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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
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Chris Rutan
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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
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photo provided by Magical Theatre Company
When Dennis O’Connell and Holly Barkdoll were leading the renovation of the Magical Theatre Company building in Barberton in 2015, some people expected molded plastic chairs and bright primary colors for the children’s theater, not suave teal movie theater-style seating and elegant lighting.
“We didn’t want it to look like a fast food playland. We wanted it to be a special, pretty, classy place for kids to experience theater,” Barkdoll says. “We wanted to make sure that we approached theater for young audiences the way we would approach theater for adults — professional, high-quality material.”
The co-owners bought the now-279-seat theater — which was built in 1919 as a silent movie theater and later became the Akron Children’s Theatre — in 1992, determined to keep it a place for children’s theater.
“We fell in love with the mission,” O’Connell says, “to be able to serve kids, to nurture their minds, their imaginations and their hearts.”
“It is such a privilege to be the first live theater experience that a child has, and that happens to us a lot,” Barkdoll says.
Most of the plays that O’Connell and Barkdoll direct, which are comprised of a company of professional actors and crew members, as well as child actors, are aimed at youth in preschool through high school. Districts from Massillon to Cleveland to Sugarcreek bring students out for field trips, and the theater also puts on weekend shows for families. It’s particularly impactful when kids see someone like them perform.
“The audience of kids identifies wholeheartedly with what they’re seeing onstage,” O’Connell says.
The company also brings magic to schools, setting up plays in schools’ gyms and auditoriums. In all, it serves 23 Ohio counties — a whopping quarter of the state. And Barkdoll constructs study guides that include the play’s themes, setting, vocabulary words and more.
“It’s not just seeing a play,” she says. “It starts with reading the book. They discuss it, they come to the show, we have a question-and-answer session … where the kids can ask the actors questions.”
An especially memorable moment for O’Connell and Barkdoll was hearing about a fourth grader who was moved by “The Amazing Lemonade Girl,” which is about a child with cancer who raises money for cancer research through lemonade stands. The couple explained, eyes watering, that the boy found the play so inspiring that he decided to do his own lemonade stands and fundraisers for cancer research.
That powerful impact is what the pair hope for, and they also help kids be kids by feeding their imaginations with magical shows like “The BFG.” The production featured a 12-foot-tall larger-than-life Big Friendly Giant puppet made by Magical Theatre’s creature maker Mark Jenks and worn by an actor. It caused kids to ooh and aah when it appeared onstage, O’Connell says.
“If you’ve got a fantastical story, then the creatures ought to be fantastical as well,” he says. “Because that’s what they’re looking for — they’re looking to be taken to a different world.”
565 W. Tuscarawas Ave., Barberton,
