Sherman and Drew Fracher | ZOOM |

        Sherman and Drew Fracher are one of the best examples of Cincinnati's play together/stay together couples. She's one of the region's best actresses. He acts a little, directs a lot and fight directs most of all.

        They wouldn't mind playing together more often, but busy as they are, they won't be sharing a stage anytime soon.

        “But at least we're in the same city,” says Sherman, whose soft Southern accent (she hails from Tennessee, born in Nashville, grew up in Knoxville) is as attractive as the rest of her.

        Drew Fracher was born in Danville, Va. (only because hometown Gretna didn't have a hospital) and raised in Waysboro. He started working in Cincinnati in 1989, when ETC co-founder Michael Hankins met him at the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. He was a fight director; Mr. Hankins invited him to work here.

        Using their Kentucky farm (“It's called Abiding Grace,” Sherman inserts) as a base, he was getting more work here. She was commuting five hours a day to perform in Lexington.

        The Frachers still own Abiding Grace, but they moved here three years ago “at just about this time of year,” Sherman says. “We spent Thanksgiving at the farm, then packed up the car.”

        The move wasn't all about careers. Sherman's high-school-age daughter, Jen, was longing for the city.

        They made it look permanent this year when they bought a brick bungalow in Highland Heights. With Jen off to college in Chicago, the Frachers share their home with a cat (Notina) and a dog (Vern), “the remnants” of their farm animals. “We used to have bajillions of critters,” Sherman says, laughing.

        Notina is a theater cat.

        “She was an amoeba when she showed up at the theater...,” he says.

        “She's named after the Indian princess in (outdoor drama) Lost Colony ...,” she says.

        “I said, "I'm not taking that cat,' ” he says.

        The Frachers converse in that easy give-and-take of happy couples who comfortably complete each other's sentences and stories, interrupting with color commentary along the way.

        Vern is a theater dog, “named after an actor,” Sherman laughs.

        “A dear boy” who shall remain otherwise nameless, Drew says.

        They also live with Drew's folk art collection, which includes some of his own. One of his pieces acts as a TV stand.

        “It's one more of his talents,” Sherman says. “He loves folk art and he thought he had it in him.”
       

Scene exploding

              

        The Frachers are probably Cincinnati's busiest theater couple and among the most talented.

        Sherman says her three short years here have “been heavenly.”

        She started off this season at Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival as one of The Merry Wives of Windsor. She's one of Sleeping Beauty's three good fairies at Ensemble Theatre. In the new year she coming back to Ensemble for Three Days of Rain, reprising a role she played last year at Human Race in Dayton.

        “I feel like something's happening here,” she says. “People talk about the way theater exploded in Seattle and Minneapolis. Why can't we say this about Cincinnati?”

        She also performs in murder mystery events and industrial shows and occasionally does some jingle-singing.
       

A prize fighter

              

        Drew began this season as one of the townspeople in Playhouse in the Park's Inherit the Wind,then went with the show to St. Louis Rep. He was wearing a hat in the role. That's typecasting. Drew favors hats from pork pies to ball caps on his shaved head.

        Since he's been back he's been in pre-production meetings. He's directing Macbeth at Cincinnati Shakespeare, which goes into rehearsal this week.

        He spent last week in London, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, judging what the Brits call “prize fights,” which are scenes all about stage combat. This is his fifth year of traveling to London in an American exchange program.

        He's also busy preparing for Keith Glover's Dark Paradise: Legend of the Five-Pointed Star for which he's fight director, as he was on last year's The Dead-Eye Boy. He'll also be fight director for Cincinnati Ballet's Romeo & Juliet in February.

        Upcoming directing jobs include the regional premiere of Lanford Wilson's A Sense of Place at Ensemble, then a commitment to work with Alabama Shakespeare Festival's master of fine arts candidates on a project, to be determined. He's crossing his fingers that it's a tryout for bigger things.
       

At home with a sword

              

        Drew started in stage combat in college. He confesses that he was going to be a biologist until his biology teacher suggested he might want to be an actor.

        Sherman treats this like new information.

        “I fenced in college,” Drew says. “It was something I could do. I never played organized sports. But the first time I picked up a sword, it felt familiar. I believe in that kind of thing. In fate, in destiny.”

        He was a sophomore in college when the Society of Fight Directors was founded. “I knew I could combine it with acting, I thought, "I want to do this every day.'

        “I got in on the ground floor. I worked my way up just by being around,” he says self-effacingly.

        Sherman inserts, “It's talent.”

        Drew vehemently denies that being an ace at stage combat has anything to do with “talent.”

        Sherman rolls her eyes.

        “If I can help people and help keep them safe...”

        Sherman wrinkles her nose. “And control them...”

        Drew grins.
       

How they met

              

        How they met “is a romantic story,” Sherman says. “Do you want to start and I'll pick up in the middle?”

        Drew Fracher met his first wife, Deb, through her sons. He and the boys were acting in an outdoor drama in Harrodsburg, Ky. “Deb had been diagnosed with leukemia and given three months to live. I met her five years into the diagnosis.”

        Abiding Grace Farm and its horses, dairy goats and rabbits were hers. She lived for nine years following her diagnosis, very good, full years, Drew says, “and she died at home, and she's buried there.”

        After she died in 1988, it was time to go on the road and make a living again, but he needed somebody to stay at the farm and keep it working.

        He put the word out.

        Sherman had spent the 1970s honing her skills as an actress in professional touring dinner theater where British sex farces were a staple. She'd tried marriage a couple of times, once with a husband who didn't want an actress for a wife, “then I had that baby.”

        In 1988, Sherman was living in Memphis, managing a bank and had a 6-year-old, Jen.

        She heard about the farm, “in the middle of nowhere, with chickens, it had an outhouse, I said, "I'll do it. I'd only met Drew once, I'd only visited the farm once.' ”

        She took the job. He went to teach at Ohio University for three months. She broke her foot.

        “The horses scared me,” she laughs.

        She found a book called Practical Homesteading. She learned to make fresh cheese and plum jelly.

        While Sherman managed the farm, Drew kept traveling, finding theater and stage combats gigs around the country but “there was this beautiful woman who was an awesome cook,” Drew says, laughing. “One thing led to another.”

        They were married in 1994.

        He directed outdoor drama The Legend of Daniel Boone, and Sherman was back in theater.

        “I had planned to be an actress, I was trained to be an actress, and Drew brought me back into the theater world — thank goodness.”
       

Life is good

              

        Sherman has been using her store of life experience, everything from “childbirth to watching the goat die” to deepen her performances.

        Life is good, they agree.

        Jen finished up her high school years by playing Abigail in The Crucible at Dixie Heights High School. One of these years Sherman wants to write her own book about practical homesteading. Drew continues to ponder the challenges of stage combat, asking himself “how do I do that and make it safe?”

        “I'm busy enough, almost,” Sherman says about her career. The only thing that would make it better would be “working together a little more.” They haven't shared a stage since Around the World in 80 Days at Ensemble a year ago.

        One of these days the plan is to move back to Abiding Grace permanently. But not any time soon.
       

IF YOU GO
              

        Sleeping Beauty

        When: 7 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 30

        Where: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine

        Tickets: $25, $20 students and seniors, $12 children under 12. 421-3555.
       Macbeth

        When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 4-Feb. 11

        Where: Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., downtown.

        Tickets: $18, students and seniors $13. 381-2273.

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