Saginaw actress makes her opera "debut" -- in Scotland

story and photo by janet i. martineau

Stasi Schaeffer

Theatergoers to whom the name Stasi Schaeffer is familiar    remember her days as an actress and director with such groups as Pit and Balcony Community Theater, 303 Collective, CAGE, Bay City Players and Midland Center for the Arts.

Well, late last year she  made her operatic debut.

In Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

With the Scottish Opera.

“Thankfully it was not a singing role,” Schaeffer assured with that familiar laugh of hers.

Schaeffer, who also was the manager of the Temple Theatre from 2003-2007, left Saginaw in 2007 to explore acting and directing possibilities in New York City.

“And when I was there, I saw an advertisement for getting a master’s degree in classical and contemporary text for directors at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland.”

It is ranked as one of the world’s top drama schools, she says, offered a fast-track one-year to getting that degree and off she went when she was accepted.

“And I’ve been there -- in Glasgow -- ever since; now as a freelance director in theater and opera.”

Enter the Scottish Opera and “La Traviata.”

The company, says Schaeffer, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in the 2012-2013 season by touring the opera to 50 venues throughout Scotland.

“I was the rehearsal assistant director, and on the road I am the tour director -- watching the performances, taking notes, dealing with different leads, always dealing with a different stage for each performance-- we have three configurations we use.”

There are only eight cast members and a small chamber orchestra, but a full set and costumes, she says. “It’s a beautiful product, set in the late 1950s and sung in English.

“The set and costumes go in a semi-truck and the cast and crew in a luxurious touring bus. We’ve played high schools, community halls, movie theaters; some really small towns; the outer islands.”

And since most of those locations are within an eight-hour drive from Glasgow (population 598,000), if a singer gets sick there is time for a replacement to get to the venue.

Except for that one time there was no time, she says, when a  non-singer got sick and she took the stage.

She has, she says been surprised “at how many hidden opera fans there are out there. They are always asking when we are coming back.”

The Scottish Opera, she says, tours its productions regularly to its largest cities. Before “Traviata” she worked on “Opera Highlights” and “Tosca.” “La Traviata” ends its 50-show run this coming weekend.

Not to worry for Stasi on what she will do next. She’s also tuned in to an unusual Glasgow venue titled A Play, A Pie and A Pint.

“They are located in a bar (the Oran Mor)  that was a church, and downstairs is a club space that does all new plays commissioned by them. They have done 300 plays in seven years -- each one running 45-50 minutes during the lunch hour. Up to four actors in each one.”

The name of the 150-seat place indicates what patrons get for their money. 

Each play is rehearsed for two weeks and performed for one.

“It’s amazing. They’re all professionals (meaning there is a paycheck) and they get plays from established playwrights as well as new one.”

She has assistant directed one and directed two and found, she says, she loves working hand in hand with a playwright in crafting a premiere of a new work.

While working on her masters, she spent a month at the famed Globe Theater in London,  was the assistant director of a “Richard III” that went to Germany, and worked on a new play (titled “God of SoHo”) that was performed in Scotland and England.

Yes, she says, it is cold and dreary and rains a lot in Scotland “but the people are fun-loving and good natured.” What she likes about Glasgow, she says, is the openness of the theater community.

“There are lots of opportunities to talk with other directors because they are inclusive, accepting. You would not get that in New York City or London,

In her mid-Michigan years, Schaeffer acted in 25-30 plays and directed 10. She graduated from Arthur Hill High School/Saginaw Arts & Science Academy.

Pit & Balcony's "Miss Firecracker" lights up the stage

From left, Stephanie Mattos,  Mandee Wunderle,  Erich Williiams,  Lisa Bader and Spencer Wunderle

review and photos by janet i. martineau

Goodness, what a motley crew of characters playwright Beth Henley concocted for her southern gothic play “The Miss Firecracker Contest.”

A beauty queen wannabe with a checkered past and her former boyfriend who is dying of a dozen ailments ...a former beauty queen with a drinking problem and who has left her family and her brother who is stark raving mad and supposedly can wiggle his ears...a seamstress given to inspecting everything  with a magnifying glass and who wears black high-top tennis shoes...and a beauty pageant minion who is just plain cuckoo and hung up on the former beauty queen.

