Thespians recall victims in Athens shooting

Athens — They came from all over town to the place where their hearts broke. Grabbing tools, they “struck the set” — dismantled the scene where the play unfolded. It is a stage tradition.

But never had so many people turned out to move furniture and trot props into the parking lot at the Athens Community Theatre. As members of the Town and Gown Players Inc. took apart the set, they reassembled memories:

Enlarge this image

Jason Getz/jgetz@ajc.com

Members of the Town and Gown group struck the set after canceling the play.

Related George Zinkhan news:

• Photos: Zinkhan's body found
• Fellow professor sent into hiding
• Details of suicide
• Dog finds body
• Reaction in Athens
• Timeline of events
• Audio: 911 call
• FBI: Zinkhan's wife had sought divorce

Marie, vibrant and tall. She loved laughter and champagne.

Tom, talented Tom. The stage was his canvas. That tree he created for “The Fantasticks?” And what about the set for “Play It Again, Sam?”

Ben, occasionally terse, sometimes testy, always teaching. Give that man a hammer and a saw …

And, as they talked, the people who put on shows at the Athens theater took the first steps in healing.

“We came together,” said Bill Caputi, a member of the troupe, an Athens mainstay since 1953.”The theater was moving forward. The group will not let it flow backward.”

But for now, the troupe is on a hiatus it didn’t plan and certainly didn’t want.

Murder does that.

A sunny day darkened

Police charged University of Georgia marketing professor George Zinkhan III with the April 25 shooting deaths of his wife, Marie Bruce; Tom Tanner, a Clemson University research specialist who lived in Athens; and Ben Teague, a translator. The FBI says Bruce wanted a divorce from her husband of 11 years.

Zinkhan, 57, shot the trio outside the theater, police say.Tanner, 40, fell first. His elementary-school daughter was at his side. The gunman then shot Bruce, 47, an Athens lawyer and mother of an 8- and 10-year-old. He turned on Teague, 63, who may have tried to help his friends.

The shootings occurred in an instant, on a sunny afternoon at an annual reunion. People sat on outdoor benches and talked about previous productions and plays they’d like to stage. The play that night, “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure,” was canceled. It is the story of how the world’s most famous detective confronts evil for the last time.

On Friday, authorities announced they’d found Zinkhan’s red Jeep, hidden in a ravine not far from his home in Bogart, an Athens suburb. He is the object of a manhunt that spans the globe.

Troupe members dismiss rumors that Zinkhan was a jealous spouse who shot his romantic rival, Tanner, before taking two more lives.

Did Tanner and Bruce have a relationship? “Yes,” said Steve Wildey, who joined the troupe while attending UGA two decades ago. ” It’s the same love we all have for each other here.”

Indelible characters

Bruce was … well, she was everywhere, on stage and behind, in the dressing rooms and in the wings. Often she came with her children, a girl and a boy. They were as welcome as she.

Re-elected in October to a second term as president of the nonprofit’s board of directors, Bruce was accomplished off stage as well as on. A plaque in the theater lobby extols her directing skill.

Friends lauded her presence on stage. Shane Clayton, the troupe’s treasurer, recalled her in “Arcadia,” Tom Stoppard’s play juxtaposing the lives of people separated by nearly two centuries. “She was just great.”

Also starring in that production? Tanner. The director? Teague.

Tanner was brilliant. Everyone says so. When he wasn’t acting — he played Dr. Watson in “Final Adventure” — he designed sets. He could eyeball a corner of the stage, said Dina Canup, and mentally begin assembling lumber and chicken wire to create an illusion. His greatest achievement: a montage of filmed scenes for “Play It Again, Sam,” Woody Allen’s comedy about a mope who can’t score with dames.

“When the audience saw it,” said the Town and Gown member, “they gasped.”

Teague? If you wanted to rile him, call him Santa Claus.If you wanted to be his friend, said Mike Smith, you listened and watched a master assemble the stuff of temporary reality — tables and bookcases, or entire rooms that could vanish before the closing curtains stopped moving.

An Athens native, Smith recently returned to get a master’s degree in education. Fifteen years ago, he was a high-school kid who wandered into the theater one day and never really left. Teague, said Smith, taught him the intricacies of wood work, and a healthy respect for power tools.

“That was taken away from me,” said Smith, visiting the theater last week. His response?

“I’m going to come in here and build sets.”

Light in the darkness

The Athens Community Theatre building is a monument of love, built in 1968 by a developer whose wife was active in Town and Gown. Walk the lobby, where the carpet is slightly worn from decades of foot traffic. Scan the red-fabric seats, capacity 128. Eye the stage, a tiny place where people created forests, cities and bedrooms — sometimes all of these for a single production.

Make sure you look at the ghost light, a bright spot in the dark. Like striking the set, it is a theater tradition.

The first ghost lights were probably for safety, to guide long-ago actors as they entered darkened stages for the first time. But, over the centuries, the lights came to symbolize something else — the spirit of the place, maybe. Or a reminder that the show must go on, no matter the heartbreak.

So when the players struck the set, they left the stage bare of everything but that light. It is an energy-saving bulb, one of those curly mercury things, and sits atop a piece of pipe held erect by four legs on casters. It is as efficient and no-nonsense as its builder.

“Ben,” said Shane Clayton. “He built that.”

As long as that light is lit, troupe members say, they will go on.