Tom Burmester (feature)

“This ‘Gospel’ is chapter and verse one of the finest war plays in recent memory.”

That’s what the Los Angeles Times wrote about Tom Burmester’s “Gospel According to First Squad,” currently on stage at UC Davis.

It’s high praise for Burmester, who grew up in Davis, and is now making a name for himself in theater in Los Angeles and other places where his works are presented.

“Gospel” is the third in what ultimately will be a four-play “War Cycle.” Burmester is working on the script for the fourth play, while considering the current show still a “work in progress.”

I asked how a kid raised in a nuclear-free town, a city of all things right and relevant, developed such an interest in writing about war. While he would not pinpoint his interest on his upbringing, he explained that “a lot of it came from my dad,” Dave Burmester, now retired and a beloved former English teacher at Davis High School.

“I took as many of his classes as I could when I was in high school and I remember a fascinating unit on war literature,” Tom Burmester said. “Some of that probably rubbed off on me.”

The Gulf War was being waged when Tom was a senior in high school and he saved every article he could find from the San Francisco Chronicle “just because I had a sense that there was something significant happening and I was going to want to look back on that time and remember.”

In 2004, after graduating from UCLA, he and other out-of-work professional and non-professional actors founded the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble, which formed partly with funds raised during a Ghostlight Theatre Festival here in Davis.

The Ensemble ultimately became “The Powerhouse” after the group took over an old Southern California Edison building in Santa Monica. They performed there for several years until the lease expired and the landlord hiked the rent so high that even with box-office income and grants from Santa Monica, the young company couldn’t make it.

The first thing the Ensemble did was a production of Burmester’s thesis project from UCLA, but it was a two-person play and, realizing that it’s hard to build a group around two people, they decided to “create something.” A socially conscious group, they wanted something relevant and decided to focus on the war in Iraq.

He explained, “We were at war, but none of us felt like we were at war.” He was working for a group called Rock the Vote, and doing research for a paper on the issue of bringing back the military draft.
“When you have a universal draft, you can’t ignore the war,” he said.

The bill didn’t pass, but the members of the ensemble took this issue on, and decided to have a season that examined the overlooked.

“The news was into this idea of the counter of how many had been killed. It was ticking up to 2,000,” Burmester said. “That’s not really overlooked, but what is overlooked is the wounded. When you are wounded it not only changes your life, but the lives of everyone around you.”

They started doing research into that, but since no members of the group had been to war and none of them had been wounded, they knew they had to go to the source. Burmester tried to connect with people in the Army. He wanted to go to Walter Reed Hospital, but was not able to get past the bureaucratic barriers.

Then help came from an unlikely source. Through Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” cartoon, Burmester learned of a nonprofit organization, Fisher House, that serves the military. It maintains homes on military campuses that are specifically for severely wounded veterans and their families. The philosophy is that healing takes place more holistically and faster when the patient is surrounded by loved ones.

“I flew out there and spent a couple of days and they were happy to have me there,” he said. “Once Fisher House had me as a guest, I was able to get into Walter Reed.”

Burmester then talked with a lot of veterans, but concentrated on three — a combat medic named Joda whose eyes had been blown out in an explosion, Bill Pepper (on whom a Doonesbury character is based), and Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs, and is currently the congresswoman from Illinois’ 8th District.

“They were generous with their stories,” Burmester said. “For me it was definitely a transformative experience. I interviewed them and they gave their permission to use their stories.”

He explained that this would be a fictional story, but their stories would lend verisimilitude to the project.

“We felt accountable to these people whose stories we were borrowing. The script is grounded in reality so that there is an honoring of their stories. We’re not trivializing anything.”

The first play was “Wounded,” which had one performance in Los Angeles and then was performed here in Davis.

” ’Wounded’ cuts much deeper than I expected,” wrote Don Shirley of LA City Beat. “It’s not a pity-the-poor-cripples, curse-the-Bushie-bureaucrats play. It looks unsparingly at the choices that face the soldiers in Iraq, the wounded who return, their families and friends — and, by extension, the American public and their elected representatives.

“Conceived by the ensemble, it has been shaped by writer-director Tom Burmester into a gripping edge-of-the-seat experience.”

“Wounded” was performed in Los Angeles and it did so well that the group staged it again the next year. The 2007 production also was successful but they thought “We can’t keep doing it over and over again.” Yet they still felt the responsibility to tell stories about the war, to hold themselves responsible and culpable for the lack of awareness.

The second in the cycle, “Nation of Two,” which opened in 2010, focused attention on the grief of a family preparing to scatter the ashes of their son, killed in Iraq, one year after his death. The idea came from a Christopher Hitchins article in Vanity Fair about a man named Mark, who had joined the ROTC while a student at UCLA, became a lieutenant and was deployed to Iraq, where he was killed.
“I was particularly interested in the widow,” Burmester said. “She looked nothing like my idea of a war widow. She was in her early 20s, young and hip. We developed a relationship with her and the rest of Mark’s family.

“As they shared their stories, I learned that each deals with grief in a different way. There was a difference in the way they wanted to remember Mark. It’s the story of the family, but the central character is missing.”

Actor/director Danika Sudik, who later became Burmester’s wife, came onto the scene at this point. As a war widow herself, she had a special interest in this story, especially the conflicts that can erupt among the survivors.

“I understand things a lot better than I did in 2008,” Sudik said. “Working on the development of this play was a lovely way to look at things in a way that I probably never would have otherwise.”

The group started looking again for what to do and realized they had yet to deal with actual combat. There was a photo spread in Rolling Stone by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger that featured portraits of soldiers in the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan, and Burmester was struck by the images.

“There was so much storytelling in the photos themselves that it became a launching point,” he said. “We managed to connect with a few folks who had served in combat in Afghanistan. It was important that they had been in combat, so they could explain that experience to us.”

Added Sudik, “The thing I remember most about them was how reticent they were to actually say the words. They were holding back and skirting around the topic, but it seemed like they really did want to talk about it all.

“Finally we told them they could say anything and we were not going to be offended or judgmental. They were relieved and the things that came out that are in the play — things that they were embarrassed to talk about, like sexual dysfunction and psychological issues that happened to them while they were there, and after they returned home — that really stuck with me, as a woman.
“They’re in this place where there are no women and how much that affected the way they were talking and acting with each other.”

“That’s a lot of what ‘Gospel’ is,” Burmester explained. “The guys are deployed in a very remote location. One of the things they talked about that stuck with me was that the farther away you are from the generals and the colonels, the more out in the field you are, there’s more of a sense of omnipotence. A gun gives you power. There’s more of a sense of not needing to adhere to rules, but being the ones that make the rules.

“We were also fortunate that one of the cast members in our original cast had served in Afghanistan in combat, so he was able to check us. When we were in our original run in L.A., occasionally a veteran would pull me aside and say, ‘You might want to look at this. … There’s a little detail here that’s not quite right.’ ”

One difference in this production is that since Sudik is pursuing a master of fine arts in directing, “Gospel” has an all-female production team.

““It has been awesome to get all these different perspectives and they’re so young, too, so they are going through their own interactions and everything is super-hypercharged,” Sudik said. “The things that they are noticing and are drawing out in the story are strengthening it so much.”

Burmester added, “It’s about this culture that we’re creating and that we are condoning. This is our American face as seen by part of the world. What does that mean? What are we creating for these men to come home to?

“So much of this play is about ideals and what we say is important to us. And then what actually happens to a person when the rubber hits the road? And how that changes, and how you justify your choices,” he continued.

“One thing I’m proud of — ‘Gospel’ is not glorifying the war. The media that we consume is about the hero story. We latch onto that and we have the American hero in our corner. But the issues are so much more complex than sound bites. We’re defining ourselves by our tweets. What does that mean?”

But that is a subject for another play.

“Gospel” is a reunion of old Acme Theatre Company alumni. In addition to Tom Burmester, Steven Schmidt, the tech director for the B Street Theatre in Sacramento, is doing tech direction for this show, and Chad Fisk, another Acme alum who went on to become an actor in the Bay Area, is doing fight preparation.

“This show has a lot of brutal hand-to-hand combat,” Fisk said. “There is one huge melee where there are six people fighting simultaneously — which involved lots of note-taking. Many in the cast are new to acting and new to fights, so I’m teaching them how to do it safely. When fights look too polished, I made them look more raw and ugly.

“It’s a great show with an amazing script,” Fisk promises.

Nearly 20 years ago, Tom Burmester realized he wanted to put a face to “the overlooked” — and with this war cycle, he certainly has done that.

Caifornia's Everything Man

It’s likely that Ray Tatar is a familiar sight to many who visit California Stage. Tall and white-haired, the theater company’s hands-on artistic director greets every patron cheerfully.

Tatar’s theater roots go deep—although he’d initially planned a career in film. A theater gig in Southern California at Knott’s Berry Farm would eventually change that course, however. After graduation, Tatar worked in Hollywood as an intern on many TV series and films, including Funny Girl, but realized it just wasn’t his passion.

“I just couldn’t get film into my heart. Live theater always excited me,” Tatar said.