But, then, Henley also crafted the Pulitzer-winning ”Crimes of the Heart,” about three southern sisters with major issues.

Fortunately the Pit and Balcony Community Theater production of “Firecracker”, which opened Friday night,  has cast it well. All five characters carry these oddballs strongly  while at the same time making us love them and understand their plight.

They are so human -- feuding and fussing and fighting among themselves, since three of the five are related, but let a stranger threaten any one of them and they lock into a unified force.

And might we say too....it’s about time on who directed this show. An actor’s actor who has played many a oddball role herself.

Ann Russell-Lutenske makes her P&B play directing debut here after acting in too many of its plays to count over a huge swath of time, as well as a little professional work as well early on in her life.

It is a solid directing debut. Not just in the strong acting ensemble she keeps on task but in the richly detailed set (designed by Saginawian Chris Largent, in his final year of college at Emerson in Boston) and the fun costuming.

If there is a complaint, it is that at times Henley’s script drags and that, here and there, some of the cast members need to enunciate their words more clearly rather than mumble or rush them. But those are minor moments.

What is interesting is that Lisa Bader, who plays the former beauty queen, hasn’t done a show in 10 years and that Tabitha Wright, the beauty pageant minion, is 30 years old and making her acting debut -- and they are two of the strongest actors in this play.

Bader in particular nails her former beauty queen, still so in love with herself if not her life. Every movement, every inflection in her words are right on and she tends to steal more than a few scenes.

Wright has a very small role, and is one of the actora who needs to work on diction, but her body English is pure goofy.

Mandee Wunderle plays the title role, the beauty pageant wannabe who has dyed her hair red for the talent part of the contest she hopes she will be accepted into.

Wunderle is a heart-breaker. You can just so totally feel her character’s insecurity and deep need to win this title -- while at the same time having to deal with  all the crap she has to put up with at the expense of the characters surrounding her.

This play, written in 1979, remains relevant today, maybe even more so than when it was written, in light of all the reality shows on television today populated by desperate people very much like her.

We won’t divulge what does happen, since that is part of the show. But Wunderle stays with her to the end and delivers one of the most heart-warming characters in the world of plays.

Stephanie Mattos plays the seamstress with a wonderful sense of quirky. Spencer Wunderle is the mad ear-wiggler and plays him in a way that creates unease in viewers since we never know when he is going to erupt and he is kinda scary when he does. And Erich Williams as the ailing ex (name is Mac Sam....so southern) sounds like he is going to die right in front of us despite his steely manner.

Interesting show that evokes both humor and pathos in equal doses.

2013-2014 Horizons Town Talk lineup features Joan Collins, Candy Crowley

by Janet I. Martineau

A soap opera siren with a British accent  and a CNN political correspondent  born in Kalamazoo are on the 2013-2014 Horizons Town Talk season at the Horizons Conference Center.

Joan Collins, of “Dynasty” fame, and Candy Cowley, host of “State of the Union” Sundays on CNN  and only the second  woman to serve as a moderator of a presidental debate, are on a bill of five speakers. 

Others will talk about Michigan’s “Christmas Tree Ship,” the history and mystery of wine, and finding humor (clean humor) in life.

The lineup is as follows:

Joan Collins

--  Monday, Oct 14, “A Day With Joan Collins.”

Collins is a Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee and has appeared in more than 60 feature films and dozens of television series -- including  the role of the back-biting Alexis Carrington on the 1980s prime time  soap opera “Dynasty.”

Her career began at age 13, on a London stage, and she continues  live theater work  today at age 79.

The Brit’s 17 novels, memoirs and health/beauty books have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 30 languages. 

And she is a regular diarist for The Spectator and a contributor to The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times and Harper's Bazaar.

Collins also is involved with humanitarian work through the National Center for Learning Disabilities and The Shooting Star Children’s Hospice.

Rochelle Pennington

-- Tuesday, Nov. 12, “The Christmas Tree Ship” with author/newspaper columnist  Rochelle Pennington.

Pennington has penned 10 books, four of them dealing with Christmas. “The Christmas Tree Ship” tells the true story of one of the most well-known shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan's Christmas Tree Ship. It delivered holiday evergreens to the citizens of Chicago each Christmas season before it was caught in the "Great Storm of 1912" and subsequently sank fully loaded with trees. 

