Jennifer Carsillo loves to share her passions whenever and wherever she can. Archives - SB Magazine

Petroleum Club – Generations of history

SB Magazine — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 21:18:58 +0000

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Disembarking from the elevator on the 15th floor of Mid South Towers in downtown Shreveport, guests step into the Petroleum Club’s bronze history of businesses that shaped the city’s oil and gas economy — energy companies, drillers, geologists and the financiers, insurance companies and others that played pivotal roles in the local economy since the club was chartered in 1950. It’s a timeline of Shreveport’s rise, fall and rebirth.

Leaving that antechamber of history, guests are introduced to the view that captured General Manager Jennifer Terrell’s imagination the first time she saw it.

“I grew up in New England,” she said. “I worked up and down the East Coast when I got out of culinary school and had the opportunity to go and see and do a lot. After having moved here, I didn’t see this part of it. When I got up here, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s beautiful.’ It was very urban-looking to me, and I liked that.”

Some of the businesses on those bronze plaques have come and gone. And Shreveport’s economy and skyline both have changed through the years. But the Petroleum Club remains Shreveport’s preeminent private social club.

“The Petroleum Club is a staple of Shreveport,” Terrell said. “It’s been here forever.”

Terrell started as the director of catering for The Petroleum Club in April 1992. She served in that role for 21 years before being promoted to general manager in June 2013.

In her time, she has seen a lot change in Shreveport and at the club. And there is a lot she enjoys about the club in addition to the view, including seeing old friends gather for lunch, to play cards, maybe tell an off-color joke or two and talk about the weather, the kids, and the weekend plans.

In some instances, the third generation of a family is enjoying membership while preparing the fourth generation to join one day. One of those members is board president Marty Wooldridge.

“I know I have been going to events there since I was 10,” he said. “I liken it unto going to your own home. Thanksgiving. Christmas. It’s been a part of your life.”

The club struggled to retain membership during the oil bust of the 1980s. So, the club began expanding its membership to other sectors of the economy. Terrell said she has seen other factors impact the club’s membership through the years.

For example, the club once hosted a monthly Ladies Day Bridge event with about 100 women spending the day at the club. Terrell said that as more women entered the workforce, those traditional social events have fallen away.

“You’ve seen this whole switch,” she said. “When I started here, it was pre-casinos and pre-Youree Drive. People were loyal to the hilt to their clubs. Coming downtown was the thing to do. Through the course of time, you see that change.”

While membership to a private club once was a marker for social status, Terrell said she thinks younger generations do not share the “old-school, private club pride” their grandfathers did.

“There is a perception of this is where he came and drank martinis and played cards all afternoon,” she said. “It’s been really hard to break out of that.

“I don’t think the younger generation has the same appreciation, because they are looking for something different. As each generation comes, they have a different idea of what they think home and family and work should be. One of the things they are looking for is experiences.”

The Petroleum Club hosts a variety of experiences throughout the year for member families. From a New Year’s Eve party to Valentine’s Day dinners and graduation celebrations.

Through the years, Terrell has grown fond of a few particular events on the club’s calendar, including Easter and Mother’s Day brunches.

“You get grandmas and their grandkids with the photo op or the caricature artist,” she said. “They’re just creating all these spectacular memories.”

The club also created Crash the Wedding, its take on a bridal show.

“It’s basically a big, fake wedding reception,” Terrell explained. “We have a band, cash bar and all the food vendors. It looks like an event, so they get to come and feel what it’s like to have an event here.”

But one of her favorites is the Junior Chef Cooking Camp, when she combines her love for cooking with her love for children. Children spend three days in the Petroleum Club’s kitchen learning to cook and preparing a meal for their parents.

“I love the kids,” she said. “I love talking to the kids. The parents are happy because they get to enjoy a meal because we’ve occupied their kids.”

Terrell said the children of members are always welcome, and the club embraces a special role in their lives. “It gives your kids a really neat opportunity to have this experience learning to be social, network, have manners, how to conduct yourself when you’re out,” she said. “At the same time, you’re getting to make all these great memories with your family. There’s not a dollar value you can put on that.”

