Passion and Performance
Melissa Staab stages “Shrek” at RUHS
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed might be one way to describe Melissa Staab, the new theater director at Redondo Union High School, who is about to stage her first musical here. “Shrek” opens tomorrow and plays this weekend and next.
She grew up in Oak Park, a little town near West Lake Village and Agoura Hills in Ventura County. But she’s covered a lot of territory since then.
“I’ve been performing since I was three,” she says, as we sit in the black box theater on the RUHS campus. “I started as a dancer, and dancing is what got me into theater. Once I did my first show around eight-years-old, I was hooked. I did theater throughout middle school, high school, and I was very active in the community as well, performing at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Then I decided to study musical theater in college.”
She enrolled in the musical theater program at UC Irvine, where she earned her undergraduate degree. But while still in school someone named Mickey took an interest in her:
“When I was a junior in college I got hired as a performer at the Disneyland resort as a dancer. That was a dream-come-true for me. I think every performer grows up loving Disney and going to see the performances there. That was really exciting.”
After three years at the theme park, Staab headed off to New York and did a musical theater program there. However, she missed the Golden State, as well as Disney, and returned home, so to speak. She’d also become interested in directing and stage management.
Staab directed a few productions at UC Irvine and then decided to move more into the creative side, so she joined a department at Disney called Disney Performing Arts, once known as Magic Music Days. She worked as a special event coordinator, which actually combined her love for performing with event management. That was during the day. At night she was onstage and in shows.
That would keep most of us pretty busy, but Staab was also beginning to freelance as a director and choreographer, working throughout Orange County. She spent four years with the Orange County School of Arts, and, she points out, “I won the title of best choreography just last year in 2016, out of 49 productions. That was a really big achievement and honor.”
She was also co-running the Yorba Linda Spotlight Theater Company, where they did four full productions a year for actors ranging in age from seven to 25. “I was our studio director,” Staab says, “and then I also directed and choreographed our shows.”
And, by the way, she was still working full-time at Disney. But then she thought: “You know what? I’m not getting any younger. I need to take all of my passions and everything I love, and combine them into one job.”
And that passion was to work with high school-aged students with their own interest (and perhaps even passion) in theater.
“And so I decided to leave Disney after ten years, and pursue teaching,” Staab says. She graduated last May and started in at Redondo in August. Last fall she was at the helm for the first time with a production of A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room.”
The green giant
As established or continued by Justin Baldridge, the school’s previous theater instructor, in the fall there’s a straight play, comedy or drama, and in the spring there’s a musical. That’s a pattern Staab is adhering to this academic year, “but my hope,” she says, “is that, maybe next year, to start adding some more productions. For a school as big as ours, we really could do more.”
And it’s not hard to guess that she leans more towards musicals.
“Plays are wonderful,” she says, diplomatically, “and I think they serve a very valid purpose, and I want to continue doing them. But people really do love musicals and I think that those are always the big draws.”
She explains why she chose “Shrek,” a relatively new work, first premiering as a musical in 2008.
“I picked it,” Staab says, “because it has such a great message about being true to who you are, and that whatever is on the outside doesn’t really matter. It’s what’s inside, and the idea of accepting who you are and just going with it, and being secure in yourself.
“For high school,” she adds, “that’s a really good message to know when students are worried about how they look or not doing well in this activity or not having friends. But the show’s message at the core is knowing that it’s okay to be yourself.”
Staab also went with “Shrek” because every one of her 38 students either has a speaking part or a featured role. “Even the ensemble is really prominent throughout the show.” Furthermore, “It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s hilarious. It would be something that the community at large can come and enjoy as well, not just the high school community.
“We also have 36 students on our technical crew and they’re working really hard to put all of the elements together. It’s gonna look great; it’s gonna be big.”
Keeping current, sharing her knowledge
Since Melissa Staab has as good a knowledge of contemporary musical theater as anyone, let’s ask her what else she likes and might consider as possibilities to stage in seasons to come.
“Without giving anything away to the kids…” She names “Hairspray,” “Mary Poppins,” the updated Rodgers and Hammerstein “Cinderella,” and the musical for which she won her choreography award: “Urinetown.”
“That’s a great one. They haven’t done that show here. Those are a few that come to mind right away that would be good candidates for the school.”
As for straight theater, she mentions perhaps trying her hand at works by Oscar Wilde and Neil Simon.
Do you go and see as many outside shows as you can?
“Oh, of course,” Staab replies. “I try to go to New York at least twice a year to see the new productions on Broadway, and then I go out in the community here all the time. Living in Orange County (she since has moved closer), we had a lot of really good theater: Musical Theatre West, over in Long Beach, and 3-D Theatricals, which performs here at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. So my goal is, if I [hear about] something that I’ve never seen before, I try to go see it, just to expand my horizon and see as many productions as possible.”
That’s certainly the best way to increase one’s vocabulary, one’s mental library, in one’s field of choice.
“Especially for class environments, too,” Staab says, mindful of her teaching, “for doing scenes and working on different things. The more knowledge and breadth that you have of the subject, the better off you’re going to be.”
And that knowledge, of course, can be transmitted to her students, who stand to gain a lot from their new theater director.
Shrek, directed and choreographed by Melissa Staab, with musical direction by Matthew Capurro, is being performed on Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., and also next Friday and Saturday as well as on Sunday, April 2, at 2 p.m. Tickets, $10 in advance and $15 at the door. The show takes place in the Redondo Union Auditorium, 1 Seahawk Way, Redondo Beach. More at ruhsdrama.com. ER
