PART 3 OF 4: AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHY BROMBACHER

Kathy's directorial finale, staging "Fiddler on the Roof" for Moonlight in 2012.  Photo courtesy of Ken Jacques.

What was the first musical you ever directed?  

“Fiddler on the Roof” was my first big, full scale production in college for my senior thesis.  It was given to me as a student and it was part of the college’s regular season of plays.  But it wasn’t a student production.  It was a fully fleshed out, professional production. 

What was the first play you ever directed?  

Then I came into teaching high school, so it would be there.  It was “The Miracle Worker.”  

Do you have a preference for working on musicals vs. “straight plays”?

I enjoy doing the right kind of musical.  You know, every director has their style.  I’m not right for “Anything Goes” I think.  I’ve never directed “Anything Goes.”  I have directed “Ragtime,” which I’m proud of.  I have directed “The Spitfire Grill.”  I think my taste ranges through the acting with musicals that have a good, solid acting script.  I’m not a choreographer.  I’m not a dancer.  I tend toward musicals that have a script and acting, as opposed to musicals that should be given to director/choreographers.  

And the question was “which do I prefer.”  I do prefer non-musical plays.  All kinds of non-musical plays.  And one of the things I felt so strongly about when we had the Moonlight going is that we should have a place in which we could do non-musical plays.  Hence, came the AVO Playhouse.   

When I started working full time with the City of Vista running the cultural arts program - coming out of teaching - I said we need a place where we can do a couple of non-musicals.  I really believe in that literature and I’m really proud that an organization that makes its name in musical theatre is also producing these non-musicals.  

The AVO Playhouse at 303 Main Street in Downtown Vista.

You mentioned that you came here as a high school teacher.  I’m curious, is there a story there of how you ended up in Vista…of all places?

Right, right!  Well I had been in Denver and came home to kind of recover.  Out of graduate school, I had done dinner theatre and had wanted to get my Equity card and go to New York, but things just kept not lining up for that.  So I came home for awhile, worked a variety of jobs, and then this teaching job came up.  Harold Warman who was band director and his wife who was teaching English at Fallbrook High School, as well as Pete McKew who was an activities director and a teacher of US History: they were friends of mine up in the Colton area and when an opening happened they said come down here to Vista High School.  They had a very short window of time - it was like a week before school started - and someone had left because they got another job.  So I auditioned for the role … I interviewed with the principal.  I had with me some letters of recommendation that were fine, but even though I had no teaching experience, they took a chance on me.  So I went up to UC Irvine at nights and got my teaching credential.  But, yeah, it was out of the blue.  It was like, “Are you ready for this?  Grab the ring and start teaching!”  And I had a great aunt living in San Marcos, so immediately I had a place to stay.  But it came very fast and furious.  And by Thanksgiving … I was ready to quit.  [laughs]  No, I continued on for 12 years.  

And the Superintendent of schools, Jack Price, who was a man who was very arts minded, came to me one day and said “What do you dream about?”  Because the high school theatre I was teaching at had 147 seats. So, it was a tiny place to be producing what I wanted to do – a combination of musicals and straight plays.  And I said, “I dream about having a place where musicals can be produced and there’s room for an orchestra, you could have production values, you could have scenery, etc.”  And he brought me out to this hilltop at Brengle Terrace Park, which was a flag pavilion for the 1976 bicentennial.  And he said, “Well, here’s a place.”  [laughs]  No running water, no lights, no electricity.  “What do you think?”  And I said, “Well … I’ll get my friends together and we’ll tackle this.”  And the city had to give their approval because it was a city park and little did they know what was about to happen to them!  

With my high school students, we built and painted scenery.  Ken Gammie - who is still conducting with us today - put together the orchestra.  And, to get this started, people volunteered for nothing, I mean just for the love of the arts. And then the Recreation Department had to help us with some infrastructure.  To get volunteers and help supplement everything.  And then, as they saw the theatre grow, they adopted us as a program of the city, which was pretty major for a city to say they’ll adopt this theatre program and help pay the expenses and help develop the land.    That’s the way it’s been all these years.  

And what were you doing at that time…were you producing musicals year round?

In the beginning, we were just doing the summer musicals and I was teaching full time.  

Kathy Brombacher and Ed Perez at Moonlight in 1982.  Photo courtesy of Moonlight Stage Productions.

How many years from when you started did the City of Vista step in and start investing in your company?

It was 1984 I believe.  And we started in 1981, so it was three years after.  

