LJWorld.com

Photo by Terry Rombeck

Butch Wilkerson, as Bobby LaRue, and Amy Reinert, as Velvet St. Regis, sing “Jump, Jive and Wail” as part of the Lawrence Community Theatre’s production of “Club Morocco.” The show also features a six-piece band and swing dancers.

Photo by Terry Rombeck

Jared Martin and Mary Williams, foreground, dance on stage at the Lawrence Community Theatre, 1501 N.H., as part of “Club Morocco,” which opens Friday and runs through Oct. 4.

Photo by Terry Rombeck

“Club Morocco” dancers, from left, Jared Martin, Gabrielle Sangervasi and Muncel Jones, rehearse a scene from the musical, which opens Friday at Lawrence Community Theatre, 1501 N.H. Shows continue through Oct. 4.

For nearly 30 years, Dennis Tyner kept a secret.

Back in college, he had done some acting — a sharp contrast to his academic career as an electrical engineer and his current career as a university administrator.

“It is very different,” he admits.

Tyner, vice president and provost of Ottawa University, has resurrected his acting career. He’s playing the lead role in “Club Morocco,” a big band infused musical that opens Friday at Lawrence Community Theatre.

“This has been an unbelievable experience,” Tyner says. “It’s a little humbling, I have to tell you, when you perform with some of these other very talented performers who have been doing community theater for a long time.”

Tyner has performed in a few smaller roles on the OU campus since arriving in January 2007. His most notable appearance was as dentist Orin Scrivello in “Little Shop of Horrors,” where he performed alongside students.

“I like doing the ones at school,” he says. “It’s not just that provost guy who sits in the office. You get to interact with students.”

Mary Baker, who is the musical director for “Club Morocco,” knew Tyner from her work at Ottawa and encouraged him to audition for the Lawrence show.

Tyner plays the role of Frank McCann, a private investigator everyone thinks is dead. But he returns to Club Morocco to settle some scores and rekindle old flames.

While Tyner is the lead, the music is in many ways the star of the show, with singers and a six-piece band playing such songs as “Old Black Magic,” “Stormy Weather” and “As Time Goes By.” Swing dancers also add to the flavor of the ’40s and ’50s.

Tyner was drawn to “Club Morocco,” in part, because of the music. He’s been a DJ on the side since the late ’70s.

“I play anything from current music back to big bands,” he says. “And I’m a huge fan of swing music.”

He admits being somewhat apprehensive about auditioning for a show, especially one that opened right around the start of the school year.

“I had a pretty good conversation with my boss (OU President Kevin Eichner) toward the end of the last fiscal year,” Tyner says. “And one of the things we talked about is we preach to our students all the time, ‘You’ve got to have balance in your life.’ And one of the things I didn’t have was a lot of balance in my life. I spent a lot of hours at school. And it woke me up to the fact that I needed to do some of the things I like to do, some of the things I enjoy.”

It’s been clear that Tyner is having a good time — and he’s good on stage, too — says Mary Doveton, director of Lawrence Community Theatre, who also is directing “Club Morocco.”

“It’s been great to work with him,” she says.

She notes that there are performers from six different cities in this production.

“I think that’s one of the wonderful things about community theater,” she says. “It brings people together with different backgrounds who probably wouldn’t know each other in their other lives.”

Performing in “Club Morocco” has Tyner thinking about continuing his acting career into the future. He says, as a relative newcomer, he’s enjoying learning from other actors in the show.

“I consider myself to be an enthusiast,” he says, “and I enjoy doing this, but I don’t consider myself a star performer or anything of that nature.”