Who better to get the story of SPRC and CET from than its Artistic Director, Marcia Gambrell Hovick? She's been there!

Marcia Gambrell Hovick moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1956. In 1959 she played Mrs. St. Maugham in THE CHALK GARDEN directed by Fred Rider and produced by Ted Kuster at the Golden Bough Circle Theatre in Carmel. In 1960 the Community Theatre of the Monterey Peninsula was being organized at the Circle Theatre. Marcia got "volunteered" by a fellow Mills College graduate to organize the children's arm of it. She had done children's theatre previously in other parts of the country and agreed to head the committee that would set it up. Students were registered, and a teacher was found. That teacher backed out, and Marcia agreed to teach for a few weeks until another teacher could be found. As Marcia says, "Never do anything for two weeks that you don't plan to do for the rest of your life." It was just called "the children's classes at the Community Theatre." In addition to learning theatre, the young people would act as ushers and help with maintenance for the Circle Theatre. The number of young students grew exponentially, and pretty soon they outgrew the space. In 1969 the Indoor Forest Theatre became vacant, so the Children's Experimental Theatre incorporated separately and moved to the space it has occupied ever since. In its second year as a children's theatre, Loel Shuler enrolled her children, Barbara and Mark, and soon Loel became a teacher and its costumer. Loel has remained in that position ever since, and Mark has worked for CET for many years teaching stage combat and photographing CET and SPRC productions.

The Spring Festival of Plays has always been a part of CET, from the very first year. That first year there was one production - THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. The next year there were two shows, and since then they've had up to eight different plays opening on one weekend. CET's Traveling Troupe started in 1967. Their first production was HANSEL AND GRETEL. The Junior League had been putting on children's plays for several years; the members would play all the parts and the productions were put on at places like the Monterey Opera House and King Hall at the Navy Post Graduate School. Eventually the Junior League headquarters decided that local groups should not continue with the productions. So a Junior League member suggested to Marcia that CET take over the performances. They did and decided to present them at schools all over the county, free of charge. Since 1967 they've performed in almost every elementary school in the county - from San Ardo to Prunedale - always at least three performances per day, as many as seven, and reach about 20,000 - 25,000 students a year. In 1979 CET/SPRC received a CETA (California Employment Training Act) grant for five technical support people and ten performers. They would help with the teaching, do technical support, and act in SPRC productions. In the period of 1979-1980 they did eight major Staff Players productions, several minor ones and toured adult productions as well as Traveling Troupe.

Marcia talks about CET as a school of theatre arts, "In the work we do with children we do not think of ourselves as training children to become professional performers - that is a very private and enormous decision for anyone to make, and I don't believe anybody should be pushed into it because it's a hard life. We want to make every child who works with us really comfortable - and give every child a part. We want to build confidence, provide joy in performing, and foster cooperative work in children; nothing does this so well as theatre. It's like a team sport without being competitive. So over the years, some youngsters are with us one year, some six months, some have been with us from the first grade through high school. Many of them go on to participate in theatre in one way or another. Two local graduates have gone off and formed their own theatre companies - Stephen Moorer with Pacific Repertory Theatre and Carey Crockett with Unicorn Theatre. Some go on and major in theatre at the university level, and some do it once and they've done it. A lot of our graduates have come back to act with us over the years."

LITTLE ANGEL'S REST/ANGELS IN FLIGHT

Marcia writes the scripts for the majority of the CET plays, although sometimes the students do plays by Moliere or other classic playwrights. Marcia began writing adaptations and original plays for her classes because she needed scripts that would fit the number of children she wanted to use. She also uses her plays so the students can learn more about history and mythology. All the plays are set in some other historical period or as Marcia says, "If you don't know where you came from, how do you know where you are or who you are?" So the plays are done with historic costume, makeup, headdresses, She explains, "If we are working with children in folk tales or fairy tales, we want to tell it the way the original story was told. And essentially one of the most marvelous things about theatre is that it allows you to play an idiot, a saint, a monster, or a giant - even if you're just 3 feet tall. We need sometimes to walk in the shoes of those other people, which is what theatre does." One play Marcia wrote originally for CET eventually became a Staff Players production. One year there were a lot of girls in the third and fourth grade class, so Marcia wrote LITTLE ANGEL'S REST. It was so popular, that they did it again the next year with the high school class. Eventually it was presented as a Staff Players play with both CET students and adult actors from the community. But the boys in CET complained - there weren't enough parts for boys. So Marcia wrote a sequel called ANGELS IN FLIGHT. Now they're presented periodically, as SPRC Christmas productions, and all ages can enjoy them. It also demonstrates the unique relationship between CET and SPRC.