The captain died but his wife along with their three daughters carried on for more than 20 years afterward in honor of “Captain Santa.”  The sunken ship is still loaded with its cargo today and is a popular Great Lakes dive site. 

The story has inspired paintings, poems, six different songs, television programs, a musical performed all over the country titled “The Christmas Schooner” (Bay City Players has performed it), and a “new” Christmas Tree Ship sailed by the Great Lakes Coast Guard each holiday season as a living memorial.

Pennington's research was used to create a television program on The Weather Channel's “Storm Stories.” It airs nationally each December (since 2004) and the e author is interviewed repeatedly during the documentary.

Pennington lives in Wisconsin, and in her free time enjoys spending weekends at the family’s 100-year-old cottage in the Porcupine Mountains ofMichigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Eliott Engel

-- Tuesday, March 4, 2014, “The History and Mystery of Wine” with Dr. Elliot Engel.

Engel is a frequent Horizons Town Talk guest. He comes from a college literature teaching background -- his entertaining skills at it morphing into 10 books, countless CDs and DVDs, and speaking engagements which entertain while informing. 

His CDs and DVDs  cover the lives  of Shakespeare,  Oscar Wilde, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Queen Victoria, Frank Lloyd Weight,  Edgar Allan Poe and many other literary and historic  figures.

Candy Crowley

-- Tuesday, April 1, 2014, “What Else?...Politics” with Crowley.

The Kalamazoo native is CNN’s chief political correspondent and has covered elections and political news, and the people involved in them,  for more than two decades. She moderated an Obama/Romney debate last August.

Before being hired by CNN in 1987, Crowley worked for a Washington, D.C. radio station, as the White House correspondent for The Associated Press and in NBC’s Washington bureau.

Crowley has won numerous journalism awards.

-- Tuesday, June 3, 2014, “Finding the Funny In...” with Jan McInnis.

Born in Washington D.C., McInnis was in charge of the “Joke of the Day” for her junior high school lunch table.  Now she has spent the past 17 years as a professional speaker, comedian and comedy writer.

Jan McInnis

McInnis has delivered  humor keynotes to thousands of organizations, from the Federal Reserve Banks to the Mayo Clinic. And she has sold comedy material to “The Tonight Show,” radio stations, greeting cards, syndicated cartoon strips, websites and  CEOs,

The Horizons Town Talk programs begin at 11:30am at Horizons, 6200 State St. in Saginaw Township, and are followed by a buffet lunch. Season tickets are $135 and on sale to renewing members until Monday, June 3. After that remaining reserved seating will go on sale to new subscribers.

For more information, call 799-4122.

Horizons Town Talk mentalist boggles the minds of reporter, audience

review and photos by janet i. martineau

Richard Osterlind  and a spoon he has twisted

“Fascinating”..... as one pointy-eared television/movie character is fond of saying.

His “Star Trek” crew character  being of a skeptical and science-driven mind.

Likewise my close encounter with Richard Osterlind, a mentalist/magician/hypnotist who was the speaker at a recent Horizons Town Talk offering at the Horizons Conference Center in Saginaw Township.

Told him straight up, in an interview before his presentation, I did not buy into this mind reading stuff...and besides, doesn’t the television series “The Mentalist” trash the whole idea with the title character of that show just being gifted in knowing how to read and/or trick people very, very well.

Osterlind was polite and patient.

“Yes, the show implies everything he does is based on reading body language,” he said. “But mine is based on ESP (extra sensory perception). I pick up people’s thoughts.

“I use abilities we all have. I have just refined them. And everyone has it (ESP) to some degree. They just don’t use it.”

He was also apparently reading that I was thinking “ya, right buddy” and asked me to pick a number between 1 and 100, took a piece of paper, wrote on it and folded it. Then he asked what I was thinking and I said 56. He held up the paper and on it was written “you are thinking 56.”

Some hairs stood up on my neck...then I though in that moment I said the number I had looked away a second before he held up his paper. Just enough time to quickly write what I had just said?

Told him so.