The Wooldridge family is seeing a fourth generation grow up at the Petroleum Club. “We provide an environment where you can bring your child and have a great place to practice being in that kind of environment. There are some restaurants where you might not want to teach a child how to use a knife and fork.

“Where we really see it pay off is as you start having high schoolers. Parents set up pre-homecoming and pre-prom dinners. knowing their kids are in a safe environment being catered to like they can’t get anywhere else.”
The staff at the Petroleum Club takes the opportunity to get to know the members and shares Terrell’s mission to serve those members.

“The staff understands the mission of why we are here,” she said. “We’re truly at our best when we are serving others. We are really at our best when we are serving our members, because them being here is special to us. They are why we are here.”

Terrell credits COVID with helping the Petroleum Club redefine itself to a younger generation of members. “It was a time when we really pivoted,” Terrell said. “We recognize downtown is getting a little more vacant. You don’t see as much for lunch. You’re trying to stay relative, so you’re looking for ways that work for them.”

Trey Giglio was the board president during that transition.

“It’s no secret that businesses are moving away from downtown, from work at home to offices in suburbs,” he said. “To be successful, we had to evolve from being a lunchtime business destination. That’s not enough.”

What has worked is becoming more inclusive, creating events for men, women, families and even kids, Terrell said.

“We’re focusing more on social,” she said. “Being available for dining and happy hour and those kinds of things when we know they will use it.”

She said adaptability has been the key, like the successful experiment with an a la carte breakfast Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

“It’s funny all the things you try,” Terrell said. “You just keep batting and hoping something sticks against the wall. And then finally it does. And you’re like, ‘OK, we’re going to keep that.’ It’s trying to figure out where you can plug yourself into their lives.”

The club’s willingness to adapt has been the key, member George Whittington said.

“If you’re not thinking outside the box constantly, coming up with new ideas, you’re not going to make it,” he said. “That’s true for a private club or being in business in general.”

Terrell said the club also connects members with a sense of community they can’t find everywhere in today’s technology-driven society.

“We are in this time when people are so connected and yet so disconnected. We’re more connected than ever, but we’re lonelier than ever. I think people are always looking for a place to belong. It’s the same reason people go to church. That’s a lot of the purpose we have here, creating that for them.”

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Jennifer Carsillo: On Screen & Stage

SB Magazine — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 21:31:45 +0000

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Jennifer Carsillo loves to share her passions whenever and wherever she can.

The classical violinist and actress has several opportunities coming up to share her passion for music and film, both locally and internationally. This winter, Carsillo will be traveling to Cuba as a Cultural Ambassador. But first, Carsillo is part of welcoming Cuban piano virtuoso Aldo López-Gavilán for two performances in Shreveport.

López-Gavilán will join the Shreveport Symphony for the Willis-Knighton Masterworks Series performance “Latin Nights” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19 at RiverView Theater. The performance will celebrate music of the Americas and will feature López- Gavilán’s work “Emporium,” Ravel’s “Bolero” and the world premiere of “Cloud Scraper: Symphony Americana,” a work the symphony commissioned Shreveport native James Eakin III to compose.

The next day, Carsillo will join López-Gavilán in a concert of chamber music, marking her return to the stage in her first violin performance since late last spring, when a rotator cuff injury sidelined her playing. The Noel Foundation Chamber Music Series recital begins at 3 p.m. at Anderson Auditorium on the Centenary College campus. That performance features López-Gavilán on piano, Ertan Torgul and Carsillo on violin, Michele Gunn on viola and Brett Andrews on cello. They will present several of López-Gavilán’s original compositions. The next time López-Gavilán and Carsillo see each other will be in February 2023, when Carsillo and her husband, Shreveport Symphony Music Director Michael Butterman, will travel as guests of the Cuban government to Havana.

“Michael’s worked with Aldo before,” she said. “They got along really well, and Michael adores his music. Aldo’s wife is the conductor of the Havana Chamber Orchestra, which is an amazing group of musicians. We are so excited to have this opportunity to experience the culture of Cuba through the arts.”

