Thousand Oaks Interviews - Page 2

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....

Producer Kaelia Winterstein talks about Lit Live's West Coast premiere of the new play 'A Klingon Christmas Carol,' which makes its debut December 14 at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley....

Jukebox musical featuring Elvis Presley catalog is refreshing, funny, and has some of the most energetic, stellar choreography of the year....

Newcomer Miyuki Miyagi was stunning in her SoCal debut in 'Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris' and is now making her first appearance with 5 Star Theatricals with 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' The Brooklyn transplant is an impressive singer and actress and if her pa...

The first stage production of THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, based on the Dreamworks animated feature, will premiere next month at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley....

Versatile actor Will Shupe moonlights as a set designer. Some of his secrets are revealed in this fascinating interview....

Choreographer Becky Castells talks with VC On Stage about working with children and eleven-year-old dance whiz Marcello Silva in the Actors' Repertory Theatre of Simi's production of 'Billy Elliot The Musical'...

Any time a high school theater department takes on a Stephen Sondheim musical, the intensity level cranks up a notch. So when drama teacher Joseph Donia took on Into the Woods, which the school last did in 2008, he needed some extra expertise behind the scenes to deal with Sondheim's uniquely diffic...

Director Aileen-Marie Scott discusses directing techniques and the 2012 Off-Broadway musical, 'Dogfight,' about a special relationship that develops on the eve of the Vietnam War....

Last month I went to a private showcase of music from the musical Hamilton. The showcase was organized by pianist/arranger/singer Justin Ramos, former director of vocal music at Newbury Park High School who is now living in New York. For his cast, Ramos utilized some of the more talented singers he ...

There are three new events being unveiled at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center Thursday evening: Lit Live, a new local production company, And Lightning Struck, a new play written by the eminent local actor and producer Robert Weibezahl, and a new director, 21-year-old Austin Robert Miller. The s...

Siena Avila is like many other 16-year-old high schoolers you know. Cheerful, friendly, enthusiastic, and just a little bit shy. But Siena has one thing that most kids her age don't have, an amazing singing ability and a natural instinct for performing everything from light opera to musical theate...

Louis Baker has had a varied career in the entertainment world. As an actor, he studied under three prestigious performers: Bill Duke, Haile Gerima, and Debbie Allen. He has worked as a voiceover artist in the animation world, co-produces with his wife a family-centered web series called Faces of Of...

The musical Ragtime, which plays through this Sunday, December 4, at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, is an important work that weaves actual historical personages into the fabric of its three intersecting stories: an upper-class white family, the African American ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walk...

The idea of a woman playing the lead in Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a new one. The first female Hamlet, Elizabeth Powell, performed the role at London's Drury Lane Theatre in 1796 and by 1820, the first American 'Hamlette,' Sarah Bartley, played it at the Park Theatre in New York....

Everyone knows that the director is the person responsible for the look and content of a musical or play, but once the cast has been selected, sets and props are delivered, and all the technical elements are in place, who puts it all together? The week prior to a show's opening is called 'Tech Wee...

Something may be rotten in the state of Denmark but, in Los Angeles, Shakespeare lovers will find all the joy that they can wish when the Library Foundation of Los Angeles opens its newest exhibit: American's Shakespeare: The Bard Goes West on November 17 at the Central Library. The show is a partne...

If you have the opportunity to see Cabrillo Music Theatre's splendid production of Evita this weekend, you will no doubt be drawn to the electrifying performances by its stars, Cassandra Murphy, as Eva Peron, and Marc Ginsburg, as Che (profiled in our October 4 story - http://vconstage.com/marc-ba...

For years I have been saying that the best kept secret in Ventura County theater is the Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company. Celebrating its 10th season this year, the VCGSRC is currently going through its second cycle of the eleven operettas in the canon produced by the venerable...

In Cabrillo Music Theatre's new production of Evita, the role of Che, the narrator figure based on Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, is played by Marc Baron Ginsburg. A Philadelphia native, Ginsburg has enjoyed a varied career on both coasts prior to coming to Cabrillo. His favorite roles include...

His day job is as associate justice of the Second District, Division Six of the California Courts of Appeal, but Steve Perren's passion for the stage has seen him appear in a variety of shows in Ventura County over the years. He played founding father Roger Sherman in Cabrillo Music Theatre's 2012 p...

...