This week, Tatar finds new excitement at California Stage, directing Leslie Lewinter-Suskind’s A Revolutionary Mind, which opens June 17. The production explores the tumultuous Vietnam-era 1960s—a period that unarguably shaped Tatar’s outlook and ethos.

Back then, he attended UC Berkeley, where he worked at the Magic Theatre and received an MFA in directing. In the ’70s, Tatar ended up in the United Kingdom, where he worked at a theater for the deaf in London. Tatar also taught method drama at a junior college in the area—a job he got thanks to a connection he had with famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg.

When he returned to the states, Tatar worked as a drama critic for a TV station in Los Angeles, and in 1977 was named executive director of the LA Stage Alliance. In 1982, he went to work for the California Arts Council, serving under then-Gov. Jerry Brown and helping to raise millions for the theater community.

That same year, however, he also wanted a change and moved to Sacramento, where he founded the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance. SARTA, which bands together local organizations, actors, technicians and administrators to produce and promote work in the region, helped Tatar realize just “how powerful that kind of [organization] can be to service theater and community.”

Tatar only planned to stay in Sacramento for a few years, but after meeting and marrying his wife Susan, he decided to make it his home.

These days, Tatar is still active in the theater community, discovering new works for California Stage, including A Revolutionary Mind. The show, told in flashbacks and flash-forwards, tells the story of protesters who marched against the war in Vietnam.

“It’s a different type of play,” Tatar said of its unusual structure.

Its activism storyline and counterculture themes are also meaningful for him. “The heroine represents to me the boomer generation—we who marched against the Vietnam War, and who wanted to make the world better. We didn’t succeed.”

Tatar says the play speaks to the legacy of that generation and passes down the message to future generations.“We may not have been successful,” he said of the ’60s, “but maybe our grandchildren will be.”

Robert Lautz (feature story)

Playwright Robert Lautz is living with prostate cancer.

“I’m terrible,” he laughed when I asked him how he was doing. “It’s terminal, but at least this is a slow-growing cancer.”

Lautz is a longtime Davis resident who moved his family to Minnesota a month ago, where his wife’s family lives, but he was back in town briefly to watch the opening of his new play, “Third Date” at the Wilkerson Theater in Sacramento.

Lautz’s first play, “The Meaning of it All” ran at the Wilkerson in 2012.

“You did a review where you didn’t trash it,” he reminded me. “You encouraged me to keep writing, so that’s why I wrote a second play. It was as a great learning experience as my first play.

“I’ve written a comedy about cancer,” he said “ ‘Fun with mutant cells’ is the alternate title.”

Some may think it’s odd to be writing a comedy about cancer, but Lautz explained that initially, it was a series of notes to keep track of all of his medical records, but so many bizarre things happened during his treatment that he thought it might make a funny play.

And it is.

The show opened two weeks ago, and Lautz was there for the opening.

“I was thrilled,” he said. They had full houses on opening weekend and “the performance just got better and better.” He was most pleased that the audience “got it.” The point had been made.

Lautz stresses that “cancer has some clout. Doctors and nurses make a point of being very courteous and very gracious. You even get valet parking.”

But the play does hit home with doctors.

“My GP who has been my doctor for 20 years came to see it,” the playwright said. “Afterwards he said that ‘Generally we’re in the habit of creating a distance between ourselves and the patients. This reminded me not to do so.’ ”

Director Maggie Adair Upton added that a lot of cancer survivor groups have been attending.

“They either like it or they hate it,” she said, adding that one of her friends saw a preview and had to leave. There had been enough cancer in her life and she had just had enough.

“It’s a tricky show to do, but I think it’s important and I’m glad we are doing it,” Upton said.
“One woman at a talk-back after the show said parts of the play made her squirm,” said Lautz, laughing. He told her his alternate title would have been “Caution: Sections of this play may make you squirm.”

Many of those who were uncomfortable were Lautz’s friends and co-workers from the California Arts Council, where he worked for many years, who felt it was difficult to watch, knowing that these were his own experiences.

“It happened to me. Everything,” he said.

“I’m a musician,” he told me, adding that he played the vibraphone and drums and graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1976, with a degree in composition. In fact, the incidental music before and after the show was composed and performed by Lautz.

He grew up in California, but moved back East with his family for high school and college. Then he decided to return to California.

“I borrowed my father’s car and drove to Santa Cruz,” he said, adding that his father never got the car back.

He became a street musician, playing on the streets and in malls and performing gigs up and down the California coast, whenever he could find work, supporting himself for some 20 years. During that time, he met his wife in a jazz club.

It was after his wife became pregnant that he decided that “this jazz musician thing may not work out financially.”

In 1995, he ended up on the California Arts Council, a move that would bring him to Davis. By this time he had two daughters, ages 4 and 2, and real estate agents took him all over Sacramento looking for a house.

“Then I drove out to Davis, first getting lost on Olive Drive. But we fell in love with the town. It was a great place to raise our daughters,” he said.

Friends in Sacramento warned him that Davis was where the liberals were, “but we came from Santa Cruz!” he added, laughing.

He worked for the Arts Council for eight years “and then the budget went way south” so he worked for another state agency for a while and then returned to the Arts Council, where he continued to work after his 2007 cancer diagnosis until his family’s move to Minnesota.

Lautz said his character, Richard Montauk, is kind of a sexist pig who has a teenaged daughter with whom he has little relationship and a wife from whom he is divorced. Through the course of the play he is very subtly transformed by his experiences.

“A friend said he really didn’t like Montauk, but toward the end he did.”

So Lautz achieved his ultimate goal, and can a playwright ask for more than that?

The show runs 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays through July 4 in the Dennis Wilkerson Theater at California Stage’s R25 Arts Complex. Visit www.calstage.org for information.

Dan Renkin (Feature Article)

Benton Locke-Harshaw as Robin Hood, crouching; Dan Renkin, fight choreographer;
and Callie Miller as Maid Marian rehearse for the Acme Theatre Company
production of "The Heart of Robin Hood," set for Memorial Day weekend. Renkin,
a Davis High School graduate now working in New York theater,
flies home every year to teach young Acme actors
realistic-looking sword-fighting skills.
Courtesy photo

When Robin Hood’s merry men engage with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s posse in Sherwood Forest this weekend, you can be sure that their swordplay will be a) realistic and b) safe.

This is due to fight coordinator Dan Renkin, a Davis High School graduate now working in theater in New York, who has returned to his hometown every year for the past six years to work with the young actors of the Acme Theatre Company to teach them the fine arts of stage fighting and handling those unwieldy swords.

Acme will present “The Heart of Robin Hood” Friday through Monday at the Davis Arts Center. The free production is its annual gift to the community as thanks for local business and community support of the company for high school-aged thespians.

Renkin never imagined he would have a career in theater, much less in New York. In fact, his whole career was really a series of fortunate accidents.

He remembers that as a young kid he enjoyed the productions of the Sunshine Children’s Theater, but didn’t get involved himself until some friends were doing a summer show with Acme at the Pence Gallery.

He came into the production late, but “they said ‘you can be one of the people we’ve never seen before for the funeral scene at the end.’ And so I got to stand around thinking ‘I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into, but this is really fun!’ ”

He graduated from Davis and headed off to UC Irvine to get a liberal arts degree “because that’s what we do in my family,” but in his second year, he realized he really missed doing theater.

“I wonder if they do that here,” he thought.

Renkin found an active theater program and began getting involved. He was also taking film classes on the side.

“Then there was a moment when I realized I had screwed up and had accidentally taken the first two quarters of the theory class that was required for the film major, but not for the minor,” he said. “There was no reason not to go ahead and get a second B.A. in film. I had no idea what was coming next.”

What came next was the recommendation of a friend who was working at the New York Conservatory.

“She spent a year on the phone with me saying ‘not only is this a really good program, but this would be a really good place for you.’ ” And so he went to New York.

He enrolled in the Circle on the Square Acting School and felt right at home immediately when the first person he met when he entered the building was Paul Shapiro, a fellow graduate of Davis High School. (Renkin later would collaborate with another DHS graduate, Ari Kreith, who runs Theater 167 at Manhattan’s West End Theater.)

“One of the teachers was B.H. Barry, the first fight director ever to win a Tony and the man credited with the birth of fight directing in America,” Renkin recalled. “He taught stage combat, which I had a little smattering of in undergraduate (days), just enough to convince me that it was not meant for me. I’m not athletic.

“But his teacher had been Errol Flynn’s stunt double, so he had certain standards for how you perform. All his drinking buddies and peers were people like Harold Pinter, writing very earthy, kitchen-sink stuff, not like Noel Coward, and he wanted to figure out how to make the fights natural like that.”

Barry found that he would treat fight scenes the same way he would treat them as an actor. It was easier to stage and the actors could remember it better; they also performed it more convincingly because they owned it.

“It became kind of an existential thing. And that made sense to me,” Renkin said. “That’s when the thing that was most terrifying to me became fun. When someone is quite literally the most skilled in the world at this thing that they do and they invite you to come learn more about it, you go!

“So I started going to his class. I assisted him on my first Broadway show, hoping that there would eventually be a second.”

