Introducing standout performers, inventive directors and clever designers sharing the limelight in The 330’s thriving theaters.
Jasen Smith
Costume Designer
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When Jasen Smith goes out on the town, he dips into his collection of colorful suits — turquoise, purple, brown, navy — and huge selection of ties to dress to the nines. “I’m not a shy violet of a person,” says the 47-year-old Akron resident. “When we dress every day, we are putting on a costume and letting people know things about ourselves without saying anything.”
Just as his vibrant suits reflect his vivacious personality, the clothes he creates as the resident costume designer for Weathervane Playhouse in Akron help audience members get to know characters before they speak any lines.
Since 2008, Smith has added his sartorial sensibilities to over 100 Weathervane shows, including crafting nine spandex and sequin-laden disco jumpsuits for the recent “Mamma Mia!”
“There is a lot of patterns, textures and colors in my design work. The mixture of the three gives the costumes life,” he says.
He researches thoroughly upon getting a script to consider how clothes can tell a character’s story from status to time to changes in mindset. To show Effie’s evolution from being unsure of herself to confident in “Dreamgirls,” Smith transitioned her costumes from cotton dresses in Act 1 to a bold sequined turquoise ombre number by the finale.
Having trained as an actor and dancer himself, Smith also considers practicalities like fit. “I tailor everything to the actor,” he says. “I don’t want them to look sloppy — unless it is in the script that this character is unkempt.”
Depending on a show’s time period, he buys some pieces new but prefers to make garments, sometimes using vintage patterns. His favorite place to find materials is Zinck’s Fabric Outlet in Berlin, Ohio, where he rummages through everything from cotton calicos to beaded appliques. For the casual look of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” he found a flexible solution to dancers in blue jeans: “I love their stretch denim,” he says.
He and his team of four volunteer stitchers can create a simplistic costume in about eight hours — like the striped cotton shirts, pants, jackets and hats they made for “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”— though elaborate period pieces can take 60 hours or more, like the sumptuous gowns with boned bodices and elaborate sleeves partly made out of embellished Nigerian wedding fabric for 2018’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”
The payoff is witnessing how the completed costumes bring characters alive onstage — sometimes being unveiled right before the audience’s eyes. For “Cinderella” in 2011, Smith sewed a ragged dress with magnetic closures for the lead and layered it over her ballgown. He then stood underneath the stage on a ladder and pulled the rag dress off as Cinderella twirled onstage.
“I got to hear the audience, the little girls, squeal in delight when she transformed into her ballgown,” he says.
Marci Paolucci
Actress
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Marci paolucci has been a fixture in local productions for 35 years, but she once thought she was not cut out for the stage.
“It never occurred to me that it was something I could do,” says the Cuyahoga Falls resident.
Her big acting break came in 1984 when she was working in an office at The University of Akron and a colleague who did community theater suggested she try out for “The Mad Woman of Chaillot” at Coach House Theatre in Akron. Despite having zero training or experience, she decided to go for it — and snagged a main role!
Since then, she has appeared in scores of productions on many 330 stages, including Weathervane Playhouse and Stow Players, and honed her craft through theater courses and Shakespeare workshops. With a penchant for serious drama, her favorite roles include Daisy in Players Guild Theatre’s 2012 production of “Driving Miss Daisy” and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Coach House’s 2002 production of “The Lion in Winter.” For the latter role, she researched the powerful 12th-century French woman to portray her sharp verbal sparring with her estranged husband, King Henry II of England.
“It was empowering and exhilarating at the same time,” she says.
At 72, Paolucci still finds the spotlight calling her from the wings to tell stories and explore the gift of being another person for a moment.
“There’s such an adrenaline rush when you’re performing,” she says. “There is this energy you’re sending out to the audience, and their responses are sending energy back to you. It’s an extension and expansion of your own experiences.”
Though roles for women in their 70s and 80s are limited, Paolucci has found an expansive outlet for her talents in staged readings. Catch her Sept. 22 in “The Waverly Gallery” with the Tower 80 Players, led by her former high school English teacher Marvin Phillips and staged in a community room at Tower 80 apartments in Akron.
“It does not matter what you look like or how old you are when you are doing staged readings,” says Paolucci.
She loves how the readings let her take on roles she never thought she would do, especially in her 70s. Last year when Tower 80 Players staged Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall,” a semiautobiographical tale of the author’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe, Paolucci read the character of Maggie, who represents Monroe as a singer instead of an actress but still a woman in her 30s. Her nuanced acting avoided caricature, finding the depth in a misunderstood icon.
“I had a wonderful time doing that,” she says. “It’s been really satisfying to explore some great roles.”
Director’s Notes
Ohio Shakespeare Festival’s glass ceiling has been shattered. Managing Director Tess Burgler played the eponymous lead of a young prince in “Hamlet” this summer as part of the 2019-20 season dubbed “Lady Disdain” for all its female-centric mainstage shows at Greystone Hall in Akron.
