Theatre

Everyone loves dressing up, and actors are no exception. On the day when costumes are first tried and fitted, you can hear the giddy giggling from even the most jaded performers. Part of it has to do with the additional flesh on the bones of the characters provided by proper dress, but truthfully, it's just fun to try on odd clothes and see how different you look.

One of the biggest challenges facing most theatre groups here in San Diego and in most urban areas is finding space. There are far more aspiring theatre companies in this city than there are venues in which to perform, let alone make a permanent home.

In theatre, sound is a way to enhance the suspension of reality. You as the audience want to believe you're in an English manor house at night, or in a train station, or on a cruise ship. Sound helps you do it.

There was a time when all theatres had extensive collections of devices for the production of sound effects such as boxes of glass, creaking hinges, and such. Today, though, the sounds, from the music that plays while you read your program awaiting the start of the show to the effects that imply phantom locations, are recorded. Every theatre company has one or more

You've been through auditions, you've survived callbacks, and you've gotten the role; these are stressful but fun activities. They have all, though, just been preparation for the first reading; this is magic. The first time you read through a scene with the other actors who will be playing the roles in performance, you finally get to live the show. It's not exactly what it will be, but its form is discernable and its substance tangible. It may still be a golem formed of mud, but it lives.

Bob Korbett, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production Bottled In by Babytori Rice, is manager and artistic director of Korbett Kompany Productions, home to Poor Players, a company specializing in Shakespeare.

Sara Angell-Isom, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production That Day by Craig Abernethy is a playwright herself, author of E.D.G.E., performed at the 2004 U. C. Santa Cruz Chautauqua Festival.

Craig Abernethy, author of the New Perspective Play Festival productions That Day directed by Sara Angell-Isom and Choices, Choices, has created a body of written work described at his web site, http://www.craigabernethy.com/, including

• State of the Art
• A View Unassisted
• Absolutes
• The Sort of Happy Ending to The Sad Tale of Mr. Ali Ali, Or:

Jessica Seaman, director of the New Perspective Play Festival productions Falling from the Stars, written by Terence Burke, is a San Diego-based actor and director. Her directing credits in San Diego include:

• A Christmas Carol with the La Jolla Stage Company

The single most common question I get from friends who don't do theatre is, "How do you learn all those lines?" Though glib, the real, honest answer is "One at a time, over and over." While auditioning can be scary, rehearsal exacting, and performance exhilerating, learning lines is the slogging through the muck that the army does before the battle is joined. It's all about getting there.

I walked into Starbucks on Mercy Road last summer, and the young barista there said, "Weren't you the guy in 'The Crucible' at OnStage in Chula Vista?" We little theatre types just live for those moments.