The Aerospace Players present “Annie Get Your Gun” at the James Armstrong Theatre
They can put a man on the Moon, but can they act? Mercifully shortened from its original Aerospace Employees Association Musical Comedy Club, the Aerospace Players have been launching musicals into the orbit of community theater since 1988. Consisting of employees from The Aerospace Corporation, the L.A. Air Force Base, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and other local businesses, the group stages one musical each summer and every three years or so one more during the winter.
This year there’s a winter show, although it doesn’t feature blizzards or blustery weather. “Annie Get Your Gun” opens tomorrow at the James Armstrong Theatre in Torrance and plays for two weekends. Herbert and Dorothy Fields wrote the book, and Irving Berlin wrote the music and lyrics. Among the latter are classic tunes like “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”
Getting off the ground
Angela Asch may be a fifth grade school teacher by day, but she’s been acting and directing when she isn’t grading papers, and she’s at the helm of “Annie Get Your Gun.” Furthermore, it was her father, Taylor Thompson, and his then wife, Tenna Tucker, who got the ball rolling for the Aerospace Players way back when with their friend and choreographer Glen Brewer.
“They saw that the aerospace company was developing different clubs,” Asch says, “and so my dad said, Wouldn’t it be great to have this place where engineers could put on theater?”
Their proposal was accepted (Tucker became the group’s first president), and their inaugural show was the musical “Grease!”
“They wound up getting a 15-person cast, and they put it on in the TRW cafeteria,” Asch says, “like in the middle of the day,” and of course with few props or costumes.
“They had a great time, it worked well, and then they said, Let’s do another one.”
The Aerospace players began putting on their shows at El Camino College, but right after the James Armstrong Theatre was built the club switched locations and they’ve been there ever since — 21 or 22 years now.
Anyone can join in
Kevin Wheaton, who plays Buffalo Bill, has been with the Aerospace Players for about 15 years, although he started much earlier than that working for the Aerospace Corporation. Chuck Gustafson, who is also considered one of the founding fathers of the Aerospace Players (he’s the club’s current president as well), was successful in recruiting Wheaton to join the group.
“He’s directed a number of plays and he’s been leads in many of the plays that we’ve done,” Wheaton says. “He knows I’m not shy in front of people or an audience, and I can always memorize my lines. I can follow orders pretty good, too,” he adds with a laugh.
Wheaton, it seems, is pretty much in every show. Last year, when the club staged “The Music Man,” which was directed by John Woodcock, Wheaton stepped into yet another role, that of assistant director. For that matter, he’s also vice-president of the board that meets to decide which musicals to sink their teeth into.
One should bear in mind, of course, that the Aerospace Players isn’t exactly on par with the Geffen Playhouse or the Mark Taper Forum, where hundreds of people may be auditioning for only a few roles. Instead, if someone tries out for one of the Aerospace Players’ summer shows they’re virtually guaranteed a part. It may not be a large part, of course, but it’s been a way to gain experience and some fledgling actors have soared into better and more prominent roles.
Although one doesn’t need to be associated with the aerospace industry in order to audition, the club, Wheaton says, makes it clear that “we would like to have aerospace employees get some good parts.” After all, “it is our company that is putting these things on. If we have someone (from the outside) who’s better, then by all means you’re allowed to cast them.”
Like this time around, for example. The male lead in “Annie Get Your Gun” is Stephen Cathers, who plays Frank Butler, and he’s an aerospace rocket scientist and the club’s treasurer. The female lead, on the other hand, is new to the South Bay and to the Aerospace Players.
Julie got her gun
Julie Hinton, who’s playing the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, has been an actress doing theater and starring in short films up in Los Angeles. So how did she wind up in the show?
“I’m friends with Lisa and Jason Stout,” she replies. Lisa Stout, along with Susan Tabak, is producing “Annie Get Your Gun,” while Jason Stout is the music director as well as performing in the show as Charlie Davenport. And by the way, there’s a 30-piece live orchestra, conducted by Joseph Derthick, which of course elevates this production several notches.
So, anyway, the Stouts told Hinton she should come and audition, and she did. Although she’s been in other musicals, this is a first as Annie Oakley.
At the beginning of the rehearsal process there was a read-through of the entire show with all of the cast members, Hinton says, and then the individual scenes were rehearsed separately with whoever was in those scenes. “Now is the time I’m seeing scenes that I’ve never been in,” she adds. “Just creating the tapestry of the show is very exciting.”