Two years ago, Burgler played Rosalind in “As You Like It,” the largest female role in the Bard’s canon. Now, she shares what it was like to play Hamlet, one of his biggest male roles — with twice the number of lines.
“It felt like running a marathon. I was focused a lot on proving myself. Then all of a sudden in the final week of rehearsal, I thought, This is really fun to have this much agency, this much to say, this much to explore that I didn’t get with even Rosalind.
By the time the night was over, I didn’t feel like anybody was responding to my gender. It wasn’t, Oh, it’s so good for a woman. They were responding to my performance. To knock down that wall — it was cool to experience.
Nine times out of 10, there was a girl sitting right where I deliver [the “To be or not to be”] speech. There’s this young woman potentially seeing ‘Hamlet’ for the first time, and it gets to be someone she can empathize with on a profound level — she could actually see herself. I loved the simplicity of that connection.”
— as told to Sharon Best
David Peacock
Actor
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The tissues really come out in the last 20 minutes of psychological drama “Boogieban.” The play tackles the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the ending is gut-wrenching. Audience members often heave audibly in a visceral effort to hold back their sobs.
“It’s so big that they make these involuntary noises,” says Akron actor David Peacock who plays military psychiatrist Lt. Col. Lawrence Caplan. “I have to say my monologues, breathe and pause so people could hear me.”
“Boogieban” has deeply affected audiences in Akron since None Too Fragile Theatre got a Knight Foundation grant to stage its world premiere in 2018. The play goes inside therapy sessions led by Caplan who sees one last soldier before he retires. The soldier’s unresolved PTSD stirs up Caplan’s suppressed trauma from serving in Vietnam and losing his son in Afghanistan.
Following rave reviews and 11 local theater awards, “Boogieban” was restaged in None Too Fragile’s new space in the old Coach House Theatre building in August. The buzz sent Peacock, director Sean Derry and West Virginia actor Travis Teffner on a tour to perform it in Chicago later in August and off-off Broadway in New York Sept. 6-31.
Much of the play’s emotional intensity stems from its raw, honest script written by psychiatrist D.C. Fidler. Fifty-nine-year-old Scotland native Peacock also draws from his own turbulent experience of serving in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces and PTSD he still copes with. He channels the grief of losing fellow soldiers — a pain that’s never left him.
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a veteran in your family. It’s a collective grief,” Peacock says. “It’s a metaphor for loss, leaving and endings.”
Peacock came to terms with his PTSD through drama therapy. One of only four drama therapists in Ohio, Peacock runs a private practice in Akron and helps those who’ve experienced trauma confront their emotions by acting out scenes that address their issues.
“Boogieban” is therapeutic like that, especially for veterans. During a talkback, a Korean War vet who was one of few survivors in his platoon said “Boogieban” communicates everything he’s never had the courage to express.
It’s more than just a play; “Boogieban” is a testament to how healing theater can be. Peacock is leading that charge by negotiating with Kent State University researchers to create a drama therapy study to look at treating patients in a theater instead of in a medical setting. Veterans and people who attempt suicide would participate in sessions at None Too Fragile that acknowledge their pain.
“Most trauma remains. But you can live with it under your terms rather than the trauma controlling you,” Peacock says. “That comes because the person’s got a voice and somebody has heard them.”
With the accolades and national tour, consider “Boogieban” heard around the country and perhaps one day the world.
Director’s Notes
In the center of an office brimming with trick knives, sequined headpieces and a robust collection of “Hardy Boys” novels sits Mark McClenathan, owner and producer of Akron-based theater company Get Away with Murder that hosts mystery nights on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. In July he launched Curtains, a dinner theater that stages interactive whodunits with audience members and actors every Sunday night at Spaghetti Warehouse. September’s caper unravels the murder of a Southern woman who refused to sell a university her land. McClenathan discusses how it feels to be part of a mystery.
“It’s like being in a live-action Clue game. At dinner we have a full interview of the suspects. You may find out you’re involved in illicit affairs or you’re being blackmailed. There may be a pop gun that goes off.
It’s a scavenger hunt written in the style of a Carol Burnett sketch. They’re situational and character driven. The names of the characters are tongue-in-cheek, so right off the bat people are laughing as soon as they read these characters’ names.
You never know what an audience member will bring to that character. People bring to the surface their wit and hidden talents they don’t get to display in everyday life. It’s an opportunity for people to let their hair down, perform in a farce-type atmosphere and get away with it.”
— as told to Caroline Crawford
Josy Jones
Playwright
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Josy Jones gave Cascade Village a rewrite. As a new Akron transplant, she had heard rumors about the Akron neighborhood: It’s violent, a place you shouldn’t go. But she met warm and welcoming residents while working there for @Play, a 2018 community art revitalization project.
To reclaim that narrative, Jones developed and taught a free playwriting course called Reimagining the Village. Residents crafted plays inspired by public spaces in Cascade Village. When they performed the works in June at the village’s Elizabeth Park and nearby steps, attendees remarked the neighborhood wasn’t like what they heard either.
“They thought it was really beautiful,” says the 27-year-old Akron resident. “They wanted to see stuff like that happen in other spaces around Akron.”
It’s already happening, largely thanks to Jones. As an actor, director and playwright, Jones specializes in giving a voice to the underrepresented.
Recently, she helped carve out a local spot for LGBTQ theater with “Tame,” which Rubber City Theatre premiered in March. Jones adapted the Shakespeare classic “The Taming of the Shrew” with gender-bending twists — like changing a male lead to a female who develops feelings for one of the sisters. Jones also penned the first full production of New World Performance Lab’s QuTheatr LGBTQ youth theater ensemble with the July premiere of “Through His I.” She incorporated into vignettes members’ experiences with issues from bullying to pronoun use. Both projects featured transgender actors and help Akron join the emerging national LGBTQ theater movement.
“If we don’t continue to provide opportunities for youth to hone these skills, they won’t be actors or be creating stories that include them,” Jones says.
She also advocates to see more African American women like herself onstage. From Dec. 6 to 22, she will play a dark elf in Ohio Shakespeare Festival’s comedic fantasy romp “She Kills Monsters.” She is thrilled to take on this role — especially the fight scenes — but she is one of few black actresses featured in the company’s season and in the entire Greater Akron theater scene.
Play by play, she’s working to bring change. She’s particularly encouraged by an audience member’s comment at Reimagining the Village: It was nice to see theater happen in a majority black community.
Perhaps one day it won’t be so rare to see LGBTQ or African American plays in Akron.
“It’s important for people to understand that theater is not just for the wealthy,” she says. “It can be for them. They can create it themselves.”
Director’s Notes
We can all see each other a little better under stage lights. John Dayo-Aliya illuminates what life is like for an American black male in the original play “Or Does it Explode?,” a series of vignettes the Ma’Sue Productions Artistic Director co-wrote. It’s been staged twice and will tour community centers and parks in Akron. Dayo-Aliya discusses the play’s most popular vignette about a black boy watching the TGIF lineup onTV.
“Everybody regardless of the color of their skin was there for ‘Full House.’ This young man talked about how he had wished Uncle Joey could be his uncle and the reality of his own uncle who was incarcerated — the distance between his life and the lives he watched.
That’s the piece most people talk about. It gives them insight into what it means to be a minority. To have the same experience, the same longing but also have your life forced behind this veil, forced into the shadow and to be longing for all things — all the bounty of culture — that is ours.
To share that moment of my own experience with this room of people is exhilarating. I feel the most seen and visible as a black man during that scene than perhaps any other moment in my professional life.”
— as told to Kelly Petryszyn
Mark Jenks
Creature Designer
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Many creatures come alive at Magical Theatre Co. From fire-breathing dragons to prancing reindeer, fantastical characters enter real life at the Barberton children’s theater thanks to the handiwork of Mark Jenks.
Over nearly three decades, the 65-year-old Strongsville resident has made hundreds of creatures for events and theater productions, including several for Magical Theatre. The elaborate larger-than-life puppets are almost always mobile, and performers operate them alongside “human” actors.
A background in construction helped Jenks easily learn how to make walking puppets as a volunteer for Cleveland Museum of Art’s Parade the Circle in 1992. He’s been doing it ever since and is now the production manager for the parade.
See Jenks’ craftmanship in Magical Theatre’s “The NeverEnding Story” in December, featuring his three purple buffalos, two gnomes, a 9-foot-tall troll, a horse, turtles that come out of their shells, four wind puppets and more.
When designing creatures from a script, Jenks focuses on movement. His creations climb, jump or dance. The puppets are framed with skeletons of PVC pipes, lightweight aluminum, plastic tubing, ropes or fabric and include sticks, straps or backpacks performers use to operate them. Jenks’ favorite part is adding personality with facial expressions made from wires, clay, papier-mache and paint.
“That’s the magic element,” he says. “I put myself into the character.”
Jenks crafts most of his puppets in his home shop, but when things are too big, he moves production out to his driveway. He used to build sets, and he once built a two-story “Romeo & Juliet” castle outdoors.
“That made the neighbors wonder,” he laughs.
Creating the five giants for “The BFG” at Magical Theatre was particularly meaningful for Jenks. Only one of the performers had ever operated a large puppet — and these were 9 to 13 feet tall. Luckily, they were fast learners, and within 20 minutes, they were inside the smaller puppet doing choreography to the Temptations.
“That was one of my happiest moments,” he says. “To see them not only come to life, but they also spoke lines — it was thrilling.”’
But witnessing kids let their imaginations run wild because of something he made is his favorite.
After Cleveland Orchestra’s “Peter and the Wolf,” Jenks got to wear his own 10-foot-long Mr. Wolf puppet at a Q&A. The kids spoke to Mr. Wolf as if he were real despite their parents explaining the puppetry.
“There’s not a lot of input while you’re making,” he says, “so to see them come to life, and then to see kids believe in them and be affected by them — it’s everything.”
