SPOTLIGHT ON... Bill and Alice Englander
by Philip Pearce

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The spotlight in theatre - and theatre columns - is usually turned on actors, directors or designers. But, as Irving Berlin reminds us, it’s the audience, not anything up there on stage, that "Cheers You When You’re Down." And what puts you right down in the dumps is "the Closing When the Customers Don’t Come." However brilliant the script, sharp the direction or sublime the acting, it just doesn’t happen unless there are people out there in the dark watching, responding and being changed. So here’s some kilowatts directed at two of the Monterey Peninsula’s most delightful and tireless audience members - Bill and Alice Englander of Carmel.

"Our first date we had a Mexican dinner and went to THE FANTASTICKS in Ghirardelli Square," Bill Englander recalls. "And we’ve been eating Mexican and going to shows ever since."

Alice grew up in a Seattle household where theatre and opera were regular and continuing facts of family life. Bill’s San Diego childhood included plenty of concerts - he played clarinet - but "we never thought of Shakespeare or the San Diego Old Globe. It’s Alice who’s injected culture into our marriage."

Young married life in 1960s San Francisco changed the pattern. "We both got season tickets to A.C.T. and saw some wonderful things," Alice explains. "Then too, we did a lot of traveling, and when we hit New York or London we always went to the theatre. It really got into our bloodstream."

Return visits to San Diego made the Englanders into enthusiastic patrons not only of the Globe but of the open-air Starlight Theatre in Balboa Park. "Theatre under the stars is really fun," says Bill. "You’re right on the approach lanes to San Diego airport, but that’s become part of the whole experience. There’s a convention that the stage action freezes when a jet is heading in or taking off. One really creative leading man caught the light they use to signal a freeze for the actors just as he was due to kiss the leading lady. . . So he raced across the stage so they could hold that kiss the whole time a 747 was flying over!" The roar of the jet became the roar of an audience applauding the actor’s finesse and timing.

Bill and Alice moved to Carmel six years ago. "We’d been longtime A.C.T. fans, but we were really babes in the woods as far as local theatre went," Alice recalls. They bought a house on Camino Real "simply because we fell in love with it." It wasn’t until they were settled in with two glamorous cats named Sabrina and Diva, that they began to explore the neighborhood and discovered they were living one block from the Circle Theatre and two blocks from the Golden Bough. They became Pacific Rep season ticket holders and soon ventured further up the hill to form a regular viewing and working relationship with the Indoor Forest Theatre. Bill and Alice volunteered to create and maintain the Staff Players’ web site. Bill admits that "it’s kind of fun to open the program and see yourself listed as an angel."

"I love the craft of playwriting and production," Alice says. "You get to study that at closer range in a place like Carmel where you’re within walking distance of several community theatres." The Englanders stick mostly to matinees these days and always try for seats in the front row. "You have to look up in a big place like MPC," Alice explains, "but it makes you feel more a part of the production."

Lee Brady’s Readers’ Theatre class at the Carmel Foundation has been a breakthrough for Bill and Alice. "As class members, we get to meet local actors and directors - the people who have the job of creating the product that we watch and respond to as an audience." One major new insight they’ve gained is the crucial role an audience plays in what happens on stage and how it happens. Guests like MaryAnn Schaupp-Rousseau, Conrad Selvig and Ramie Wikdahl have been able to cite examples of an audience’s effect on the pace, emphasis and power of particular performances. Bill and Alice Englander agree that’s exciting.

What’s best for the Englanders about local community theatre is its accessibility. What they feel is lacking is enough coordinated planning between different theatre managements. "We didn’t hate that musical about the big plant," Alice explains. "What was it called?. . . LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS - that’s the one. It’s okay, but who wants to see three or four versions of it within a couple of years? The local theatres ought to take each other into account when they decide on the shows they’ll be putting on."

The Englanders don’t carbon copy each other in their views on particular productions. Bill really liked BLUE/ORANGE, Alice was less impressed. Recent productions they both praise highly are Pacrep’s BUDDY HOLLY STORY , which took Bill back to his 1950s rock and roll band days, Magic Circle’s production of WIT, and Will Shepherd’s one man portrait of Jack London for Staff Players Repertory Company.

"We both like plays that engage your emotions without wringing you out like a dishrag," Bill explains. They discuss and even disagree on their best-ever theatre experiences, but they are unanimous in naming the worst. It was an A.C.T. THE TEMPEST so quirky, obscure and inaudible that Alice just tuned out. "I meditated and was able to block out all that confused action and mumbled dialogue." "But when I glanced at her," Bill explains, "she looked totally absorbed." In agony, he whispered, "I’m going to leave quietly. You stay on. I can tell you’re enjoying it." "Enjoying?" she countered. "I can’t stand it. Let’s get out of here!" "And we did," she admits. "Ordinarily, it takes a lot even to send us home during an intermission. But with that show, we left then and there."