Renkin also began filling in when Barry was unable to teach a class and eventually he began doing his own fight choreography (“I find mall atrias, for some reason, are a great inspiration for choreography ideas — I could slide down this railing, and jump over that table …”)

Then, six years ago, he was contacted by Acme Artistic Director Emily Henderson about helping with a show. She explained that Libby Renkin, Dan’s mother, had come to an Acme show and mentioned that her son did fight choreography and might be able to help out on their next production.

“So I cold-called this total stranger and said ‘I’m doing this play and it has 17 different fights and do you think you could come for a week?’ He said sure,” Henderson said. “It was really wonderful. He knew our style and everything worked perfectly.”

Added Renkin, “We had to explain to the kids who I was, and that I had been in Acme and graduated from Davis High and was now working in New York. When I told one of the students the year I graduated he said, ‘That’s when I was born.’ I responded with something completely unprintable, and we got along famously after that.”

It has been a win-win situation for everyone. Acme actors have learned professional fighting from a master, Renkin gets to come home on a regular basis to visit his parents, and Davis reaps the benefits of one of Acme founder Dave Burmester’s success stories.

How many other young-adult theater groups have an official fight choreographer who learned from the guy who learned from the guy who was stunt double to Errol Flynn and who introduced fight choreography to this country? Pretty cool.

DMTC at 30

Things are busy at the Jean Henderson Performing Arts Center as the Davis Musical Theater company prepares for its 30th Anniversary Gala, to be held on Saturday, August 23 at 6:30 p.m.

“Last night we had a Young Performer’s Theater committee meeting in the women’s dressing room, the cast of “Shrek” was rehearsing the big tap number on stage, and in the lobby, singers were rehearsing for the Gala,” laughed Jan Isaacson, who added that set building and painting for the upcoming production of “Shrek” were also taking place on the dock in the afternoon.

The gala anniversary evening, at only $15 per ticket, will include hors d’oeuvres and a light dinner catered by Symposium Restaurant, followed by an evening of musical theater songs and highlights from dozens of productions that have been offered by DMTC over the years.

“I found people who performed from the beginning of the company,” says Jan, “so it will start off with ‘Oklahoma’ in 1987. Joe Anthony is coming back to perform ‘Oh what a Beautiful Morning.’ I picked selected songs from different decades. Mary Young is going to do ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ from ‘Gypsy.’ Jay Joseph lives in Las Vegas and he’s coming back to sing ‘Buddy’s Blues’ from ‘Follies.’ The pièce de resistance of the evening is going to be Ben Bruening’s half hour movie tracing our history from the very beginning to now.”

Mayor Dan Wolk, a long time supporter of DMTC will present a proclamation congratulating DMTC on its 30th anniversary and thanking the company for its commitment in making performing arts accessible for all in the Davis, California region.

"I am so delighted about presenting this proclamation to Jan and Steve Isaacson and DMTC. As someone who is an alum of DMTC, has been a performer in a number of musicals, and who recognizes the importance and joy of community theater, this celebration has particular meaning to me,” Mayor Wolk said.

Bob Bowen, Promotions Manger for the City of Davis. laughs ''If someone had told me, back in 1984, that DMTC would be around for 30 years, I'd have thought their gaffer's tape was wound too tightly, Having produced my fair share of theater, I know how demanding and stressful it is to raise money and produce theater in Davis. For DMTC to produce a series of adult and children's shows - every year, and for more than a quarter of a century - is a testament to the their passion and energy for theater."

Statistics show that many community theaters which get off the ground and achieve some sort of success generally begin to peter out around 30. The founding members start to get older and can’t do what they did 30 years before, the younger members don’t have the dedication. Ultimately they call it quits, throw a big party to celebrate a long and productive life.

At 30, the Davis Musical Theater is just hitting its stride. Last year their house was amazingly 91% full and they expect to equal or surpass that this year. The company appears to be healthier than ever with exciting plans for the future.

DMTC produces six Main Stage musicals and five Young Performers Theater musicals annually. That’s more than one hundred performances on the DMTC stage each year. What keeps things so vibrant and alive?

“There’s a real sense of family about the group,” says actress Dannette Vasser, who joined in 1997. “There’s not the backstage drama that you sometimes find in other theater groups. It’s a very comfortable place to be. Everybody gets along and a lot of that is due to the atmosphere Jan and Steve foster. They’ve created this to be a family place, where all different members of the community can work together to put on a show.”

“I consider DMTC my musical theater home,” says Mary Young, who has been with the company since she followed choreographer Ron Cisneros to Davis and performed Lady Thiang in the company’s second show, “The King and I.”.

Mary, who lives in Roseville, never thought she would ever drive to Davis to perform but once she started she “just never stopped.” “It has a lot to do with Jan and Steve. They are such good human beings,” she said. “I had a really bad car accident a few years ago and Steve just put me in the next show. Didn’t make me audition. It was my road to recovery. Physical therapy, mental therapy. What better place to go and just play.” Young will be performing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from "Gypsy" at the anniversary show.

Young’s daughter Wendy was in the fourth grade when her mother joined the company, and she literally grew up with DMTC. “She was one of the children in 'King and I,'” Young said, “and I remember washing black hair dye out of her blond hair.”

Young has had an opportunity to perform with not only her daughter but also her grandchildren on the DMTC stage. In fact, the upcoming “Shrek” will feature 3 generations of Youngs. “I haven’t been able to perform with all three of my grandchildren,” she says, “But it’s on my bucket list.”

She remembers when DMTC moved from the Veterans' Memorial Theater into a small theater they built in the Davis Commerce Park on Second Street, near Sudwerk ... and being escorted out to the Port A Potties during evening rehearsals.

People who started at the Second Street theater were like “the survivors, ” laughed Marguerite Morris, who joined DMTC out of high school in 1985 at age 19 to play Hodel in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

That was the show, Steve remembers, where Pat Piper bought the very first DMTC season ticket (she would later become DMTC’s first lifetime season ticket holder.)

Morrison remembers the difficulties working in that small theater and the company’s eventual move downtown to the Varsity theater.

The landlord of the Second Street facility eventually raised the rent so high that DMTC had to think about finding a new place to perform. Bob Bowen, who met Jan and Steve while all were in the Davis Players, proved a valuable friend.

'When they built their first theater in rented space over on Second Street, I got involved. I also got involved when they approached the city for a loan.

'Since DMTC still owed money on that loan, we negotiated a deal for them to use the newly renovated Varsity Theater, beginning in January 1993, so they would remain viable. I acted as their Varsity landlord until the Davis City Council changed the Varsity back into an art film theater.'

“One of the things that makes me want to do shows there is the people,” said Morris. “ I’ve made excellent long term friendships there. It’s a family.” Morris herself will be singing the Mother Abbess' "Climb Every Mountain" from "The Sound of Music" at the gala performance, one of her favorite roles.

Morris’ daughter Rachel performed in 8 shows, when she was 9-11. “There is always a tight knit group of kids as well as adults. There’s no real age barrier. A lot of the older kids take younger kids under their wing and show them the ropes.”

John Ewing, who joined as an actor in the late 1980 and moved on to become a designer and director and member of the Board of Directors, has a slightly different take on why he has stuck around. “One thing I like about DMTC is they’ve always been really great about being open to anybody, they always had open auditions. I get a real thrill out of taking something from nothing and creating a show for an audience. The great thing about the way DMTC does their shows is that so many ordinary people, not necessarily pursuing theater as a career, have the opportunity to experience it. You can’t get that anywhere else.”

Ewing points out that people come and people go, but he most values the ones who have stuck around, people like Lenore and Gil Sebastian, who were in the very first show Ewing did and are still around.

“I’m excited about Saturday’s Gala, that people who performed years and years ago have been invited back to perform again.”

As the company has grown, the expertise of the Young Performer’s Theater (started as “DMTC’s Children’s Theater” in 1987) both in its performers and its parents has grown and become an essential part of the DMTC family.

Jen Nachmanoff is a mom who came to DMTC because her daughter Sophia wanted to perform.”I’m a ceramic artist and have learned how to paint here at the theater, so I’m now a painter too. I didn’t know how to paint before I came here, but I’ve learned on the job. So I help with the scenic artistry. We find out we can do things we never knew we could do.”

Jen oversees the decorative tiles on the wall (continuing the work begun by Jeni Price). She helps families create tiles and has been overseeing the design and firing. I’ve only been here three years, but it feels like forever. It’s the volunteers who make DMTC.”

Children in the Young Performer’s Theater learn all aspects of theater, not just performing, and kids as young as 10 now run the light board for main stage shows. “They’re focused, they’re mature, they know what they’re doing. The kids who run the light board are phenomenal,” said Steve proudly.

Lighting is a big part of every production, and an aspect which the audience, for the most part, is unaware. Someone told me once that if the audience doesn’t notice the lights, the lighting designer has done her work well.

On October 18, 1985, when DMTC opened its first show at the “Old Theater,” which had no walls, insulation, heating or air, Steve remembers chaos on opening night, when Diane Wershing was running the lights. There had been no time for lighting rehearsal.

