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Chad Luberger Stars in Dual Role as Potter and Actor

Chad Luberger throws a pot at Plum Bottom Pottery. Photo by Len Villano.

In a county blessed with every kind of artist, Chad Luberger is unique – equally at home on stage and in his pottery studio. The years it took him to return to his childhood home may have been marked by coincidence or good luck. Or perhaps he’s just where fate meant him to be all along.

He lived in Sturgeon Bay from age two until he finished second grade, but it was in sixth grade in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that the acting bug bit hard. “I had a wonderful teacher who thought it was important for children to be exposed to the classics,” Luberger says. “She cast me as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet, and I was hooked. In high school, I was pulled into speech and forensics by kids who saw something in me that made them think I’d be good at it. But theater continued to be my consuming interest. hen my family moved to Texas during my junior year, I said, ‘I’m not going.’ I had too many established relationships with local theaters. They let me stay behind to finish school and continue working as an actor. I had an apartment next door to my girlfriend’s house, and her parents became my official guardians.”

At Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Luberger immersed himself in a “conservatory” theater program that consisted almost entirely of acting classes. “Just one English and one history class,” he says. Three shows he particularly remembers from those years were a farce called Musical Comedy Murders of the 1940s, in which he played a bad guy (definitely casting against type); The Actor’s Nightmare, in which he discovered he could do comedy; and, again, Romeo and Juliet, this time playing Mercutio, his favorite role on the college stage.

But it was also in Pittsburgh that Luberger did his first acting in film. “Sally Field came to town,” he says, “to film The Christmas Tree, the first for-TV movie she directed. She cast me as the young male lead. Julie Harris was the star. At the time, I was struggling with the fact that stage acting didn’t seem to be a really tangible thing – that it lacked permanence. I wondered at the end of the night what I was really left with. Now I feel very differently. It’s all about the audience, communicating a story, creating a sacred space where, if you’re lucky, something magical happens in the air between you. When I did my first film I was 19, I was drawn to the fact that I could point to something tangible and say, ‘I did that.’ Now it is the intangibility that draws me back to the stage, the magic created on the AFT [American Folklore Theatre] stage on a summer night or the intimacy you feel with the audience in TAP’s [Third Avenue Playhouse] new theatre goes beyond anything I could hope to create on film.”

Luberger creates various shaped pots, awaiting firing. Photo by Len Villano.

Inspired by his work in Field’s movie, Luberger moved to Los Angeles right after college. “I hired an agent and a manager,” he says. “I was going to be a movie star. I spent four years there, doing network TV and a couple of films. But you had to work so hard just to get roles that weren’t very satisfying artistically. From this frustration, I formed a small film production company, wrote and directed a short movie and was all set to start shopping it around to film festivals. I was getting into a whole other world of writing, directing and producing when I kind of took a look around myself and thought, ‘Even if this works out perfectly, this isn’t the life I want to create for myself.’”

In a complete turn-around, he rebelled against Hollywood by moving to Alaska. “My family was horrified,” he says. “They were concerned that I couldn’t find work, that I wouldn’t be safe. They tried just about everything to try to convince me not to go, but I went and fell into one of the most secure jobs I’ve ever had.” In Anchorage, he worked with the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association, teaching HIV prevention in native communities and correctional facilities.

He later moved to Homer, AK where he first encountered handmade pottery. “I was captivated by this little bowl. It seemed to capture the essence of the maker, frozen forever in a moment in time. I soon found myself enrolled in a pottery class,” he says. “Since grade school, I’d been immersed in theater and never tried any other form of the arts. But pottery immediately just made sense. I loved working with clay, but never imagined doing it for a living. I had run away from acting, looking for something that was ‘real’ – that didn’t disappear at the end of the night. Pottery became that for me.”

Luberger shows off a completed piece. Photo by Len Villano.

And yet, by the end of his time in Alaska, Luberger felt like a failure. “I had gone there with such grand dreams,” he says. “I was going to write; there was so much I had hoped to find. When it didn’t happen the way I planned, I left thinking, ‘Well, it’s time to grow up, get a real job.’ But, even though I didn’t recognize it at the time, the pottery seed had been planted.”

