Daughter, mom both work magic

by PAT PRICE

My daughter works for David CopperÞeld. She's his executive assistant.

Though she helps with the show, she's more of a behind-the-scenes person and he's never asked if he can saw her in half or anything, but he does make magic and most everyone thinks she has a pretty impressive gig.

Let's not forget, though, that Becca's mom makes magic, too. As a matter of fact, I've made it for about 40 years now -- pretty much as long as David CopperÞeld has. Sure, mine's a little more local, but like Becca, I tend to be a behind-the-scenes girl.

I've directed more than 60 plays and musicals in Lorain County. In that capacity, it's my job to make sure everything works, that all elements are coordinated.

It's always been my philosophy that theater is the "art of making magic," that "we work hard to make things look easy." Putting a show together is a painstaking, piecemeal bit of work, but the outcome always gives the illusion that it is being done for the very first time.

Audiences sit in the dark waiting to be swept into another world where it may be another era, another location. They peer into characters' lives as words -- that were once black ink on a page -- come to life from the lips of actors pretending to be someone other than themselves.

Behind the scenes, though, is where the real magic takes place. It's where the stage crew waits to transform a farm house into a sheriff's office. It's where a light operator hovers over the board to turn day into night with the push of a button. It's where folks wait in the wings to strip a costume off an actress and replace it with another for a quick change before her next entrance.

Years ago, when I directed for Lorain Community Music Theater at the Palace in Lorain, I used to love to get there early on performance days. Because we shared the space with their youth program everything had to be put away each night. Scenery had to be pushed way backstage, properties put and locked away -- all until there was a bare stage.

So, each day required set up. I'd invariably be the first one through the door and I'd just watch and wait as each person arrived, putting his or her piece of the puzzle into place.

Within an hour the stage would be Tevye's barnyard or the town square where Huckleberry Finn lived. Actors in full costume and makeup would be roaming around, making sure all their props were set. There'd be sound checks and follow spot operators would climb the towers into their posts.

The audience would file in, the lights would fade and the Palace would be completely transformed into a different place and a different time. The magic would begin.

When I was at Oberlin High School, I loved watching my students work hard at creating dozens of such transformations. I loved introducing them to this mesmerizing, captivating world of illusion and am proud to say that many of them became real "theater people" like myself. (Definition: A real theater person is one who MUST do theater.)

One of my first students, Paul Nelson, is working with me now at Workshop Players in Amherst. He was actually one of the founding members of the OHS Drama Club.

During my first year there, nine students worked together to put on our first show, "The Foreigner," and he was one of them. Now, well more than a decade later, he is developing the challenging role of Noah in the classic play, "The Rainmaker."

In retirement, I've continued my theatrical involvement through Workshop Players. Everything I had ever seen there was quality and it was one of my retirement goals to work with them.

I've been on stage crew for two shows, been in two, and have directed two murder mysteries for them. In nearly two years with them that former little one-room school house has become a beach, a funeral parlor, a restaurant, an Italian city, a gloomy mansion, and now it's the home of the Currys, a Kansas ranching family stuck in the middle of a drought.

It's our goal to take our audience back to 1935 and to plunk them down in the midst of our characters' lives. Lizzie, an aging spinster, resides at home with her father, and two brothers. Life is passing her by and it seems there is little hope for a beau to come her way.

The ranch is withering under the heat of the punishing drought and then one day, a rainmaker sweeps through their door offering a bargain: $100 in return for making the rains come. The father and younger brother, Jimmy, become believers, but Lizzie and her brother, Noah, remain skeptics.

Yet, an amazing thing happens. Lives are transformed by this stranger's arrival -- even his own life -- and it's a tale filled with wit and charm alongside real human drama.

It's a play I've always wanted to direct. It's magic I've always wanted to make and I have an amazing cast and crew.

I hope it's magic many of you readers will want to experience. You don't have to go to Vegas to see David CopperÞeld because Workshop is right down the road, Middle Ridge Road in Amherst.

The show runs April 15 to May 2 with shows Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Opening night is sold out, but tickets are available for all other performances. Call 440-988-9130 for tickets or additional information.