“I remember going to the theater for opening night and HOPING that they had hung lights,” Wershing said, “Luckily, it was a show that I knew inside and out, so as long as someone was going to hang the lights and hook up something for me to control them with, I figured I could wing it. I was hoping beyond hope that there was something for me to work with, and lo and behold there was. A little 6-dimmer board that I could hold in my lap in the back row of the audience. I ran the lights from there.”

More recently, in the final performance of “South Pacific,” the 10 year old light board just died. Light board operator Mia Piazza turned on the board and there was no response. They were faced with having to cancel a show that was sold out. But they were able to turn on the house lights and the work lights, and Steve went out to face the audience. “This was going to test how good a salesman I am. I explained that our light board died and someone in the audience cried out ‘the show must go on!’ We did the whole show with just the work lights on and the house lights on. When we finished a scene and we’d cry out ‘scene!” It was like a recital. The audience loved it!”

One thing that separates DMTC from many theater companies is it has been and remains an all-volunteer organization, and everyone works on everything. Actors know when they audition that they will be expected to help build sets or help in some other way.

“Except for the piano player we’re still all volunteer,” said Jan proudly. “We have the best volunteers around. People love it here. They’re here because they want to be here. It’s not a paid job. I always say we must be doing something right.”

They even have a complete all-volunteer orchestra. Nikki Nicola and Pam Thompson both get all the musicians. “We had 26 for ‘Les Miserables,’” Jan pointed out proudly. “We never have to worry about the orchestra. Ever. People ask ‘how do you get your musicians to volunteer.’ I tell them they all get a free cookie and a drink at intermission. The ushers go down, take the orchestra order before the show gets started, at intermission they bring it down there. They love not having to get dressed up.”

Steve adds, “Other music directors ask ‘how do you get them to volunteer?’ I say....uh...ask them?”

Costumer Jean Henderson has been with the company for 17 years and for her recent 70th birthday, a surprise party was held and she was told the theater had been renamed for her. “It came as a complete surprise,” she said. “I was so shocked.”

Henderson loves the DMTC family. “I don’t like to be with just old people. I like the diversity of age, I get to know what’s going on in the world. I’m not the retirement home kind of person.”

One of her new roles, since DMTC got a liquor license, is to handle the bar before the shows and at intermission. “People like being able to take the drinks into the theater. I try to find something that will represent the show.” For “Peter Pan” she found a drink that used Cpt Morgan rum. “We had ‘Barricade lemonade’ with vodka and sparkling water for ‘Les Miserables,’ a Spamarita for ‘Spamalot,’ and a Fa-Gin for ‘Oliver!’.

As the company has aged, the shows have gotten bigger. On April 14, 2012 DMTC’s second performance of “Titanic, the Musical” opened exactly 100 years to the minute of the sinking of the great ship. Ludy’s Main Street BBQ recreated the last 11-course meal served on the great ship, as a fundraiser for over 50 patrons.

Thanks to donations by many patrons, the company was able to buy mirrors for a spectacular production of “A Chorus Line” in April of this year

In June, Steve directed “Les Miserables,” the show he had dreamed of directing since he first saw it in 1988. The production was described by one patron as “the best night I’ve had in this theater.”

Though the Davis Musical Theater Company does not always get the respect or the attention it has earned, the fact is that they have outlasted every single theater company in Davis, that they are the longest-running, year-round, non-professional musical theater company in California, and that the quality of productions has continued to improve every year over the past 30 years, as evidenced by their loyal audience (40% of which comes from Davis and 60% of which comes from other areas). The company has proved that they are indeed doing something right.

As DMTC start its new season, the company is deserving of a hearty bravo! for a job well done

Art Theater of Davis (feature)

 

Just like Mickey and Judy, Timothy Nutter found himself a stage and is putting on a show.

The Davis native, a student of Hanneke Lohse and Pamela Trokanski (among others) has been teaching dance at the Davis Art Center and the Davis Holistic Health Center. Nutter attended college at Purchase College (State University of New York) and at Antioch College in Ohio. He studied at the Conservatory of Dance, produced his own dance shows and ran an independent improv dance troupe.

But after his return to Davis, he decided he wanted to start a theater. Seeing a niche in this community that has a musical theater company (DMTC), a couple of groups devoted to Shakespeare (the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble and the university’s Shakespeare on a Shoestring) and a group that does both musicals and comedies (Woodland Opera House), he realized that nobody was really doing contemporary modern drama.

He started the fledgling Art Theater of Davis with some friends he knew from ballet. Ania Mieszkowska, for example, is a director, teacher and theater practitioner to more than 30 years experience in the United States and England. She moved to Davis with family nine years ago. Since her arrival, she has worked as a drama coach and taught ballet and Pilates at The Davis Art Center, Pamela Trokanski Dance Workshop and Applegate Studio.

Once they had the seed of an idea, the next step was finding a venue. Nutter first talked with various churches in Davis. His first thought was to produce something by Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Marie Rilke.

“I thought, people like Rilke so we’ll put something together that will be fun, different and interesting,” he said.
But he ran into rental problems.

“To have a one-day event in a church is plausible, but to put on a theater event that runs for a few weeks takes so much more time. You have to control lights, space, etc., people in and out, set pieces, noise, etc. And God forbid there might be some kind of content problem or ideological conflict. That was a dream that died on the vine,” he said.

Event insurance was also a problem, as the theater company would have to cover insurance at a church venue, which could run into thousands of dollars for the two-week run of a show.

And then he found Third Space, the multipurpose space housing shops, studios, workshops and the like on Olive Drive behind Redrum Burger. He talked with the owner to ask if he would allow a theater to start in his building. It was perfect, with affordable rental rate and no insurance problems.

They created a little gem of a theater that seats 40 to 50 people (on folding chairs, some of which have padded seats), but is just perfect for the kinds of plays Nutter wished to produce.
“It’s been pretty good,” he says. “They didn’t realize how serious we were about changing part of their building, and they didn’t realize how much furniture we were going to be storing here, but it’s been a positive all around because I personally cleaned up a lot of the space and took out shelving they didn’t want anyway. We’re using a room that was underutilized and now it’s a theater, so it’s been good for everyone.”

There has really only been one big problem, so far — where to store all the set pieces, especially when the flea market is being held once a month. “My biggest fear was that someone would buy one of our set pieces!” Nutter said.

For help in casting his show, he joined the Sacramento Area Regional Theater Alliance and advertised through that group, as well as an ad in The Enterprise and individual emails to people Nutter knew who were doing the same kinds of plays he was interesting in putting on.

A multi-talented guy, Nutter also did all the graphic design and printing, so he made up fliers that he put up all over Davis.

“I have no web design skills so couldn’t create a web page other than the Davis Wiki,” he said. “I hadn’t joined Facebook, but then the people I was working with said there is no way you can do this without joining Facebook, so I set up a page on that social media.”

Next came the problem of money. “We started in my garage with my bank account — and I’m a dance teacher,” he said with a laugh. “I just sold off some of my estate and we had lots of lucre to work with.

“That was part of the push for Facebook, but what we did was a funding campaign (like Kickstarter), and 29 or 30 people donated to help us get money to rent costumes and house money to work with for buying lumber, paint, etc.,” he added. “It has mostly been publicized by me, my friends and the 12-actor cast.”

When he first began this project, Nutter thought he would do one play and see what happens, but as he got into it, it seemed that the best way to get funding was to have a plan in mind, which involved not only his first production, but future productions as well.

“Now that the first has come together and we learned we could raise money for this one and people are happy and excited, I’m planning to do more,” he said. “The next play would be a Brecht in the spring and I’m hoping to do another production in the summer and fall.

“My plan is not to go away. I talked with UCD but they have no plans for summer. I was able to rent costumes from the theater department. They were very helpful.”

Nutter sees his new theater as giving more opportunity for people outside of university to perform.

“We need more people,” he said. In fact, he had to write two minor characters out of “Three Sisters” because he couldn’t find 14 actors.

With the success of “Three Sisters,” it is hoped that there will be more interest in future productions, both in actors and in audience. While this is not a conventional theater, it’s easy to find, parking is sufficient and you can stop at Redrum Burger for dinner on your way to the show.

And with good production values and talented actors, it should become a real asset for Davis.

Woodland Honors an Opera House Treasure

“It’s been a good run, but I just have to shake things up a bit,” said Jeff Kean, current managing director and company Pooh Bah for the Woodland Opera House. Kean, who leaves his job after 18 years at the end of the month, says it’s been “an interesting confluence of events” that has led him to his impending retirement.

Kean arrived in Woodland in 1996, after working for four years in Texas.
While Kean started out wanting to be an actor (“I started at age 15, as a mugger in a play”), he quickly realized that the real fun for him was in working behind the scenes. He credits one of his acting instructors, who had been a professional actress in New York for many years, for giving him the real story of the kind of life he could expect as an actor.

“I wanted to have a home and a house that I live in. You’ve gotta be willing to go on the road for months and I didn’t want to do that, so I switched over to design my last couple of years,” he said. “I then went to grad school and got a couple of paying gigs. Somehow I transitioned into management because people needed managing. But I enjoy that.”

And the Opera House has enjoyed his management. On Saturday night a ceremony was held to honor the soon-to-be-retired manager, with participation from many Opera House members, as well as member of the community.

