"Skipper" Kadish (left) 1956 THE REMARKABLE MR PENNNYPACKER

Born and reared in San Francisco, Skip began his stage career when he was cast, at the age of about eight, as one of a pair of twins in an Alameda Little Theatre production of THE REMARKABLE MISTER PENNYPACKER. "It was a good experience," he recalls, "and I'm glad I did it, but I don't think it left a lasting impression on me." That impression was only made after the Kadish family had left the Bay Area for Phoenix and son Skip had overcome his boyhood shyness. "All through grade school and high school in Arizona, I didn't feel the slightest urge to do anything in the theatre line." It only happened after four undergraduate years at the University of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, and two more years of graduate work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "I majored in Art History and I'm glad. Oh, people warned me I would never make any money at it - and they were basically right. But it carries rewards you just can't put a dollar figure to." One of them has been a second satisfying career as teacher of an art appreciation course at Monterey Peninsula College.

OF MICE AND MEN Unicorn Theatre

It was while he was still in Arizona, studying sculpture, that Skip got a job at a radio station. About the same time he linked up with a local theatre troupe who put on spoof melodramas. "I learned quite a bit on this radio station. And the melodramas put me in with a lot of wonderful people having a lot of fun in and with theatre. The plays were lighthearted - some of them downright slapstick. We used to encourage people in the audience to throw stuff - not real rotten produce, but little puff balls. A couple of starring roles in those melodramas helped me get over my shyness and started in me a serious desire to act on stage." Finding Arizona "a bit hot and dry in more than one way," Skip moved back to San Francisco, bent on a career in the visual arts. Eventually he landed a job in an art gallery in Carmel. And while he was there, he discovered the Indoor Forest Theatre. "Marcia Hovick very generously gave me the opportunity to try some things out. She taught me some wonderful techniques. I sincerely think I owe about 95 per cent of what I know about theatre to Marcia. I did plays at the Indoor Forest Theatre, I did plays at York School, some Shaw, a couple of plays Marcia herself wrote. It was delightful."

Getting married, starting a new business on Sunset Avenue in Pacific Grove and launching the art appreciation classesat Monterey Peninsula College brought a temporary halt to Skip's acting career. But then Sandy Sidener and Jose Lambert, mounting a production of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES in the SRO Theatre at MPC, needed someone to play Sherlock Holmes. They found him in Skip Kadish. "From there I went on to work at the Unicorn with Carey Crockett. I played Colonel Pickering in PYGMALION. We did a weird but interesting show called HUNTING COCKROACHES. I was well and truly back into local theatre."

THREE PENNY OPERA Unicorn Theatre

More work at Monterey Peninsula College followed, including THE FRONT PAGE and MUSEUM - "an unusual play, but right up my alley in the way it took pot shots at modern art and the people who try to 'appreciate' it. I love modern art, but the types and situations in the play were certainly ones I could recognize and enjoy seeing satirized."

Back at the Indoor Forest Theatre, Skip worked with Marcia Hovick's son Nick, playing Judge Brock in HEDDA GABLER, then acted with Marcia, again under Nick's direction, in THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT. Reflecting on favorite roles, he predicts that his current assignment as Elwood P. Dowd in Mary Chase's HARVEY, again at the Indoor Forest Theatre with the Staff Players Repertory Company, will be near the top of the list. "In a general sense, it lines up with a part of my character that has changed a lot since those school days when I was so shy. I like to be the center of attention - to be in control, to affect what is going on. And I like the play itself, the way it creates humor and excitement without four-letter words. I've used them on stage - very reluctantly at first, but I can now do it with a certain amount of gusto. But if you can get meaning and entertainment out of a story that even kids can relate to, that's something worth doing.

As to other favorite roles, Skip states, "I liked being Slim in OF MICE AND MEN." Others seem to have liked it too; the role earned Skip a nomination for the Pacific Grove Arts Council's Performing Artist of the Year Award in 1998. Another high point was playing Scanlon in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST at the Cherry Foundation. "A humorous part of the play involved insects - I don't know what they're called, but they are very prevalent in Carmel. Unless you're a mosquito, they can't harm you, but our director, Elsa Con, hated them and we spent a lot of rehearsal time waving and swatting and wondering how we'd manage if the insects got out of hand at a performance. We found out. One night one of them flew right into me in the middle of a scene and, being an asylum inmate who drooled and gabbled a lot, it seemed right in character for me to swat the thing down and stomp it to death on the boards of the stage. I mean right in character for Scanlon, not for me! In Buddhist terms - and I guess that's what I am in a soft way - doing that offended me. I don't like to kill anything."

Skip continues, "Working with a professional like Jolie Kobrinsky in HEDDA GABLER was memorable. I think it was my highest experience of interrelation between two stage characters. The Judge and Hedda weren't intimate, but Hedda was forced by the circumstances of the play to interrelate powerfully with him - and Brock, in his devilish ways, exploited the relationship. It's such good drama - and Jolie and I were able to work on it and refine it as the play was in its run."

HARVEY Staff Players Repertory Company

The qualities of a good actor? "Just off the top of my head and in no special order, to be able to memorize lines ... to be able to listen carefully and trust the director ... to think on stage ... to trust and respect your fellow actors on stage. You also need to be able to separate yourself from your role. Of course you always bring something of who you are off stage when you move on stage. But you need to work at leaving as much of yourself behind as you can - and filling that theoretical void with the person in the play. Some directors actually give an actor the task of working out that distinction, like an assignment in a class. I plan and choose and analyze whenever I am preparing a role , but always based on suggestions from the director."

Skip and his wife Mary have two sons, both enrolled at Pacific Grove High. The young men did a bit of theatre in grade school, but to date neither has found the passion for acting that their father has. "Naturally, I hope that will happen," says Skip, "but I'm not going to push it. I was encouraged, though, when my son Tristan said recently that he and I ought to do a play together someday. I'm really looking forward to having that happen."