- What year did the Wagner Arts Foundation come along?
Mrs. Wagner's experience to the Lilac Theater was when she attended
Cloteal Horne's performance of Anne Frank. This was in 2003. She had been
invited by Mrs. Mary Wagner to see how special the program was with the
idea that she might want to help out financially. At that time the
techies had to climb extremely rickety old ladders to change lights and
paint the sets. At our cast party for Anne Frank, Mrs. Wagner made her
first big donation to the program by buying us two beautiful new
expandable ladders. The techies took a number of pictures of themselves sitting
proudly on their new ladders.
- When did 6 to 6 After School Program get involved in the drama program?
The YMCA, before the 6 to 6 Program came into existence, met with me in
2002. Patrick, the area supervisor, had heard of our theater and
wanted to help. That year the YMCA bought us a beautiful main curtain that
we still use today. The following year they bought us a computer so that
we could make our own DVD's and show the bloopers on the screen.
- What year changed the theatre the most? [Besides this year]
In 2004 Mrs. Wagner bought us a brand new sound system. Up until that
time we had to play music and sound effects over a large cassette
player. That was the first time I had ever heard the term "ghetto" as in,
"That is the most ghetto sound system we ever seen, Mr. Maher".
- What year did the Lilac Theatre start?
Our first performance was Christmas Carol in 1999. This was also the
first year in the drama room, which had been used up until that time as
everything from a detention room to an English classroom.
1st year: The drama room, when I first walked into it that September
morning of 1999, was a gutted shell of a theater. The curtains had long
ago been ripped out. There were holes in the wall that we had to seal.
Graffiti covered the side walls. Trash, several years old, filled the
stage. We found old broken phonographs, thousands of spiders, old rags,
and rats, long deceased, still stuck in old mouse traps. A group of
twenty-two students met with me after school and together we began the long
process of restoring the theater. We had to wash out the room with a
hose, paint, tape, repair, and then wash again the entire stage. The
stage lights were nothing more than florescent lighting that we switched
on and off. The bulbs had to be replaced and the plastic screens had to
be cleaned out. We went to every store, shop, and supermarket we could
think of and begged them for donations.
That first year, after we performed Christmas Carol, we performed, at
the end of the 2000 school year, Romeo and Juliet. We hand made our main
curtain out of a large sheet that we painted. I still have that sheet
that we will use for our last performance when I retire.
- How did you find the space for a theatre?
Two teachers were involved in getting us the theater: Mr. Joe Corr and
Mr. Ed Johnson. Ed told Joe that he had been assigned a new room, the
old drama building. Joe, knowing my desire to create a theater, ran to
me saying that perhaps Mr. Johnson would let me have the theater and
he'd take my room. Which is exactly how it happened.
- How did you come up with the name?
We had a contest the first year of the theater. Whoever came up with a
name for it and a good reason for that name would win a brand new
Complete Works of Shakespeare. Kristina Johnson came up with the name Lilac
Theatre. She reasoned that since Shakespeare's theatre was named The
Rose, our theatre should be named after a flower as well. And she loved
lilacs. We used the old spelling of theatre in honor of the British way
of spelling it.
- What made you decide to continue the drama program year after year?
There was such a strong reaction both by parents and other students
that I decided to continue the program the following year. A number of
younger students, having seen our Romeo and Juliet, wanted to be in the
club the following year. Our numbers went from 22 to 41 in just one year.
- Who was with you in the first year? [adults and maybe students
too!]
The first year had our fewest, but in many ways, most important
students. Most of them came from a seminar English class that I taught
along with other students who wanted to do theater. This first group
included Lendl San Jose, Mikael Andaya, Chelsea Craig, Kirstie Dela
Cruz, Shaun Deguzman, Darlene Cayabyab, Carlo Victa, Brian Bacsal,
Alexis Norausky, Chris Alcantar, Kathy Walker, Kristen Brannum,
Kristina Johnson, Christina Bertrang, Elma Cordoba, Joanne Lim, Ralph
Dimarucut, Elmer Manlongat, Pamela Diaz, Nelson Donado, Brian Reed,
Angela, Frances Pascua, Laurie Barrera, Vanessa Tugade, Justin Woo,
Marybeth Drake, Patricia Alberto, Belinda Nguyen, Amanda Barnes. The
last student's mother, Mrs. Barnes, was instrimental in our set
design. We had no curtains in that they had been torn out years ago.
She hand made curtains for us spending countless hours on them and on
our flats.
