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.
Jesse Bethune is an Ovation Fellow from California State University Northridge.
On December 19, 2009, my mentor Kevin and I were off to our next show, Musical Theatre West’s production of the popular Broadway musical Rent. Although I had seen Rent on Broadway and three different touring productions of this wonderful musical, I was still excited to see how Musical Theatre West would handle this musical, especially since I knew it was not part of a touring company. The last time I saw a touring production of Rent was about six months ago and it was horrible! (I’ll keep that production’s theatre venue to myself…it was that bad!)
The matinee performance we saw and the meeting prior to the show with director Nick DeGruccio and associate artistic director/producer Steven Glaudini proved Rent was indeed a good show and the entire experience showed how we really do live in such a small world.
For starters, this production of Rent was the first time I had ever seen any theatre in Long Beach. Even the drive was worth my time to experience both the production and the beauty of the venue, the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, located on the property of California State University, Long Beach. This venue was absolutely wonderful and it was an added treat to look around the lobby and discover it is actually named after the famed 1970s brother-sister musical duo, The Carpenters. Inside the lobby are displays of memorabilia from their career including actual Grammy Awards they had received. Karen Carpenter’s drum set is also on display among varying other artifacts of their successful time in the music industry. It was really interesting and cool to be able to view such fabulous items from American Pop Culture. Just seeing these items, which are permanent to the venue, was worth the time spent there.
Things got even more interesting during our discussion with Nick DeGruccio and Steven Glaudini prior to seeing Rent. In this discussion, I learned some very interesting facts. To begin with, this production of Rent marks the first time it was being produced as a professional regional piece, separate from any Broadway ties. This was exciting news but then it got even better. Starring as Angel is Jai Rodriguez, one of the Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Not only is Rodriguez a pop culture icon but he actually played Angel on Broadway for a long period of time; in fact, it began his professional career. Things were looking good: we had a star who had done his role on Broadway and a production as original as anything imaginable.
When Kevin introduced me to DeGruccio and Glaudini, he mentioned the three of us had something in common: we all spent time working for Performance Riverside (it was called Riverside Civic Light Opera when I was there from 1992 to 1995). Glaudini was artistic director, DeGruccio directed there and I was production stage manager. I never worked with either of them but they worked together. RCLO is where I actually cut my theatrical teeth and now I was meeting two great theatre practitioners who sharpened their own teeth there, a theatrical venue with an excellent production record.
I was excited to be in the same room with them. It made me wonder about the truth behind the concept of our planet being such a small world. It really is a small world! Here we are meeting to discuss this production of Rent not knowing we had actually worked and trained at the same theatre. It almost felt as if I was meeting alumni and that made the entire experience even more magical! Also, making this afternoon a true delight was that DeGruccio and Glaudini had done a good job of bringing Rent to life at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center.
