All the Stages Are a World of Discovery

Sheldon Epps saw his first play, Carson McCullers’ “The Member of the Wedding” starring Ethel Waters, at the Pasadena Playhouse.

“If I was hit by anything that afternoon,” he said, “it was how expressive language could be in the hands of wonderful actors.” He was 9 years old.

Ellen Geer was 7 or 8 when she was bowled over by a New York production of “ ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ of all things,” she said. Most of Shakespeare’s singularly dark, dank comedy of vice and corruption was over her head, but “I just flipped.”

When he was a ninth grader, Peter Schneider said, “my father dragged me” to a D’Oyly Carte Opera production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado” at downtown’s then-new Music Center. “It was, oh, my God,” he reminisced, “the building, the white shiny building with the pillars, the whole experience of going to the theater.”

That experience sparked an interest that would lead Schneider--today head of Walt Disney Studios--to a career in managing and directing theater here and in London.

Geer grew up to be the artistic director of the family-friendly Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga and a veteran film and stage actor. Respected New York and San Diego director Epps, the son of a Presbyterian minister who believed “that cultural arts were very much part of young people’s education,” had an unexpected deja vu moment in 1997: That’s when he became artistic director of the venerable Pasadena Playhouse.

“I always tell people that it would be a better story if I could say that [seeing “The Member of the Wedding”] was the day that I decided to spend my life working in the theater,” he said. “That’s not quite true, but it was certainly the day when I learned to love going to the theater and realized how magical a place a theater could be.”

Most children who go to the theater won’t end up choosing it as a career, but Epps’, Geer’s and Schneider’s transforming early experiences testify to a live performance’s ability to “broaden people’s horizons, to expand their knowledge of what is possible,” Schneider said, even at an early age.

Southern California is chockablock with legitimate theaters large and small, and many offer shows for younger audiences and “adult” works appropriate for an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old or a teenager.

So why don’t more families go?

“I think a lot of people are intimidated by theater,” said Jay McAdams, executive director of Los Angeles’ 24th Street Theatre.

“We all know the rules of going to the movies. You’re not nervous; you know how it works. With live theater, if you’re not familiar with it, you don’t know what the rules are. Do I have to have a reservations, do I have to wear a tuxedo, do I have to spend a lot of money, can I take my soda in the theater?”

Shakespeare, Moliere, Miller: For Kids?

Whatever the reasons--lack of awareness, an assumption of exclusivity, unfamiliarity with the how, where and what of it--one way to get an easy introduction is through Kids’ Week at the Theatre, a nine-day event beginning Saturday.

Presented by A.S.K. Theatre Projects, this growing annual event, back for a fourth year in Los Angeles County’s theater community, is a smorgasbord of free performances, workshops, open rehearsals, backstage tours and offers of free kids’ tickets to big and small shows--from fairy tales to Shakespeare and Moliere; from puppets to Arthur Miller and Noel Coward.

It’s an opportunity for kids and families to get comfortable with the ritual of purchasing tickets at the box office, reading the program, seeing that “it’s OK to wear blue jeans,” McAdams said, and understanding the etiquette of what is a two-way, living, breathing human interaction. It’s not TV, it’s not the movies.

But Shakespeare, Moliere . . . kids’ stuff?

Absolutely, says Art Manke, artistic director of the Glendale-based classical repertory company A Noise Within. He remembers once being anxious about having sixth-graders see his company’s production of Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale.”

“After they were here, they sent us a stack of drawings. They had illustrated the story--including parts of it that were not actually occurring onstage but only talked about. It made me realize that children will follow a story if it’s clearly told, regardless of whether or not the vocabulary is beyond them. It’s about imagination.”

“Don’t underestimate a young person’s ability to understand and be engaged in the same material as adults,” Epps said. “One of my favorite comments was when we had a group come for ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and I heard a 14-year-old girl say, ‘Gee, I didn’t realize they wrote romantic comedies that long ago.’ ”

That doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t check to be sure that a play is appropriate for their child or teenager, said David Emmes, co-founder and producing artistic director of South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

“Because you are in the presence of the live performer, because you are in fact an organic part of that experience, communication is going back and forth between the audience and the actor. Everything becomes more intense, because the illusion is more convincing and has more impact. An act of violence or of language or even partial nudity has a much stronger impact than something that would be twice as [graphic] in a film.”

McAdams, pointing to some theaters’ concerns that young audiences will be disruptive, said Kids’ Week is not only a way for children to learn that theater is nothing to be afraid of. It’s also a way for theaters to learn that children are “just little audience members,” he said. “They won’t destroy the theater, and they don’t talk all the way through the shows.”