And the way we had funds to even start was back to that Superintendent of schools.  He said I have a way to get you some upfront money … I mean you need money for royalties, money to build scenery, money to get costumes … so, for the first couple of years we were an adult education program.  He said let’s offer this as an adult education program to the community and the actors will sign up for class, you will be the teacher, and we’ll have a few people who are independent contractors come in and provide support services.   

So, a $10,000 budget was allotted for the set of summer classes through adult education.  And it has always been a combination of the school district supporting us and then the city supporting us.  And it certainly helped that I had friends who were also teachers that were contributing to this who were certified to work with students.  They all had faith in us.      

Were you called Moonlight Stage Productions at this time?

No, we were called the Vista Summer Theatre Festival.  We started with two musicals and we didn’t know if we’d want to do straight plays, or some festival, you know, we were just being open to it all.  

Moonlight in 1983.  Photo courtesy of Moonlight Stage Productions.

And when did you change the name and how did you choose Moonlight?

We got together an Executive Committee composed of people who were volunteers - like a Board except they were more like an Advisory Committee.  And we sat around and came up with names and we eventually came up with Moonlight.  At the time, there was the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park that was very familiar to everyone.  And we thought that keeping “Vista” in the name might keep away some of the neighboring communities who wanted to be involved, so we wanted something that was more umbrella-ed.  And we have gorgeous moons that appear in the sky over the amphitheatre and behind the trees!  So it just seemed a really graceful kind of name.  

And do you remember when-abouts you officially changed your name to Moonlight?

It was a couple years in because they didn’t have a name for the amphitheatre, really.  Even though it had existed since 1976, it was simply known as “the Amphitheatre at Brengle Terrace Park.”  I’m thinking it was the mid-80’s … 1984, 1985 … something like that.      

How would you characterize your working relationship with the City of Vista since then?

Well, I became a City of Vista employee and left teaching in 1989.  So the city was absolutely supportive from the beginning. 

At that time, there was a Vista press that existed.  And articles were written about us getting started, photographs taken, and we were really supported by the press in a big way.  Jim Porter, the Director of Parks, and Kathy Brendell both collaborated to write grants to improve the facility to bring running water and electricity.  They wrote a grant to build our patio area and restrooms…that was 1987 or 1988.  Jim also made sure we had a proper sound and lighting booth.  We’ve also had community projects to lay cement slabs and another project to build a side stage for us so that we could store scenery to give us more space onstage.  But the City of Vista has been very, very supportive of improvements, including putting roads in, parking lots in, and fences in … all kinds of infrastructure.  

Then in 1990-1991, we started discussing building a permanent stage house.  We had pretty much built everything ourselves until we had the new stage house built and so there was a long set of campaigns and fundraising efforts for that.  We also went out and did a feasibility study, we raised money for the architectural plans (there have been several renditions that happened during the 1990’s into the 2000’s)  and then in 2006 the voters of Vista voted on Proposition L, which included the upgrade of the fire stations, the city hall, the sports park and, of course, Moonlight’s new stage house.  So that support is indicative of the fact that our City Council and these wonderful people who ran Recreation always had us in mind as they were improving this park.  Jim Porter passed away last year and I will tell you I really miss the man.  He invested so much in this.  He believed in it completely as did many, many citizens.    

The Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.  Photo courtesy of Ken Jacques.

THEATRE REVIEW: "Fiddler on the Roof" at Moonlight Stage Productions

An Incredibly Fine “Fiddler”:

Kathy Brombacher’s swan song staging is a stunning feast for the eyes and ears

 By Donnie Matsuda

David Ellenstein as Tevye (foreground) in "Fiddler on the Roof."  Photo by Ken Jacques.

Moonlight Artistic Director Kathy Brombacher understandably has a special place in her heart for the timeless and tuneful musical theatre classic, Fiddler on the Roof.  After all, it was the very first full-scale musical she ever directed as a student at the University of Redlands (many moons ago), and now, in a full-circle moment that only the mystical theatre gods can dictate, she once again returns to the venerable musical as her final show before stepping down as head honcho of the Vista-based theatre company after 32 years of outstanding leadership.  No doubt, it is a very important musical for her, and this time around, she wants to make sure it is done right, with every note, every step, and every aspect of the beautiful, intimate Russian village of Anatevka perfectly in place. 

Simply put, her careful attention to detail mostly pays off here and her current staging of Fiddler on the Roof – both visually and vocally stunning - is a “grand finale” that she can be proud of.  Working with a top-notch creative team, which includes veteran Moonlight choreographer Carlos Mendoza (who borrows judiciously from Jerome Robbins’ original dance sequences) and veteran Moonlight Musical Director Elan McMahan (who elicits a large and lush sound from her 11-piece orchestra), Brombacher does what she can to keep the three hour long musical moving along at a brisk pace while still paying due homage to the quirky characters and hummable musical numbers we all know and love.   

