A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Troupe Brings Live Theater to Kindergartners

In this crowd one flaw could wreck the magic and blow apart the suspension of disbelief built up during a 45-minute performance.

“They are the hardest audience,” said Ezra Weisz, an actor currently playing a role of giant proportions in the Santa Clarita area. His is a discerning audience who can pick out the scratches in the golden egg or tennis shoes under costumes. One hint of incongruity can rip through a room with pinches, taunts and thoughts of Power Rangers.

Kindergarten students.

“Some of these kids have never seen live theater before,” said Christopher Cook, playing Jack to Weisz’s Giant in the Santa Clarita Repertory Theatre’s “Jack and the Beanstalk,” which was performed at the James Foster Elementary School in Santa Clarita last week. Cook is also director of the theater’s educational outreach program that earned a Community Partnership Award last year from the Valley Edition of the Los Angeles Times last year for its efforts in building an appreciation for theater in children.

When the company first started bringing theater into the schools five years ago, David Stears, the group’s producing artistic director, said, “teachers told us we couldn’t get kindergartners to sit still for a story for 45 minutes unless it has a joystick.”

But the Santa Clarita troupe does.

“Too often kids theater companies will say, ‘Oh, we’re just doing this for kids,’ and play down to them,” Stears said. The Santa Clarita Repertory Theatre, made up largely of recent CalArts graduates, uses a smart, funny dialogue that includes jokes for adults and brings the children into the play.

In its version of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack is a failed operator of a cheese shop who uses the goose that lays golden eggs to build a multinational corporation before climbing the beanstalk to face the Giant.

Throughout the play the Bean Seller--also played by Weisz--talks to the children, getting them to shout out advice to Jack.

One of Weisz’s favorite moments is watching the children as the beanstalk is extended to the ceiling. “When they see the stalk go up, their chins just drop,” he said.

As one of the improvisational twists developed over several performances, Cook borrows a sneaker to substitute for the gold he steals from the sleeping Giant. The students all laugh when the Giant wakes up, finds the shoe and says, “Stinky. Stinky.”

By the play’s end, the kids are reciting along with the Giant his famous catch phrase, “Fee, fi, fo, fum,” and then screaming in panic as the Giant chases Jack into the crowd. “I need an ax,” Cook yells desperately as the Giant follows him down the beanstalk. The kids’ screams intensify until the Bean Seller reappears with an ax and Jack kills the Giant.

“Did you plan all this?” Jack asks.

“Me?” the Bean Seller responds. “No-o-o.”

“Yessssss!” all the kindergartners protest.

“There are some very observant kids,” Weisz said. Some notice when the Giant is killed, the actress who plays Jack’s mother is in the costume. “The mom was the Giant?” they ask in confusion.

Sabrina Hill, who plays Jack’s mother, speaks Spanish throughout the play and likes hearing the children whispering translations to each other as she performs.

The children often come up to her afterward. “They say, ‘I speak Spanish,’ ” Hill said. “ ‘You were speaking to me.’ ”

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