Front Porch: Spokane’s live theater a treasure worth supporting

I was 5 years old and living in New York City when I had my tonsils removed. As a reward for being a brave girl, my mother took me to Broadway to see Mary Martin in “Peter Pan.”

I was hooked (no insider joke intended) and I’ve been going to the theater ever since. Broadway and London and Ashland, semi-professional theater, community theater, college and high school productions, and children’s theater.

I love it all. I only wish more of us did.

I urge everyone to open themselves to unexpected delight and stimulation as a member of the audience at any one of the Spokane area’s true treasures – live theater. We’re happy to boast about our great outdoors and top-notch medical centers and the famous people who’ve come from here, but we do come up short – generally speaking – in our support of the arts.

Let me make my case for what’s out there on area stages and why you want a piece of it. By way of additional background, I see a lot of theater. It’s one of my indulgences. I don’t go to everything, as budget and time make that impossible. I have a season subscription at one theater and then I pick and choose from among everything else. Many decades ago I was the theater reviewer for this newspaper, so I actually got paid to see shows. How delightful was that!

I’ve learned through the years how much live theater challenges the brain with new thoughts and ideas, delights the senses, evokes moods and memories, and establishes a link between performer and audience that happens in no other way that I know of other than when a living, breathing actor is onstage talking directly to a living, breathing person in a seat in the audience.

Let me mention a few of the best from the past decade: Spokane Civic Theatre’s productions of “Les Miserables” and “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.” Interplayers’ recent and completely delightful production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the longer-ago “Dancing at Lughnasa.” Lake City Playhouse’s “Sweeney Todd.” Best of Broadway’s “Book of Mormon” and “Wicked.” Lewis and Clark High School’s production of “Miss Saigon.” The list goes on and also includes many plays as well as musicals.

Sure, I’ve seen lots of plays and musicals that weren’t as good as they might have been – some a bit painful, actually – but in total, I have been enriched by all of it. There’s nothing better than watching local actors develop their skills. Many of them have the chops to make it on bigger stages – Jean Hardie, Patrick Treadway and Kathie Doyle-Lipe, to name a few – but they remain delights for us to enjoy on the various stages in the region. And there are some who have grown up in theater here and have risen to note on the national scene – most recently Cheyenne Jackson, of Newport, Washington.

Because my own son was active in local theater while growing up in Spokane, I know about many of his friends from those days who are working actors in New York and Los Angeles and other theater-hub cities. This was a good place for them to learn their craft – and for those of us in the audience, we had the privilege to see them do it.

Just like we root for our high school athletes and follow their careers into college and beyond, there’s a host of theater kids with as much potential, or more, to make it big. And they need boosters, too, as do those who will step away from the stage after a while to go on to do other things (having been enriched by their performance experience, of course).

And mention goes also to the professional shows that come through. I wonder how many children caught the theater bug as they sat transfixed at the INB during “The Lion King.” But I confess that I have a particular fondness for local shows. I know Greg Pschirrer, drama teacher at LC and a friend of my son’s. I heard from him about what it took to stage “Miss Saigon” at his school in 2008. With its adult themes, this is not your average high school musical, yet Greg went about carefully exploring the subject matter in discussion, working with parents and putting on a production that just blew the socks off everyone who saw it – and turned it into a wonderful educational experience as well. That’s what a good teacher does.

Many years ago I saw “Man of La Mancha” at Eastern Washington University. The role of Sancho Panza (the lovable sidekick) was played by an international student, whose enthusiasm for the role and hard work to master the dialogue was infectious to the point that the audience was so audibly cheering for him that it felt like a perpetual group hug. You might argue that this took away from the rest of the show, but I was there and can tell you that it didn’t. Whitworth University’s “Godspell” in 2005 was the best production of that show I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen it done a lot.

I am still amazed at the work done by Interplayers, and they don’t get near the credit they should. Civic Theatre has developed the talents of so many people that it remains a diamond in our midst. And there are other companies out there, too, that would love to perform for you.

We talk so often about shopping local, buying American. So do it. Skip just one post-apocalyptic zombie pyrotechnic noise fest at the cinema and go see a live theater production in Spokane or Coeur d’Alene. Get thee to a theater near you and get invested in watching your friends and neighbors hone their acting skills while you make that connection with a story in a way that only happens with a live actor and a live audience. Or you could try your hand yourself and audition for a show or maybe work on the stage crew.

You too can get hooked, no tonsillectomy required.