PART 3 OF 3: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOEY LANDWEHR, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF J*COMPANY

Joey with Rebecca Myers (Fanny Brice) in rehearsal for "Funny Girl."

How did you come up with the idea of a “Streisand Season”? 

When I first walked in the door in February 2006, I knew then that I wanted to do this season.  To me, there wasn’t a question…I knew this must happen.  As Artistic Director, I was the first to bring in themes to our seasons - the second season I was here we did a “Disney” season and the third year we did a “Going Green” season, and then we did our “Rodgers and Hammerstein” season, and last season was our 18^th year so we did a whole Jewish themed season, which had never been done here before.  They’ve been around for 18 years and they’ve never done a Jewish-themed season?  And it takes the “Goi” to put it together!?  [laughs]  I guess people just don’t think about that.  And then, of course, last season was our tribute to the La Jolla Playhouse and then this season we walk into Ms. Streisand. 

While I’ve wanted to do this for some time, I didn’t know exactly which shows I wanted to do.  We looked at On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and we looked at I Can Get It For You Wholesale.  So I had to weight things out in terms of what was going to sell tickets, as well as what the kids would garner from it.  I actually wrote to the Streisand Foundation and asked if they would partner with us for the season and they were very generous in saying “we are so honored that you’re doing this, thank you for using her name and paying tribute.”  I’ve also invited her out to see the shows in our season … like she’s really gonna come! [laughs]   But one can hope. 

I’ve been such a Streisand fanatic my whole life.  From growing up in rural Missouri, my parents were a little backwoods and a little redneck-y, and I grew up in a double wide trailer.  I was the first person to graduate high school in my entire family and I was the first person to ever think of leaving Missouri.  So I remember listening to Barbara Streisand as a 14 year old and my parents kept saying “why are you listening to that long hair?”  Long hair is a term for classical music.  They thought I was all hoity-toity because I was listening to “classical music.”  I’m like, Barbara Streisand is not classical music! [laughs]  But to them it was because it wasn’t Tennessee Ernie Ford and Theresa Brewer and all those banjo playing singers. 

I knew this was Barbara’s 70^th birthday and all the stars just aligned.  This year is J*Company’s 20^th anniversary, my 40^th birthday, it is her 70^th birthday, it is my Executive Producer’s 50^th birthday.  Clearly, something is telling me this is the right time to do it.  And everything just sort of came about as it should have.  It was a relatively easy season to put together it just sort of laid itself out in front of me. And when I presented it to my committee, they said great without even a bat of an eye.  I mean she’s sort of the patron saint of Judaism ... if there is one [laughs]! 

This season: Which show do you think will be the most fun?  Which will be the most challenging?

Well, the most fun is going to be Hello, Dolly!  It just lends itself to it.  With a Jerry Herman score, how can you go wrong!?  He’s brilliant.  I got to meet him in New York when they were doing his show Showtune and I was like, “I love you!” [laughs]  He was the nicest man.  As far as the most challenging, I think probably the other three shows have their own challenges.  Funny Girl is just massive.  There is nothing small about it and there’s no way to do it small.  Yentl has its own challenges in that the subject matter is on the heavy side and it’s a little adult.  So we have to really watch how we handle this with our 10-18 year olds.  And then Gypsy has its own challenges as well because - in my eyes - I see it as this beautiful story about a mother and her daughters and how everything changes around them.  But, I think in many ways, the parents see Gypsy as just a show about strippers.  And that’s not what it is about.  So my own work with that will be to present it in a way that people will come to see it. 

Where would you like to see J*Company in 5-10 years from now?

I hope that we continue to grow.  I would love more than ever to have a blackbox theatre.  Because our space here is a large 500 seat theatre, I would love to be able to do some more intimate plays that really aren’t these huge mongo musicals.  We could do plays like The Laramie Project.  And we could do some darker, more intimate things.  And I would love to at some point - when our building isn’t bursting at the seams - put together a conservatory training program for our kids.  Because education is so key to me. I think many times youth theatres are created for the wrong reasons: either as easy pocket money or as easy ways to promote a director’s artistic vision and feed their ego.  Those are not reasons to create a children’s theatre.  In my opinion, the reason for children’s theatre is to help young people grow and to educate them in what they’re doing.  So, to have a conservatory here to train these young people to help them grow in theatre and in other arts would be so amazing. 

