Preview
What: “A Year With Frog and Toad” by Rainbow Company Youth Theatre When: 7 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday Where: Charleson Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St. Tickets: $5 (702-229-6383, artslasvegas.org)
The classes proved so popular that, after four months, Johnston (daughter of comedian Totie Fields) was asked to put on a show — “Pippi Longstocking,” complete with pony.
Since then, more than 500 students have been members of the Rainbow Company ensemble; add “the number of people (who’ve) seen a show or taken a class, it’s well over half a million,” according to theater specialist Kristopher Shepherd, one of Rainbow’s three fulltime employees.
“It’s very hard to believe” that it’s been 40 years since Rainbow Company’s launch, Jody Johnston Davidson says in a telephone interview from her Arizona home, adding “it’s a tribute to all the people” involved that it’s “still thriving.”
Among the troupe’s innovations: ageappropriate casting, with adults playing adults and kids playing kids.
“Back then, if you had a child character, it was played by an adult — but there’s a difference between childlike and childish,” she contends. “You will never get the emotional honesty of a child” with adults in children’s roles.
A 1981 People magazine article also cited Rainbow Company’s success in integrating mentally and physically handicapped kids into the group.
“We had a visually impaired stage manager calling cues to a visually impaired light board operator,” Davidson recalls.
But Rainbow Company’s professionallevel training extends beyond the theater.
The goal was “to create kids who were responsible and dependable and understanding,” Davidson says, “whether they ended up as firemen, veterinarians or teachers.”
Mission accomplished, says Andy Lott, a former Rainbow Company member who’s now president of the Friends of Rainbow Company support group.
Lott went on to pursue a career in the arts; after performing in Broadway tours, he now teaches dance at Del Sol Academy of the Performing Arts, a Clark County School District arts magnet high school.
But “what you learn at Rainbow Company goes beyond theater,” he says, noting such life lessons as “being on time, respect for others, ironing a shirt.”
And, of course, that the show must go on.
Adjusting to the times
In recent years, Rainbow Company lost its studio theater when the city closed Reed Whipple. And while five full-time employees once ran the program, that number is down to three, reflecting postrecession budget cuts.
But McKenney, Rainbow Company’s third artistic director, has been with the troupe for more than 30 years; Shepherd has been on the job for 20.
And while education director Kearsten Kuroishi as only been in her current position for a year, she’s worked at Rainbow for nine years, took her first class there at age 4 and graduated from the ensemble in 2007.
On a recent weeknight, a few days before “Frog and Toad’s” first performance, they’re all busy — Kuroishi teaching dance class, McKenney running rehearsal and Shepherd shepherding crew members as they install a bubble machine and make other adjustments to the Charleston Heights stage.
Making adjustments is part of life at Rainbow Company, Shepherd says.
When “Frog and Toad’s” youngest cast members didn’t hang up their costumes, he told them, “If you’re old enough to have a role in the play, you’re old enough to hang up your costumes.” And they told him, “‘We can’t reach the costume rack,’ “so Shepherd built them one they could.
“You just have to make the world fit them sometimes,” he explains.
When Rainbow Company began, Las Vegas “didn’t have a lot of opportunities for young people,” McKenney points out. By now, however, Rainbow “has acquired such a reputation” — and has become “such a strong part of the community.”
And “every day or two” at Rainbow Company, Kuroishi says, “I think, ‘This is magic.’ “— For more stories from Carol Cling go to reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.