By Artistic Director Dexter Fidler

It's September, a few days before the Stories on Stage auditions are about to take place and Katie O'Bryon and I are exchanging e-mails. Katie will be directing my adaptation of Eileen Spinelli's Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch. Months later, I'll be excited to be writing and imagining what inventiveness Katie will come up with as director, but right now we have to make decisions on a script I haven't written yet. Since we cast for the entire SOS season right after the auditions, Katie and I need to know how many actors we'll be casting. Over the last 4 years, I've adapted several scripts for SOS, all from well-known books or stories. Some books - like Judy Moody Gets Famous! - give you almost everything you need. A clear storyline, well developed characterizations, dialogue. It's mostly a matter of adjusting it to the stage. Others - like If You Give A Mouse a Cookie - are so sparse, that the challenge is how to invent enough stuff to fill 45 minutes. Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch is somewhere in the middle - a clear and touching story, with a lot of potential characters, but not all that much dialogue. I'm looking forward to it but don't really know what I'm going to for the adaptation yet.

Katie and I start going through what characters we'll need. Mr. Hatch, obviously. Mr. Goober, the postman. Mr. Smith and Mr. Todd. We both agree we need to keep Melanie Todd and Tina Finn as the only children in the story. Mrs. Dunwoody? We ponder Mrs. Dunwoody, when Katie writes that she'd like 4 "Shoelace Factory Workers." The workers are peripheral characters -- you see them in the background, but they don't really interact with Mr. Hatch. The nice thing is that we'll be able to use those characters for whatever we need. Sorry, Mrs. Dunwoody, no room left for you. Bye-bye. We discuss a few more decisions, then Katie writes, "And of course we need the Mouse."

The MOUSE? WHAT Mouse?

Adaptations can be tricky - you need to remain true to the spirit of the original, but also make sure the play works on its own. The play should make perfect sense even if you've never read the book. The format of the show is particularly important in one-act adaptations. As an author, I'm searching for - for lack of a better word - the "hook." The hook can be almost anything: an event, or a character, or even a past event. The hook is the emotional glue. The hook is what pulls an audience into this story, and what holds the story together. If it's done right, the final scene of the play will have new and deeper meaning because of that hook at the beginning. While I've been rolling scenes around in my head, imagining certain bits and pieces, I haven't actually started writing yet. And I definitely don't have a hook.

Since we're e-mailing, my ignorance is not yet apparent to Katie. I somehow manage to find my copy of Mr. Hatch amid the potential avalanche of books and papers on my desk. I open the book to the first page, and there, off to the side, I see the Mouse. Next page - there's the Mouse, over in the corner. I quickly flip through the book, consciously seeing for the first time what Eileen Spinelli intended me to notice all along.

The Mouse.

Suddenly I know how the true story of Mr. Hatch unfolds. I know what needs to happen, and why. I know who the factory workers are and what they do. And I know why there's a Mouse.

I've found the hook.

PYT's popular summer camps and classes are now available for online enrollment! Spend your summer onstage with PYT!

This season, PYT welcomes outreach directors Megan Fischer and Elizabeth McClelland, who oversee PYT's School Play in a Box program.

Through School Play in a Box, local public and private elementary schools contract with PYT to offer on-site, after-school drama instruction once a week for 10 weeks. PYT provides the teacher, a choice of scripts, the set and a costume plot. Students learn the basics of acting, character development and storytelling while rehearsing a production as a team. The program culminates with a performance for their classmates and parents.

Elementary schools participating this school year include Covington in Los Altos; Encinal and Oak Knoll in Menlo Park; Barron Park in Palo Alto; and Cherry Chase in Sunnyvale.

A drama kid herself ever since she can remember, Meg might be familiar to Theatre in the Park campers since she spent four summers teaching our popular two-week day camps. She also is directing her first Stories on Stage production, Anne of Green Gables, running April 24-25 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

Meg has spent the past seven years teaching religion and drama at the high school level, and she worked as assistant director in St. Francis High School's drama program for five years. She regularly leads delegations of youngsters to peace education camps around the world through Children's International Summer Villages, a non-political non-profit that believes peace is possible through cross-cultural friendship. Meg holds a bachelor's degree in theology, with a minor in theater, from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Beth graduated with a bachelor's degree in theater and dance from Santa Clara University, and is a theater arts master's degree candidate at San Jose State University. She has taught acting classes with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and SJSU, and has directed several plays in both community and educational settings. Recent directing credits include The Siren Song of Stephen J. Gould, for which she won SJSU's Arends Award for excellence in stage directing; The Most Massive Woman Wins; and Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Beth also enjoys performing; her favorite roles include Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, Miss Dorothy in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime.

PYT is always looking for ways to simplify procedures for our staff and reduce costs to families. To this end we are testing a new way of handling costume fees.

For Sleeping Beauty this spring each child will be charged a flat fee that will cover all costume expenses except shoes and undergarments. This will be included in the registration fee that is paid up front. The costumer will still collect a security deposit of $150.00 to guarantee that the costumes are returned. This security deposit check, written by the parent at the time the costumes are handed out before tech, will only be cashed if costumes are not returned at the end of strike. When costumes are returned at strike, the check will be handed back to each family.

This flat fee policy should be easier in that it is one less check for the parents to write. With a flat fee, there are no costume charge surprises for parents. The book keeping should be easier for the costumer and the book keeper and it allows us to better control the costs that are passed on to our families.

During and after Sleeping Beauty we will be listening for feedback on how well the policy works. If you have input please feel free to email our Production Manager, Elisa Olson at elisa@pytnet.org.

The Board of Directors of the West Valley Light Opera Association is pleased to announce the 7th. Annual Gene Pincus Memorial Theater Arts Scholarship for 2009.

The scholarship will award, on a competitive basis, an amount of $500 to a Santa Clara County graduating high school senior who intends to pursue a career in Theater Arts and who has demonstrated a high degree of involvement in the performing arts throughout his/her high school career.

The applicant must be a graduating high school senior going on to a 2 or 4 year college; their intended college major must be in the Theater Arts; this includes Acting, Music (vocal), Dance, or Stage Production; they must be a Santa Clara County resident.

Note: application materials must be postmarked no later than Monday March 10, 2009.

The director for PYT's upcoming production of Aladdin will be Jillian Toby-Cummins.

Aladdin auditions will be held on Saturday, May 16 at 10am and Sunday, May 17 at 2pm and 6pm. There will be no 2pm audition on May 16 as previously published.

We apologize for these errors!