For more information about J*Company, visit: http://www.sdcjc.org/jc/

PART 2 OF 3: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOEY LANDWEHR, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE J*COMPANY

Joey Landwehr

How did you end up in San Diego?

My partner and I met in 2000, just before the 9/11 attacks, and we were living in Brooklyn just over the river.  When the towers fell – we could see the towers from our apartment window – the whole scheme of New York changed.  And having been there for so many years, I felt it was time for me to find something different, something that really gives me some fulfillment instead of living from paycheck to paycheck and going from show to show and waiting tables in between. 

My partner was getting a little disenchanted with New York as well.  He said if he ever moved away, San Francisco and San Diego were the only places he would ever go.  So, we flew out here the summer after the 9/11 attacks and I got off the plane and said, “I’m home.”  And I never thought I would be a “California person” because I had never been to California and always thought of California as that fake, botox-filled place and it drove me a little batty to think of it.  But when I stepped off the plane in San Diego, I thought “wow this has so much potential and there is so much already here I wanted to be a part of.” 

That being said, that year I decided I would come out for pilot season because I had my SAG card and my AFTRA card, so I thought I’d sort of feel it out and see what’s going on.  And I remember I was taking an acting class I can’t remember exactly what the scene was but I was paired up with this beautiful lady with beautiful red hair and we were doing this scene about her father having raped her.  It was a very emotional scene and she was doing the lines like she was in a hamburger commercial.  I, on the other hand, was really getting into it and so the instructor stopped us halfway through and she – pointing to me - goes, “you, you’re from New York right?  We don’t do that here in LA.”  And I about fell out of my chair.  That’s when I knew LA is not the place for me.  [laughs]  Perhaps San Francisco and San Diego were better options. 

Then my partner got a great job working at Rady Children’s Hospital and so we came out here to San Diego.  I had no prospects and I was very lucky Alan Ziter at the SD Performing Arts League hired me as a temp doing office management and then within the next few years I became member services director.  It was the perfect way to jump into the theatre scene here because I got to know everybody in town.  Then, Becky Cherlin Baird - who was the artistic director at the J*Company before me - was leaving the job to start a family and I happened to see her at a taping at NBC.  I told her, “I want your job …what do I need to do?”  And she said give me your resume and we’ll see what happens.  So I went through a bazillion different interviews and I was very lucky to be given this, my dream job. 

That’s great.  What year did you start working here?

2006 was my first year here.

Joey in rehearsal for "Fiddler on the Roof" in 2010.

Take me through the process you go through selecting musicals for each season.  Other than being kid-friendly, what do you look for when choosing shows?

I have a fantastic, amazing committee that’s an integral part of the J*Company and I have one of the most amazing Executive Producers you could ever ask for, Monica Handler Penner.  I bring things to her that I might be a little weary of.  Inevitably, it always comes around to Monica asking me if I think this is right for our children.  And if I say “yes,” she says “I trust you and I know it will be great.”  So, it is wonderful that she trusts me, as does my committee and the Board of Directors and the Executive Staff here.

I think I’ve worked very hard to gain that trust.  I mean, they still wonder sometimes [laughs] but every year they are very pleased with the outcome.  And I’m very proud to say that for the first 13 years here, they were in the red trying to establish themselves and ever since I walked in the door I’m so proud to say that we’ve been in the black.  And we’ve never looked back.  And or budget gets bigger every year and we grow with the numbers of our kids and our audiences and it is very exciting.

