Constable: When opera and 'Dummies' collide
Before he wrote “Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Dummies” and starred in cabaret shows he wrote, Bill Dyszel made a life-changing discovery as a freshman at Palatine High School.
“I had no musical background, and then I came to the school and started doing plays,” remembers Dyszel, 61, a member of the Class of 1972. His first musical role was as a chorus member in Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Oklahoma.”
“I never realized I could sing,” Dyszel says. He also sang in the high school chorus, which performed challenging classical works, including Bach cantatas and the Fauré Requiem. As much as Dyszel loved singing, he figured it was just a hobby.
“I didn't know any adult who did that for a living. I didn't know that was possible,” remembers Dyszel, whose father, Chester, was an engineer for the state of Illinois, and whose mother, Mildred, was a nurse at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.
Dyszel, now performing in “The Internet Ate My Brain,” would make his living in a number of different ways on a career path with several improbable twists.
By junior year, Dyszel was taking voice lessons from opera singer Virginia Parker at the Chicago Conservatory. After graduation, he enrolled in Southern Illinois University as a music major. At an 8 a.m. music theory class on his first day of college, Dyszel heard the professor warn, “If there is anything other than music you would be happy doing, don't do this.”
So Dyszel became a communications major focusing on radio and TV. But he continued to sing on the side at an opera workshop at Southern. After graduating, he enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This made him eligible to take singing lessons from music professor William Warfield, famous for an opera career that included his starring role in “Porgy and Bess.”
“Well, wouldn't that be nice,” Dyszel thought, even as he dismissed a singing career and joined the Navy in 1975.
During his five-year military stint, Dyszel still managed to sing in a Gilbert and Sullivan production while off-duty in Maine, and perform in dinner theater productions in Virginia.
“You're still doing this. This is what you actually do,” Dyszel remembers thinking. He followed a critic's advice and moved to New York City, looking to make a living with his voice.
For 14 years, he sang baritone with the New York City Opera, had regular solo gigs with local churches, and even appeared in movies and TV shows. His first one-man cabaret show, “99% ARTFREE,” in 1993, was called an “amusing” satire by The New York Times, which dubbed Dyszel “a keen observer of the musical world.”
Buying a computer to help with his music career, Dyszel soon became such a techno whiz that he found jobs in that world, too. A regular contributor to PC Magazine, Dyszel also wrote humorous books that explained it all to people who were intimidated by technology.
“I did 'PalmPilot for Dummies' back when there were PalmPilots,” Dyszel says. “I did 'Microsoft Outlook for Dummies.'”
He has written 21 books in the Dummies series, so far. In the meantime, he made dozens of YouTube musical videos and produced 60 short films, most of them for the “48-Hour Film Project,” which gives people two days to take an idea, come up with characters and a script and complete a movie. Those films combined his technology knowledge with his musical talent, and led to another observation.
“We're the last people alive who know about a world with, and without, the Internet,” says Dyszel, who had written songs about that brave new world.
“That's where this is already going, so let's go there,” the performer says, explaining how he came up with a new one-man cabaret show called “The Internet Ate My Brain.”
“I looked at what I had done and I had already written about 80 percent of the show,” Dyszel says, noting that the show skewers topics such as online shopping, addictions to selfies and online dating. Splitting his time between his homes in New York City and Palatine, Dyszel debuted his show last year in New York, where it was hailed as “One of The Top 10 Shows of The Year,” by New York TheaterPizzaz.
He's bringing the show to the Skokie Theatre, 7924 Lincoln Ave., in Skokie for a Feb. 27 performance. Tickets, $20, are available by calling (847) 677-7761 or online at SkokieTheatre.org. The show asks audience members to leave on their cellphones and participate with texts and games, and includes live music and multimedia productions.
“I like to be a funny author who sings,” says Dyszel, who smiles at the result of his worlds colliding. “A lot of things that don't fit together, you fit together, and it ends up working.”
“Internet Ate My Brain”
What: A one-man cabaret show by Palatine native Bill Dyszel
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27
Where: Skokie Theatre, 7924 Lincoln Ave., Skokie, (847) 677-7761,
SkokieTheatre.orgTickets: $20Info: