Los Altos Stage Company approaches 30 years of theater performances
Roughly 45 years after the first production in Los Altos, live theater continues to entertain local audiences. Los Altos Stage Company (LASC), which picked up in 1994 where Los Altos Conservatory Theatre left off, is currently staging “Significant Other,” the latest in regularly scheduled productions undeterred by the pandemic or the indifferent arts environment that is Silicon Valley.
Nearly 30 years after its formation, LASC continues to produce quality performances with a sure-handed artistic director and enough revenue to actually pay its actors. The entire time, productions have been held in a cramped venue that once housed school district buses.
The longevity of local community theater, though buoyed by many supporters, is due to three key figures: Doyne Mraz, who founded Los Altos Conservatory Theatre and built the actual theater; Vicki Reeder, president of the LASC Board of Directors, who led the theater into the present; and the late Roy Lave, a former Los Altos mayor and longtime leader who ushered in the theater’s second act in 1994 by refusing to accept a community with no theater.
“It was Roy who said, ‘I won’t let this happen,’” said Lave’s wife, Penny. “He was really the one who got Vicki and some other people together to raise the money to keep the theater open.”
Lave, who died earlier this year, served on the city council in the 1970s when the city’s movie theater on Main Street closed down. He didn’t want another disappointing closure.
Local theater debuts
Mraz, who was teaching and producing shows at Foothill College at the time, lost his theater venue with the passage of Proposition 13 (which capped property tax increases but slashed government funding) and went about finding a new location. Bob Rayl, the city’s parks and recreation director at the time, suggested the “bus barn” at the city’s recently purchased Hillview School location. In 1978, the city allowed Mraz and Los Altos Conservatory Theatre to use the bus barn for six months.
Bus Barn Theater is still used for productions today.
Mraz, now an energetic 90, recalled how he and his volunteers had to build the theater from scratch.
“There was nothing there but a concrete floor,” he said in an interview last week from his home in Ashland, Ore.
Before long, however, the productions rolled out, one after the other, as Mraz enjoyed the challenge of staging in limited space. He liked putting on serious Shakespeare and Greek tragedies, much to the chagrin of his audiences. Lave took him aside.
“He said, ‘People are working 40 hours a week, and by Friday, they don’t want to see (a Greek tragedy),’” Mraz recalled of Lave’s advice.
Mraz subsequently turned to lighter fare.
Along with his time at Foothill, Mraz produced local theater for 20 years before, as he put it, the money ran out and people got tired.
“I’m extremely proud of the support that, for years and years and years, was there from the people in Los Altos,” he said. “I’m extremely satisfied. And very happy. It was a successful, wonderful venture.”
Reeder’s husband, Dave, arranged for the city to purchase the conservatory theater’s assets for $40,000. That opened the door to a fresh start. Reeder, who had performed in several theater productions under Mraz, took on the new challenge of running the theater with artistic director Marcia Frederick, a drama instructor at Foothill College.
“We didn’t want to be known as LACT – we wanted people to understand it was a new theater,” Reeder said.
It was Frederick who came up with the new name, Bus Barn Stage Company, after the venue. By 2013, theater leaders figured adding “Los Altos” would bring more identity, less head-scratching.
In 1995, the new theater was incorporated, with financial support from the city, Los Altos Community Foundation (which Lave led) and the Los Altos-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
A big fan of musicals, Reeder feels right at home in productions like “A Chorus Line,” in which 25 dancers somehow occupied the cramped stage at one time. But LASC followed with the risky “Avenue Q,” which she described as “a raunchy puppet show.” It turned out to be one of the company’s biggest hits.
LASC has benefited from the 2012 hiring of artistic director Gary Landis, who has helmed an array of diverse, successful productions and works well with local theater supporters. In 2018, LASC assumed management responsibilities for Los Altos Youth Theatre. It is a major goal of Landis’ to expand the theater’s audience by attracting younger members.
“I think support that the community has provided the theaters is kind of remarkable – the mix of kind of older generation with a kind of family generation, young families and youth,” Landis said.
The Follies
LASC’s most successful and entertaining fundraising endeavor proved to be the
annual Los Altos Follies, a series of popular tunes set to new lyrics that spoof local and national events. It was the Laves’ idea, but executed to great acclaim under Reeder. A talented, witty lyricist, Reeder figures she’s written approximately 300 songs during the course of the Follies. This year’s fundraiser is set for Oct. 5-7 at Bus Barn Theater.
Reeder, who has a decidedly liberal bent in her songs about national issues, has run into a few complaints over the years, but it doesn’t stop her.
“How can it get crazier than this?” Reeder said in promoting this year’s performances. “And yet, the worldwide and local shenanigans do not disappoint. We find ourselves in the oddest of times, with an ex-president facing multiple criminal indictments, a Congress self-destructing before our eyes and locals on the warpath over a dog park. The times cry out for more music parody.”
The pandemic offered Reeder and other LASC supporters an opportunity to explore technology to cast remote performances. Videos are now incorporated into Follies performances, and Reeder is figuring out how to do storyboarding.
Reeder has an acute interest in the theater’s future as well as its present and past. She is leading an effort to eventually build a new theater in downtown Los Altos. Supporters have raised funding for a feasibility study on what it would take to make that happen. She would like to see a theater in the 170- to 200-seat range instead of the 90-100 currently available at Bus Barn.
It may or may not happen. But in the meantime, the stage awaits and there’s another production to mount.
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” Reeder said. “I like being on stage and I like performing … I like writing, and so it’s been an opportunity to enjoy that kind of work as well as the busy work of keeping a business going.”
“I think Roy and I felt the same way – that if you have a community, you need to have community functions,” Penny Lave said. “The theater is one way to promote a community culture because it can involve all ages of people. We have a youth theater, we have an adult theatre, and the wonderful thing about it is that so much of it is volunteer. And that brings people together.”
Landis noted that LASC’s success lies in its local focus.
“Other people from outside the area attend (our shows) and that’s great, but our primary lens should be on supporting people within a close proximity to us,” he said. “That’s our focus and education. That’s our focus within our shows.”
All Follies performances begin at 7:30 p.m. at Bus Barn Theater, 97 Hillview Ave. Tickets are $85 per person on Oct. 5, $125 on Oct. 6 and $160 on Oct. 7. The Friday and Saturday performances include a pre- and post-show reception at the Los Altos History Museum that includes wine, appetizers, desserts and a silent auction. For reservations, call (650) 941-0551 or visit losaltosstage.org.
For more information on Los Altos Stage Company, visit losaltosstage.org.
