Brian Fisher: Becoming Fritz

As our second interview installment, we spoke with Brian Fisher, who was a member of BBT’s Nutcracker cast for more than 20 years. For most of those years, Brian was beloved as Fritz.

I got involved with BBT in 1991. I had just moved here from New York with the plan to stop dancing. I had danced for 10 years in New York, bopping back and forth between Broadway and concert dance and doing a bunch of touring work, and toward the end of it I wasn’t really enjoying a lot of it, and I hated living in New York. When my husband had a chance to come to San Francisco for a job, I thought that I could come here and just be completely happier.

When I got here I had no idea about the Bay Area and what it was like and how it was built so I thought I’d stick with what I know for a little bit and I got a job at Capezio in Oakland, and it was through that job I heard about BBT.

I did not want to take professional classes and I did not want to get back into that world. But I thought I would take the adult student classes, at which point I met Lauren Jonas in class.

Lauren told Rae Lee, who was the Artistic Director at that point, about me. And Rae asked me if I would dance for the Company, and I said absolutely not. She said, don’t be silly and then wanted Sally to see me.

I agreed to come into the morning class that Sally was teaching, with the understanding that both of us could say no with no hard feelings. Sally was very positive and very encouraging, so I went ahead and did it. And then I did “The Nutcracker” like a minute and a half later.

I’ve apparently been Fritz for half of the time it’s been playing.

That first year I don’t think I did Fritz. David Kato was still dancing, and I believe he did Fritz and he was great. That year, Sally choreographed Russian as a solo for me and I did Russian. I can’t remember what else I did that year, because I wound up being Fritz for so long.

Sally and the Artistic Directors really gave us quite a bit of leeway as performers to bring ourselves into the work which is really important if you are being the character for that long. You try to find different things to play with and bring about. 

We did a couple of different versions of “The Nutcracker” in the early years. I think Clara and Fritz used to have a campfire that we would sit by in the early years. But the version I remember the best was with the big house drop in the middle of the stage with the windows and I would put Clara in the shoulder sit and we’d look through the windows.

The divertissements for the second act have changed over the years. I don’t know what it was before I learned it, but Sally built the Russian solo on me and then used that version to make a trio later on. Spanish had several different versions depending on who was doing it. It was both a solo and a pas de deux. Toward the end of when I was performing, Spanish was a trio of women.

Some things never changed, like Mirlitons were always the same. Mother Ginger went through a couple of different versions. I remember Private Freeman did it one year, and very little will make me laugh onstage, because once I’m in character I don’t break. But one year, he completely cracked my character. He did the thumb and finger to his ear like “call me” and I looked deadpan to the audience and just shook my head “no”.

I have always loved partnering, and unbeknownst to me before being at BBT, I always loved teaching. As an adult, because I started BBT’s “Nutcracker” at 29, Clara is one of the first times that one of the students will work on a real partnering role and oftentimes this is the entre into becoming Snow Queen or Sugar Plum. So, as Fritz, you are helping them learn to partner, you are helping them learn to have a relationship onstage, and you are helping them to learn to create a character. How is your Clara going to react? I don’t want the new Clara to do what the ladies learned last year. I want them to bring what they are going to invent as Clara. And that way I get to react as Fritz. If I had to do the same thing with every single Clara, I would drive myself crazy.

What I loved most was the trust and faith that the Claras had in me. It is a gift.

It was really hard for me to stop doing the Fritz role. Ilona McHugh was the Artistic Director at the time, and in January of that year, I said this would be the last time I did Fritz. After a while, not even the nicest audience suspends belief for an old Fritz! My last year as Friz I was 48 years old. I was ancient. In a way the BBT audience was incredibly forgiving because I was kind of an institution at that point. I realized that I needed to stop playing the role.

When I left, Nicky Rio was very young, and at my last performance I went off stage and got the Second Act Fritz costume, and I stood on stage and yelled, ‘Nicky?’ I handed him the costume and said, ‘This is yours now.’ A few years later, I was teaching at the San Francisco Ballet School summer program, and I went down the roll, and there was his name!