Marcia explains about the origin of Staff Players Repertory Company," One of my biggest obsessions is that no-one should be teaching or directing or costuming or anything else who doesn't get on stage at least once a year. At the Circle Theatre we had started a group called the Young Actors Company - which was high school and college age and toured quite a lot. We thought of calling the adults The Old Actors Company, but that was too close to the bone, so we called it The Staff Players, because the staff was expected to participate and they did." Of course the productions would include non-staff actors from the community. Their first production was THE AMERICAN DAME in 1971, and after that they

MAN OF DESTINY

began doing two and then three productions a year. They limited the productions to the classics; performances were often attended by CET students and this became kind of a museum of valuable theatre. Over the years SPRC has done almost every play by Moliere, a great deal of Shaw, Ibsen, Barrie, Goldoni, Checkov, and Euripides; they've produced from almost every important theatre period. They've also done some original productions from countries around the world including Hungary and Pakistan. In addition, they've presented productions by local playwrights including Lee Brady, Philip Pearce, and Marcia Gambrell Hovick herself. Marcia tells an interesting story, "One year, sometime in the '70s, I had a large, enthusiastic bunch of people - Mary Schmidt, Steve Dirk, Tommy Sanchez, Greg Niebel, Lee Brady, Jeannie McGill, Adam Lembeck and others. So I wrote a play for them called THE CLACKETT HOUSE. I wrote a part for everybody - with multiple murders and it was heavily Egyptian. I love murder mysteries and I'm crazy about Egyptian things. It was wonderful fun and very successful." Marcia also writes and performs monologues; she's written a whole series on characters in Greek plays and myths and women in the Parzival story who never get to say anything. So she's written their voices for them.

Staff Players Repertory Company is one of the major fundraising arms for the Children's Experimental Theatre. In 1970, when it began, the "staff" included Marcia Hovick as artistic director, Loel Shuler as costumer and teacher, Gwyneth Hovick and Barbara Rose Shuler as teachers, and Bill Lewis as technical director (a wonderful light designer and ingenious set-builder). Over the years many, many actors have been in Staff Players productions. Marcia states, "The fascinating thing is that at one time or another, almost every able actor on the Peninsula has been on our stage. Many actors like being in Staff Players productions. It's a wonderful home away from home for both actors in adult shows and for children. Over the years dozens and dozens of students and actors come back to say "Hello." Play-goers can also find it a home away from home. Marcia explains, "We've had a lot of Europeans coming to our shows here because of the kind of plays we do. It feels like home to them because they have a long theatre tradition of doing the classics."

The Indoor Forest Theatre has a small house, seating 65 people. The stage is small with one notable difficulty - no Down Left entrance. But, starting with their earliest productions and the help of their incredibly gifted scene designer, Bill Lewis, they were able to overcome the limitations of the space. Because of the small house, each production usually runs four to five weeks, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings with a Sunday matinee. About ten years ago they took the next step - to begin selling season tickets and have, since then, had an ever-growing loyal group of subscribers. Each season usually has a central theme; for 2000/2001 the tentative theme is "Power, Money, and the Main Chance." Marcia has directed the majority of the productions over the years, but there have also been guest directors including Ramie Wikdahl, Steve Harris, and Philip Clarkson. Marcia's son, Nick Hovick, has been an Associate Director for the past two years.

GETTING MARRIED

Marcia concludes, "We've been fortunate to have working on our stage people not only theatre-trained, but literate members of the theatre community - so that teaching history, both to the community at large as well as to the children in our classes, has been one of the most important overriding intentions of the company. The excitement of working with really good material and actors who want to learn and want to explore is so exciting and so nourishing that, like musicians, actors and directors tend to live a long time because they enjoy their lives."