Gerald Castillo returns to SPTC to direct the season opener. Among his directing credits with SPTC you’ll remember many of the favorites from seasons past including “Of Mice and Men,” “Miracle Worker,” “Awake and Sing” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.” An accomplished actor as well, Castillo has appeared onstage and in both television and films.The design team for “Steel Magnolias” includes Gary Richardson (sets and lighting), Randon Pool (costumes), and Fred Helsel (properties and set dressing). Karl Krause is stage manager. The show runs through March 28 in Santa Paula and will travel to the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center for a three-week run beginning April 9.“Enigma Variations” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, a psychological thriller set on a remote Norwegian island, is the second offering in the SPTC season. It will run April 23 through June 6 and be directed by Michael Sollazzo. Promising to be a roller coaster ride of twists and turns, the show features a reclusive author who grants a rare interview to a young journalist.Third in the season will be a very special presentation of “The Boys Next Door,” a show written by Tom Griffin that played to critical acclaim 10 years ago on the SPTC stage. Artistic Director David Ralphe will direct on this tenth anniversary season of his association with SPTC. The show is a heart-warming look at the struggles of four mentally challenged men living on their own in a group home and promises laughter, love and tears as you visit with them. “The Boys Next Door” will run July 9 through August 15.SPTC brings a new work to the stage in the September 10 through October 4 time slot. Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, “Proof” is a compelling drama centering on a young woman coping with the demise of her father, whose intellect gradually eroded into madness. Once a vital math talent, his greatest proof mysteriously surfaces in the days after his dementia and death. Hailed as a “vivid and gripping” play of “complexity and depth” by the New York Times, “Proof” unfolds like the mathematical puzzle at its center, revealing the complex equations of the mind and heart.Start your holiday celebrations off by enjoying the annual holiday show at SPTC. While we’re not yet releasing the title, the show is certain to be another memorable holiday event just as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street” and “A Christmas Story” were in years past. The holiday show will run November 19 through December 18.Tickets for “Steel Magnolias” can be purchased by calling the box office at 525-4645. The show will play Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. Anyone wishing to receive a season brochure can do so by calling the box office at 525-4645.
Santa Paula Theater Center opens its 14th season
February 13, 2004
Santa Paula News
Santa Paula Theater Center opens its 14th season with Robert Harling’s “Steel Magnolias” Friday, February 13.
Santa Paula Theater Center opens its 14th season with Robert Harling’s “Steel Magnolias” Friday, February 13. Featuring an all-women ensemble cast, the show premiered at the WPA Theatre in New York in March of 1987, and was transferred to the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theatre, where it ran for an impressive 1,126 performances. It gained widespread acclaim and popularity in a 1989 big-screen version starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley McLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts, who was nominated for a “Best Supporting Actress” Oscar for her performance.Originally written as a short story by Louisiana-born Harling, “Steel Magnolias” was created as a means for helping the author cope with the untimely death of his diabetic sister, following childbirth. “My nephew was about to turn five,” he explains, “and I suddenly realized if I didn’t put down on paper what happened to his mother, he’d never know who she was.” Luckily, Harling elected to tell his tragic story with a heavy dose of Southern humor, and he set it in a place in which he claims never to have stepped foot - a beauty parlor, the mysterious and fascinating place where his mother and sister would disappear for a few hours each week with their friends. “I realized the story really had nothing to do with the men,” he says. “It was about these women and their support systems; I wanted to have the women comfortable enough to let their hair down.”Six softhearted “magnolias” with steely dispositions gather regularly at Truvy’s Beauty Salon, the unofficial hub of Chinquapin, Louisiana, to chitchat with, counsel, criticize and comfort one another. The wise-cracking Truvy (Dayna Quinn), with the help of her new glamour technician Annelle (Rena Petrello), dispenses liberal doses of shampoo, hairspray, free advice and gossip to the town’s rich curmudgeon, Ouiser (Dee Anne Helsel), an eccentric millionaire Miss Clairee (Leslie Nichols), and the local social worker M’Lynn (Lillian Byrd), whose daughter Shelby (Erin Callon) is on the verge of marriage. The play visits these women over the course of two years in which together they experience love, joy, pain, death, and rebirth. They are soul mates in a rarified, peculiarly Southern way that assumes a cult of femininity - sisters come hell or high water.Dayna Quinn (Truvy) comes to her first appearance at SPTC with a background that includes plays ranging from Shakespeare to David Mamet. Favorite roles include Iris in “Bits and Pieces,” Josefa in “A Shot in the Dark,” Catherine in “Suddenly Last Summer” and Rita in “The Water Engine.”Rena Petrello (Annelle) makes her fourth appearance on the Santa Paula Theater stage. She appeared in “Awake and Sing” (Hennie), “Master Class” (Sophie), and “George Washington Slept Here” (Hester). Other recent roles include “Guys and Dolls” (Sarah), “Cyrano De Bergerac” (Roxane), “The King and I” (Anna), “The Sound of Music” (Maria), and “Carousel” (Julie).Dee Anne Helsel returns to SPTC, having appeared in “Bleacher Bums.” She has been a professional actress in Hollywood for over 30 years, starting with “Little House on the Prairie” to a current recurring role this season on “The Practice.” Leslie Nichols (Miss Clairee) is certainly no stranger to all things Santa Paula - a longtime resident of the city, she is the producer of the show, as well as the president of the SPTC Board of Directors. Nichols has appeared in numerous Santa Paula productions, including a recent portrayal in the traveling company of “The Importance of Being Earnest” which played late last year at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center. She worked with director Gerald Castillo in the past in SPTC shows “The Miracle Worker” and “Diary of Anne Frank.”Lillian Byrd-Golembesky (M’Lynn) makes her first appearance at SPTC. Having acted professionally since she was 17, she recently performed in “The Music Man” (Mrs. Paroo) at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center and “A Christmas Carol” (Mrs. Pocket) at Santa Susana Repertory Theatre. Recent television credits include “Providence” and “The Gilmore Girls.”Erin Callon (Shelby) returns to Santa Paula Theater Center after having appeared in “The Importance of Being Earnest” (Emily Cardew) both at SPTC and SVCAC. Directing children’s theater and doing theatre camp for kids has also kept Erin busy for the past few years. In 1998 she began “The Young Dramatists of Santa Paula,” a group that began as a backyard hobby. Since then it has turned into an annual community fundraiser for St. Sebastian Church.