Before she embarks on that cultural mission, Carsillo will perform as a violin soloist in “Christmas…as it should be,” a concert of holiday favorites arranged by Phillip Wade, formerly the music minister at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton. “We are presenting the best Christmas songs, both sacred and secular, in a fresh and powerful way,” Wade said. He added that he considers it an honor to arrange the songs for Carsillo to perform. “There are good violinists, there are very good violinists, then there is Jennifer,” he said.

“Christmas…as it should be” will be at 7 p.m. Dec. 9 and 10, with a 4 p.m. matinee on Dec. 10, at the Emmett Hook Center. Tickets are available online at tix.com.

But music is not her only passion. Carsillo is a multidimensional artist. It goes back to her childhood in California, where she once dreamed of being a “Vallerina.”

No, don’t try to correct her. “My mom was like, ‘That’s’ wonderful, but it’s pronounced ballerina with a B.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what that is. I want to be a VALLerina.’ I was so headstrong, so confident about myself. I ‘knew’ that’s what it was called.”

Her aunt took her to see “The Nutcracker” when she was five. Carsillo remembers being “enchanted” by the entire experience — “the music, the dancing, the acting, the costumes. I knew I wanted that in my life.”

She stepped onto a stage for the first time cast as Lucy Van Pelt in a Charlie Brown play.

“I was kind of a shy child,” she said. “But I felt happy on stage.I was never nervous.”

After that role as Lucy, Carsillo played several small parts in school performances. But her drama teachers saw something in her when she had a tiny part in a musical production.

“My drama teacher encouraged me to improvise,” Carsillo said. “She told me to just take it and go with it. That was my introduction to improvisation. I loved that freedom.”

In the fourth grade, Carsillo got the chance to choose any musical instrument to learn to play at school. For her, there was no other choice than the violin. Just like watching “The Nutcracker” inspired her to dance, watching a young woman play the violin lit another fire in her.

“I was, ‘Ooooh, yes!’ So I went home and told my parents I wanted to play violin. They were like, ‘That’s sweet, but what happened to wanting to be a Vallerina?’”

Her parents fostered this new passion, and Carsillo nurtured both for a while. When she auditioned and was accepted at the Young Conservatory at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, she spent the summer juggling acting and playing the violin. Her acting teachers told her she was doing too much music. Her violin teacher told her she was doing too much acting. Her parents told her it was time to make a choice.

She chose the violin. “I guess because acting came so easily to me, I didn’t value it as much,” she said. “Violin was so hard. I took to it well. But there is so much that goes into it… so much more I wanted to learn.”

Carsillo still considers herself a student of the violin. “I can’t perfect it,” she said. “I can play well, and I have played at Carnegie Hall and many other great venues, but I will always be striving for perfection. And I will never reach it.”

But Carsillo never lost her passion for acting, either. Her mind would often drift to thinking about the kinds of roles she longed to play if she were an actor, especially during bouts of tendinitis when she had to limit her concertizing. Carsillo began to ask herself why she couldn’t do both. As she and Butterman traveled the country with their music careers, she began to explore acting again. She was signed by an acting agency, and right away landed some commercials. But she also had to decline several jobs, including a good movie role, because of her commitments with the violin.

“I said to myself, ‘Why did I ever think this is going to happen? I knew I could do it; I just didn’t have time for the opportunities.”

The Music Directorship of the symphony brought Carsillo and Butterman to Shreveport in 2006, at which point Carsillo was concentrating on balancing motherhood of a two-year-old with a violin career. Their daughter, Olivia (“Bunny”), later excelled as a competitive dancer and an actress at Shreveport Little Theater Academy. It stirred something in Carsillo.

“I saw how much fun she was having onstage, but I could kind of feel I was a little more into it for her than she was,” Carsillo said. “She loved it, but I was SO into it. I decided I should pay attention as to why.”

