Thousand Oaks Interviews

On July 30, Ingram premiered his play, Sage, a deeply personal slice of life about an old man on a park bench and the various characters that he encounters, either in passing or who come to sit beside him on the bench....

The classic 1964 musical Fiddler On the Roof arrives in Thousand Oaks on Thursday, March 9 and prior to opening we had a chat with Mary Beth Webber, who plays the part of Yente in the show. Mary Beth is jubilant and honored to join this amazing cast and crew as she makes her national tour debut. Her...

Cary Ginell's insightful new book, 'Carefully Taught' looks at 40 musicals, both on Broadway and off, that deal with events and personages in American history. A fun read, educational and highly entertaining. Shows include '1776,' 'Hamilton,' 'Shenandoah,' 'Parade,' 'Hair,' 'Assassins,' and many mor...

Willem Butler, winner of BroadwayWorld's first ever season of Next on Stage, is currently shining bright on stages across the country as Dmitry in the National Tour of Anastasia. A recent graduate from Elon University, Anastasia is Butler's touring debut! Read BroadwayWorld's interview with Willem B...

Jonalyn Saxer grew up in Oak Park dreaming of becoming a star on Broadway. After making her debut in 'Bullets Over Broadway,' Saxer has continued from one show to the next, shining with her superb dancing abilities and versatile singing and acting. This July, she returns to her home town to play the...

Guy Noland is currently in a second career as an actor and having the time of his life. During his early years, Guy found himself looking like 'a million other' young stage actors, but the 9/11 tragedy sent his career in a new direction as he became an award-winning documentary director for the Salv...

Anna Kotula reprises her one-woman show as poet Emily Dickinson in 'The Belle of Amherst,' playing from March 3 - 13 at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard...

Matt Faucher has a knack for playing Nicks. After performing on Broadway and on the national tour of 'Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,' Matt is now doing the same thing with a different Nick - the Four Seasons' Nick Massi. Cary Ginell does an exclusive interview with Matt about this unique and im...

Read a behind-the-scenes look at Broadway's master parodist, Gerard Alessandrini, who dismembers 'Hamilton' with his 2016 spoof 'Spamilton.' The show plays at the Scherr Forum in Thousand Oaks from March 1 - 6. 'I laughed my brains out!' said Lin-Manuel Miranda when he saw this show. You will too....

It's always nice when we see a show that has never been performed in Ventura County so we were looking forward to seeing 5-Star Theatricals' Something Rotten!, the 2015 sendup of Shakespeare that answers the question: 'What if Shakespeare had a rival?' As you will read in our upcoming review in The ...

Director David Krassner brings a deep theatrical resume to his new role as drama director at Agoura High School, which is currently staging 'Rent,' which made its debut nearly a quarter century ago....

Theater veteran Gilles Chiasson, who performed in the original New York Theatre Workshop, Off-Broadway, and Broadway productions of 'Rent' now is in charge of the Performing Arts Education Centers at Agoura and Calabasas High Schools. We talked to him about his experiencing performing in New York wi...

An exclusive interview with Kennedy Caughell, a stunning multi-talented redhead who is currently starring as Carole King in the national touring musical, 'Beautiful: The Carole King Musical' in Thousand Oaks at the Fred Kavli Theatre....

'Bandstand' is a show that fell through the cracks, never sustaining the kind of buzz it deserved on Broadway. But a national tour is different from the Great White Way, and the producers of 'Bandstand,' which won a Tony Award two years ago for Best Choreography, is playing to ecstatic audiences in ...

An interview with Josey Montana McCoy (Huck Finn) and David Aron Damane (Jim), stars of Rubicon Theatre Company's current production of 'Big River.' The immersive, atmospheric production has been critically acclaimed by press and audiences alike and has been extended for an additional week, until No...

In Part 2 of our interview, Kirby & Beverly Ward talk about how they decided to stage 'Big River' in the round at the Rubicon Theatre Company. The result is a production of intimacy and atmospheric beauty....

An interview with Beverly and Kirby Ward, producers and directors of the new production of 'Big River' at the Rubicon Theatre Company....

Trent Mills is one of those versatile young actors who can do it all - a 'five-tool' player who can act, sing, dance, do drama, and comedy and do it all well. Mills is starring as Marcellus Washburn in 5-Star Theatricals' production of 'The Music Man,' which plays through Oct. 27 at the Thousand Oak...

In 5-Star Theatricals' production of 'The Music Man,' Antonia Vivino and Adam Winer take on the roles of River City teens Zaneeta Shinn (the mayor's 'oldest girl') and Tommy Djilas (the 'wild kid from the wrong side of town'). We interviewed them about their characters' back story and the energetic ...