Each member of the audience was handed a life-size paper cut-out of Kean’s head in one of the many roles he played in the 2008 production of “Tuna Christmas.” Our instructions were that we were to raise the cut-outs whenever we heard the word “Jeff” coming from the stage.

 Kean and his fiancée, Laurie Weidner, were seated in thrones in one of the side boxes of the theater, drinking champagne from Waterford crystal glasses, while Master of Ceremonies Steve Cairns opened the festivities with a video of members of the community, with comments about the guest of honor.

There was a telephone call from Lou Anderson, former stage manager of the Opera House, now living in Arizona, who reminisced about his time working with Kean.

“I’ve been lucky to get good staff people,” Kean said in his interview. He singled out Don Zastoupil set designer for eight years. “Brilliant set designer. His stuff was just incredible,” said Kean, also mentioning current tech director John Bowles, “a wonderful guy, who creates great stuff.”

Outgoing Opera House board president Mike Patmas commented that thanks to Kean, the Opera House was “well-managed, solvent, in the black, with money in the piggy bank.”

Kean lists as his management highlights “running at least a break-even operation. We established an endowment fund, which is doing really well. We’re generating income to pay for maintenance, so that’s really a safety net for us. Very few theaters have a safety net. We’ve got one.”

In addition to running a break-even operation, the Opera House has purchased a building which they own outright. “That’s a wonderful addition. We have two studios over there, a shop and a costume shop and storage. Having that is a major advantage.”

And then there were all those theaters he helped design. In 2006, Woodland passed Measure E, which would allocate funds for the improvement of the Opera House and expansion of its program. First Kean worked with architects to plan an expansion of the current building, but only got as far as adding an elevator and five new bathroom stalls for women before the economic downturn happened. When things began to pick up, he again worked with an architect to design a theater using the old State Theater space, but that plan fell through. Then he worked to plan turning unused space at the adjacent Daily Democrat into a theater expansion, but so far nothing has come of that.

“That’s politics,” says Kean, who shrugs and adds, “They’re supposed to redo the City Hall, redo the library, redo the Opera House, redo all the pools in town, reopen the one that’s been closed and do roads. So far they have done some road work. The pool remains closed, City Hall is just like it was. The library is almost closed. And the Opera House got an elevator and five new toilets. That’s what the citizens of Woodland got for $60 million.”

When asked if it was frustration with politics that caused him to leave his job, he replied, “No. I’ve lived here a long time. I’m used to it. But if the State Theater project had gone forward, if I had seen some determination on the city council’s part to follow through on that project, I would have been honor bound to stay and see it through. I couldn’t have left. I would have seen it through and got it up and running, which probably would have been another four or five years.” He added: “The city voted $3 million dollars to expand the Opera House out of the sales tax money. We’ve used about half a million for design of the building that didn’t work and elevators and the bathrooms and all that. As far as I’m concerned there’s still two and a half million on the table.”

On stage, Mayor Skip Davies expressed his good memories of working relations with Kean and added, “the city isn’t going to forget its obligations to the Opera House.”

Kean was also presented with a state proclamation, signed by State Senator Lois Wolk, D-Davis, which listed his many accomplishments, including the five extra bathroom stalls in the women’s bathroom.

“My legacy is five extra stalls in the women’s room,” said Kean with a laugh. “I’m putting a little plate in the second stall from the window on the right. It says ‘Jeff Kean sat here for 13 years.’ You know actors. They like to leave their name in theaters! It’s exactly where my chair used to sit when it was my office. I couldn’t ask for a better legacy. Leave ‘em laughing.”
In addition to a memorial bathroom stall, the “green room” of the Opera House is now being renamed the “Kean Room.”

Kean seems most proud of the fact that he has built such a competent team that he knows he is leaving the Opera House in good hands. “Angela Baltezore is an excellent administrator, she’s a good director, she can act and she runs a great education program. She’s a good teacher.”

As for Kean, he admits to being tired. Before Woodland, he had never stayed in one place for more than four years, but he’s been here for 18. “It just isn’t fun for me any more,” he says.

Of course there is also his fiancée moving to Southern California for her job and it’s no fun facing a long-distance relationship either. He’s ready to take some time off to smell the roses and walk on the beach before deciding where his life is headed.

“Woodland is a wonderful place,” he says. “I enjoyed everything I’ve done here, but I just wasn’t enjoying theater any more and that really was alarming. It wasn’t hard, but it became a chore. I didn’t want it to be a chore and I was in a position to do something about it. The theater transition was going to be seamless and into the hands of people I trust.”

Elly Award Nominations, 2013

 

More than 450 Elly nominees for the 2012-13 season were announced at an informal nomination reception on Sunday, Aug. 11. Actors, directors, technicians and producers were on hand to listen excitedly for their names to be called.

This past season, 272 shows were submitted by 82 theaters (up from last year’s  244 shows by 78 theaters). Fifty-eight theaters and 123 productions received nominations, with the Woodland Opera House garnering the second largest number of awards (29) and the Davis Musical Theatre Company receiving a very respectable 14.
Woodland Opera House’s John Bowles received four nominations — three for set design (“Peter Pan,” “Stuart Little” and “Goodnight Moon”) and one for lighting design for “Goodnight Moon.” Elisha Machado was nominated for Supporting Actor, Adult for “Goodnight Moon,” and Eric Alley received a nomination in the same category for “Pinkalicious.” Nancy Agee picked up a nomination as Supporting Actress, Adult for “Pinkalicious.”

But the bulk of Woodland’s nominations went to “Peter Pan” (10, including one for Overall Production) and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (nine).

James Glica-Hernandez, nominated for his musical direction for “Peter Pan” was delighted.

“You don’t expect to have that response,” he said, admitting he was still dazed by it all. “I’m so proud of ‘Peter Pan.’ We had a great team and a great cast.”

He was particularly happy to see Emily Jo Seminoff, nominated for her role as Peter Pan (and also as Supporting Actress in “Hairspray” with DMTC). “She takes her participation so seriously and works so hard. She is very professional and she has such joy in it. I love that.”

Rodger McDonald, nominated for his dual roles as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook in “Peter Pan,” was happy to work with Seminoff, who also just won Woodland’s annual Chesley Award for “Peter Pan.”

“Emily Jo is very good and worked hard at it,” McDonald said, and then commented on his own nomination. “That role is such a juicy role. You have to be half an imbecile not to get laughs. I really enjoyed doing it.”

Emily O’Flaherty picked up a nomination in the Best Actress, Child for her role as Wendy Darling in “Peter Pan,” a nomination that particularly pleased Glica-Hernandez.

“Emily started with me as a private vocal student about three years ago,” he said. “She was a timid little girl, and now here she is with an Elly nomination. Unreal. I’m the old proud grandpa.”

Others nominated for “Peter Pan” include Jeff Nauer (Supporting Actor, Adult), Betsy Taloff (Supporting Actress, Adult) and Bailey Robinson (Supporting Actor, Child).

Angela Baltezore also received dual nominations for that show, for both set design and lighting design. The latter nomination tickled Jeff Kean, the general manager and frequent set and lighting designer of the Woodland Opera House.

“Angela had never done lighting in her life before. I don’t think she had ever been on a ladder in her life. It’s all part of my evil plan,” he said with a laugh.

Bobby Grainger picked up a nomination as director for “The Drowsy Chaperone,” one of nine nods for that show.
“We had really great cast,” he said “It’s just a fun show to do. The whole team is really excited.”

Grainger, who had appeared in the show last year with a theater company that is no longer in existence, was tapped by Kean to direct Woodland’s production and brought several of that cast across the causeway with him.
“Some people have this crazy notion the causeway is 75 miles long. It’s really only a 35-minute drive. We arranged car pools,” he said.

“I go for best talent and best chemistry. My goal is to put on the best show that will sell the most tickets. I want the audience to have a good time and to smile. I’m very much sophomoric, and I love slapstick. I have a good time.”

The goal must have worked because by the end of its run, “The Drowsy Chaperone” — which also won a nomination for Overall Production — was playing to sold-out houses.

Colby Salmon and Stuart Eldridge received nominations in the leading actor category. Eldridge played “Man in the Chair,” the only character in the show without a name.

“Stuart is a tremendously talented man,” Grainger said. “He and I had lengthy conversations about why he said his lines, who he was, and why he was sitting in the chair. I wanted to give him a name and an identity.”

Others nominated from “Drowsy Chaperone” include Ryan Adame (supporting actor), Gino Platina (choreography), Denise Miles (costume design) and Bradley Moates (musical direction).

Jason Hammond received three nominations for DMTC’s sparkling production of the Elly-nominated “Hairspray” (direction, choreography and sound design), though he says “I really had my hand in almost every cookie jar at that time,” including set design and design of the 35 wigs used in the show.

“I loved it so much. We had that kind of positive energy where you get creative and have synergy with other people.”

Hammond, too, was pleased with Seminoff’s nomination in the supporting actress category as the “bad girl” in “Hairspray.”

“I’ve worked with her a couple of times and to see her growth, especially in the past couple of years, has been wonderful,” he said. “She’s doing incredible work, and is a great lady, too.”

