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Teresa Dean-Tidwell, Sean Stangl and William Flannery play for the audience in "Bye Bye Birdie."

Curtain Call

Theater groups thrive in Sunnvyale

By Lester Chang

When the lights go up and the music kicks in for Bye Bye Birdie, the Sunnyvale Community Players' actors poise themselves for action.

They rhapsodize, sing and gesticulate wildly, holding the attention of the audience.

It is this energy, creativity and flamboyance that people have come to expect from SCP and the California Theater Center--the only two theater groups in Sunnyvale.

Theater-goers seem to like what they see. Attendance at plays staged at the Sunnyvale Community Center Theater has gone in recent years.

"Sunnyvale would be artless without us," said Joan Macias, a former SCP board member.

SCP will soon put on The Sound of Music. The CTC has staged Sleeping Beauty, Frog and Toad, Beauty and the Beast, The Hobbit, Rip Van Winkle and The Miracle Worker this season.

Bye Bye Birdie, which had its run from April 18 to May 11, took the audience back to the 1960s. Actresses sported bouffant hairdos, cashmere sweaters and pearl necklaces, and actors wore white shirts, skinny black ties and hats.

The musical is a spoof of Elvis Presley's induction into the Army, with the character of Conrad Birdie subbing for the King. Before Birdie gets a buzz cut, he will give "one last kiss" to a teenage girl on The Ed Sullivan Show.

None of the performers was paid, but the 50 actors and actresses wanted to perform as well as any professional. Before curtain time, David McCaleb, who played Albert Peterson, and Joan Meyer, who played Birdie's agent Rosie Alvarez, practiced singing tunes and saying their lines.

Earlier, as they prepared for the play, cast members gathered in a circle, closed their eyes and held hands to center themselves before the performance.

As with many of the actors, McCaleb and Meyer have no plans to become professionals, but they participated in the play because they enjoy it.

On top of their jobs, McCaleb, an administrative assistant, and Meyer, a media buyer for an advertising firm, rehearsed 20 hours a week before the play started its run.

"They don't complain because they know what they are getting into," Macias said.

The group is in its 27th season. Macias, SCP Vice President Susan Buchs and co-producer Barbara Morgan, along with board members, help take turns producing five plays during the season, which runs from September to May.

"You keep doing it because it feels good," Morgan said.

The California Theater Center, a professional acting company, was formed 21 years ago, and its goal hasn't changed: to educate the public and children about theater.

The group puts on 25 plays a year with a budget of $1.4 million, said CTC administrative director Susan Earle.

Up to 15 plays are performed at the Sunnyvale Community Center. The others are performed in other parts of the United States and in Russia, Kenya, New Zealand, Italy and Fiji.

CTC also has a year-round educational and workshop program for thousands of schoolchildren, Earle said.

Those who love the theater get a treat every February, Earle said. CTC takes students and their families to London Theatre to take in "the best theater in the world," Earle said.

For more information about CTC, call 720-0873; for information on Sunnyvale Community Players, call 733-6611.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, June 4, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.