Ovation Fellows are current students or recent alumni from Los Angeles area universities. Fellows are paired with a Mentor, currently serving as an Ovation Award voter, and see productions and meet artists around Greater Los Angeles throughout the year. Their articles, posted on LAStageBlog, are intended to be their personal responses to their experiences, and not as critical reviews or representing the views of LA Stage Alliance.
Aubrey Canfield is an Ovation Fellow from California State University Northridge.
People are always saying and sometimes it’s easy to forget: the theatre is a close-knit community. My mentor will often talk about the people she knows or has worked with at each of the shows we attend. Perhaps I was feeling slightly out of the loop because I didn’t understand how it was possible to know so many individuals within Los Angeles theatre.
I’ve recently discovered, however, how to find family in the theatre. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts was a whimsical musical told through comical numbers and satirical characters. The audience laughs along to the pandemonium the Bee has become.
Before the show I studied the program to see who’s in the cast, what the synopsis says and what’s coming next at the theatre. While scanning the cast list I suddenly stopped at one of the actor’s names. My mentor, seeing that I had suddenly frozen, asked, “Do you know someone?” I was so excited and surprised to see one of the cast members, Cassie Silva, was an old friend of mine. For six years we studied dance at Carousel Dance Studio as teenagers. I immediately felt a connection, not just to Cassie, but to the whole cast. I felt like a part of the family.
After the show I met with actors Daniel Tartar (William Barfee), Melvin Abston (Mitch Mahoney) and Cassie (Logainne Schwartzadgrubenierre). After exchanging overdue hello’s and hugs the three actors spoke to me about their experience in Spelling Bee and what Los Angeles theatre is like. As we talked I asked them what the benefits to doing theatre in LA were. Cassie and Daniel both expressed their happiness with LA’s tight knit theatre community. Cassie said she enjoyed having the opportunity to get to know people and described LA theatre as being one big family. Daniel seconded the sentiment by saying that “there is an overlap” which creates a very close-knit community, giving actors “more opportunities to grow!”
Of all the places to find community, I never thought LA would be one. Through the magic of the theatre and these amazing relationships we have forged it is possible to find family at the theatre.
