by Dean Poling
Creating shows at Wild Adventures would seem a long way from his nights performing on Broadway, but not for Aurelio “Tony” Padron. It is the current chapter in a life he has lived with enthusiasm.
“I wasn’t particularly talented,” Padron says of his days performing on Broadway, working with Anthony Quinn, Bette Davis, Tommy Tune, Chita Rivera and many others. “What I lacked in grace, I made up for in chutzpah.”
He had the energy to be noticed, the commitment to make an impression, the fearlessness to go after what he wanted.
And why not be fearless – “dancing for an audience was nothing to be afraid of” – especially given what Padron had endured during his childhood.
“By the time I was 13,” Padron says, sitting in a production room in a Wild Adventures theatre, “I’d been through the revolution, seen my father placed in a concentration camp, I’d lived in a refugee camp, and had moved to a strange country where I didn’t speak the language.”
He spent his childhood growing up in a fishing village on the beaches of Cuba, the oldest son of Aurelio and Inez Padron. Named for his father, young Aurelio recalls a childhood of watching dolphins and sharks in the ocean. He enjoyed a peaceful childhood with his two younger brothers Victor and Frank.
“Then the revolution came and this paradise turned into this, this …”
He’s referring to the coming of Fidel Castro and the establishment of Castro’s regime. International news for many was the end of young Aurelio’s childhood.
He remembers the family eating supper and revolutionaries bursting into their home. He and his little brothers, just kids, Aurelio no more than 10, pushed up against the wall. Machine guns pressed against the children. His mother cries, hysterical, pregnant with another sibling. The revolutionaries ransack the house. They discover an American flag. They laugh as they burn it.
They take his father away, and the elder Aurelio Padron is gone, arrested, taken to prison.
“My father’s best friend was assassinated,” Tony Padron recalls. “I still don’t know why my father was imprisoned.” There have been whispers about resistance to the revolution, only speculation, though. “I’ll find out some day.”
Two weeks later, Inez Padron took the three boys to see their father imprisoned in a chicken farm turned into a concentration camp. Stories circulated that the revolution sent boys 12 and older to Russia for communist indoctrination. Get the boys out of Cuba, the elder Aurelio told his wife. Get them out before they are old enough to be indoctrinated, and she did.
The boys left. Dad remained in prison. Mom stayed behind. Young Aurelio, all 10 years or so of him, was in charge of his two little brothers, in a faraway place called Miami.
They stayed in a refugee camp. A grandmother arrived. She took charge of the three boys.
The early days of the revolution, the boys are among the first Cuban refugees in Miami. People throw rocks at the boys. People call them derogatory names. The Padron boys speak no English. The boys don’t understand the names, but the rocks define the words’ meaning.
They are placed in classes with English-speaking American kids. They learn. Within a year, young Aurelio – Tony – and his two brothers understand and speak English.
Growing accustomed in his new country, growing up, Tony noticed
a girl. He followed her around. She asked if he wanted to go to ballet class with her. If that’s where she was going, then that’s where he would go.
He’d been studying acrobatics and found ballet even more liberating. He went because of a girl but Tony discovered the passion of dance, the camaraderie of a show.
Dance liberated. A dance company provided a surrogate family. With his parents still faraway, living in a new country, Tony Padron found a home in dance.
“Dance was musical. I could understand it,” he says. “It was so comfortable because I didn’t speak the language.”
He enjoyed dance’s expression, its form and technique. You’re nervous before a show, but when the lights hit and you’re on your spot, it all comes together. “In a company, you’re in a family. You work together and it feels like a family.”
It would not be a “family” that Tony’s father liked discovering.
After four years in prison, Cuban authorities released the elder Aurelio Padron. He came to Miami, via Cuba. Father and mother reunited with their elder sons, the Padron family grew to five children with Alfredo and sister Inez.
The elder Aurelio worked two jobs. He attended school. Tony’s involvement in dance did not please him.
Tony laughs. “My dad’s been in prison. He comes to America and his oldest son is a ballet dancer. I had to hide my tights from him.”
Despite being unhappy with Tony’s dancing, the elder Aurelio signed the papers allowing his oldest son to join the Harkness Ballet’s junior company. Tony’s career began.
