Arts Listings

Roald Dahl’s classic story, Big Friendly Giant, is onstage now at the Ashby Stage, produced by Berkeley Playhouse; Fiddler on the Roof opens this weekend, produced by Youth Musical Theater Co. (YMTC) at the Julia Morgan Center.  

Berkeley Playhouse features professional adult actors. YMTC puts their professionally trained youth company onstage with full orchestra. What both companies have in common is a mission to bring professional standards to family theatrical entertainment. 

“I realized at some point that if audiences didn’t know what they were missing,” said Elizabeth McKoy, artistic director of Berkeley Playhouse, “the future of theater would be in trouble.” 

“The demand is there among young people for professional training,” said Jennifer Boesing, stage director of YMTC. “And they rise to those expectations when they experience it. But there’s not a ton of opportunity for training, especially year-round programs. In school, they can put on shows, but they don’t get that kind of training.” 

They echoed each other in their commitment to nurturing the love of live performance, building informed audiences for the future. “It’s keeping the muscle of the imagination in practice,” said McKoy. “We can’t compete with multimedia and special effects. But we can provide the illumination of the human character. And the audience has different physical reactions to theater in real time. When there’s music, toes have to tap, bodies have to move.”  

Boesing took it further: “Cultivating audiences of theater lovers makes for engaged citizens. They see what collaboration means, that articulateness makes for authenticity, being able to speak with your own voice.” 

There’s a giant mural—literally—outside the Ashby Stage, and the lobby is decorated with props from the show for interactivity with audience members. There’s a wall to write on, and the actors appear, in character, to meet the audience offstage.  

Inside, onstage, on Kim Tolman’s Victorian attic set, the cast of 15 characters are becoming giants together, several actors to each giant, using found objects—recycled coke bottles, an empty laundry basket—and it’s all to scale.  

“We use a stuffed doll, with an actor speaking the lines, as Sophie, whose birthday it is,” Boesing said. “So it’s a believable transformation, to have actors as giants. In the second act, there’s a helicopter scene using hula hoops and flashlights. The actors descend, making the sounds. All 15 engage in telling the story. It’s an actors’ production.” 

The audience is asked to make a card for Sophie that’s put up in the lobby. A play-within-a-play,  

Big Friendly Giant follows Sophie, from the present her father gives her—an empty box—into giant land. “It’s about a father-daughter relationship,” says McKoy. 

YMTC brings the excitement of a full production, with live orchestra, of the great musicals to family audiences. Last summer they put on Into the Woods—Sondheim’s take on fairytales that’s normally considered adult fare. 

Next summer, it’s Les Miserables, an ensemble epic if there ever was one.  

“It’s on the model of summer stock theater,” said Boesing. “We open it up to alumni, to university students—and some of our trainees are in the most prestigious programs now. Last summer some people thought we had ringers brought in from New York among the cast!” 

The fall and summer shows are competitive—and more and more students compete to be cast. 

“They’re not good in spite of being kids,” said Boesing, “But because they are. They have incredible energy. They pull it off, and with excitement. So much theater you go out to see seems phoned in.” 

YMTC began with a one-man show. “Bruce Wicinas was a parent who saw his kids didn’t have enough opportunity to learn and play in musical theater,” she said. “He put shows on in his living room, at first, paid out of his own pocket. He hired me as musical director; at first, for Kiss Me Kate in 2000. It was then Youth Musical Theater Commons. We played in middle school auditoriums, rehearsed where we could—and he was recruiting kids for the shows. In 2003, we staged Les Miz at Longfellow, became a 501-C3 in 2004, with Pam Crane as managing director, and Bruce stepped aside. We helped build the black box at Willard School Metalshop. We hired a professional music director, bigger and better orchestras of pros—and are now year-round, from our non-competitive Pocket Broadway spring show, which attracts younger students, to our competitive summer and fall shows. We want to give them the skills to be competitive, to be full singer-actors. And we have outreach programs, but aren’t recruiting anymore. 16 Bay Area schoolsare represented by the 35 castmembers of Fiddler.”  

Berkeley Playhouse began eight years ago when McKoy started Imagination Players. “My kids didn’t want any more of my two week camps,” she said. Since starting in her living room “with talented friends,” they’ve done 16 shows since being subsumed by Berkeley Playhouse.  

“We’re not a one-show wonder,” McKoy said. “We have a multi-pronged approach.” That includes classes with parents and their “walkers”—1-year-olds—singing together, all the way up through the family age chain. There’s an educational outreach, a partnership with Malcolm X School, workshops for kids—and a youth company besides the adult troupe now at Ashby Stage.  

“The kids are taught by professionals,” she said. “They get the real thing. People think there are teachers and then there’re artists. This way, we can bridge the gap.” 

Both McKoy and Boesing are mothers, and both come from theater backgrounds. Boesing’s from an artist family in Minneapolis. McKoy is from Manhattan, trained in New York and was with Seattle Children’s Theater before moving to Berkeley 9 years ago.  

“The care about the quality of the process is greater here,” she said. “There’s much more collaboration than in New York.”  

She singles out Kimberly and Patrick Dooley of Shotgun Players in particular. “We never could’ve started without such great friends.” 

BIG FRIENDLY GIANT 

Adapted from the Roald Dahl book by David Wood. Directed by Jon Tracy. Ages 5 and up. 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 7 p.m.; 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 23 at Ashby Stage 1901 Ashby Ave. Adults $28, Kids $22 (pay what you can Nov. 6 and 13) www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. 665-5565.  

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF 

7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays (Nov. 7, 8, 14, 15); 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9 at the Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. $20; seniors, $15; 18 and under, $8. brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006. For information, call 595-5514.