PART 4 OF 4: AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHY BROMBACHER

Kathy and Marie Ertel, project director for the city of Vista and supervisor of the construction of the new Moonlight Amphitheatre stage house, which was completed in 2009.  Photo by Pam Kragen.

Shifting gears a bit, how did you meet your husband, Robert C. Brombacher, DDS?  

I was living in Oceanside and one of my friends was a dental hygienist.  She and I would go jogging and then we ended up having potlucks and things with our friends and colleagues, and that’s how I met my husband - through her - because she worked with him as a dentist.  

My husband is originally from LA, went to San Francisco Dental School, and he and his partner started their dental practice here in Vista because of his cousin who lived in Encinitas at the time.  His cousin had said this is a beautiful area, you should think about it, come down and drive around, see where all the golf courses are (my husband was a golfer from when he was age 13), etc.  And so he came down because of family and relocated here to start his business.

Is he involved in the Moonlight business at all?

At one time, he was the treasurer of the Vista Foundation (which was the original nonprofit that built the theatre and they are now known as the Moonlight Cultural Foundation).  He actually acted in the first show we ever did up here: “Oliver!”  He was convinced to do the role of Dr. Grimwig, which is a tiny role.  When Oliver passes out and gets sick, he is taken in by a wealthy man who brings the doctor in to see how Oliver is doing.  And that was a role that my husband took on because I was completely out of men who would volunteer to do the role! [laughs]  So, he did that one role and he said “I’ve had enough.  I now know what it takes and I appreciate it, but I do not need to be onstage ever again!”  [laughs]  And from then on, he supported us from backstage, as a corporate sponsor, as a patron, and on our Board.

As the founder and artistic director of Moonlight, what achievement or production during your 32 year tenure are you most proud of?

Wow…that’s a hard one.  It’s a tie for “Les Miserables” and “Ragtime.”  Both of them were acquired as productions that had not been produced by regional musical theatre in our area before.  With “Les Miserables” we went in on it with another theatre company in northern California to co-build … they actually built the set and sent it down and we rented the turntable to make everything work.  

Moonlight's "Les Miz" in 2008.  Photo courtesy of Ken Jacques.

So “Les Miz” you would say is more of a technical achievement…

Yes, it was a technical achievement.  And then “Ragtime” was just a remarkable show to be able to produce.  Again, collaboration has been something that I’m really proud of.  For that show, we collaborated with Musical Theatre of Wichita to get a touring set brought through.  

What was particularly special about “Ragtime”?  Would you say it’s the biggest artistic achievement of all the shows that you’ve done?

I think it was one of the big ones for us.  In terms of recognition of the work and we had an incredible artistic team.  Our choreographer, Paul David Bryant, had done the show on Broadway with the original artistic cast and sat through all the sessions with Graciela Daniele about the origins of the music and the dance.  And it is just a beautiful piece of theatre.  So to have the chance to do that with an incredible artistic and technical team … it was a glorious time of creation.    

Moonlight's "Ragtime" in 2002.  Photo by Moonlight Archives.

Where do you hope to see Moonlight in 10 years from now?

I hope in ten years that Moonlight is very healthy: that it is continuing to produce the size musicals that we’ve been able to produce.  And hopefully doing a combination of beloved classics and premieres of new work.  I think every theatre has to keep bringing in new work, new titles, and new thinking to the forefront in order to evolve.  Theatre needs to evolve with the society.  What we were doing 10 and 15 years ago and what our audiences most wanted to see was not what they’re wanting to see right now.  Our audiences want to see the new titles, but they also want to see beloved favorites like “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Anything Goes.”  To get a younger audience in, we need to do our “Legally Blonde's", we need to do a very different, younger version of “Sweeney Todd.”  I very much believe that the company needs to stay flexible.  And sometimes that means doing – as we did last year – a couple of very small shows in order to make your budget work.  It is part of being in these economic times and if you call it recession or just a bump in the road … it’s just what everyone goes through.  So I hope that Moonlight will be the theatre that is not closing because we weren’t thinking ahead and because we weren’t budget conscious.  And that is not to say that any theatre wants to be in that position.  It’s just that smart choices have to be made everywhere.  

I also hope there will be more youth theatre that is healthy in this community and that Moonlight will continue to support that.  Kids are both our audience members and our performers of tomorrow.  And for that, you have to have arts education, you have to have young people in fine programs in dance and voice and such.  I hope that will continue to grow and flourish and feed what Moonlight is.  

Where do you hope to see yourself in 10 years from now?

I hope to continue to be engaged in the action of producing theatre.  It may not be at this theatre, but I have some titles that I have my eye on that I’d like to be engaged with.  I also want to support Moonlight in any way I can, whether that means serving on the Board of the Moonlight Cultural Foundation or fundraising or speaking in the community … I want to be an advocate for Moonlight.  And possibly for other arts organizations in our County.    

Thank you, Kathy, for your time and talent in bringing the magic of musical theatre via Moonlight! 

Bravo and Farewell, Kathy!  Photo by John Koster.

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.

PART 2 OF 4: AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHY BROMBACHER

Kathy Brombacher.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

When would you say was your very first time getting involved in theatre?

My wonderful journalism teacher gave me as a graduation present a two week workshop at the University of Redlands.  My mother thought “Are you kidding? What could she do with theatre!?”  But the teacher saw something in me.  And so I took summer school at the University of Redlands right out of my senior year of high school.  First, I was terrified at having to perform and sing and do the things that they did.  But then, I got hooked.  And because I was going to the university, I met actors: the teachers were students at the university in the theatre department.  So I met the people already and it was just a natural segue to getting involved with the theatre.  But I owe that all to my journalism teacher who somehow saw that that might be something good for me.  I had been a public speaker in high school also…I had done speech competitions, contests, that sort of thing.  So maybe that was part of it.  Then, I started taking those theatre classes in college and went on and focused on directing at one point.  

