TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
MPC Theatre Company - 1997
Theatre at Monterey Peninsula College started in 1954, when Morgan Stock, armed with a fresh M.A. in Drama from Stanford, was appointed to head up a new college drama program. "Our earliest shows were put on in the Student Union," Morgan recalls, "then in L6, a room with a little stage near the library. We did stuff for about a year in the barn at the Presidio, then on a site where the pre-school and children's work now happens - near the present admin building."
He was still directing plays in that spot when Peter DeBono, who was to succeed him as Drama Department Chair in 1981, arrived on campus as a student in 1963. It was familiar ground for Peter. His brother Jerry, co-founder of Carmel's Studio Theatre, had studied at MPC from 1958 to 1960. Both brothers moved on after MPC to do theatre studies at four-year universities, Jerry at San Jose State, Peter at UCLA, from which he went on to act in movies and on television. "I agreed to come back to Monterey and stand in for Morgan when he took a sabbatical in '71," Peter recalls. "When he returned, he suggested that I stay on for a while. I've been here ever since."
The present theatre on campus opened in 1969 with a lavish production of WEST SIDE STORY, a show that has become an MPC tradition, revived about every ten years. The opening was a huge success, directed by Morgan Stock with music from a 30-piece orchestra, major newspaper publicity and coverage. Morgan also directed the first revival in 1980. Tom McKenzie then did a production in the 90's. MPC haven't settled exactly when the first New Millennium version will be, but Peter DeBono says it will happen. Memorable as the Bernstein/Sondheim musical has been for MPC, Morgan Stock thinks his most exciting directing job was the landmark sixties rock musical HAIR. "It was a time when everything was going on and the show expressed all that: kids against the war, draft cards being burned, you name it. It was impossible to get seats. People sat on steps. We had to re-run it during the summer."
Two factors have made for the continuing success of MPC shows. One is that the theatre, with its big fly gallery, orchestra pit, reasonably large house and spacious lobby, provides what is probably the best physical facility for live performances on the Monterey Peninsula (but check out Santa Catalina School for a near second). The shop for building MPC sets was not there when the building opened for business. That only happened when Morgan Stock and then MPC President Robert Faul promoted big bond issues for the construction of college buildings in the 1970's. "Without the commitment of Bob Faul," says Peter DeBono, "MPC theatre would never have happened on the scale it happens today. The way he and Morgan promoted the cultural life of this campus was nothing short of monumental."
A second factor favoring the success of MPC productions grew out of the first. All that space and all those facilities made it possible to accommodate big season-ticket audiences - which in fact have at times reached 5,000 and now number above 4,000. Major musicals have tested the theatre's resources. They include a highly successful FIDDLER ON THE ROOF in 1970 and the 1974 HAIR as well as its 25th anniversary revival last year, again directed by Morgan Stock. MPC main stage has also met the tricky technical and artistic challenges of straight plays like AMADEUS in 1988 and SLEUTH in 1997. Even the SRO was able to house a remarkably staged OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD in 1992, directed by Nick Zanides in the small black box theatre across the corridor from the main lobby.
 TARTUFFE - MPC Theatre Company - 1996 |
It's a space that was labeled "Green Room" when the original plans were drawn up - "which couldn't have been more absurd," according to Peter. "It's about as far as you could get from the main stage and the dressing rooms, so for about ten years, the Art Department used it as a gallery for student work." But Morgan wanted to reclaim it as a space for student drama productions, most of them growing out of department acting, directing and playwriting classes.
Student initiative and enthusiasm exploded into ten shows in the first year of the SRO's existence in the early 70's. Today about half of SRO productions are student-powered, the other half responding to growing demands for playing space from different local production groups. Maybe even more significant than MPC's technical resources is the way it has managed to combine experiment with continuity. In the nearly half century of its life, it has had only two theatre department chairs - Stock and DeBono. There's continuity for you. Yet it has at the same time used the talents of directors as radically different in their approach and production styles as Tom McKenzie, Jerry De Bono, Nick Zanides, Terry Barto, Ramie Wikdahl and Mark Shilstone-Laurent.
On January 30th of last year, actors, singers, musicians and just plain theatre fans homed in on MPC to perform, to party, to reminisce, to present a citation "honoring a life in the theatre" to Morgan Stock and to change the name of the auditorium where they were gathered from the MPC Main Stage to the Morgan Stock Main Stage.