And what does she think of the result so far?
“It’s a real show, it’s a real experience,” Hinton says. “You don’t imagine engineers on stage singing and dancing would be anything to watch, but it’s actually surprisingly good.”
It’s his party
When Kevin Wheaton is asked what he’s doing to prepare for his part of Buffalo Bill he tugs lightly at his graying beard. That’s his first answer.
Buffalo Bill is also the guy in charge. After all, it’s called Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
And so Wheaton’s preparation, he says, consists of “always holding yourself up straight and becoming more ‘I own this’ — you just kind of get yourself into that mind frame where this is mine: Start talking louder than anyone else on stage, and I do other things to try to take control of what’s going on.”
Does that include knowing how to shoot a Winchester rifle and riding a horse?
“Supposedly,” he replies, “but I don’t have to since I don’t shoot any guns in this show. I don’t even hold a gun in the show. Buffalo Bill would have, yes.” As for saddling up: “I haven’t ridden a horse for a long time now.”
As for doing this and other shows…
“We do it for the fun of doing the plays,” Wheaton says, “and it’s just an outlet for engineers. You’re using your mind all the time, working on all these interesting or strange or hard problems, and this is our way of relaxing. We’re all friends and we have a good time.”
True to the original
It’s a safe bet that the Aerospace Players will never consider staging “Oh, Calcutta!” and probably not “Hair” or “Urinetown,” either, but they may be roiling the waters a little with “Annie Get Your Gun.”
“I’d say this one probably pushes the envelope more than shows they’ve done in the past,” says the director, Angela Asch. She’s referring to the Native American references. “There’s a lot of language that is not P.C.”
For example, “There’s a song where the lead has been adopted by the chief and she’s now an Indian, and she sings about all the things that she’ll do as an Indian. It’s funny, it’s comedic, but audiences of today may not appreciate it the way audiences of the ‘60s may have. And I was asked if I was going to cut all of that out because it might be offensive.
“I thought about it,” she says. “I don’t want to offend my audience, but I don’t want to offend the words that the Fields had written and Berlin had written, and I think that they’re still comedy and I think that we have to honor the history and keep it in. That was a tough choice for me, but I decided to take the risk and do the show in its original format because it’s not often done.”
On the other hand, the revival of several years ago, the one starring Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat, deleted some of the key material.
“They kept the character of Sitting Bull,” Asch says, “but they didn’t keep in the song about his people and they didn’t keep in the song where (Annie) was adopted. There’s a whole piece of Indian dancing and ceremonial chanting that they do in the original that the revival just cut right out. So, it’s kind of fun to have kept them in. I’m very happy that I chose to keep everything written as is. It’s accurate.”
A can-do, will-do attitude
The last time I’d spoken with Angela Asch she was involved with “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” at the Manhattan Beach Community Church, which turned out to be a delightful and well done production. So, is there much difference between the two groups when it comes to putting on a show?
“It’s very similar in that the people that make up most of the cast are not technically professional actors, but they have the love for it,” she replies. “I’ve worked professional shows as well as community theater shows and then clubs like this. And one thing I find is that it actually seems the less professional, the more dedicated your cast is.”
Also, Asch continues, “This group is very similar to the church because that’s another place where we weren’t working with a great huge budget and all of the high-end elements of theater that you would normally get to work with. So you kind of have to get your cast members building sets, doing lights, and everybody’s kind of doing it all.”
Referring now to “Annie Get Your Gun,” Asch says that whenever something was needed, there was someone who came forward to see it through.
“There was a lot of jumping in of people because the ultimate goal of everybody is to have this show be a success. If that means you have to work harder then that’s what it means. The benefit to these people is having a show they can be proud of and enjoy their time having done it, and maybe walking away with a new experience and some talent they didn’t have before. And I enjoy that part of this very much.”
Annie Get Your Gun opens tomorrow at the James Armstrong Theatre, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance. Performances, Friday and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2 p.m., plus Thursday, Feb. 4 at 7, Friday, Feb. 5 at 8, and Saturday, Feb. 6, at 8 p.m. Tickets, $24 general; $22 seniors and students. (310) 781-7171 or go to aeaclubs.org/theater.
