Jenn is an artist I’ve seen onstage (beautifully embodying Marc Antony in T.U.’s Julius Caesar) and know purely through her great work within the theatre community. You can just feel her spirit emanating from her presence onstage, and I look forward to learning more about her!
- Fringe Page: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/346
CMJ: Please give a short description of SS from a Director’s Perspective. What are the images or themes that drive your process?
JS: Super Sidekick is a cartoon on stage. But it’s not a throwaway Saturday morning episode – it’s more like a full length musical feature that makes you love the heroes and love to hate the villains. My main goal for this show is to create a world in which the adults exist as cartoon caractaures and the kids are the real human beings you can relate to. Casting young people in the main roles was very important to me as I wanted them to be the connection for the young people in the audience.
CMJ: How did you prepare for directing a musical versus other pieces, and a children’s musical in general?
JS: I directed this piece last summer for Theatre Unleashed so my process going into this year wasn’t hugely different. Music is simply another layer of story telling and while I wanted the music to add fun and visual spectacle, I also made sure that the actors remained true to the characters within the music. Sometimes in musicals the character can fall away when the actor starts singing. Michael Shapiro’s fantastic lyrics help the actors and enhance their characters beautifully. My actors were great with incorporating the information they found about their characters within the lyrics as well as within the script.
Children’s theatre is something I feel very comfortable with. I was a full time Artist in Residence at Stages Theatre Company in Minneapolis before moving to L.A.. I was incredibly lucky to work with this company that did 6-week runs of 8 shows a year and played to nearly 200,000 patrons annually. While my experience there was as an actor and stage manager, I worked alongside some wonderful directors. I think the most valuable thing I learned about children’s theatre was never talk down to your audience – kids will get it and appreciate it as is as long as you’re true to the story.
CMJ: What was the biggest challenge in directing this piece and how will you overcome it (if you think you will)?
JS: This time around our biggest challenges have been out of our control! We ran into many scheduling issues with rehearsals early on. Our young actors – Scott Sharma as Inky, Hannah Nawroth as the Princess, and Sara-Beth Wichman as a Ninja Koala – all come from rather far away and needed to work around their school schedules. Also, since I was in rehearsal for Julius Caesar we needed to work around that too. Finally just when our schedule seemed to be coming together and we were starting to have some solid rehearsal time, Mark Lopez, our villain Slurm had a medical emergency that took him out of the show. We were very sad to lose him, but thankfully the very talented Shawn Cahill stepped into the role. All this, combined with just the fast-paced nature of Fringe definitely made for a challenge! But now that we’re into our final rehearsals the show has really come together.
CMJ: What is the biggest challenge to directors in Los Angeles? How have you found your way here and where do you hope to go?
JS: I consider myself an actor who is moonlighting as a director. However, from my experience in Theatre Unleashed and other theatre companies in L.A. I think the biggest challenge directors face is having a vision for a show that will not only work artistically but also create a show that will stand out from the many other entertainment options there are in L.A. People think nothing of shelling out $15 to see a mediocre movie, but even spectacular plays discount their tickets to entice people to come. My hope is that by exposing young people to live theatre, they will grow up to appreciate it as adults.