As a dancer, he traveled. He toured. He performed on Broadway. He danced. Then, he suffered the dancer’s nightmare.
All dancers know their careers, like an athlete’s, will be short. Age does not suffer dance well. An injury, however, can shorten a dancer’s career further. Padron ripped a hamstring, but his chutzpah kicked in.
He switched from ballet to theatre. He studied acting. Through his chutzpah and dance connections, he landed roles in Broadway productions: Three bombs in one year. One of these bombs was “Miss Moffet” starring Bette Davis. Padron has a Bette Davis memoir signed to him. She underlined a passage praising the honor of work, calling work “the one anchor for a satisfying life.”
His chutzpah carried him through the bombs. He worked on stage, on television and movies.
Though Tony had been in several major ballets, a small television appearance won over his father. He had a bit part on Telly Savalas’ 1970s cop show “Kojak.” “My dad, he told everyone,” Tony says, puffing out his chest, jutting out his chin, in an impersonation of fatherly pride. “‘My son, my son, he’s on ‘Kojak.’ Watch ‘Kojak.’”
He has many stories, such as when a producer of a failing show offered Padron a role in his next project. Padron said he had other work. Tony Padron turned down “A Chorus Line.”
Tony Padron worked with many stars. He worked with John Raitt in “The Man from La Mancha.” He worked with Tommy Tune in “Pippin.” He appeared in the movie “Grease 2.” He worked with comedian George Carlin as a regular in the children’s television show “Shining Time Station.” He worked with Chita Rivera on at least two occasions, including “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
He became close friends with Anthony Quinn, performing for more than three years in the live musical of “Zorba.” Playing the village idiot, Padron took care of Quinn on stage, while some members of Quinn’s family often expected Padron to care for the legendary actor off stage. Quinn’s second wife would ask Padron if Anthony Quinn was behaving himself or ask Padron to keep her husband away from other women. But Anthony Quinn was Zorba, a larger-than-life individual. Anthony Quinn was going to do what Anthony Quinn was going to do. But Padron says Quinn was a wonderful co-star.
After years of performing, Tony Padron was ready for a change.
In December of 1990, Padron was driving through South Georgia and North Florida on his way to visit family. He liked the land. In Madison, Fla., he stopped, found a real-estate agent, and asked to see some land for sale. He saw a 165-acre farm. On the return trip, he purchased the farmland.
“I thought, ‘What have I done? What am I going to do with this land?’” Padron said in a past interview. Yet, the purchase made sense. He’d been looking for something different. He loved theatre but, after years of performing and touring, Padron was looking forward to being home evenings and not traveling.
Yet, even with the land, that lifestyle would have to wait.
After purchasing the Florida property, Padron fulfilled about two years of contractual obligations, which placed him for six months in Toronto, six months in New York, and six months in London with shows. He also had to return for some additional filming playing Felix for “Shining Time Station.”
Even after such a grueling schedule of performing and travel, Padron didn’t plan to completely quit showbiz, but he did and enjoyed the rest. Soon, his life took a new path owing less to his Broadway experience than to the Bronx Zoo, where he’d cared for animals years earlier as a struggling dancer and actor.
In the mid 1990s, Kent Buescher opened Liberty Farms Animal Park on a tract of South Georgia land. Liberty Farms was a conference center with a petting zoo. As interest in the park increased, Liberty Farms became Wild Adventures with rides, concerts and more exotic animals.
Padron came to Wild Adventures as an animal caregiver. He worked with the animals for several years, getting to know them, caring for them, participating as the park developed the animal habitats. Wild Adventures put more emphasis on its in-house shows, but Padron did little with these productions at first.
Now, he produces, casts, directs, and choreographs the in-house shows at Wild Adventures. He’s working on “Imagine,” a new show to open with the park’s return on March 14.
Though he enjoys his Southern life at Wild Adventures and the Florida land he shares with Dennis Helming, Padron admits he misses two things about the Broadway lights.
“I miss the camaraderie of artists and writers,” he says. “And you know, for years, I went to work every night and heard a full-size orchestra. I took it for granted at the time.”