In Part 2 of our interview with Adam Pascal, Adam talks about two traumatic Broadway experiences: going on with 'Rent' right after the sudden death of Jonathan Larson and having to do 'Aida' two days after the 9/11 tragedies....

Broadway star Adam Pascal (the original Roger Davis in 'Rent') comes to Thousand Oaks to play flim-flam man Harold Hill in 5-Star Theatrical's new production of 'The Music Man,' which opens Oct. 18 at the Fred Kavli Theatre. Cary Ginell interviews Pascal about his approach to the show, which he has ...

Mariah Tobin and Dakota Heer play Corie and Paul Bratter, two newlyweds who are moving into a fifth floor Manhattan walkup, only to find the apartment has no furniture, no bathtub, and a gaping hole in the skylight. And it's February. Neil Simon's 1966 classic never had better players in Tobin and H...

Actress Anna Kotula reprises her sold-out performance as Emily Dickinson in William Luce's 'The Belle of Amherst' in a new production staged on August 31 at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura. The show features a champagne reception in which Dickinson's famous 'black cake' recipe will be served ...

Patrick Ortiz, who plays Bernardo in 5-Star Theatricals' production of 'West Side Story,' comes into the show with experience, having played Chino in the Broadway revival and a Shark gang member on the national tour....

Girl-next-door makes good! Calabasas High School graduate Sami Staitman, who is entering her sophomore year as a musical theatre student at Pace University in New York, has already landed her first Off-Broadway starring role in the theatre-themed musical, 'The Green Book,' which opens September 27. ...

An interview with director Larry Raben, who is utilizing new choreography (Karl Warden), ethnic-accurate casting, and a more athletic approach to the look of 'West Side Story' to bring it into the 21st century. 60 years after its debut, the Bernstein/Sondheim classic still packs relevant punch in to...

Pacific Festival Ballet of Thousand Oaks will be premiering its new ballet version of Camelot, the original 'Game of Thrones' in two performances on May 18 at the Fred Kavli Theatre in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Directed and choreographed by Kim Maselli and featuring new music by Eric Allam...

In McCoy Rigby Entertainment's production of '1776,' director Glenn Casale utilizes a mixture of young and veteran performers. In the show, seasoned actors like James Barbour (Edward Rutledge) and Peter Van Norden (Benjamin Franklin) co-star with young newcomers like Jordan Schneider (Lyman Hall) an...

How does a busy soprano balance career, family, motherhood, and art? If that soprano is Julie Makerov, it's all about scheduling and planning ahead of time. Makerov, who will be appearing as one of four soloists with LA's Verdi Chorus this weekend at First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica, sa...

5-Star Theatricals' new artistic director Patrick Cassidy talks more about his vision for the future regarding the company's forthcoming seasons of musicals....

Newly appointed artistic director Patrick Cassidy, son of Shirley Jones and the late Jack Cassidy, puts a lifetime of theatrical experience to work as he begins his first season helming 5-Star Theatricals' musical theatre program in Thousand Oaks....

An inventive costume, makeup, and wig design highlights Moorpark College's production of 'Clue: The Musical,' playing through August 5 at the school's black box theatre....

Disney's Classic Film and subsequent Broadway Musical are not easy to recreate and to do justice to as well, both to the animated film version and the original stage production. Five Star Theatricals has opened this past weekend at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza/Kavli Theatre with a most lavish,...

For the first time in 22 years, Susan Egan takes to the stage in her pioneering role as Belle in 'Beauty and the Beast.' 5-Star Theatricals' production (July 20-29) is being directed by Yvette Lawrence, who took over the role of Belle after Egan vacated it in Los Angeles over two decades ago. We spo...

An interview with mental health professionals Erik Sternad and Joelle Vessels of Interface Children & Family Services and Panic! Productions co-executive director Paul Panico about the mental illness displayed in its recent production of 'Next to Normal.'...

Mazie Rudolph knows where Diana Goodman is coming from in Tom Kitt & Brian Yorkey's Pulitzer Prize Winning musical 'Next to Normal.' In this revealing interview, Rudolph and director Fred Helsel talk about mental illness and Mazie's own journey into rediscovering her own traumas from the past....

Alan Waserman plays Shakespeare super-villain Iago in Playhouse 101's production of 'Othello.'...

The recent women's march and #MeToo Movement have suddenly made Alan Ball's comic-serio play 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress' even more relevant than it was in 1993 when it made its debut. Read about how Brian Robert Harris came to direct the show at the Camarillo Skyway Playhouse....

An interview with director Timothy Reese, who discusses the process of a first read-through of 'Heathers: The Musical' - which opens January 5 at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks....

A talk with the actors who portray the Klingon equivalents of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present in Lit Live's West Coast premiere of 'A Klingon Christmas Carol,' playing at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley beginning December 14....