“Not realizing that actors can see and hear isn’t unique to children,” Manke said, noting that adults’ cell phones and pagers are more the concern. His company has found it invigorating to have young people at performances, “particularly after the performance, when the actors [talk] with the kids. You realize that you’ve really had an impact on their lives, that they’ve experienced something new. And when teenagers are so jaded these days, it’s wonderful to know that there’s something they haven’t done before.”

An adult’s caution about being quiet during a play is an important lesson in theater etiquette, but it can be a little tricky.

“Some children seem to know that it’s live,” said Meryl Friedman, executive producer of Burbank’s Falcon Theatre, which includes children’s shows in its regular season. “But they still don’t make the leap that if they can see and hear everything the actors do, the actors can see and hear everything they do.” On the other hand, “you don’t want them so scared that they won’t respond at all.”

Bob Baker, whose 40-year-old Bob Baker Marionette Theatre in Los Angeles is a multi-generational tradition for many families, remembers “a terrible thing that happened a couple of years ago.” During one school group’s visit, “when the puppets came out, this poor little girl went hysterical,” he said. It turned out that the group had been warned that “if they weren’t good, the little people were going to get them.”

“From my point of view, less rather than more preparation is the key,” Epps said. “I’ve sometimes heard teachers say to classes as they’re getting off the bus, ‘Now we want you to go in there and be very, very quiet and behave yourselves.’ But theater is a place where people young and old should be responsive, where they should be free to laugh, applaud and respond viscerally. It’s no different than an older audience: If older audiences are not engaged, they talk.”

After all, it’s the audience, no matter what age, that makes a play come alive, said Manke. A play “really exists in the imagination of the audience,” he said. “The actors are going through a series of physical actions and they are verbalizing the text, but what happens onstage is the stimulus; it’s not complete without the audience there to create it in their minds.”

“It’s fascinating,” Geer said, “to watch [young people] open up in every way--physically, emotionally--because the experience becomes theirs, rather than some [machine] that is telling them how to hear and what to see.”

A play’s ability to spark conversation can be one of live theater’s big rewards for families in this busy age in which talks around the dinner table are increasingly rare, said Kendis Marcotte, the former executive director of the Virginia Avenue Project, a theater mentoring program for youth. Her three children--ages 7, 11 and 13--have been going to theater all their lives.

“It’s a great way to become educated with your child,” she said. “What was good about it, what wasn’t; what were the main messages; what was the tone; [how] was the acting. And the wonderful thing is that even if it isn’t quite what you expected, or maybe the production quality isn’t quite there, that’s a point for discussion too.”

There are countless opportunities for family theater beyond Kids’ Week. There are the big performing arts centers at colleges and universities; there are long-established large venues, such as the La Mirada Theatre or the Globe Theatres in San Diego; there are smaller theaters in nearly every neighborhood.

At the Pasadena Playhouse, “60% or 70% of what we do is perfectly suitable to bring the family to,” Epps said. In Laguna Beach, the Laguna Playhouse’s laudatory Youth Theatre puts on a regular season of literature classics. Ventura-based Performances to Grow On and L.A.’s 24th Street Theatre offer varied family series of top professional theater and music artists. South Coast Repertory, which is planning a major expansion in professional family theater programming at its soon-to-be-built second theater, has two of the most family-friendly shows around: its annual productions of “A Christmas Carol” and “La Posada Magica.”

Center Theatre Group (the Ahmanson Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum) has plans to expand family programming, including longer runs for the Taper’s professional youth theater, PLAY, at a new Culver City venue.

And there’s that blockbuster, “The Lion King,” with its cross-generational appeal (“When adults go see it,” Schneider said, “there’s tremendous awe and inspiration. When kids see it, they have the exact same response to it”). It has extended through December at the grandly restored Pantages Theatre.

Aware of criticism that “The Lion King’s” regular ticket prices, with a top of $77 (and VIP tickets at $127), put the production out of reach of many families, Schneider points out that there are balcony seats for only $12. “It’s not close to the stage, but the view is terrific.”

Wherever you go, keep in mind that good children’s theater should be good theater, period.

“It doesn’t matter if children understand every word,” McAdams said. “What matters is that they see excellent art and if they don’t understand it all, that’s fine--they can talk about it with their parents. If they’re engaged and excited by it, that’s good theater. If they see ‘Cinderella’ and understand every bit of it but aren’t impressed by the art of it, that’s not as valuable. If you can marry those two, that’s even better.”