PART 1 OF 3: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOEY LANDWEHR, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE J*COMPANY

Everything’s Coming Up Streisand For Joey Landwehr and the J*Company

By Donnie Matsuda

Joey Landwehr has been the Artistic Director for J*Company Youth Theatre for the past six years, putting his innovative artistic stamp on the theatre company’s award winning and ambitious musicals.  Prior to his tenure as head of the “J*Co” (as it is affectionately referred to by many), Joey worked for several years as a professional actor and director in New York City, working on and off Broadway, singing and dancing on national tours, performing in regional theatre, and even soloing at Carnegie Hall.  He’s trained with some of the biggest names in the biz, including Betty Buckley, Marcel Marceau, Twyla Tharpe and Patti LuPone, and has had the privilege of working with such greats as Phyllis Diller, Sam Harris, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Mallory, Joel Grey, Kaye Ballard, Michael Feinstein and the late Howard Keel.  As Joey gets ready to lead his youth theatre company into its 20th Season (a tribute to the legendary Barbara Streisand), he sat down with me to chat about his childhood growing up in the backwoods of St. Louis, his reasons for moving to San Diego, his process for putting together the company’s “Streisand Season,” and his hopes and dreams for the future of J*Company.

Joey Landwehr

How does a young boy growing up in rural Missouri get involved in musical theatre? 

Well, growing up in a rural town in Missouri, I was planning to be a minister.  Especially when you get to know me, you’ll be, “like, what!?!”  [Laughs]  I think most of it was because that’s what my mother wanted and I wanted to please her.  I went to Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, TN in between my junior and senior year of high school and it was an experience I’ll never forget.  I was there and I was thinking, “this is beautiful, but I don’t really know why I’m here.”  Then I realized half way through that I didn’t really want to preach the word, I just wanted to be on stage and tell people what to do!  [laughs]  I always loved theatre and I was always singing in church but I never thought of it as an actual job or a career.  It wasn’t until I was a junior in high school that I went, oh there’s a whole genre and there’s something you can do onstage.  And that’s when I discovered theatre and realized that I had this love for it. 

Growing up, I was a rotund boy with a 44 inch waist, weighing about 260 lbs.  And my sister was going on a date with a guy that knew John Goodman and they knew I was starting to get into theatre so they introduced me to him.  I asked him if this is something I want to pursue, what should I do and where do I go?  And he said the first thing you need to do is lose the weight.  And literally, that summer I went from 260 lbs to 170lbs.  He was such an inspiration.  He spoke so eloquently and I remember his thunderous laugher.  He was so jovial and wonderful and that’s when I started thinking maybe this is something I could do. 

I went to undergrad at a little liberal arts college and thought I would have teaching as a background and something to fall back on and then I realized no, if I’m going to do this I need to go full out.  I wanted to experience it all the way or not experience it at all.  So I just jumped in with both feet and never looked back. 

I have to assume from your impressive bio that you’ve spent a lot of time in New York.  How many years were you there?  Did you get to do any Broadway or Off-Broadway shows?  What’s the most important lesson or piece of advice you took away from your time in the Big Apple?

I was in New York from 1997-2003.  On Broadway, I did a little stint in The Secret Garden and then did the national tour which was a lot of fun.  I also did the national tour of the The Wizard of Oz with Phyllis Diller and the national tour of George M with Joel Grey.  I also took classes from Betty Buckley.  I had already been through undergrad and grad school at Ohio State and when I burst onto the New York scene, I didn’t know where to start.  I discovered that Betty was giving acting classes and I said I just want to try this out and see if I’m missing something that I didn’t learn in college.  She was such an incredible teacher that I took classes from her for three years.  She taught me so much about the process of theatre much more than the product.  Whereas in college, I think they were getting me ready for the product of theatre: how to get the show and how to market myself.  Whereas Betty taught me to find the underlying aspects of theatre, the exciting parts where you could really delve into characters. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH J*COMPANY ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JOEY LANDWEHR IN GAY SAN DIEGO

Check out my interview with Joey Landwehr ("Everything's coming up Streisand") as his J*Company prepares to kick off the first production of their “Streisand Season” on October 19.  In our conversation, Joey and I talked about his upbringing in Missouri, his time spent “pounding the pavement” in NYC, his transition here to San Diego, and his process of putting together the J*Company’s 20th Anniversary Season.  The interview (on page 4) is in the current edition of Gay San Diego, which is on newsstands now!