy of the Auburn Players. She didn’t get the part.

She attended Mount Carmel High School, where she felt she was taught, more than anything, about discipline and perseverance. When Mount Carmel High School closed, she was among those in the first class of students to attend Auburn High School. While maintaining that she was always shy in high school, she continued to pursue her love of classic movies, developed an obsession with the stories of Charles Dickens, and dove into anything regarding history. She explained, “Early on, I simply knew I loved stories.”

Despite her shy disposition, O’Connor did get involved in the first plays produced at the new Auburn High School under the drama teacher, Brian McLernan. She became the student director, including stage management of “Camelot.” At the time she noted that her “mother didn’t know what to do with me.” she giggled that her mother wanted her to be a nun or pursue secretarial work after high school. O’Connor said joyfully, “I did not want to be a nun. I wanted to be Jennifer Jones!”

She began college at Auburn Community College (now Cayuga Community College) in the secretarial program. But after a few typing classes, O’Connor said she “went out the back door” and discovered the college’s theater program. She enrolled in theater classes and learned lifelong lessons from professor Daniel Labay, who lectured her and her classmates, “The most important thing about the theater is no one is going to be a star. You are here to learn to be the audience.” At Auburn Community College she worked in all aspects of the theater, including acting on stage. She noted that she also developed a love of theater history, which joined together her early love of classic films, classic theater and the classic stars of the '30s, '40s and '50s.

The passion instilled in her at the college led her to SUNY Brockport, where she graduated from the theater program. While there she performed as Miss Wellington in “You Can’t Take it With You.” Her performance as Clara in “Save Me a Place at Forest Lawn” went on tour and won best performance in the state theater competition in 1976. O’Connor had clearly overcome her early shyness and learned that she “is an old soul and loved playing older women in her 20s.”

Graduate school at Boston University followed. She said she always wanted to live in a big city. O’Connor took many art classes and theater history classes. She said that she was inspired to personally “learn the American Songbook.” Immediately, she found herself auditioning and getting what she referred to as “little acting jobs, including television commercials.” She was hired as the stand-in for Karen Allyn in “A Small Circle of Friends.” She did numerous plays during her years in Boston. Feeling that her acting work and previous program at Brockport had already taught her more than she was learning in graduate school, the next essential move was to New York City.

Friends from her years at Brockport were waiting for O’Connor in New York. As a gang of four college roommates, they all roomed together again as they pursued a relentless schedule of auditioning, bit parts and moving from one apartment to another. O’Connor paid the rent as a roller-skating waitress at a popular spot on 64th Street where Bruce Willis was the bartender. She roller-skated to and from work for years. She loved the work and met some of New York’s famous and unique actors, including Russell Baker, Clyde Barners and the Stiller family. The staffers from Mad Magazine ate there regularly, often utilizing the rolling-skating restaurant as their second office. One of her daily customers was Quentin Crisp, who created an iconic role in Sting’s music video, “Englishman in New York.”

She and her friends workshopped their own plays together, even after exhaustingly long shifts on roller skates. O’Connor wrote and created a 15-minute show as part of their workshopping of a work they referred to as “The Birthday Girls.” Her piece featured a cat lady based on her experiences with a former neighbor in New York City who had 72 cats, titled “Molly was my Next-Door Neighbor.” “The play took off and showed all over NYC,” explained O’Connor. It became an off-Broadway feature at the Clurman Theatre, and when cable TV launched, “Molly” was repeated for years.

Eventually, though, O’Connor said that “after 35 years in theater she had enough of the theater world and was done.” Instead, she became the event planner for NYC’s premier club venue, Laura Belle. In a luxurious space that could hold 1,000 guests, O’Connor planned every detail of over 200 major events yearly. Among her vitae at Laura Belle, she planned the 75th birthday party for Paul Newman, created openings for Bob Mackie and Chanel, coordinated parties and openings for Diana Ross, Liza Minelli, Mary Tyler Moore and Madonna. To pull off all this work, O’Connor said she "lived at Laura Belle.” One of her dearest memories of working with hundreds of theater, music, arts and clothing designer stars was an incident with Paul Newman. He came to Laura Belle hours before the event and asked if he could work there for awhile in her office. In this interaction, he held out his hand to shake hers; he held onto her hand for a long, extended time with such warmth and genuine interest in her that to this day she said, “I can feel his hand in mine still.” As she recalls this memory to this day, it evokes tears of warmth, connection and joy.

And then, in her 41st year in NYC, COVID-19 hit. The pandemic pushed her heart back toward home. She knew Angela Daddabbo at Auburn Public Theater and realized, “There is just as much theater and fun available right in my old neighborhood.” Without a look back, she packed up her life in NYC and moved home.

O’Connor described her years in NYC as “getting on the front seat of the Ferris wheel and never getting off for 41 years.” But she notes that Auburn and Cayuga County offer as much fun. Now that she is home again, she said she is "never bored and tries to have fun every day.”

O’Connor played a key role at Auburn Public Theater during the COVID shutdown. With Daddabbo’s encouragement, O’Connor created three online theater shows for APT that move from comedic details in “My Live as a Wedding Planning” to a 2020 New Year’s Eve party show, “All Dressed Up and No Where to Go.” Another online show is “Live from Kips Bay.” All of these performances have been preserved and can be watched on APT’s YouTube channel.

In a full cycle of her early childhood and teen interests, O’Connor now hosts the weekly classic movies at 1 p.m. Tuesdays at APT. She prepares and presents the history of the weekly film and fills audiences in with fun facts about the classic actors and actresses. January featured Hitchco*ck films. In late January, she performed “Chronicles of an Auburn Citizen,” in which she read from selected articles she has written for The Citizen. O’Connor is now a member of the board of Auburn Public Theater. She describes her association with APT as among her most important work to date.

Perhaps O’Connor jumped off the Ferris wheel in NYC to take the front seat on a Merry-Go-Round in Auburn. After all, O’Connor, spoke the first words at the first show of the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, briefly called the Auburn Civic Theatre.