He sighed...and asked me to think of the first name of a close friend. I told him I was going to watch him like a hawk, maybe not even blink my eyes, during the process. And I did.

Out of his mouth next. “You are thinking of two people.” OMG, I was. “Concentrate on just one.” I did. And then  he wrote on a piece of paper, “Susan.”

Not Sue -- she hates that.

Susan.

The hairs were really standing up on my neck now....and then he bent and twisted a spoon as I watched.

This was a mere warmup to the Horizons Town Talk show before 1,000 or so people -- during which he fiddled with playing cards and time, bent some more spoons, and picked up random thoughts among the audience members. None of us had met him before.

Ostetlind looking more relaxed

There were some telling comments. “I create my stunts when I am on the road,” he told his audience. His bio program referred to skills in magic and in creating inventions which are now a part of the arsenal of mentalists everywhere . Both imply fakery.

But he also pointed out in Saginaw  he uses no assistants roaming in the audience with microphones, to pick up on what people are saying and then relaying them back to him in some way. No mirrors --- besides 56 and Susan were not reflecting anywhere; they were only inside my mind.

With the 1,000 in the Horizons Town Talk  audience he had them write special  dates, places they had been, family members or pet names on a piece of paper, and then place them in an envelope on each table. “Mix up the categories you write down.”

He did not collect the envelopes or even go near them.

“Feb. 7, 1969 ...” he said and a hand went up. OK, lucky guess. But then he proceeded to tell the person her husband’s first name and the first names of her daughter and son.

Over and over he did this with other members of the audience, with 100 percent accuracy on names, hometown, pets. “You have these messages in your head and I pick up thoughts like a radio picks up signals.”

In the interview the 64-year-old said he has been doing this professionally for nearly 40 years -- starting for just fun when he was a child growing up in P.T. Barnum’s home town of Bridgeport, Conn.

“My dad used to take me to the (Barnum and Bailey) circus. I loved the side shows. The fortune tellers, the magicians. I was interested in the mystery of it.”

He took a deck of cards early on, he claimed,  asked some  childhood friends to pull some out, and then told them what they were holding. His parents wanted to know where he had learned that card “trick.” What trick, he asked. He just knew what they were holding, And a career began.

Now he performs worldwide, for major corporate meetings and town halls. Before Gerald and Betty Ford, where he told the president the name of a childhood dog he had 60 years ago. Before 600 Chinese in Beijing. On Fox and Friends in the U.S. and on  “Good Morning Helsinki.”

He is, however, banned in casinos if he he recognized.  But he did “drive a car blindfolded in Japan” since he could “see” where he was going.

“You know there is no more wonder and mystery in the world today,” he said in talking to me. “When I was a kid I could imagine there were some places in Africa where dinosaurs still existed. Now kids can Google it and see there are no dinosaurs in Africa.”

But apparently there are mind readers in America? Google Osterlind and it is impressive. He ranks among the best. But the articles about him and his ilk are always kind of cloudy on the uses of magic vs. real ESP.

I started doubting again.

Then I thought of the two times in my life when I woke up in the dead of night, got up and stood next to the phone in the kitchen because I knew it was doing to ring with bad news, and both times it did. Within a minute or less.

Both callers remarked  that it sounded like I was wide awake when they called.

“I use abilities we all have,” Osterlind had said. “I have just refined them. And everyone has it (ESP) to some degree. They just don’t use it.”

So is he the mystery in our world ....or its magic...or maybe a little bit of both?

"The 39 Steps" at Bay City Players filled with sight gags and spies

review and photos by janet i. martineau

Imagine a 1935 Alfred Hitchcock spy movie taken from a 1915  novel and  married to a 2005-penned Monty Python style  script and you have Patrick Barlow’s “The 39 Steps,” playing this weekend and next at the Bay City Players.

From left, Trevor Keyes, Kurt Miller, Nathan Cholger

And yes, the play directed by Leeds Bird is as crazy a caper as that sounds -- so many bits of business amid the mystery that it boggles the mind.

Also it is superbly directed and superbly acted by a cast of four with  seven Zanies backing them up -- and three members of that cast plays, oh, maybe 20-25 characters. Cops, spies, train conductors, newspaper sellers, a memory performer, a sheriff, hotel owners, aged politicians, a murder victim, a farm couple.