L-R: Aubrey Elson as Chava, Alexis Grenier as Tzeitel, and Charlene Koepf as Hodel.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

While her vision for this production is more muted than any I’ve ever seen, it appears that it is her intent to strip away the theatrical flourishes and instead focus on the real characters and the everyday situations at the heart of the piece.  Instead of playing up the acerbic Jewish wit written into the piece, her cast delivers the many punch lines with a naturalistic tendency that causes the humor in the piece to fall consistently flat.  But despite her watered-down storytelling, one thing is for sure: Brombacher knows her space well and manages to create some incredibly stunning and evocative pictures using her large 39-member cast and a number of rustic set pieces (the compact and cozy set is rented from Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre and fits well on the sprawling amphitheatre stage) handsomely lit by Jean-Yves Tessier. 

Victoria Strong as Golde and David Ellenstein as Tevye.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

Based on a collection of stories by Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem, the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof combines the talents of three writers – Joseph Stein (book), Jerry Bock (music), and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) – and holds the distinction of being Broadway’s fifteenth longest-running show in history.  The original Broadway production was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning nine including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, and Best Direction, and spawned four Broadway revivals as well as a successful 1971 film adaptation.  It has enjoyed enduring international popularity largely thanks to its universal appeal and it has been performed in more than 15 languages, in over 30 countries.

At the heart of the story is dairyman Tevye, his wife Golde, and his five daughters who all struggle to keep their traditions alive and their sanity in check amidst the caustic winds of change that threaten to tear their family apart.  But despite the ongoing persecution by the Tsarist regime, the imminent threat of revolution, and the concern that his daughters are falling in love and falling out of their faith, Tevye manages to maintain grounded as he deals with each new twist of fate with his characteristic warmth, humor, and humanity.

The "Fiddler on the Roof" Company.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

Without a doubt, it takes a whole lot of chutzpah for any actor to step into the workboots of America’s most iconic Jewish milkman and David Ellenstein (esteemed Artistic Director of the Solana Beach-based North Coast REP Theatre) is more than up to the task.  While his singing and dancing are a bit rusty here, he nonetheless manages to captivate the audience with his authentic charm and his no-nonsense, down-to-earth sensibility.  As his wife Golde, Victoria Strong simply shines.  She’s a true triple threat, boasts a magnetic presence on stage, and brings a lighter and more loveable touch to a role that’s normally played with a nagging edge.  Together, Ellenstein and Strong are unusually laid back (certainly not cut from the same cloth as most Jewish parents) and frequently at odds with their traditional roles as written in Stein’s banter-filled book and Harnick’s prickly score.  But, then again, this is a musical about breaking with tradition and forging new beginnings, right?  

Even the girls playing the couple’s eldest three daughters tend too much toward the vanilla.  They are exceptionally strong singers, however, and they are Alexis Grenier as Tzeitel, Charlene Koepf as Hodel, and Aubrey Elson as Chava.  And among their men (intended or otherwise), Timothy J. Allen is a ball of nervous energy as the mousy, timid tailor Motel, Jason Webb is charismatic as the young revolutionary Perchik, and Eric Hellmers is both gentle and graceful as the Russian suitor Fyedka.     

The "Fiddler on the Roof" Company.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

There are also some fine comic turns by Susan E. V. Boland as matchmaker Yente, Ralph Johnson as town bookseller Avram, Jamie Snyder as the butcher Lazar Wolf, and Danny Campbell as the Rabbi.  And there is even a children’s cast of eight – Noah Baird, Will Ellenstein, Hayden Kerzie, Hourie Klijian, Shea Starrs, Skylar Starrs, Sloane Starrs, and Scarlett Strasberg - who are nicely worked into many of the group scenes and musical numbers.

All in all, it’s a lot to rein in with a musical of this magnitude, but Brombacher does an admirable job of making it all come together as seamlessly as she can.  With her Fiddler, there may be a few shortcomings to kvetch about and it may not be the most robust revival you’ve ever seen, but it does boast some strong performances, a number of picture-perfect moments, and serves as an appropriate “farewell” to one of the most legendary leaders in the Moonlight Stage family.