Occasionally we venture out of the sanctity of Ventura County to see how some of our locally raised theatricians are faring in their acting careers. Today we visit with Harrison Meloeny and Michelle Lane, two performers familiar to Cabrillo Music Theatre audiences (both were in Mary Poppins last yea...

Today we meet Katherine Bottoms, a young actress who we hope you will be able to see on stage some day before fame and fortune takes her away from us. Katherine was born in Palm Springs but has lived in Santa Barbara most of her life. Her father and three uncles were actors so it was only natural ...

One important and valuable aspect of Cabrillo Music Theatre's long tenure in Ventura County is its devotion to casting talented young local performers in as many of its productions as it can. Cabrillo's casts are usually laden with a mix of professional Equity lead performers, local and regional tal...

Larry Raben is an accomplished actor and director who has added his prodigious abilities to a multitude of productions around the world. In addition to acting in a command performance before Queen Elizabeth II in London and producing Sweet Charity in Argentina, Raben has also graced Cabrillo Music T...

For the past seven years, composer Christopher Hoag has conjured up battle scenes, storms, romance, and adventure with his music for Kingsmen Shakespeare Company's annual summer festival. If you've seen one of their productions, you know how beautifully his rich orchestral scores enhance Shakespeare...

In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about community and family in a Dominican-American neighborhood in New York City, has a multi-layered meaning for its talented cast. The production, which is currently being presented at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, features veteran television ac...

Playing a character is hard enough for many actors and actresses who are starting out in musical theater, but The Drowsy Chaperone throws its performers a curve because of the complicated nature of the show. A cloistered record collector, the character known only as Man in Chair, shares his favori...

Last night's opening of Cabrillo Music Theatre's Children of Eden was every bit as enchanting and magical as anticipated. After the debacle of Theater League's Ragtime, in which two synthesizer players were hidden back stage, out of sight of the audience, it was a pleasure to hear a sumptuous orch...

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was originally a short story penned in 1953 by Dorothy M. Johnson (1905 - 1984), who wrote numerous articles and stories with Western themes. In 1962, Valance was adapted for motion pictures in a blockbuster film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, James...

It's not often when a person is able to develop their own stage show about their idol, but for the past four years, actor/singer Scott Dreier has done that very thing, when, in 2011, he started paying tribute to former actress/singer Doris Day. Dreier has toured all over the U.S. with Doris and Me...

I haven't posted a story yet this year because I've been busy. For the past two weeks, I've been immersed in learning the flute part to the score of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which concludes a brief four-day, five-show run this afternoon at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts. Spelli...

December 12 marks the centennial of Frank Sinatra's birth, which makes the arrival of Sandy Hackett's Rat Pack Christmas, which plays for one performance this Saturday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, all the more special. Since 2009, Hackett, son of the late comedian Buddy Hackett, and his ...

Like many Ventura County performers, Autumn Bodily has a long career in local theater. She started as a teenager in 1986 with Young Artists Ensemble in one of their earliest productions. Autumn made her Conejo Players debut in 1989 in Annie before getting married at 22 and moving around the state. S...

One of the most talented musicians to join the Ventura County musical theater scene in the past few years has been Cassie Nickols. Most audiences haven't seen Cassie before because she has spent most of her time behind the scenes, working first as a rehearsal pianist and then as assistant musical di...

For an actor, Renee Marino has lived a charmed life. This Friday, the 'Jersey Girl' will be appearing in Cabrillo Music Theatre's production of Damn Yankees, in the part of Lola, the Devil's vixen whose job is to charm baseball phenom Joe Hardy into cheating on his wife. Renee is a director's dream....

On October 2, Camarillo Skyway Playhouse debuts its production of Nine. Based on Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film, 8 1/2, the musical version, which features a score by Maury Yeston, tells the story of Guido Contini, a film director approaching his 40th birthday who undergoes a midlife ...

Nicole Parker stars opposite Justin Kirk in the west coast premiere of THESE PAPER BULLETS! A Modish Ripoff of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at Geffen Playhouse this month. Written by Rolin Jones (Weeds, Friday Night Lights, Boardwalk Empire) with songs by Green Day frontman Billie Jo...

Idina Menzel will perform in Toronto this Wednesday at the Sony Centre as part of her 2015 world tour. Menzel is of course best known for her work in WICKED and FROZEN, and also recently concluded a Broadway run in her star vehicle IF/THEN, which she will take on tour this fall....