The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
GOOD GRIEF!
Workshop Players celebrates 70 years of creativity
"I’ve heard people say that they love to come here because every time they come here, you create something different."
— Board President Dave Stacko
As the Workshop Players polished their performance of the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” the character Lucy remained uncharacteristically silent.
That was not part of the play.
In one of the last dress rehearsals before their season opener, actress Alicia Fogal was stricken with laryngitis and could not speak.
But for the Workshop Players Theatre in the Round cast and crew, the show must go on, like it has for 70 years.
The 2017-18 season marks the 70th anniversary for Workshop Players, and a retrospective of sorts. All the plays have been performed before by Workshop Players, but the dramas, comedies and musicals will get new twists this season.
“The idea was to take something from each decade and reboot it,” said Pat Price, of Lorain.
A 10-year actor and director, Price also serves as theater board secretary and editor of its weekly newsletter.
The play begins
The theater got its start in the summer of 1947. A number of Clearview High School students of Valerie Jenkins Gerstenberger graduated but wanted a place to continue performing, according to the Workshop Players’ official history.
She directed them in
“Western Union Please” in August 1947 at the Clearview High School auditorium. It was the first incarnation of the group that would become Workshop Players, which began rehearsals for its second show in late 1948.
Workshop Players’ current home is the 1898 sandstone schoolhouse at 44820 Middle Ridge Road in Amherst.
The theater has 100 seats and the company performs shows arena- style, surrounded by the audience on four sides, or with a thrust stage, with the stage space thrust amid the viewers on three sides.
It’s a space that kindles creativity among the cast and crew. Adaptability is required for set design and stage directions.
“I’ve heard people say that they love to come here because every time they come here, you create something different,” said Board President Dave Stacko of Amherst Township. “It’s just interesting to see what can be created in a small space.” Players in 1963 or 1964 to watch a performance by his friend, Paula Scrofano, a Lorain native who went on to make her career on stage in Chicago.
“I kind of liked what I saw of the theater,” Stacko said. “I like the intimacy, the closeness of the actors to the audience, and it was in the round. That intrigued me, having only done proscenium theater prior to that.” Next came an audition. “Lo and behold, the first show I tried out for, I got the lead role,” Stacko said. That play became the first of 75 shows he has done with Workshop Players.
“I think they just needed people when I was trying out,” Stacko said.
“Oh, that’s not true. I love to work with him, he’s a wonderful actor,” Price said.
As an English and drama teacher at Oberlin High School, Price said the school had a vibrant drama club and she enjoyed taking students to theaters for field trips. One time they came to Workshop Players to see “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” a Neil Simon play in which Stacko had the lead.
“I was not too far from retirement at that point and I remember sitting here going, when I retire, I want to be involved right here, because I too like the intimacy,” Price said. “I like theater in the round so much both as an actress
and as a director.”
Stacko, 73, and Price, 66, are among the veteran performers that anchor the troupe. Actors try out for their roles, so the cast gets a reboot for each show.
“One of the things that impressed me since I became involved here 10 years ago, there seem to always be new people,” Price said.
“There’s always those that want to audition over and over again, but you do get new people and you hope you get new people just for fresh blood into the theater,” Stacko said. “They can see the space and they can, word of mouth, tell other people about it because this evidently is a quiet, unknown treasure to a lot of people in the area, especially locally.”
The anniversary season was to open with “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” by Clark Gesner, based on the comic strip of by Charles M. Schultz. of Lakewood stepped into their respective roles for the play when another director and musical director had to leave the production.
For “Charlie Brown,” the character Sally Brown is played by Shelbey Linder, 25, a six-year veteran of the theater company and a member of its board of directors. Actor Kevin Cline, 43, of North Ridgeville, is in the title role, and he worked with Linder and her mother, Stage Manager Becky Linder, for last year’s Christmas show.
Fogal, 45, of Rocky River, and fellow actors Matt Tomecko, 34, of North Olmsted, Matt Cuffari, 31, of Lorain, and Brett Heidinger, 24, of North Olmsted, have stage experience but are debuting with Workshop Players.
Stage Manager Becky Linder, who is the mother of Shelbey Linder, and technician Matt Gould worked out lighting cues and hunted for batteries for their walkie-talkies. It was decided Heidinger needed longer white socks for his Snoopy costume.
Fogal’s prognosis was “fingers crossed” on both hands to get better for opening night. For the practice, Fogal went on stage and mouthed the words as Rivera read her lines aloud.
The comic strip characters came to life as Sally, Linus, Lucy and Schroeder, and Snoopy atop his doghouse, opened with their homage to Charlie Brown.
Show times are at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday matinees are at 3p.m. Doors open 45 minutes before show time.
Ticket information, along with information about auditions and getting involved backstage is available online at workshopplayers.com.
For more information, call 440-988-5613.
Soon he was eating lunch alone, staring across the playground, soliloquizing about the little redhaired girl.
“I wonder what she would do if I went over there and asked if I could sit next to her,” said Cline, portraying Charlie Brown. “Probably laugh in my face. It’s hard on a face when it gets laughed in.”