“Hairspray” also received other nominations for Denise Miles (costume design), Steve Isaacson (lighting design), Christine Deamer (set design), Andy Hyun (supporting actor) and Danielle Hansen-Penny (supporting actress).
Tevye Ditter, nominated as leading actor in “Urinetown,” says it is one of his favorite shows. He played the role in 2012 for Runaway Stage and was pleased to have another opportunity for DMTC.

“It has a lot of very smart comedy in it, and paid homage to a lot of other shows and genres,” Ditter said. “It makes fun of itself and is very self-aware.”

DMTC also picked up nominations for Laura Woodruff (leading actress in “Oklahoma!”), Jenny Plasse (supporting actress in “Cats”) and Jan Isaacson for choreography for “Wizard of Oz.”

Named for the late Eleanor McClatchy, a devoted patron of the arts and former publisher of the Sacramento Bee, the Elly Awards celebrate excellence and the outstanding achievements of community theaters and artists in the greater Sacramento area. Created 31 years ago by local community actors, the Elly Awards have grown from a Sacramento tradition to now include theaters within a 70-miles radius.

In celebration of the 31st annual Elly Awards, SARTA will host two ceremonies this September. The Youth Elly Award ceremony will be at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8, at the Roseville Theatre Arts Academy. The Adult Elly Award ceremony will be at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22, at the Red Lion Inn, Woodlake.

Tickets are available now at brownpapertickets.com. For more information,  visit www.sarta.com.

Ambitious Season for DMTC

Steve Isaacson, general manager and company leader, is very excited about the Davis Musical Theatre Company’s 2012-13 season, which begins Friday with the six-time Tony award-winning musical comedy “City of Angels.”

“It’s a very esoteric season,” Isaacson admitted. “It’s not your grandfather’s season.” But he believes DMTC audiences are sophisticated enough to embrace it, and he is looking forward to full houses and a lot of fun.

“The season ticket response has been great,” he said, enthusiastically.

“City of Angels” will be followed by the Alan Menken version of “A Christmas Carol” in November, Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” in January, “Urinetown” in February, “Oklahoma!” in April and Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” in June.

” ‘City of Angels’ is the most technically difficult show we’ve ever done,” Isaacson says. “It makes our production of ‘Titanic’ look like ‘Our Town.’ ”

He explained that the show tells the story of an author struggling to turn his book into a screenplay in the 1940s.

“There are 40 scenes, going from black and white to color and then color to black white, with set pieces that are identical in both color and black and white. There are so many set pieces that there’s no room backstage, so we’re being very inventive.”

Isaacson is excited about his cast of 30. He mentioned specifically “The Angel City Four,” who sing tight Manhattan Transfer harmonies throughout the show.

“And we have a great ensemble,” he added. “A show is only as good as your ensemble. It’s a very strong ensemble. I’m very pleased with it.”

In an unusual move, DMTC is presenting “A Christmas Carol” in November, rather than December. ”It’s a fun, fun, fun show. Very Christmassy.”

This version of the Dickens classic is the one that was a 2004 TV production, starring Kelsey Grammar. It played every holiday at New York City’s Madison Square Garden from 1994 until 2003.

“I really wanted to do it closer to Christmas, but we kind of have a huge show — ‘Follies’ — opening on New Year’s Eve,” he explained.

“Follies,” which just closed on Broadway, is the iconic Sondheim hit and seven-time Tony winner about two couples who reunite on the eve of the demolition of their beloved theater. The show, last seen on the DMTC stage in 1989, centers on the couple’s dreams, harsh realities of times and the uncertainty of the future.

It’s also a dream show for longtime costumer Jean Henderson.

“Jean’s been with us 22 years as a volunteer,” Isaacson said. “She chooses to spend her retirement not sitting around relaxing, but she loves doing this and we love having her. We’re probably going to have to carry her out — in an absolutely gorgeous dress.”

Isaacson said he was most concerned about audience response to “Urinetown,” a satirical comedy musical that pokes fun at everything, from government bureaucracy and the legal system to corporate America’s mismanagement and social irresponsibility.

“It’s a funny, funny show with a terrible title. I love it that they spoof ‘West Side Story,’ they spoof ‘Fiddler,’ they spoof ‘Oliver,’ they spoof everything they could think of.”

Isaacson first saw “Urinetown” in New York and thought it was the funniest show he’d ever seen. But he was careful about how he introduced it to the audience when he announced the upcoming season.
“I was most concerned about our senior audience, but season ticket holders have been asking me already if they can get extra tickets so they can bring their grandchildren,” he said.

There were no such concerns about “Oklahoma!” The perennial Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, always a favorite, was last seen at DMTC in 2006.

The season closes with Bernstein’s “Candide,” not done at DMTC since 1989
.
“Nobody does ‘Candide,’ ” Isaacson said. They are remodeling the theater, removing seats and placing them on the stage so it can be presented as much in the round as possible.

“To me, there has to be an education of the audience. I want to expose the audience to good theater, I want all theaters to be good. I don’t want theaters to fail. I don’t want theaters to go out of business. I don’t want theaters to put on shows that are not good.

“I want them to have the best talent available, so audiences go ‘Wow — that was good. I loved “Drowsy Chaperone” at Woodland, so let’s go see “City of Angels.” ’ ‘I’ve never heard of “Drowsy Chaperone”; I’ve never heard of “City of Angels.” Wow, there is incredible talent in this area.’

“That’s what I want. That’s what I hope we get.”

Starting its 29th season, DMTC is California’s longest-running, year-round amateur musical theater company. It has a dedicated group of volunteers — actors, directors, choreographers, musicians and backstage people. It’s easy to see what keeps people coming back year after year.

“We just had our ‘Hit of Hits,’ a thank you to 350 volunteers from this past year. We gave them a certificate of appreciation, every single one of them. It wasn’t an event for the public. We weren’t charging. The season-ticket holders were invited and some came. They just loved it.

“We had hors d’oeuvres, we had desserts. We did scenes from the past season and a preview of the next season. We had a blast doing that. I believe that nonprofits should be volunteer. I find it easier to get volunteers when you volunteer yourself,” said Isaacson, who along with his wife, Jan, is an unpaid volunteer.

“God knows this is stressful,” Isaacson said, laughing. ” I wake up every day stressed from this, but it’s worth it. It’s a lot of fun. We’ve lasted 28 years.”

Robert Lautz (feature story)

 It will be a proud day when Robert Lautz’s play, “The Meaning of it All” makes its world premiere at California Stage’s Wilkerson Theater on Friday, April 27. Directed by Ray Tatar, this 20th presentation for California Stage is set in the Italian Renaissance and deals with love, intrigue and alchemy.

It is also a debut play for Lautz, who has spent the past six years polishing his skills as a playwright. What the audience will see is his 11th version of this story, which he has been thinking about for most of his life.
This now 50-something-year-old did not start out to be a playwright; he wanted to be a jazz musician. Lautz had played music all his life and went to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston as a drummer, but found that didn’t really meet his needs.

“When you’re a drummer, they give you a pad and put you in a room and tell you to keep banging on it,” he said.

Looking for more interaction, after making friends with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton (who went on to become vice president of Berklee, before his retirement), Lautz took up the vibraphone and became a composition major (“a natural for a percussionist,” he says).

After graduation, he “borrowed” the family car (his father never got it back) and drove across the country to return to his native California. He had grown up in the Bay Area and after his return, settled in Santa Cruz.
“I got there in April and the car still had snow tires on it,” he recalls.

He became a street musician, playing on the streets and in malls and gigs up and down the California coast, whenever he could find work, supporting himself for some 20 years.

It was after his wife, whom he met in Santa Cruz, became pregnant that he decided that “this jazz musician thing may not work out financially.”

In 1995, he ended up on the California Arts Council, a move that would bring him to Davis. By this time he had two daughters, ages 4 and 2, and real estate agents took him all over Sacramento looking for a house.
“Then I drove out to Davis, first getting lost on Olive Drive. But we fell in love with the town. It was a great place to raise our daughters,” he said.

Friends in Sacramento warned him that Davis was where the liberals were, “but we came from Santa Cruz!” he added, laughing.

“I’d always liked writing,” Lautz said, when asked about his play. Built while concentrating on his music, he’d never written anything officially. He had an idea floating around in his head about what would happen if someone invented a “universal solvent” that dissolves anything (kind of a variation on the King Midas touch).
He approached California Stage’s Ray Tatar with his idea.

“I was so naive,” he said. “He probably gets hundreds of play ideas pitched to him.”

Tatar, however, was intrigued enough to let Lautz know he would be willing to read his script once it was written, and if it was good enough, he would produce it.

Realizing that Lautz had no experience writing a play, Tatar suggested he connect with Rich Foster, the dramaturg for California Stage.
“He lives in Sonora and is a wonde
rful playwright and writer and volunteers his time to help aspiring writers,” Lautz explained. “Without him, I would not know how to write a play.”

Over the next five to six years, Lautz worked on his play, and Foster gave constructive criticism.