In 2005, he came back to Door County to spend the summer with his grandparents. The idea was to work as many jobs as possible and save money for grad school. “I was looking for something creative to break up the monotony of restaurant jobs, and mentioned to my grandparents that I’d enjoyed working with clay. ‘Pottery?’ they said. ‘You need to meet Abe and Ginka Cohn!’ I’d never heard of them. I had no idea that Abe had pots in the Smithsonian. But they took me to The Potters Wheel, the Cohns’ studio near Fish Creek, and basically ‘sold’ me to them. ‘He’ll do whatever you want,’ my grandfather said. ‘He just needs a little time in your studio.’

“So I weeded their garden and mowed their yard and, because the Cohns’ wheel was set up in their gallery, I learned to be a potter ‘on stage’ with people coming and going all the time. I didn’t worry about pots that flipped over and were ruined. I was okay with an audience to my failures and successes. It all just felt very natural.”

Abe suggested that Luberger apply for a spot in the Emerging Artist Program at the Peninsula Art School. (“Probably to get me out of his hair part-time,” Luberger chuckles.) He was accepted and given his own studio space, a small stipend and, in the spring of 2006, a show at the school. “At my first show at the art school, everything I made sold. At that point,” he says, “I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can make a living at this!’”

That winter he took a huge leap of faith, buying and moving into an old building on 20 acres on Plum Bottom Road near the family farm homesteaded by his great-great-grandfather. By the summer of 2007, he had transformed the property into Plum Bottom Pottery. The activity that began as a way to pass the long dark nights in Alaska has become a business. Luberger is well respected in Door County’s community of potters as the creator of one-of-a-kind pieces of sculptural and functional porcelain pottery.

Luberger is currently performing in American Folklore Theater’s production of ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships.’ Photo by Len Villano.

The seed planted in Alaska flowered years later. Luck or fate?

Bringing his other passion full circle, in the fall of 2005, he responded to an ad for an audition for Isadoora Theatre Company’s production of Assassins. He was cast as John Wilkes Booth, his first stage role in years. By another twist of fate, Holly Feldman, Mark Moede and Angela Olson, were also in the show. Feldman would become manager of marketing and audience development for AFT, Moede would go on to appear in numerous productions with Luberger, and Olson, six years later, would become Luberger’s fiancée.

Dave Maier, now AFT’s executive director, saw the show one night. Two years later he tracked Luberger down while he was visiting relatives in Texas, said he remembered him from Assassins, and asked if he’d be interested in participating in a workshop of a new play, Life on the Mississippi, that saw its world premiere on AFT’s stage in 2010.

It was the beginning of an on-going relationship with AFT that has included roles in the 2012 blockbuster, Victory Farm (that will also be on stage this fall at the Door Community Auditorium) and this summer’s world premiere of Windjammers and the revival of Loose Lips Sink Ships, the first show Luberger ever saw at AFT. It has also led to roles at the TAP in Sturgeon Bay. “Both these places have such immensely talented people throughout their organizations,” Luberger says. “I love the opportunity to do original work at AFT, to build a character from scratch, working with writers and composers, really crafting shows. That doesn’t happen anywhere else. At TAP I feel like I’m helping build something from the ground up. James Valcq and Bob Boles have done such an incredible job revitalizing TAP and creating Stage Door Theatre. To be a small part of that is so artistically gratifying. Coming back to Door County, I never imagined all this opportunity lay in wait. It’s unbelievably exciting to share in the rich theatre and arts culture of the county. I’m living a dream I never could have imagined.”

For more information or to view more of Luberger’s artwork, stop by Plum Bottom Pottery, located at 4999 Plum Bottom Road near Egg Harbor, open daily from 10 am – 5 pm, or visit plumbottompottery.com.

To catch Luberger on stage call American Folklore Theatre at 920.854.6117 or visit folkloretheatre.com.