Greetings, theatergoers! It’s been much longer than I ever intended. You know how it is: you take on a couple of exciting projects, one turns out to be particularly engrossing and takes precedence over everything else, and before long you’ve lost the habit of keeping up the other stuff. When it comes to theater, especially, I get very passionate about my current projects. Which ties in nicely with what I want to discuss today.
We’ve got a new-ish (or perhaps I should say, semi-recently reborn) space at the Santa Paula Theater Center, one that serves as an exciting alternative to our already attractive Mainstage, and one that subsists on the sweat of those who get especially worked up about their theatrical endeavors. If you’re a regular, you already know what I’m talking about, as we’ve gotten much better about hyping it up both in our Mainstage curtain speeches and on Facebook. Yes, I refer to the increasingly popular and much spoken-of Backstage. 1 Comment 'Tis the Season... 10/19/2010
…The 2011 SPTC Mainstage season, that is. We’re finally ready to announce next year’s programming, and it’s going to be another exciting, entertaining, educational, and provocative lineup. This gives me a good opportunity to explain something I think a lot of people don’t know much about: our season selection process.
The first thing you have to understand about SPTC’s season programming, and something that differentiates us from some (though certainly not all) of our fellow community theaters in the area, is this: we’ve got an artistic director. I’ve spent time working in various segments of the Ventura County nonprofessional theater scene, and I well understand that the artistic director paradigm is not to everyone’s taste. But man, I’ve gotta say, it really seems to work for us. Everyone Wants to Be an Actor 10/07/2010
It is one of the clichés, if not truisms, of the theatrical world that most people working in it will be tempted to stride across the boards at some point or another, even those who have sworn to remain out of the limelight. My own father, a committed stage manager at SPTC, used to express frequent astonishment at my willingness to show my own vulnerabilities in front of an audience. He was thrilled to contribute to our art in his own way, but acting would never be in the cards. This he avowed.
Then came the call from SPTC Artistic Director David Ralphe. A bit player was needed for the role of a movie theater manager in The Boys Next Door. My father was perfect, David assured him. It was only a handful of lines. It’d be a good learning experience. I watched Dad turn green and break into a cold sweat. But once the offer was there on the table, the future was written. Even Dad’s preemptive attack of stage fright couldn’t compete with the overriding lure of the stage. Within weeks we were having breathless conversations about the craft. He had never properly considered, he told me during one of these, the difficulty actors have in fine-tuning a performance without being able to see themselves from the outside. He constantly worried and fussed over his physicality, his vocal inflections, whether what he thought he was doing was what he was actually doing. It was only a handful of lines, but all the more reason it should be good. He had the bug. Sort of, at least. Lights Up 10/07/2010
Welcome! Yes, friends, Santa Paula Theater Center has been working hard in recent times to catch up with the modern world. We’ve started putting out an email newsletter, launched a gorgeous new Website, started a Facebook page, and now, at long last, we bring you this, the official SPTC Blog. Welcome to the future, theater lovers. It is bright indeed. The blog gives us a less structured and more colorful means of reaching out from the Web and giving you the community the opportunity to know more about us. Of course our regular updates through all other above-mentioned channels will continue, but expect updates from this blog to give additional context and personality to the proceedings. There’ll be a whole host of articles coming down the pipeline very soon, but we also want to hear from you. This being a proper Web 2.0 weblog with comments, you have the ability to weigh in on the proceedings. Let us know what you think, what your experiences have been, and especially what you’d like to learn more about. We’ll be happy to make this blog responsive to your questions and interests. My name is Peter Krause, and for now at least I’ll be your guide around here. I’ve been involved with SPTC off and on since the summer of 1997, when I came on board to run lights for Laughter on the 23rd Floor. I went on to tech for several more productions, and eventually got onstage in 2000, appearing first in The Diary of Anne Frank. These days I also serve on the board. If you’re a long-time audience member, you’ve likely seen me at some point running up to the tech booth, appearing on the stage, or, in one of the rare instances that Leslie Nichols is actually watching a show at another theater, perhaps even giving one of our warm and welcoming preshow speeches. Also, I’m the guy freaking out in the picture gracing the top corner of this page (for context, my dear friend and fellow SPTC devotee Andrea Robles and I were improvising a scene set on a Ferris wheel as part of SPTC’s wildly successful 25th anniversary celebration). I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. Now give me a moment and I’ll go write some real content. Back in a jiff. Friends in The News! 08/24/2010
  John Nichols is featured in an article in the Ventura Star. Click the link to read the entire story: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/aug/28/fertile-ground-for-creativity/ | AuthorPeter Krause ArchivesApril 2011 CategoriesAll |
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