With varying Scot, British and German accents to boot (and some needing translation, which also is provided)

Farcical comedy is playing well this winter in mid-Michigan. Pit and Balcony Community Theatre in Saginaw had us laughing with “God of Carnage” and Saginaw Valley State University with “Moon Over Buffalo.” And now this delicious treat.

The plot concerns an unmarried Canadian man visiting England and attending a show at the famed Palladium. Quicker than quick he gets blamed for a murder following a shooting there, and the madness to track down the real killer while keeping ahead of the police ensues.

Bird has directed with a minimal set. Yet involved are cars, planes and trains, and escapes through windows, with the actors involved in not only dialogue but hilarious mime and/or movement connected to carrying them off. 

Two Zanies and a window escape

We do not want to spoil too much of that fun, but the airplane scene and one of the  window escape scenes left us in stitches. And if you know your Hitchcock films, they were even funnier.

Nathan Cholger plays the Canadian, Caitlin Berry three women he runs across, and Kurt Miller and Trevor Keyes everyone else. All are superb actors with a wonderful physicality, expressions, timing and line delivery. Truly, there are times we forget there are only four of them and think other actors have  joined them on stage.

Miller in particular is captivating -- in one place alternating two characters by just spinning around. He also has the most fun with the varying accents. But even straight man Cholger gets an outstanding sight gag early on when the murder victim has fallen across his lap in a chair with arms and he can’t lift her off so he .....well, never mind.

Earlier we mentioned the cast included seven Zanies backing up the cast. This was Bird’s addition to the show, and a brilliant one. Dressed in black, they are ....how to explain it. Well, they are costume changers who usually do their work backstage but in this show do it in view of the audience, a herd of bleating sheep, the holders of the windows involved, the set piece changers. With body English of their own.

We can’t imagine this show without them and their ever presence, especially when it comes to the costume changes -- in particular when  Miller does that busy interchange of two characters with Keyes also engaged at that point.

Another Zany moment or two involves the use of a fog machine....with a Zany delivering the fog literally into the faces of the actors. Thought I would die laughing.

Other bits of fun business include one the actors doing battle with the sound man, and troubles getting a set piece  on in time for the lines. There are, in this play, many places where is the sound person has to be spot on -- and always is.

Great costumes also in this 1935-set play.

Like we said earlier, what a delicious treat -- for movie fans, Python fans and theater farce fans. The only problem is, methinks, there is so much to take in we are sure we missed things.

SVSU's "Moon Over Buffalo" charms with its words and physicality

From left, Keith Schnabel, Amanda Moths, Cassidy Morey, Lexee Longwell and Isaac Wood

review and photographs by Janet I. Martineau

Frank Capra meets William Shakespeare.

Half the cast performing “Cyrano” and the other half “Private Lives.”

Backstage shenanigans galore and four doors leading to it.

Yep, Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo,” which opened Wednesday at Saginaw Valley State University, sounds like a farce and is a farce -- one that also is ode to the love of theater and movies.

The more you know about theater, and to a lesser degree movies, the more charmed you will be with this production directed by Richard B. Roberts -- like one set of dialogue using the titles of Capra movies, with the music playing pre-show, and with the Jerry Dennis set design and all of its 1950s era artifacts. 

Rusty Myers

Playwright Ludwig leaves no stone unturned into mining everything into farce -- a hard-of-hearing woman, a veteran acting couple involved in affairs, a mistaken identity, confusion on which play is to be performed, their  daughter with two boyfriends. And it all goes faster and faster, and gets more and more involved, until it in one fell swoop  rights itself.

Rusty Myers and Cassidy Morey play the veteran acting couple, and there is a HUGE amount of physical activity on the part of Myers. He must be exhausted at the end of the show having been beaten by his wife with a copy of Variety, gotten drunk and devoid of most of his clothes, fallen off the stage, fallen onto the couch, wandered in and out of all the doors. 

This is his show, really...he is the driving force with it more than the rest of the cast... and he delivers 100 percent.

Another goody in the cast is Amanda Moths as the hard of hearing and elderly mother of Morey’s character. She has a tart tongue, totters around the stage, and is a hoot with  what she heard vs. what was really said because of her suffering ears. Moths, though she is but a collegian, plays elderly well.

