The Play’s the Thing

While most 10-year-old girls are practicing ballet or playing soccer, Victoria Kristy was channeling Steven Spielberg, soliciting her neighborhood friends to be actors in her front lawn productions. She created fliers on a mimeograph machine to draw an audience, and she even performed her own music for the show.

“I would sing songs onto a tape recorder and then play it during the production,” Kristy explained. The determined artist finally saved up enough babysitting money to buy her own wind-up movie camera when she was 15 years old.

Although theater runs in Kristy’s blood, the now retired elementary school teacher’s first community theater experience wasn’t until she joined Arizona State University Children’s Drama Troupe in the 1970s. After obtaining a degree in teaching with a minor in theater, she discovered her sweet spot of combining the two fields. As she taught across Arizona, Southern California and finally Washington, she started a children’s theater group at each school.

Now, Kristy lives in Sunriver where she retired with her husband. But for this artist, retirement hasn’t meant leaving her life’s work behind. She is now the artistic director for the nonprofit Sunriver Stars Community Theatre.

“I’m not the type of grandma you will find in a rocking chair,” she said. “Once we moved to Sunriver and I retired, I thought, people have fishing clubs, knitting clubs. I needed a niche. I asked myself, ‘What can I do that Sunriver doesn’t already have?’ Community theater!”

Four years and more than a dozen performances later, Sunriver Stars Community Theatre now has about 40 core actors. Family-friendly productions include shows such as Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Follow that Rabbit,” a musical rendition of “Alice in Wonderland.”

For 82-year-old Bob Vogel, a love for singing lead him to SSCT. Taking music lessons for the first time when he was 75 years old, Vogel’s music teacher convinced him to try out for “Cabaret” at the Tower Theatre.

“I thought, gee wiz, I’ve never done anything like this before,” he recalled. “But I tried out and I got it.”

Now, following his “Cabaret” debut, the Sunriver resident has been in nearly every SSCT production.

“At my age, memorizing things is a lot more difficult. So it keeps me sharp. … I love to ham it up.”

With a broad range of talent, backgrounds and ages, Kristy said the theater group’s cast varies greatly from show to show. While some joined the theater late in life because it was on their bucket list, others, including SSCT vice president of the board Susan Evans Inman, have been acting on stage, TV and film since they were young kids. Many of the actors prefer Reader’s Theater, but sometimes act in shows where they have to memorize lines.

“I have about five actors who let me twist their arm and test their comfort level,” Kristy said.

In Vogel’s case, Kristy had to beg him to play a part in the dark comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Vogel wasn’t too excited about the prospect of being in a murder mystery with a lot of lines to memorize, and worse, no singing.

“But Victoria got down on her knees and pleaded with me,” he said with a laugh.

Even back in 2011, before SSCT was formed, Kristy was prepared to do whatever it took to make things happen. Her first big step toward making SSCT a reality was simply voicing her dream to some friends. They encouraged her vision, so she decided to join the American Association of Community Theater, which provided step-by-step guidance for starting up a community theater.

Kristy started by sending out letters to all the local churches and then to potential meeting spaces. She was invited to take a tour of Sunriver Homeowners Aquatic & Recreation Center in a hardhat, as the community center was not complete yet. The planned facility at the SHARC was an ideal fit for a community theater, Kristy said.

Once she had the foundational pieces in place Kristy started soliciting community involvement.

“I met Susan Harkness Williams by chance in the Sunriver Artists Gallery and struck up a conversation,” she said.

A member of the Sunriver Women’s Club and key player in forming the successful art gallery in the Village at Sunriver, Harkness Williams connected Kristy with many pivotal individuals. Kristy then advertised a planning meeting in the Sunriver Scene.

Although this initial meeting produced a humble handful of attendees, Kristy still had enough interest to put on SSCT’s first show, “The Bremen Show Musicians.”

While many who attended that first meeting realized they either didn’t have the time to commit or were hesitant to join due to the theater’s infancy, others are still with SSCT today.

“Nancy Foote and Susan Evans Inman were among the first who attended the initial meeting and stuck with me,” Kristy said.

To her surprise and satisfaction, auditions for “The Bremen Town Musicians” attracted young and old alike.

“Initially, I thought my group might have to focus on senior theater as I was new to the community and did not know many young people with families in the area,” Kristy explained.

That original cast included a colorful group of 11 actors, ranging in age from 12 to 79 years old and with experience levels from novice to seasoned. They performed their debut without any lights, sounds or props.

“One actress (playing a farmer) couldn’t remember her lines, so she would read them off a packet of seeds in her shirt,” Kristy recalled.

Learning from this bare bones performance, Kristy was not deterred.

Kristy said SSCT has continued to attract new talent of all ages with every new show.

“Being involved with the theater is challenging, stimulating, scintillating, and edifying hard work — rarely a dull moment,” said Evans Inman. ”It’s especially rewarding to sense the audience’s enjoyment of our performances.”

For other SSCT actors, involvement came unexpectedly. Amy Franson took her 9-year-old daughter Savanna to audition for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with no intention of trying out for the play herself.

“As I sat and watched all of the other actors try out for their parts, I began to think, ‘Wow, this would be fun!’ Listening to Victoria describe the play and her visions, it sucked me right in,” Franson said.

Although Franson hadn’t acted in a play since middle school, she ended up landing a part in the play.

Fulfilling the theater’s mission to support local community and education, ticket proceeds go toward after-school enrichment and recreational opportunities. To date, SSCT has donated $8,100 to FAST Camp. Kristy said they have also partnered with Three Rivers School to bring last year’s popular Shakespeare show back again.

While running a community theater certainly has its challenges, Kristy explained that what drives her is affirmation from her students.

“When students ask me, ‘When are we going to do the next one?’ that’s my pay,” she said, affectionately. “Printers break, people don’t know their lines, but then that theater magic happens and all of a sudden there they are.”