“I remember the first draft I sent him. He just tore it apart. He’s been wonderfully honest. After his criticism, I asked lots of questions. He said ‘bravo to your wonderful response to my savagery.’ ”

Lautz discovered that when one plot point doesn’t work, it sometimes requires making massive changes. His cast, for example, doubled in size, from three to six.

“Writing is a struggle. You lock yourself in a room and ask ‘why am I even attempting this?’ Rick would have ideas different from mine, but it made me realize he was right,” Lautz said.

“Sometimes you have dialog working so well but then you realize that in order to introduce a new idea you have to tear apart something and then mend it. I might be in love with a line that works well and realize I had to throw it out to get better perspective about what the story is all about.”

One of the ideas that had to go was the play’s setting. Lautz explained that originally he had scenes all over the place, including one on top of the leaning tower of Pisa, until he realized that, economically, he needed to find a way to set the whole thing in one room.

There will be incidental music throughout the play, from the time before the play starts to exit music. Lautz did a lot of research on music of the period which, he explained, tends to be mostly sacred vocal music music.

“I wanted small instrumental ensembles and I’ve found some really wonderful, charming and even goofy music,” he said.

Lautz also sought help from Franco Renosto, a retired UC Davis faclty member who is perhaps better known as a youth soccer coach, for translating some of the script into Italian, to give the play an authentic sound.

“When the characters get angry, they are more likely to speak rapidly in Italian,” he said.

After a long labor process, “The Meaning of It All” is about to be born, and there will be no prouder first-time papa than Lautz. The show opens April 27 and runs weekends through May 27. On Sunday, April 29, the playwright and his translator will hold a talk-back with the audience.

My Spiritual Death (feature story)

Katie Rubin may just be one of the busiest performers you’re likely to meet.

She is just finishing a run in Capital Stage’s “In the Next Room, The Vibrator Play,” she recently brought her “Amazing & Sage, a Joke-o-so-theom,” to Capital Stage and other stages in Northern and Southern California, and now she is back with her newest one-woman show, “My Spiritual Death, a Comedy Show.”
Her solo show will be presented for two nights only, Friday and Saturday, at Capital Stage in Sacramento.

The UC Davis graduate, now Los Angeles-based actress, already has performed this work several times in Los Angeles and twice in Sacramento.

Can jokes about family trauma, addiction, self-loathing, affirmations, abundance consciousness, new thought-ism and energy healing actually make us laugh?

Rubin had been writing jokes for a long time.

“I had this idea to do a small hour of stand-up material on spirituality and recovery for five years or so,” she explains. “One day I was sick of having these jokes and not doing anything with them, so I contacted my friend Georgia at the Center for Spiritual Awareness and said ‘Let’s do a show in three months.’ In that three-month period of time I turned all of my jokes into a show.”

Unlike her previous shows, “Amazing and Sage” and “Insides Out,” this show is less personal.

“It has two characters who create a kind of narrative structure and the jokes happen at the end,” Rubin says.

“This was easier to do than the first two shows,” she adds. “In part, because I already had all the material, but also because it was not so personal to me, it wasn’t so gut-wrenching and painful and connected to my own inner journey, it was more about people I had observed outside of myself.

“It’s easier to create a character when it’s not your own story. The character who narrates the show is an amalgam of many people I met in 12-step rooms, but the narrator of the show is not me.”

Anyone who has watched the actress in any of her one-woman shows knows how frenetic she works, creating various characters and displaying conflicting emotions rapidly and seamlessly as she bounces about the stage.

“My Spiritual Death” runs “a nice tight hour,” she explains, adding that the show doesn’t have a formal director.

“It’s not a show that requires much direction,” Rubin says. “I have a couple of friends I trust in L.A. who are giving me feedback when I have performed it in L.A. a few times. They have given really useful feedback that has functioned as a directorial eye.”

Rubin is expanding her performing opportunities. She divides her time between Sacramento and Los Angeles, where she is involved with Rogue Machine Theater, which she describes as “The Capital Stage of Los Angeles — a really edgy, interesting, high-energy, smart company.”

She also has begun auditioning at large equity houses in Los Angeles and all of the equity principal auditions for Broadway touring shows and larger houses.

“I feel like I’m on a good track,” Rubin says. “People say good things, and often have me sing a second song, which means they are interested in you.”

I asked the actress how she deals with the inevitable rejection that comes with life in the theater, and she thanks her 12-step work for that.

“I have a very specific emotional and spiritual process that I use that helps me deal with the heartaches that come with all the rejection,” she explains. “When I was in New York, I met an actress who was working successfully on Broadway. She said to me, ‘the best advice I can give you is find a way to grieve all of your losses because you will get rejected more than you will get accepted so you have to accept it or you’re going to be bitter or go crazy or quit.’

“That has stayed with me. I knew that she was right. I was never very good at doing that until the last few years until I went to my healing school. where I learned how to meet the needs of my own heart and tend to myself.

“When I’m rejected. there is a way that it needs to be addressed so I don’t just suck it in and pull up my bootstraps. I don’t believe in that any more. I don’t agree with ‘tough it up’ mentality.

“Now I believe it is about softening and deepening and coming into contact with the part of ourselves that feels so hurt and sad and unloved and nurturing those parts of ourselves.”

Katie Rubin isn’t feeling hurt and sad and unloved these days, however. She is on fire and good things are happening for her.

“My Spiritual Death, a Comedy Show” is one of those good things, and should be a good thing for those in the audience fortunate enough to see it.

Amazing and Sage

In 2006, I wrote a review of a one-woman show called “Insides OUT!” I opened that review by saying, “Stop what you’re doing right now, go to the telephone, call Sacramento Theater Company, and order tickets for the production of “Insides OUT!” the powerful one-woman show by Katie Rubin. It’s that good.”

Those who took my advice and were fortunate enough to see this extraordinary piece of theater will be overjoyed to know that at long last Rubin is ready to reveal her latest work, which she calls “Amazing & Sage, a Joke-O-So-Theom,” at Capital Stage’s brand-new theater, 2215 J St. in Sacramento, for three nights only, starting Sunday.

The unusual secondary title is because Rubin says her show is “one long joke/song/theatrical poem.” While her first work was a “no-holds-barred, emotional, funny, gut-wrenching look at the 29-year-old Rubin’s journey through alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, food addiction and self-loathing,” the current work centers on Rubin’s relationship history.

“It is a story, my continuing story, of the evolution of a human, me, as she trudges the road of deep spiritual waking that emerges as the result of letting go of dysfunctional relationships and relationship patterns,” she said in a recent interview.

Described as a “recovery entertainer,” Rubin began writing her show in graduate school in 2004. She explained that this show took a long time to write because she hadn’t yet lived through the things that she was writing about and she needed to live through them and fully heal before she could write about them.

“The story is about the healing pattern of unhealthy relationships,” she said. “I was simultaneously experiencing a transformation around those issues. It was very difficult and painful and uncomfortable to write.

“By the time I got the first act down on paper, I was so out of the relationship that created the impetus to write the play (that) I didn’t want to write about it any more.”

However, she realized she had something important here and decided to try to finish it. Then she created yet another delay for herself.

“I thought wouldn’t it be cool to be narrated entirely in poetry,” she explained. “It took me a longer time to heal the issues than I thought it would, and it took much longer to write because of the form.

“The piece is narrated poetically so the whole thing is a poem, but the moments that are not rhyming and poetic are the dialog moments with the other characters.”

Unlike “Insides OUT!,” where the many characters were all aspects of Rubin’s self, the characters in “Amazing & Sage” are not necessarily simply aspects of her own psyche, but six or seven other characters she encounters on her spiritual journey.

This is a piece that is about going beyond mental and normal therapeutic means to heal an issue that, for Rubin, was not otherwise healable.

“I needed to delve into really deep space of consciousness and deep spiritual states. I needed to go to great lengths to bring about transformation,” she said.

“This piece seeks to articulate that process with language that in and of itself is otherworldly. My interest is in taking people on a journey into another realm, and it’s cool to have us be already in another realm by way of language.”

In making her own journal through this transformation, Rubin sought a lot outside help. “I went to a three-year energy healing school, delved very deeply into Sufism and the healing techniques in the Sufi tradition. It was profound, the most profound healing I’ve experienced.

“I’ve done a lot of different energy work, a lot of therapy, Name it, I’ve done it. This, for me, is the most potent and the most effective in terms of bringing about actual and lasting change.”

Rubin began her career as a comedic writer/performer at Amherst College with her first original piece, “PartyBoobyTrap.” Her second play was produced through the 2000 New York Fringe Festival. “Insides OUT!” was her third original piece and her first one-woman show.

She is a graduate of the theater and dance program at Amherst College. She has studied at the Wynn Handman Studios, at Annie Bogart’s SITI Company and has a master of fine arts degree from UC Davis.

In addition to performing and writing original material, Rubin also works as a stage, screen and voice-over actress, and as an acting and vocal coach. While teaching acting to undergraduate students at UCD, she appeared in “The Laramie Project” and the musical “Falsettos.”

In 2000, Rubin made her television debut as a law student on A&E’s “100 Center Street” with Alan Arkin. She has continued to tour “Insides OUT!” to venues across the United States for the past eight years.