Bunny was homeschooled while Carsillo and Butterman both traveled the country for performances. When Bunny decided to attend public school in the eighth grade, that necessitated Carsillo to stay in Shreveport with her. Without homeschooling duties, she had a lot more free time during the day, but found she couldn’t physically add seven more hours of violin to her routine.

Carsillo was asked by the Shreveport Opera to play the title role in “Fiddler on the Roof.” She enjoyed her experience so much that she prepared a monologue and answered an open call at Shreveport Little Theatre. John Daniel cast her as the lead in “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” a play by Sarah Ruhl. “It was like coming home,” she said of being on stage again. “It was so comfortable. I had been out of that whole scene for so long. I don’t know what made me think I could do it. But it all came back.” Carsillo has been in seven theatre productions at SLT, including starring roles in the musicals “MAMMA MIA!” and Steve Martin’s “Bright Star.” She also won Bravo! Awards for Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the 2018-19 season.

Carsillo also began hearing about something called Film Prize. As with everything else in her life, she dove straight into the deep end. She worked with fellow “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” actor Camille Gladney to create the short film Gloria for the 2018 Louisiana Film Prize.

Anatomy of a Selfie: Los Angeles-based actress Iris Almario (Tales of The Walking Dead, NCIS) coming out to support friend Jennifer Carsillo for her appearance as “Angel” in the Hollywood premiere of Hard Up. (Photo credit: Ilja von Nagel, Valley Film Fest 2022)

It won a Founders Circle award that year. It also launched Carsillo into an even broader array of creative outlets.

Since 2018, she has acted in twenty films to date (more are in the works), including several shorts that have been Official Selections at Film Prize. Carsillo has performed a variety of on and off-screen roles for a number of other Film Prize (and feature length) projects. In 2019, she starred as her great-grandmother in St. Esther Day, which she co-wrote with Gladney. The following two years, Carsillo appeared in and composed/ performed the music for writer-director Abigail Kruger’s films, Green’s Alley and Amber the Acrobat, part of a trilogy of films that premiered at Film Prize. Amber the Acrobat has screened in film festivals around the world, including the Berlin Short Film Festival, Berlin and Amsterdam Lift Off Film Festivals, Wisconsin Film Festival, and Berlin Art Film Festival. Carsillo will soon represent the short at the Hollywood Florida Film Festival. Attending film festivals is something Carsillo enjoys greatly, as it allows her to meet other filmmakers and “see all the creativity in independent film, which is really inspiring.”

For this year’s Film Prize, she played a British character, Corporal Shawcross, in the Top 5 Film Bamber Bridge, a World War II-era short film that explored the issue of racism, by 2021 Grand-Prize winner Mark Bonner. And Carsillo received a special gift herself as she was altering the costume Bonner provided, a genuine World War II uniform. “I found some secrets in the pocket,” she said. “That was the coolest thing ever. I reached my hand in and I pulled out this art deco lighter. I just burst out crying. It was so emotional to think that was actually used by a soldier. I also pulled out an old British coin from the breast pocket. I just popped them back in and said, ‘This is for the next person that gets to wear this costume.’”

Carsillo said she is grateful to Shreveport for giving her the opportunity to embrace all of her artistic interests. “There are so many motivated people here, and it has been fun to pool our talents to create art, be it for the stage or screen. I have been so fortunate to do so many different things: story writing, scriptwriting, producing, costumes, helping with art design. And in the world of performing, acting, dancing, singing, violin, and composing. I’m thrilled to have really unique opportunities here in Shreveport.” But since the pandemic, Carsillo says that acting auditions are mostly taped, so she’s been able to take advantage of callbacks and projects throughout the country. Case in point, Carsillo just booked a beauty campaign for Bambu Earth, a brand she has admired for its safe ingredients and belief that beauty shines through healthy, natural skin.

Whatever role she is playing, Carsillo has one goal when it comes to her audience. “The thing that has been important to me—in whatever endeavor—is to infuse my passion for the activity into it,” she said. “I want them to feel how important it is.”

Michael Butterman and Jennifer Carsillo at their home in Shreveport. (Photo credit: Neil Johnson)

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