What was the first show you ever performed in?  What role did you play? 

I think that would be the “Merchant of Venice” my freshman year.  I played the role of Jessica.  And, heaven knows, I needed a lot of training!  [laughs] But the University of Redlands did one Shakespearian production a year.  And we all auditioned for everything and that was what I recall was my first official role.  And to this day, I love Shakespeare!

I want to talk more about your acting experience in the pre-Moonlight era.  Have you acted with other San Diego theatre companies, for example, The Old Globe or La Jolla Playhouse?  

Yes, with The Old Globe.  I did a production of Chekov’s “The Seagull” directed by Craig Noel.  At the time, I was teaching high school in Vista and they had open call auditions.  At that time, I think it was 1978, this was a production that went into the theatre-in-the-round there and they were not paying the actors, except there were two Equity actors that they paid, but it was essentially all volunteer at that time.  So my driving from Vista to San Diego while I was teaching full time was a little demanding, but it was something that I really wanted to do.  

Kathy and Craig Noel at the 2004 SD Theatre Critics Circle Awards.  Photo by Ken Jacques.

Kathy and Craig at the 2006 SD Theatre Critics Circle Awards.  Photo courtesy of the SDTCCA.

I also performed with The La Jolla Stage Company in “The Lion in Winter.”  I played Eleanor.  That was some years ago … I can’t exactly remember the date, but it was another one I performed in while I was teaching and I drove down.  And I became good friends with Walt Stuart, who was the artistic director of La Jolla Stage Company and directed the show.  He was a long time teacher of theatre at La Jolla High School and that theatre was on the campus of La Jolla High.  It was a community theatre that he helped develop. 
 

And I did a couple of things here locally before the Moonlight got started.  I did “The Lion in Winter” here for North County Community Theatre.  I was Eleanor in that.  And I did the role of Hope Harcourt in “Anything Goes” with that same community theatre.  

And onstage at Moonlight I played the role of Vera in “Mame,” the role of Jack’s Mother in “Into the Woods,” and Julia in “Lend Me A Tenor.”    

Wow.  You’ve had the privilege of playing some fantastic roles.  Have you worked alongside any memorable San Diego actors?  

Brian Salmon.  Brian, I met at “The Lion in Winter” that we did in La Jolla.  Thereafter, he came to our theatre to play Professor Henry Higgins in our first “My Fair Lady.”  And I have great admiration for Brian.  He’s a great person as well.  

Any particular funny stories or interesting experiences during your onstage acting career?

Well, when I was doing “Mame” at Moonlight in 1991, I decided to be on stage, which took a lot of doing, but meanwhile I was working with a new director, a new lighting designer, a new costumer.  Usually, what an artistic director does is integrate new staff in that direction from out front.  So, because I had a relatively large role onstage, I wasn’t able to sit out and integrate.  The director had a personal emergency, the choreographer left the show, and the costumes weren’t finished the night before opening.  And I thought: of all shows to be in onstage, when what I really should be doing is helping direct from out front, helping finish the lighting, etc.  So we just had to go forward and I called in some of my friends who helped with the costumes and the show went on … but it is not really a funny story.  It’s actually kind of sad.  [laughs]  That all these things happened in one production!  

Into the 1990’s I had decided - and it was a very good decision - to bring in some wonderful directors from the outside.  I had only had a couple of local directors work with me and I was directing most of the productions in the 1980’s.  So in the 1990’s, I said we’ve got to reach out and bring in more actors of a professional level.  So that was my philosophy in the 90’s: integrating the artists that come from Orange County, San Diego, wherever it might be.  And it was wonderful.  But “Mame” was one of those projects where things just didn’t line up. [laughs]

I want to talk about your educational trajectory from college to graduate school.  You mentioned you went to the University of Redlands where you got your…

BA in Theatre and then I went for my Master of Fine Arts in Acting at the University of Denver.  It was a two year program with summers included and that was really training to become a repertory actress.  And I loved the theatre department because they did musicals as well.  And we did Shakespeare, and lots of training in repertory literature with some fine professors.    

University of Redlands.  Photo courtesy of redlands.edu.

Any specific highlights or milestones you vividly remember from those years?  

It was a wonderful time of learning.  I also taught voice at that time because I was raising money to pay for college and I played piano for classes and that sort of thing.  What I remember most is the core of people and the achievements that we had.  I mean, this was a theatre program where all the costumes were built from design.  

I remember my training with John Powell who had worked significantly with the BBC in London.  He painted pictures on stage that were extraordinary.  I think it was during my MFA in Acting that I began to realize how interested I was in the directing aspects of theatre.  Largely because there were such great theatre directors there.  There were people who were "actor’s directors" who focused principally on the text and bringing that alive from the inside.  And then there were (like John Powell) directors of great pageantry and visual imagery and they directed in a very different way.  And then there was a third professor that I remember so clearly, Yayega Ziff.  She was with the Polish Lab Theatre and she gave us exercises and coached us in dialect and her insight into the characters was just on a whole different plane.  And very physically oriented.   

And then, I just started directing a couple projects myself there.  Even though I was in the acting program and required to be in all these productions, I started some outside multimedia directing and did some black box directing, too.