The rest of the cast handles the slamming doors section with a spot on sense of timing as well as the  other cuckoo demands of the script very well -- in particular Morey, Lexee Longwell as the visiting daughter and Dakotah Myers as one of her two boyfriends.

Many farces are more about physical action than the words spoken. This one is different in that, since it is spoofing theater and movies, the words actually play an equal role. Thankfully all the cast members speak them with clarity and conviction, making the words almost funnier that the play’s physical action.

At one point the Rusty Myers character mutters that his company is the House of Usher Repertory Theater. So make sure you hone in on every word in the script .

Can’t say much more than that so as not to spoil the fun of the storyline and action. Suffice it to say well directed, well acted, well costumed and staged, and a great light night  of madcap fun at the theater.

“Moon Over Buffalo” plays through Sunday.

Landscapes a varied view at Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra concert

review and photos by janet i. martineau

Landscapes was the theme of Saturday night’s Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra concert at the Temple Theatre.

And, oh, what a varied picture the three works on the program provided -- chirping birds, thunderstorms, an Appalachian hoedown, countryside peacefulness.....and a constant shimmering noise throughout the orchestra that allowed each listener to create his or her own landscape.

That shimmering comment refers to the first piece on the program conducted by Brett Mitchell’s -- a minimalist one by John Adams, titled “Common Tones in Simple Times.”

Tones is the operative word here. As Mitchell said at its outset, the piece has no melody, no theme, “just listen for color...and maybe with your eyes closed.”

To describe it is impossible. To hear it was a challenge but a rewarding one. Although contemporary minimalist compositions tend to leave this listener cold, this one did not.

Angela Fuller and Brett Mitchell

Suffice it to say that virtually every instrument shimmers in sound -- that is the only word I can muster.

 There are the  ebbs and flows (pulses, modulations) of various instruments as they are the primary sound and then fade as another instrument rises over ever so slowly. There are very low sounds and high ones. A marimba here and and two pianos there.

A sameness of sound yet differences...the color Mitchell referred to. Yet, also, a small sense of rhythm to it all.

Adams defines the work as if one was seeing the surface of a continent from the window of a jet plane, and says the piece is influenced by long camera pans and  film techniques. 

Perhaps for him but this listener remained earthbound, eyes closed with images of nature in all its variances sparking so much it became overwhelming.

This piece made if difficult to settle into the rest of the program, for some reason, as the mind kept processing it (and thinking what a nightmare it must be to play, and we would LOVE to see what the score looks like).

The second piece on the program was also composed by a contemporary American -- one steeped in classical music but who is known for collaborating with country music folks.

Nothing minimalist here at all. Even a hint of two of Aaron Copland. And with true guts, a two movement piece played without pause and encompassing both classical music violin playing and country music genre fiddling. This is the Appalachian hoedown referred to in the second paragraph.

Edgar Meyer, a bass player, is the composer, and he created the piece in 1999 for the Grammy-winning American violinist Hilary Hahn. Playing it in Saginaw was Angela Fuller, principal second violin with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

It too was a work of much color -- but also the more traditional melodies and themes. At  the outset, Fuller’s violin was whisper quiet and simple; tranquil. But then came that second fiddling movement, a retreat, some bassoon intervention, and then more high energy from the soloist.

People laugh at me when I say my two favorite kinds of music are classical and country (or country and classical, depending on the mood of the day). Thank you Edgar Meyer for proving they can share a piece together and make it work.

Concluding the evening was Beethoven’s No. 6 (Pastoral), a true oldie and goodie, which Mitchell conducted without a score before him.

Its five movements are titled “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arriving in the Country,” “Scene by the Brook,” “Merry Gathering of the Country Folk,” “Thunderstorm” and “...Thankful Feelings After the Storm.” It totality it is peaceful and relaxing, even with the storm.

Premiered by the master in 1806, it also proves mankind across the decades and  miles across the ocean are linked by its love of simple things as the piece celebrates moods evoked by the weather and nature.

It is the “Brook” movement with the chirping birds -- nightingale on flute, quail on oboe and cuckoo on clarinet. Great stuff perfectly played, as was the entire piece under Mitchell’s baton.