Actor Scott Weintraub returns to Portsmouth in one-man show after 37 years in LA

The last time I interviewed Scott Weintraub he and a talented acting troupe were performing a cabaret called “We Sing, We Dance, Etc.” aboard a local cruise ship. That was in the early 1980s. Scott was also part of the first revival of The Music Hall. He and his wife Nancy also saved the Prescott Park summer festival from shutting down. A classically-trained equity actor imported from the Big Apple, Scott Weintraub was handsome, hilarious, and bursting with energy. We all knew this guy was going places. He did.

Then the cruise ship caught fire. My newspaper closed down. Prescott Park recovered. And after 10 years making Portsmouth audiences swoon, Scott Weintraub packed up and left us. But this month, four decades later, the prodigal actor who played a key role in the renaissance of Portsmouth performing arts is back. 

His one-man hour-long cabaret is appropriately titled “Scott Weintraub: Return to Portsmouth.”  Tickets for the three-day event may be hard to find. Performances will be held at the intimate Pontine 1845 Plains Schoolhouse the weekend of Sept. 24 to 26. But all shows will be videotaped with plans to present an edited version online via Zoom the following weekend of Oct.1 to 3. 

“Through songs and anecdotes I’ll be exploring my time in Portsmouth,” Scott told me from his California home last week. "Why did I come there in the first place? Why did I stay so long? And why do I keep coming back?”

It all started with Theatre by the Sea, the cramped 93-seat stage carved into the basement of an ancient grain warehouse on Ceres Street. By 1975, TBS was entering its second decade when Weintraub, who was having some success as a performer in New York City, got the call from TBS director Jon Kimball. Scott starred in the musical “Carousel,” the first TBS outdoor production in Prescott Park. He eventually appeared in roughly 30 local productions including Oklahoma, Grease, Guys and Dolls, Carnival, 1776, Starshine, Pippin, Godspell, and Bus Stop.

“These actors would job out of New York and come to Portsmouth for a couple of months,” he recalls, “and you’d work so closely and intensely that you’d really bond and create this incredible theater. Then they were gone, never to see one another again.”

Scott played TBS between gigs in New York. He fell in love with a Portsmouth woman (who was actually from New York City). He moved back here to live and then ran out of theater work.

“I was doing the Portsmouth Shuffle,” he says. ”If you’re not a doctor or a lawyer and you don’t own a restaurant, how are you going to make a living here?” He tried voiceover work in Boston, started a singing telegram company, waited tables, launched “We Sing, We Dance,” delivered the Boston Globe, and even got his real estate license. 

Like so many before and since, the actor from New York had been seduced by the City of the Open Door. “For me, it was the lure of just walking around this beautiful city,” Scott says. “The bricks and the fences and houses that had been there for hundreds of years were magical. Did I find peace there? Was it all the nice people in a small town? I don’t know.” 

The only thing missing was steady work. So in 1985, the Weintraubs moved to Los Angeles. It was not the wild leap it may appear. Although born in New York, Scott’s father, an economist, had moved the family to Santa Barbara, California in 1965. 

“Back then, everyone was surfers and jocks and I was the kid with the crew cut and the hideous New York accent,” he says. “Then I found theater.” Scott became a mime, studied improv, attended theater school, and eventually found his way to Portsmouth via New York City. By the 1980s he was truly bi-coastal. 

Another reason for his departure, Scott says, was the death of his father in 1983 at age 58. “I started thinking of my own mortality,” he recalls. “I was hitting 30 and I had never really tried to make it in Big Town. I thought I’d go to L.A. and get myself a sit-com. Instead I fell into teaching drama at a private school and, suddenly, decades had passed.”

“I don’t do children’s theater, I do theater with children,” he says of his career teaching at the prestigious Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica. “We did Hamlet with fifth graders a couple of years ago. It was as good a Hamlet as I've seen anywhere.” He retired this summer after 37 years. His celebrity students include a 16-year old Jack Black, Emily and Zooey Deschanel, Jason Ritter, and Kate Hudson. “But the kids I’m the proudest of are the ones who now work in regional theaters, on TV, and are journeyman actors,” he says. 

“I didn’t go to teacher’s school,” Scott adds proudly. “As a teacher, my whole thing was asking myself -- what would be cool to do? For me, teaching drama was all about - why not, and what if we did this?"

In his spare time, while raising a family, Scott co-wrote a book on acting. He has appeared in tv shows and films like Deadwood, A Civil Action, Dinner for Schmucks, and Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David. 

Eventually, as our interview grew too nostalgic, I asked Scott the big question: So how does a performer measure success? After four decades of acting, teaching, coaching, directing, and producing, does the legendary Scott Winetraub feel he took the right path?  

“This is what I tell my students,” he says: “You need four things to create good theater. You need people who will perform. You need an audience. You need a space. And you need material. But teaching theater on Zoom just about killed me,” Scott admits. “I retired because I feel like I still have one more adventure in me.”

I asked again - but how does a performing artist measure success? Scott didn’t hesitate.  

“If you’re doing the thing you love to do, and you’re doing it well, and you have a roof over your head and oatmeal on the table - that’s success,” he said.

“We are here on this planet, I believe, for the sake of stories,” Scott Weintraub sums up. “Things will happen to us that we can tell stories about. My only big nightmare right now is how I’m going to tell all the stories I have about Portsmouth in a show that only lasts an hour.”

How to see Scott Weintraub live or online

Pontine theater announces that Portsmouth legend, actor, singer, writer, director, and producer Scott Weintraub will open its 44th season with the debut of an all-new one-man cabaret, "Scott Weintraub: Return to Portsmouth." The show will be videotaped during live performances at Pontine’s 1845 Plains Schoolhouse the weekend of Sept. 24 to 26 for online broadcast Oct.1 to 3. For tickets to the Zoom performance or to be added to the waiting list for the live show, visit www.pontine.org online.  

Copyright 2021 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Dennis is the author of a dozen history books on topics including the Music Hall, Strawberry Banke Museum, Privateer Lynx, the 1873 Smuttynose ax murders, and Wentworth by the Sea Hotel. His first history mystery novel, POINT OF GRAVES, is now available at Discover Portsmouth and on Amazon.com. He can be reached at dennis@myseacoastnh.com or visit jdennisrobinson.com.