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Players

It's amazing that a cable TV series that ran from 1979 to 1981 could reboot in 2018, but The Downtown Altoona Players isn't your average television show.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, no other television show was doing what The Downtown Altoona Players was doing: Every episode had not only original comedy sketches but also a rock band from the New York area that performed at least two original songs. It was different. It was innovative. And it was all done on a shoestring budget.

By 1979, the comedy team of Johnny Stevens and Jack Bachner had already been performing together for a few years, mostly in hole-in-the-wall clubs: The Bombay Badminton Club, which was, despite its name, home to a rough crowd; then there was Vinnie's Concussion Room and The Pesticide Bar and Grill East. Well, maybe those last two weren't actual places, but they're as real as the world of The Downtown Altoona Players.

Stevens and Bachner met and started doing comedy and theater together in high school, and along with most of the rest of the cast's mainstays, consisting of Allen Roberts, David Cooper, and Maureen Cooper, the five actors met as a group for the first time at a 1975 audition for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Genesis Reparatory Playhouse in Paterson, New Jersey. Soon, the five formed the comedy troupe that has, rather unbelievably, survived since 1979. Of course, there was that short break of 37 years when the troupe wasn't active, but that can be chalked up to a minor historical footnote. Actually, David Cooper and Allen Roberts have been friends since childhood, and John Daro didn't join the ensemble until the TV run started. At first, it was Daro's rich announcer's voice that brought him into the production, but everyone found out quickly that there were more than a few comedic characters in Daro's repertoire.

When Stevens and Bachner were given an opportunity to have their own cable TV series, they didn't even have to think about who they wanted in the cast: Roberts, Cooper, Cooper and Daro. Still, there couldn't have been a show without Rich Olko.

Back in the 70s and early 80s, of course, there were no computers or software or Internet for that matter, so editing a TV show on a laptop wasn't going to be possible for decades. Olko had gone to school for Communications, and he knew how to run a TV control room as a director, and he knew how to use video and sound editing equipment. Moreover, beyond just knowing how the equipment worked, Olko was talented. The show was a team effort: there wouldn't have been a show without Stevens writing the episodes; there wouldn't have been a show without the cast, and there wouldn't have been a show without Olko directing and editing.

As for the name of the show, Stevens and Bachner, as well as the rest of the cast, were very much influenced by legendary comedians, classic acts like Abbott and Costello, The 3 Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Martin and Lewis, Charlie Chaplin, and comedians who, sadly, are lost to today's generation: Edgar Kennedy, Leon Errol, the great W.C. Fields, and many others. All of these classic, legendary acts weren't exactly uptown humor; in other words, we're not talking about Oscar Wilde's brand of comedy. We're talking about downtown comedy, but we'll stop short of calling it lowbrow and just acknowledge that there's a slapstick element involved. So, the aspect of downtown comedy gives us the downtown part of the name The Downtown Altoona Players. Many of those classic acts like W.C. Fields and The Marx Brothers played the vaudeville circuit, and Altoona was the epitome of a classic vaudeville town. If an act worked vaudeville, it worked in Altoona again and again. Out of sheer admiration for those performers, and perhaps a want for not being born early enough to play that circuit and be part of the days of vaudeville, the show's title became both a tribute to that bygone era and a reflection of what type of comedy TV viewers could expect from The Downtown Altoona Players.

The plan was to air 13 episodes. Eight episodes actually aired, and not one airing but many, many times. The series was in repeats for years, certainly through sometime in 1982. Through the efforts of Al DiGiacomo, the series experienced a rebirth through a second run some years later on a local TV channel. DiGiacomo, along with Bachner and Brian Wood, were series-saviors in that they salvaged the old video tapes of the series, raw footage and all, and converted it to a digital format. Were it not for their efforts, The Downtown Altoona Players would surely have been lost to the ravages of time long ago. DiGiacomo and Wood's interest in preserving the show stems from the fact that they are both musicians and actors who also appeared on various episodes in comedy roles, and they also appeared as featured musical guests with their rock bands, The Bones Band and Guilty, respectively.

The plan to air 13 episodes, though, hit rough waters. By the time Stevens had written 12 episodes, the series ran into production problems and was, in effect, abruptly cancelled in 1981.

And here's the part of Altoona lore that leads us to the unlikely 2018 reboot.

When the show was cancelled, it meant that episodes 9, 10, 11, and 12 never aired nor was the shooting 100% complete, so only parts of those final four episodes had been shot.

In late 2017, Stevens, who now lives in Texas, visited New Jersey for no other reason than to see his old friends and partners in comedy. Naturally, there was an evening of watching old episodes of the TV series and watching the raw footage of episodes 9, 10, 11, and 12 that never aired.

When Stevens got home to Texas, he worked with Brian Wood and secured the digital footage of all the episodes and the raw footage too. A YouTube channel named The Downtown Altoona Players followed, and the original eight episodes were back on the air, so to speak.

Still, there was something so unsatisfying about airing only the first eight episodes on YouTube. Since the sudden cancellation of the series in 1981, Stevens was nagged by the fact that episodes 9 through 12 never aired. He began to edit them together from raw footage so that he could see what parts of the episodes were never shot, which was complicated by the fact that the original scripts had been lost decades ago.

Those last four episodes were not, like the earlier episodes, a collection of random sketches with a musical guest. By the later episodes, the troupe had learned how to perform as more of a cohesive comedy unit, and Stevens' comedy writing had evolved to the point where each episode revolved around a single storyline. So, it became an interesting challenge to write some additional pages for each unaired episode, scenes that could be shot in 2018 and stories that would explain why the troupe looked decades older, aging from their 20s to their 60s within the same episodes.

To see if this reboot could actually be accomplished, Stevens called his old friend Al DiGiacomo, who had produced his own film, Hold That Note Just a Little Bit Longer, and asked him if he'd be interested in directing new footage that could finally bring episodes 9 through 12 to the air. Of course, DiGiacomo agreed to become part of the 2018 reboot, becoming the new director of The Downtown Altoona Players.

First, though, there could be no 2018 reboot without all the former cast members. After all, Stevens was in Texas and the rest of the cast was in New Jersey. Even after a 37-year hiatus, the entire cast jumped at the chance to reboot the series. Really, their willingness to and enthusiasm for the reboot speaks to how very much they all enjoyed the series and working together.

Stevens titled the new episodes The Lost Episodes, but maybe they could also be called The Found Episodes because after 37 years, it's fair to say that The Downtown Altoona Players found their way back.

-Johnny Stevens

The Downtown Altoona Players

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