Good Sense of Direction : Multitalented Student Oversees School Production

During a recent rehearsal for the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” abouteight members of the Channel Islands High School cast were practicing the scene where villagers learn about “a new arrival” at one of their neighbor’s homes.

But something was wrong.

The students’ voices were listless, their arms hung clumsily by their sides: They did not look like the happy villagers they were supposed to be.

Seeing the problem, 17-year-old Tino Preciado jumped up from his seat to intervene.

“Picture this,” he said to his classmates. “You’re on a street. You know everyone in the town. And Motel and Tzeitel have just had a baby. It’s got to be lively!”

And so it became.

After Tino sat down, the actors began the scene again. This time, their voices rose in excitement and their arms moved expressively as they exclaimed over the new arrival, which the audience later finds out is not a baby but a new sewing machine.

The acting was convincing enough to transport onlookers back to the place and time where the scene is set--a small Russian village at the turn of the century.

This is not the only scene that Tino has had his hand in.

Besides being the student director for the play, the senior is also musical director and has taught all of his fellow cast members how to sing their parts.

When he is not behind the scenes directing, he is on the stage acting in the lead role of Tevye.

As cast member Sarah Weist said: “This play would not be without Tino.”

Drama teacher Patricia Shepherd said she chose “Fiddler on the Roof” for this year’s production only because she knew she could cast Tino as Tevye and his fellow senior Chava Shinault as Tino’s wife, Golde. Chava won the school’s best actress award last year.

Shepherd also decided to risk having Tino coach the students in singing, rather than hire a professional musical director. It’s a risk that’s paid off.

“A lot of these kids had never sung before in their lives,” Shepherd said of the 65-member cast. “He has a lot of them sounding almost professional.”

Voted most talented senior this year, Tino plays saxophone in the school band and performs after school and on weekends in a musical group called Satin Soul that is headed by Tino’s father and includes his younger brother.

But Tino has never had formal lessons in either music or drama.

He has been accepted at Cal State Northridge, where he hopes to major in music next fall.

Tino’s father, Toby Preciado, said he first noticed his son’s talent when Tino was about 7. The family was riding in their car singing Christmas carols when suddenly young Tino began singing harmony.

“It really surprised me,” said Preciado, a construction worker who plays both guitar and bass guitar. “I said, ‘Who taught you how to do that?’ He said, ‘Oh, I just hear it in my head.’ ”

Remarkable as Tino’s musical abilities are, his talent at directing and teaching his peers may be just as unusual, Shepherd said. Last year, when Tino was musical director for “Grease,” the student cast members were surprised by how much work he expected from them, she said. This year, students who auditioned knew what they were getting into.

“So the ones that are in there are the ones willing to work as hard as he expects,” she said.

Tino said he is comfortable giving orders because he’s learned from his father that in any successful musical production, performers must follow directions from a single leader.

“In music there is no democracy,” Tino said. “My father tells me that all the time.”

Not that Tino is dictatorial.

Tall and soft-spoken, he raises his voice only rarely, such as to lightly scold some actors for not having memorized the lyrics to one of the play’s songs.

And his classmates say he is patient.

“He goes through every song so every little thing sounds perfect,” said 17-year-old Christina Harvey, who plays a villager in the musical and is also costume and make-up director. “He makes us work hard.”

Tino and other cast members agreed, however, that they must work hard because “Fiddler” is more of a challenge than other plays that students have performed in recent years at Channel Islands High.

“This is a much more difficult play, musically and thematically,” Tino said.

For one thing, it’s more of a stretch for this racially diverse cast to act as the Russian Jewish characters in “Fiddler” than it was to play the high school students in “Grease,” the students said. Only two of the 65 students in the “Fiddler” cast are Jewish. And many of the students said they have had little contact with Jewish culture.

So Shepherd has had both a teacher who is Jewish and a cantor talk to the cast about Judaism.

Besides being remote from the students’ experiences, “Fiddler” is a drama, which both the cast and Shepherd say is more difficult to play than light comedy.

“If the audience isn’t crying,” at the end of the play, Shepherd told the cast recently, “we’ve failed.”

To meet this challenge, the students rehearse during lunch and after school every day. But Tino goes further.

Every night, Tino’s father said, the boy retreats to a room at the back of the house where he repeatedly plays recordings of the “Fiddler on the Roof” score as he practices the parts to every song. And on weekends he watches the videocassette version of the film.

“It drives him,” Tino’s father said. “There’s no stopping him.”

FYI

“Fiddler on the Roof” will be performed at Channel Islands High School on Friday, April 22, and Saturday, April 23, at 7 p.m.; Thursday, April 28, and Friday, April 29, at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, April 30, at 2 p.m.

Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for students. The school is located at 1600 Raiders Way in Oxnard, near Channel Islands Boulevard and Rose Avenue. For information, call the school drama department at 385-2776.