She came to Capital Stage because she had seen its production of “American Buffalo” and found it “guttural, visceral and inspiring.” She approached Capital Stage co-founder Stephanie Gularte with the idea of writing a three-person play that would be as guttural and visceral, but written for women, instead of for men.

“You don’t see that,” Rubin said. “Where women are all laying it out there like men do.”

Gularte liked the idea but time passed without any official commitment. Then Capital Stage received an Irvine Foundation grant to support female playwrights writing plays for women and Gularte asked Rubin if she was still interested in developing the play they had discussed.

“What happened was that every time I tried to write it, I would find myself working on the one-woman piece that I had started previously. I couldn’t help myself, so I surrendered to the process,” Rubin said.

The end result was a play about a woman written by a woman. Thankfully, Gularte liked it and felt it satisfied the requirements of the grant.

“I was very happy and very grateful,” Rubin said.

“Amazing & Sage” is directed by Janis Stevens, an actress and director. And, if past experience is any indication, those who attend this production will be in for something very special.

Gallathea (feature story)

'It rocks the world of traditional theater while exploring sex, identity, lust, love, infidelity, deception and denial with burlesque flair. It is sophisticated and coarse at the same time.'

So reads the description of UC Davis' upcoming production of John Lyly's 1588 comedy, 'Gallathea,' opening Thursday at UCD's Main Theater.

Director Peter Lichtenfels notes that the play feels like 'vaudeville and (almost) stand-up comedy.' He thinks audiences will enjoy the bawdy and surprisingly contemporary humor of 'Gallathea.' Fans of 'As You Like It' 'are sure to enjoy Lyly's play and Lichtenfels' fun and uproarious update of this classic.'

Showing off their ship hats - the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria - are,

from left, Mark Suarez, Matthew Canty
and Mitchell Vanlandingham,
in UC Davis' production of 'Gallathea.'
(Matthew Dunivan/Courtesy photo)

Lichtenfels first read the play three years ago and fell in love with it.

'It's funny, contemporary, and deals with issues that are of concern to our society today. I was blown away by it and couldn't understand why it's rarely done,' he said.

Though Lyly's language is more accessible to today's audiences than Shakespeare's, the director modernized a few words in the text, but the staging is contemporary, and he does not attempt to do it in the traditional way it would have been done in 1588.

'What I like doing is looking at a play and filtering what it says about now. My ethos is always 'why do a play if it doesn't talk to us,' ' he said. 'Early modern ideas about men, women and the flexibility of gender are both remarkably similar and completely different to ours today in 'Gallathea.'

'The similarities help us to think about gender and sexuality through the differences of a society and culture from over 400 years ago - with thought-provoking and challenging perspectives on what many people today take for granted.'

Costume designer and Ph.D. candidate Liz Galindo remarks, 'Gallathea is a historical play and creating costumes with a contemporary twist has been a challenge.'

Galindo's costume designs have been featured in recent films, including 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' 'Charlie's Angels' and 'There Will Be Blood'; on TV's 'Sex in the City'; and on the red carpet at the Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes. Actresses Sophia Loren, Cate Blanchett, Cameron Diaz and Uma Thurman have worn her Galindo Couture gowns. She has designed a total of 28 hats for 'Gallathea.'

'This show is about life and all the different hats one has to wear from childbirth to death,' she explains, so it seemed logical to design hats to represent that fact.

She took inspiration from London milliner Philip Treacy, whose hats were featured in one of this season's episodes of 'Project Runway.'

'I had fun researching 21st century haute couture hats and then started creating fun, sexy and over-the-top hats for each character,' Galindo says.

Three brothers wear ship hats that bring Monty Python to mind as the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria adorn their heads. She got the idea from one of Treacy's hats of a three-masted ship, and she found vintage wooden boats on e-Bay.

'The challenge is making them stay on,' she laughed.

The shaping of this production has been a collaborative process. The actors and director participated in an improv workshop that allowed everyone to voice ideas that would be incorporated into the finished product.

The group even set up a Facebook page and characters from the play have Facebook identities and participate in online discussion as their characters.

'I'm finding myself looking at the astronomical time that daylight-saving time ends,' says the character of Tyterus, whose bio includes the fact that he is self-employed as a shepherd and that he likes to 'tend to flock, marvel at landscape and tell stories to daughter.'

Lichtenfels was inspired by watching how his son could multi-task, using the cell phone and an iPod while watching television and keeping up-to-date with his friends on Facebook, all at the same time. His production will include not only the action on stage but also will incorporate video and sound.

Multi-media artist John Zibell decided to give cameras to the actors and let them film the action on stage from the wings (or just themselves backstage), which then will be projected onto two screens on the stage itself.

The audience also will be permitted to use cameras and cell phones, if they wish, and are encouraged to text or tweet about the performances as they are happening.

'We have to ask how kids want their stories told these days,' Lichtenfels said. 'They like short bursts of lots of stuff.'

It seems clear that 'Gallathea' will consist of 'lots of stuff,' and that Lichtenfels may be discovering new ways for younger audiences to enjoy a 16th century classic in the age of television, the Internet and instant gratification.

Back in the Barnyard (Feature Article)

Barnyard Theater, the charming, quirky group that performs out at Schmeiser's Barn on Road 31 every summer, is back for its seventh season.

'It's exciting!' said co-founder Stephen Schmidt. 'It doesn't feel like seven years, but when I think of all the shows we've done, I realize it's a lot.'

Schmidt has directed everything in Barnyard's history until now, but is taking more of a backseat role this year.

'Lyndsay Carpenter is directing this time,' he said. 'As an organization, we're trying to do more and trying to have more people involved. We want lots of people filling lots of roles. Lindsay has been involved in Barnyard Theater since 'Galileo' in 2007, but this is the first time she has directed a full production.'

Carpenter has taken on an ambitious project for her directorial debut. This season, instead of offering the usual single play, the company is doing three new one-acts.

'I've been acting since I was 9 years old,' Carpenter said, 'mostly with the Davis Musical Theatre Company, but also with Acme and Barnyard Theater. I also did some high school productions. And last semester, at Tufts University, I directed a 10-minute piece.'

But there's a big difference between directing a 10-minute piece and directing three one-acts, she realizes.

'In the past, I showed up and was told what to do. Now I have to know what I'm doing. I have to be ready to make decisions. A lot more goes on than I ever realized. There've been challenges, but it's nice, because I'm not allowed to not come up with solutions. I have to work through them, because nobody else will.'

Carpenter's directorial debut is in keeping with the company's goal of promoting new talent in all sorts of roles, but still with a safety net of the old timers.

'I've been at most of the rehearsals, and I'm there to provide support and guidance,' Schmidt said. 'It's a cool relationship. I'm functioning more as an artistic director, which is new for me. I enjoy both the artistic and technical sides, but I really like it when I can combine the two and make them work together.

'One thing Barnyard Theater does well is have the tech crew support shows in ways that sometimes don't happen in other companies.'

Over the years, Barnyard Theater has used many interesting technical devices to add to the fun of their shows, perhaps the most memorable of which was during 2006's 'A Flag Touched the Ground.' Instead of having a scene change, the entire platform on which the audience was seated rotated, when it was time for a new scene.

Schmidt promises new tricks this year, as well, but won't go into detail so as not to ruin the surprise.

The decision to perform three plays instead of one came about in conference with company member and playwright Brian Oglesby, about how audiences rarely see fully produced short plays. Then, too, fresh challenges are involved.

'They don't take less production than a full-length play,' Schmidt said. 'We still have to create all the worlds. Production-wise, directing three short plays is the same as directing three long ones.'

The three original one-acts will make use of the unique performance space in and around the working barn, to tell stories about love, relationships and memories.

Rob Rinow's 'Unusual Epitaphs' - opening the evening's entertainment - is a 10-minute piece about a longtime traveler with no roots, who wants to be remembered for being eaten by a bear. He meets a lonely security guard/tour guide/shindig planner whose roots are too deep to break free.

'It's a really heartwarming piece that will start out in the arena outside the barn, facing west, just before sunset,' Schmidt explained. 'As the audience watches the piece, it'll end at sunset.'

Then, in the barn itself, Eva Konstantopoulos' 'Fly Me to the Moon' will present a husband and wife trying to buy themselves the perfect memory: a trip to the moon.

The evening's final play, Brenda Varda's 'Things That Fall From the Sky,' tells the story of Melvia, a young woman whose preoccupation with the Columbia space shuttle disaster changes her relationships with her astronaut brother and astronomer boyfriend.

'Unusual Epitaphs' and 'Things that Fall from the Sky' were read aloud during an earlier season of Barnyard Theater's 'Night of New Plays,' which the company presents each year as unstaged debuts.

Following the plays, audience members are invited to stay for star-gazing in the barnyard. Patrons are reminded to bring sweatshirts in case of chilly weather; bug spray will be provided. Parking at the barn is limited this year, so carpooling is strongly encouraged.

Curtain time is 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday and July 22-25, and 29-31. Advance tickets - $12 general, $8 students and seniors are available at (530) 574-1318 or http://www.barnyardtheatre.org. Tickets at the door will be $16 and $12.