← The Works

The Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc

1999 · Passavant Auxiliary Follies fundraiser, Jacksonville, Illinois

Each year the Passavant Auxiliary mounted its Follies as a community fundraiser for the hospital, and in 1999 Ken Bradbury wrote and directed an original Wild West romp called The Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc. As Bradbury liked to put it, this fundraiser should also be a fun-raiser — "a heck of a lot more enjoyable than holding 200 bake sales."

The show frames its tall tale through a TV news bit gone sideways: Channel Twenty-One's relentlessly cheerful weatherman Goose Gordon is dispatched to Jacksonville to interview "the world's oldest living cowboy," a 160-year-old Yiddish-accented old-timer named Maury who rides a horse-headed wheelchair named Bruce-and-Chet. Maury spins the legend of Dead-Eye Doc, once the sheriff of Morgan County, who cleaned up a wide-open frontier Jacksonville full of "murderers, robbers, thieves — real estate agents!" When his beautiful wife Diana steps in front of a ricocheting bullet meant for him during a duel with the villainous Black Isaac, the heartbroken lawman turns in his badge, goes to medical school, and devotes the rest of his life to healing others.

What makes the piece a true community show is how thoroughly it folds Jacksonville's real civic life into the joke. The cast drew on the town's service clubs and physicians — the retired doctors became "Chester's Jesters," the Kiwanis became a singing "Kiwani Gang," the Rotary turned into the "Rotary Injuns," and the local hospital's practicing docs took turns in the spotlight. Local landmarks, College Avenue, Morton Avenue, and IC's alma mater all earn winking shout-outs. Bradbury kept a wry running journal of the production — from August auditions filmed on Julie Hood's "casting couch," to an orchestra that first rehearsed in a funeral home, to a soft maple felled by a storm in his own front yard — that captures the affectionate chaos of pulling a whole town onto one stage.

Musical Numbers

Act I

• Overture — Doc Heller and His Rowdies
• Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc — Doc Heller and His Rowdies
• Hey Sidewinder — Miss Lily's Girls
• Kiwanis, Whoa! — Big Jim and the Kiwani Gang
• Home on the Stage & Ghost Doctor in the Sky — Chester's Jesters
• The Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc — Doc Heller and His Rowdies
• If You Knew Wareco! — The Wareco Singers
• Mope and Whine Minuet — The Semi-Denominational Choir
• Running Scared — The Rotary Injuns
• My Buddy — Hoss
• That's My Brother, Hoss! — L'il Joe, Hoss & the Gang
• The Town of Jacksonville! — Dead-Eye Doc and the Townsfolk

Act II

• Entr'acte — Doc Heller & His Rowdies
• The Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc — Heller's Rowdies
• Sixteen Hours — The Doc Squad
• Athens Blues — Doc, Angels, and the Cast
• I Can See Your Dream, Doc! — Homer and Cast
• The Big Hats! — The Cast
• America — The Cast
• The Big Hats!, reprise — The Cast
• Lonesome — Black Isaac and Others
• That's Mercantile! — The Mercantile Crooners
• Past-Yer-Aunt! — Dead-Eye Doc, Miss Lily, and Staff
• Tumblin' Docs — Chuck Wagon Chet, The Chaplain, The Prairie Docs
• Dear Dead-Eye Won't You Please Stay Home? — Miss Lily & the Gang
• Happy Trails — The Cast
• The Town of Jacksonville!, reprise — The Cast

Cast

• Dead-Eye Doc — Bill Meier
• Miss Lily — Janet Auld
• Maury — Mark Steinberg
• Black Isaac — Bruce Surratt
• Goose Gordon — Nathan Carls
• Ron Hickman — Bob Chipman
• The Fair Diana — Shelley Wessler
• Big Jim — Jim Mungai
• Chief Rotary — Fred Osburn
• Hoss — Rich Foss
• Little Joe — Andy Applebee
• Homer — Tim Greene
• Gummy — Troy Armstrong
• Spasty Pete — Eddie Carpenter
• Dogbutt — Bill Middleton
• Chester — Chet Bone
• Choir Leader — Julie Hood
• Mr. Wareco — Tim Greene
• Tex Mercantile — Joe Tapscott
• Miss Lily's Girls (Mona, Lullabelle, Flossy) — Janet Roach, Suzie Glisson, Kristan Becker Hoffman

The full company numbered well over a hundred, including the Kiwani Gang, the Rotary Injuns, the Semi-Denominational Choir, the Wareco and Mercantile Singers, a chorus of townspeople and angels, and a host of retired and practicing Jacksonville physicians.

Production Notes

Written and directed by Dr. Ken Bradbury, The Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc was the 1999 edition of the Passavant Auxiliary Follies, an annual fundraiser for Passavant Area Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois. Bradbury also played in the onstage band, "Doc Heller and His Rowdies," alongside Chuck West, Jon Carls, Jerry Kirbach, David Zink, and Kurt Heller.

The production was guided by a large volunteer staff: Ginny Fanning and Suzie Glisson as Auxiliary chairmen, Julie Hood directing the singers, Tammy choreographing the dances, Chuck West building the set, and Janet Long heading costumes, with dozens of additional committee leaders handling advertising, tickets, makeup, publicity, the showbook, and the post-show "Afterglow." Rehearsals began with auditions in early August 1999 and ran through the late-summer blocking-and-run schedule chronicled in Bradbury's production journal.