There are many ties between the Star Trek franchise and the works of William Shakespeare. The first season of the original series, for instance, featured an episode entitled “The Conscience of the King” in which Captain James T. Kirk becomes convinced that the main actor in a traveling theater troupe is a former colony governor responsible for the massacre of 4,000 people. Twenty-five years later – during the motion picture Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country – a Klingon chancellor tells Kirk, “You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation likewise contained multiple references to the Bard, and even included Shakespearean actors Patrick Stewart in the role of Captain Jean Luc Picard and John de Lancie as Q amongst its cast. After three seasons of portraying a Vulcan on the original Star Trek – followed by two years as a “master of disguise” espionage agent on Mission: Impossible – Leonard Nimoy decided it was time for him to tackle Shakespeare, choosing the role of Malvolio in a 1975 Pittsburgh Public Theater production of Twelfth Night.
“Stretching yourself with different kinds of roles is what it’s all about for me,” Nimoy told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time. “I’ve been studying and reading and watching Shakespeare long enough to feel excited and positive about it. The biggest problem an actor has is finding good material. With Shakespeare you know that not only do you have good material, you have a proven piece that has been staged successfully many times.”
Despite a career almost exclusively centered on the television medium, Leonard Nimoy was no stranger to the stage by the time he arrived in Pittsburgh, having performed in such classics as Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, and The Man in the Glass Booth. Two of those productions were directed by Ben Shaktman, founder of the Pittsburgh Public Theater and the organization’s first general director. It was Shaktman’s involvement in Twelfth Night that played a key part in Nimoy’s decision to make his Shakespearean debut in the Steel City.
“I talked to Ben for a long time before the Public Theater got started and I knew all about his fantasies and dreams for the theater,” Nimoy explained. The actor was equally impressed with the strength of the theater community in the region. “I’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I sense the Pittsburgh audience is really interested in coming here and seeing these plays,” he added. “Cuckoo’s Nest is sold out. I understand Glass Menagerie did very well and we’re almost sold out for Twelfth Night already.”
Although Leonard Nimoy was in Pittsburgh for Shakespeare, he couldn’t escape Star Trek even though the three-season original series ended the previous decade and was still four years away from being revived on the big screen. “I’m laughing because I just can’t believe it,” Nimoy told the Post-Gazette regarding the continued popularity of the series. “There’s never been another show like it. I think the interest in Star Trek is a healthy, educational thing.”
When Pittsburgh-based Star Trek fan Nancy Hoy realized that Leonard Nimoy would be in town for Twelfth Night, she decided to organize a Star Trektacular Convention in the city to coincide with his appearance. After contacting another fanclub located in New York, she discovered that other members of the main cast – including William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and George Takei – were available the weekend of December 12, 1975, making Star Trektacular a mini-reunion for the actors of the original series.
In her 1983 memoirs On the Good Ship Enterprise: My Fifteen Years with Star Trek, legendary Star Trek fan Bjo Trimble discusses the various Star Trek conventions that popped up around the country during the 1970s. Many of them, including those in Chicago and Los Angeles, were organized by fans that had no prior experience at constructing such a convention, thus leading to a certain level of disorganization within the proceedings.
Star Trektacular in Pittsburgh appears to have been no different as it was ripe with difficulties from the very beginning. The convention was originally scheduled for the Pittsburgh Hilton, for instance, but was relocated to the William Penn Hotel after a misunderstanding caused the Hilton to believe that the event had been cancelled. Souvenir programs for Star Trektacular were still being printed hours after the convention officially convened, meanwhile, and William Theiss, who served as costume designer on Star Trek, was stranded at the airport because no one was available to pick him up.
Despite such hiccups, estimates range from 1,000 to 5,000 Star Trek fans attending the event – including Bjo Trimble, who was listed as “Honored Ambassador” in the program – with a confirmed 2,500 tickets sold beforehand. Official hours for Star Trektacular were from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each of the three days that it was held, with episodes of the original series being shown during the evening hours and extending into the early morning. There was a full-slate of activities scheduled as well, including a breakfast with the actors that was limited to 400 attendees, an art show, trivia contest, and costume contest.
Although it was 1975, Star Trektacular was equipped with computer terminals courtesy of On-Line Systems Inc. that featured computer game simulations and trivia quizzes. John Johns, president of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh at the time, designed the souvenir program for the event, while an additional ten Steel City fans were listed as organizers of the convention along with Nancy Hoy. Last but not least, there was a Dealers Room that featured a full-array of Star Trek themed items – from books to buttons, comics to posters, jewelry to T-shirts.
“It’s a good living because right now there’s not much competition,” one of the vendors explained to the Pittsburgh Press. His specialties were “Vulcan nickel” buttons that sold for fifty cents and a larger version that went for one dollar, each of which cost only twelve cents to produce. “I figure to sell one thousand buttons during the convention,” the dealer added. “You figure out what I’ll make.”
At least one attendee, however, took exception to the hawking of Star Trek merchandise. “All the commercialism really is a shame,” Bjo Trimble told the Pittsburgh Press. “With the movies, trivia contests and fashion shows, these conventions can really be fun.” Leonard Nimoy offered a similar viewpoint a few weeks later. “When a Star Trek convention is done right, the focus is on the show and the cast,” he explained to the Pittsburgh Press. “But when it’s not well organized and the dealers take over, the fans feel angry and ripped off and nobody is happy.”
Despite being in Pittsburgh for Twelfth Night, Nimoy was a no-show at Star Trektacular due to a pay dispute. Not wanting to disappoint fans, he arranged for a solo appearance at the University of Pittsburgh’s Lawrence Hall the following Saturday. Attendance numbered in the hundreds, and while the audience appreciated the self-penned poetry that Nimoy read during the proceedings, the loudest cheers were for his anecdotes regarding Star Trek. “I really can’t stop the Star Trek craze, so I enjoy it,” he told the Pittsburgh Press afterwards.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a long way from the Final Frontier of outer space, but during a few weeks in December 1975, the crew of the USS Enterprise traveled to the Steel City nonetheless – to the obvious delight of thousands of Star Trek fans in the region.
Anthony Letizia