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The 2nd year: More than any other year I learned more about theater
during the second season through all of the mistakes that we made. As an
example, our Romeo and Juliet was a disaster. Opening night was four and
a half hours long. People kept leaving as the play went on and on and
on. Part our set fell off the stage. We had one of our Romeo's unable to
continue on two-thirds of the way through the play only to be replaced
by another Romeo, which complete confused the audience. Our Juliet
stepped on broken glass in her bare feet and had to limp the rest of the
performance (It was one of the most amazing thing I ever saw in theater.
Even with glass in her foot the young lady, Chelsie Craig, continued
the scene and finished the play.) Our Mercutio hyperventilated and had to
be taken to the hospital after the play. And yet a year like that had
to happen for the theater to grow and achieve the success it later
realized.
- Who was in the second year?
The main actors that I remember were Robbie
Hubbert, Robert Wilson, Chelsie Craig, Anthony Mack and his brother,
Strait, Melanie Enriques, Josh Mia, and Ruthie.
3rd year: This was the year that we began to produce better plays with
much more efficient sets and set changes. We did four plays during the
season for the first time. Two of my students wrote the script for "The
Secret Annex," the one woman play that we still perform. We also did a
new version of Christmas Carol which included elves that said "Meep."
We did a sixties rock version of "Much Ado About Nothing." And we did a
wonderful version of Romeo and Juliet. This was the last complete year
that our drama mother, Mrs. Craig, helped our students, making their
costumes and acting as house mother. Without her wonderful help we never
would have managed those early years. The third year also saw the
beginning of the truly talented actors and actresses that are just
graduating from high school. Chloe Horne, Berenis Gonzales, Christina Mia,
Thomas Mac, Cher Krista Padua, Monica Madden, Denice Dyse, Evan Gaspari,
and many many more all came into their own this year.
- What did the theatre look like?
The lighting was vastly improved this
year through a grant. We no longer had to hang our lights from lighting
trees, but had battens with dimmer boxes installed. Our techies were in
heaven.
- 4th year: So after four years, how did you feel about the Lilac theatre?
Who was there and what was it like?
Forth year brought in new cast members
such as Charmaine Yee and Monica Madden. We performed Romeo and Juliet
with our first black Juliet (Chloe) and the wonderful Thomas Mac and
Corey Traversey as Romeo. Kathy Santos also began to be a presence in the
drama program along with the young seventh graders such as Jamie Diaz,
who played the nurse just as her sister, Pam, had played the nurse in
the very first production. This was a wonderful year in the growth of
the theater in that our sets were now being built by Mr. and Mrs.
Williams. We also had a young woman, Bern, who designed and made our
costumes.
5th year: This year was most notable in that we performed our first
musical, Oliver! People appeared out of the woodwork to help us on this.
Mr. Hamilton, a former British actor, substituted at Bell and
volunteered to help our actors with their English accents. Julie, an itinerate
violin instructor also from England, suddenly appeared at our door
saying, "Hello, I understand you are performing Oliver! I played Nancy," and
immediately started to help our students.
6th year: This was our biggest year to date. Two of our actors, Lani
Abels and Marielle Bardos, working with Mr. Opina, wrote an original
Peter Pan musical. We rehearsed this for three months and then had our
world premier during the last week of May. Chloe came back to play Hook
with Cashae Overton playing Peter. Evan Grisperi played an amazing Wendy.
In the second cast Lani played Hook to Marielle's Peter. Our sets
rotated so that the Darling's house was on one side and Wonderland and the
Lost Boys' home was on the other. Along with this original production a
new member of the Lilac Theatre joined us, the amazing costume designer
Charlie Rice-Healy.
7th year: This was a strange year. To begin with we finally retired
Romeo and Juliet, killing them off in kabuki style. And then we did our
last production of Peter Pan with the closing night performed at the Joan
Kroc Performance Center. It was also strange in that we said goodbye
to so many of our students due to the fact that Bell went from a junior
high to a middle school the following year.
8th year: And now we come to the current year. The Lilac Theatre has
grown over the past eight years from a small group of twenty-two students
to now a swelling seventy-five. We've had over six hundred actors and
techies pour their hearts out on our little stage. And we're only just
getting warmed up. This year we've already produced Anne Frank,
Christmas Carol, Midsummer Night's Dream, and now we march towards our
musical, Cinderella. So many of our students have gone on to theater in
college and so many new students are marching towards the same ending.
- Were there times where you wanted to quit?
Yes, on a couple occasions. Sometimes, at the end of the school year,
having put in hundreds of additional hours after school, I would think I
just couldn't do this any more. But then the new group of students
would come in and everyone would be so excited and all of my energy came
rushing back.
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