Things to know before you go: Fiddler on the Roof plays at Moonlight Stage Production’s Amphitheatre through August 11, 2012.  Running time is 3 hours with a 15 minute intermission.  Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8pm.  Tickets are $15-$50.  For more information or to purchase tickets, call (760) 724-2110 or visit www.moonlightstage.com.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ELLENSTEIN AS MOONLIGHT STAGE TAKES TO THE FIDDLE

A Tevye for Our Times:

David Ellenstein steps out of his artistic director shoes and into the work boots of America’s most iconic milkman

By Donnie Matsuda

It is perhaps no surprise that the masterful musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF has stood the test of time.  The beloved and poignant tale of a poor Jewish milkman named Tevye who fights to maintain his family intact and his Jewish religious traditions unscathed as the winds of change swirl about him is perhaps as relevant as ever in our current times.  But what is surprising is that actor, director, and artistic director of North Coast REP, David Ellenstein, has never tackled the role of the famed “Dairyman” – a role which he seems born to play.  Now, he gets that chance, as he carries on the tradition of Tevye (a role his father has played several times) and as he makes his debut on the Moonlight stage in the company’s second show of its 32nd Summer Season.

David Ellenstein as Tevye in Moonlight Stage Production's "Fiddler on the Roof."  Photo courtesy of Ken Jacques.

DONNIE:  I was surprised to see that you have not done FIDDLER (either as an actor or director) before.  Will this be your first time doing this show?  And will this be your first time working on the Moonlight stage?

DAVID:  My first FIDDLER and my first time at Moonlight.  I have known the show since childhood.  My Dad appeared in it several times and I have seen a number of productions.  I am excited to take on "the Dairyman" and to be debuting at Moonlight. 

DONNIE:  How does it feel being back on the “performing” side of things?  Is it hard to step out of your directing shoes and be back on stage?

DAVID:  I have been getting back on stage about once a year (MY NAME IS ASHER LEV and TALLEY'S FOLLY most recently at North Coast Rep.)

It is very good for me as a theatre artist to go through the actor’s process.  It makes me a better director, a better theatre person, and a more compassionate theatre employer.  When one takes on a large role like this you must trust your director and not try to impose on that side.  Acting requires a full commitment of being and there really isn't room for the "visionary" or the “critic” if you are fully inhabiting a role.

David Ellenstein as Tevye.  Photo courtesy of Ken Jacques.

DONNIE:  What aspect of Tevye’s character do you most identify with?  

DAVID:  His big heart.  His inability to be unjust or unkind to fellow human beings.  His ability to laugh at himself and question everything.  His innate knowledge that nothing is black and white, but that we live in a world that is ever changing and ever surprising.  His ability to overcome unpleasantness and forge on.

DONNIE:  In what way are you completely unlike the character you play?

DAVID:  He is a manual laborer and works extremely hard with his hands. I am an artist and run a theatre - the physical nature of our two selves is very different.  I grew up in an upper middle class home, whereas Tevye comes from poverty.

DONNIE:  What artistic challenges do you face stepping into such an iconic role?

DAVID:  Being true to the character and the situation.  Fulfilling what an audience expects and desires from the role, but still being unique and personal in how it is delivered.  Being satisfying and surprising at the same time for both the audience and myself.  Knowing that the enduring impact of the character is in its truth and trusting that.

DONNIE:  In your opinion, what is relevant about FIDDLER today?

DAVID:  Our world is ever in flux and change.  What is true today in absolute terms may not be tomorrow.  Our ability to adapt, accept, and move on with shifting perspective and acceptance - and still have room to dream and find joy in those we love and the world we live in.  FIDDLER is filled with this universal truth which is why it is a timeless show.  Not to mention how well written and structured it is.  Great songs help, too.

Kathy Brombacher first directed "Fiddler" as a student at the University of Redlands early in her career and now it will be the last show she directs as Artistic Director of Moonlight Stage Productions, a Vista-based company which she founded 32 years ago.  Photo courtesy of North County Times.

DONNIE:  How would you describe Kathy Brombacher’s artistic vision for the show?

DAVID:  Kathy wants to be true to the script, true to the historical context, and true to the needs of her audience.  She understands her space so well, and what needs to be done to communicate this show properly in its confines.  Her approach comes from a place of knowledge of the material and a breadth of experience, but is allowing of input and ideas from her artists.  I am delighted to be working with Kathy at the helm.

DONNIE:  What are you most looking forward to about Moonlight's production of FIDDLER?

DAVID:  The joy of doing it.  Inhabiting and sharing Tevye with the audience.  Bringing a bit of my Dad onstage with me each night and knowing that my sons are taking it all in.  Tradition!

Things to know before you go: Fiddler on the Roof opens at Moonlight Stage Production’s Amphitheatre on July 25 and runs through August 11, 2012.  Performances are Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8pm.  Gates open for picnicking and dining at 6:30pm.  Tickets are $15-$50.  For more information or to purchase tickets, call (760) 724-2110 or visit www.moonlightstage.com.