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Theater community says a sad goodbye to one of its own

Bill DeYoung

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Writer and director Patrick Brafford died Aug. 8. Photos: Gulfport Community Players.

It was in 2015, not long after he’d left New York City for Pinellas County, that Patrick Brafford arrived at the front door of the Back Door Theater, the Gulfport Community Players’ rehearsal room and black box space.

“He knocked on the door and introduced himself,” recalled GCP president Eileen Navarro. “He said he was kind of new to Gulfport – he’d bought a condo there, but had recently sold it and moved to Pinellas Park. But he wanted to know about our theater.”

Brafford, who died Aug. 8 at age 73, would soon become an important part of the Gulfport group, and of community theaters county-wide. His unexpected death, due to complications from surgery, came as a shock to the thespian community.

“He inquired about membership,” Navarro said, “and it was something like $10 a year. He wrote out a check for $1,000. I thought OK … so this is a good start. He became a lifetime member.”

Brafford’s last show was “Torch Song” in June.

An accomplished playwright and director, the Missouri native spent years in close collaboration with actress Madeleine Sherwood, teaching, writing, holding workshops and producing plays. He directed shows at the legendary Actor’s Theatre in New York.

According to Brafford’s Theatre Tampa Bay resume, he directed, worked and/or taught a number of successful actors including Kim Hunter, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Grayson Hall, James Spader, Charles Busch, Betty Buckley, Shelley Winters, Jack Betts, Genie Francis, Robert Fitch and many others.

He was Associate Director of John Strasberg’s Real Stage.

Upon his retirement to this area, Theatre Tampa Bay immediately enlisted Brafford for its judges’ panel. “He was a real New York, professional theater guy,” said TTB director Kim Rosenthal. “So that really brought a pointed edge to the judging panel that we’re going to miss. Because he was the only one on the panel who brought that level of professionalism from New York City.”

Not that Brafford turned up his nose at non-professional theater. Quite the contrary. “He was very down-to-earth,” Rosenthal said. “He was a lovely guy.

“We try to recognize local talent at Theatre Tampa Bay. That’s what we do. But he really had a world perspective on theater, and it was very, very valuable to our organization.”

He directed his first show at Gulfport, The Kitchen Witches, in March 2015, followed by his own play, The Slut From Blue Eye.

Larry Biddle and his partner, David Warner, met Brafford right around this time. “I was always raising money for LGBTQ organizations and activities,” Biddle explained, “and he was a man of resources – I don’t know to what extent – and I would ask him for some money all the time. And he was very generous.”

Warner, a journalist, had been thinking about getting back into acting, an early passion. It was Brafford, he said, who convinced him to try out for Modigliani, an offbeat drama he was about to direct at Gulfport.

“He was wonderful to work with,” Warner said. “He wasn’t a diva, but he knew exactly what he wanted. Down to the details of the set – he would go and sources the sets himself, to a great degree. They’d be exquisitely detailed.”

“The Lady With All the Answers” (Elizabeth Bell as Ann Landers).

Once he hit his stride, Brafford directed one, sometimes two, Gulfport Community Players shows each season, at both the black box and the mainstage, the Catherine Hickman Theatre. He brought an edge to the group, choosing shows like Parfumerie (the Hungarian play that inspired The Shop Around the Corner) and The Lady With All the Answers (a one-woman show about advice columnist Ann Landers).

“Patrick was my friend and my mentor,” Bell said. “He made me an actor of quality and shared his incredible talent for theater with the Tampa Bay area. But more than anything, he was my friend. I will always miss, love and think of him.”

He also directed at Largo’s Early Bird Dinner Theatre, and for the West Coast Players in Clearwater.

Brafford’s last show was the Gulfport production of Harvey Firestein’s Torch Song in June. It was the theater’s third consecutive Pride Month show – a tradition that began with Brafford and – according to Navarro – will continue.

“What I really liked about him as a director was he would let you go, and fly, and then pull you back,” explained Velda Gauthier, who played numerous roles under Brafford in the 2021 Pride Month production Birds of a Feather. “He would say ‘Show me what you can do.’ I knew he would pull me back and not make me look foolish. So I took a lot of risks.”

Gauthier was sure she was in good hands. “The fact that someone of his creativity and artistic integrity had faith in me, meant the world to me,” she said. “And I worked really hard to make him proud.”

 

“Parfumerie.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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