A Theater Program with a Social Conscience
Vistamar School presents “The Diary of Anne Frank” this weekend
Where have I been? Prior to last week, I’d have received an “F” if you’d asked me about Vistamar School. On the other hand, this private high school in El Segundo with a total enrollment of about 280 only came into being in 2005. But now, thanks to its drama teacher and theater director Mickey Blaine, it’s on this writer’s map and just in time for their fall play, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” opening tomorrow night.
You’re in town, aren’t you?
Mickey Blaine is affable and a pleasure to speak with. This is his sixth year at Vistamar, and before that he taught high school in West Hollywood. He came to Vistamar, he says, “because when I was researching schools (I saw) on their website their devotion to diversity,” and this pleased him. The school draws students from as far away as Pacific Palisades to the north and Long Beach to the south.
In addition to upping the cachet of the theater department, Blaine teaches visual literacy, part of the school’s seminar program. Asked more about it, he replies “Visual literacy focuses on the arts but also commercial, mass media, design, architecture, film… It’s a seminar that I present to the entire ninth grade class once a week,” after which there’s a lot of discussion and the sharing of ideas. “It’s my sixth year doing that as well.”
But let’s focus on Blaine’s contributions to theater.
“When I came here I said to the head of the school, I don’t want to do the traditional plays that we know every high school does. I want to do something different and give the students an experience they wouldn’t get at other schools.
“My first year,” he continues, “we did a play called ‘Urinetown,’ which is a very funny musical, with a really funny name, that deals with a water shortage that is so extreme that the citizens of this town must pay to pee.”
Satirizing the government, the work explores climate change and what could happen if the global water tap goes dry. I once suggested in these pages that the late (and, yes, lamented) Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities should do shows like this, which was probably regarded as the slight jab it was meant to be. However, once the audience can step around its puddle of a title, “Urinetown” is fairly impressive, as I’m sure Vistamar’s students discovered.
Then a lightbulb or two went on over someone’s head.
“We were (making) this money from concessions and putting it back into the department and helping with costumes,” Blaine says. “It was actually a student who said, ‘What if we give it to someone else? We can go out and get costumes and everything.’ And because the play was about a water shortage, we decided to raise money for an organization that built wells in Africa. It was such an amazing idea that we decided to continue that for every play.”
Now, he adds, “Every time we do a play the students and I discuss the cultural significance, the effect that society had on the creation of the play, what it reflected in the society in which it was written, or what it reflects in our society today. As we discussed that, and looked at the historical research that comes along with doing a play, we then decided what we could raise money for that relates to it.”
A nifty and yet civic-minded idea, don’t you think? I bet your high school didn’t do that.
So, for example, when Vistamar staged “Steel Magnolias,” with its central diabetic character (and performed by a young woman who had diabetes), money was given to a diabetic foundation. After “Cabaret,” proceeds from concessions went to a Jewish center and after “9 to 5” money was given to a woman’s center. In short, “Each charitable organization is chosen by students to reflect the themes of the play we’re producing.”
Exposed to the bigger picture
Typically, three shows are presented each year, a drama, a comedy, and a musicall, always closing with the latter.
And how are the works selected?
“I pick the plays and then I run them by the administration,” Blaine replies, “and I haven’t had one denied yet.”
Which presumably means he hasn’t chosen anything too edgy. But when asked what he’d like to stage next, Blaine doesn’t give away any company secrets: “I’ve gone through my wish list, if you will, of shows that I’ve always wanted to do, so I’m now digging into that second tier. We’re a small school, so sometimes it’s harder to do really big productions–although we did have 76 students working on ‘Grease,’ which out of a school of 280, is phenomenal.”
Perhaps it might be more revealing to ask who and what Blaine himself likes, as a theater-goer. He reveals that, although he went to elementary school, high school, and even a couple of years of college in Santa Monica, he’s originally from Houston, and apparently there’s something from those early years that has remained with him.
“I’m a big fan of Tennessee Williams,” he says; “Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard and Beth Henley, those sort of Southern playwrights, have always appealed to me. The Southern culture, Southern gothic aspect, I’ve really liked.” He hasn’t done any of their works yet, many of which might be too racy for his young actors. Blaine’s also “a big fan of Arthur Miller,” and recently took students to the Ahmanson Theatre to see “A View from the Bridge.”
In addition to exposing students to local professional theater, once a year he accompanies 20 students to New York where they take in three Broadway shows as well as engage in workshops with topnotch theater companies.
This way, the students see the crème de la crème, and what’s truly possible. Or, as Blaine puts it, “It gives them something to aspire to.”
Civilization up against the ropes
As I’m writing this, Mickey Blaine and his cast of 13, with eight principals, are rehearsing “The Diary of Anne Frank,” based on the writings of the young girl who put on a brave and hopeful face as the world around her and her family crumbled into mayhem and madness.
With an election upon us that could determine which direction our society takes, Blaine sees a certain relevance to the era that led the world into war. But it’s not only Germany that he’s referring to.
“Every day students are bringing in newspaper clippings about the Syrian refugee crisis versus the Jewish refugee (crisis) pre-World War Two and during World War Two.” He also points to the recent statement, by a certain candidate, of registering Muslims that seemingly echoes the plight of Jews during the 1930s and ‘40s, although many in California would also point to the internment of Japanese-Americans, which at the very least reveals that Uncle Sam himself wasn’t entirely blameless.
All in all, though, as Blaine makes clear, “this play is as important today as it was when it was written [adapted for the stage by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich] and when Anne Frank’s diary was first published.”
For this show, proceeds from concession sales are being donated to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, specifically the Isaiah 58 program, which delivers food, medicine, and critical care to to elderly Jews, families, and orphans in the former Soviet Union.
This past Tuesday, Blaine and his cast traveled to Sherman Oaks to visit Sidonia Lax, a Holocaust survivor born two years before Anne Frank, who was sent to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen. (Anne Frank was at the latter concentration camp at the same time.)
“And she’s invited our students into her home,” Blaine says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me, and one that none of us will have access to much longer.”
He seems quite moved just talking about this, and one hopes that his cast has sensed the gravity and importance of this rare opportunity. One hopes, also, that they have listened well to what Sidonia Lax told them and will convey a sense of it through their performance.
The Diary of Anne Frank is being staged Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Vistamar School, 737 Hawaii St., El Segundo. Tickets, $5. Please email boxoffice@vistamarschool.org ER
