Author: Miller Murray Susen

Charlottesville is fortunate to boast a rich local theater scene with myriad opportunities to get involved. Theatrical training is worthwhile even if you don’t have stars in your eyes; but for kids hungry for that theater life, growing up on C’ville’s stages provides the training and support they need to take their next steps. Read on to learn more about a few local theater kids making it big, regionally and beyond.

Finn Faulconer

12, tutored by On Location Educational services

Current role: George in Finding Neverland (now on its first national tour)

Charlottesville acting opportunities:

A Christmas Carol at Four County Players

Fiddler on the Roof at Ash Lawn Opera

Les Misérables and To Kill a Mockingbird at Live Arts

Mary Poppins at Shenanarts

Training:

• Ballet, tap, contemporary and hip-hop dance lessons with Charlottesville Ballet Academy

• DMR Adventures Dream Team and DMRinNYC

• Virginia Consort Choir under Donna Rehorn

• Voice lessons with Liz Leone and Doug Schneider

• Private audition coaching with Melissa Charles for NYC auditions

How do you find acting opportunities?

My mom found the New York auditions I’ve done on Backstage.com and Actors Access, and also from my NYC-based manager, who scheduled the audition appointments for us.

Why do you enjoy performing?

My favorite part of theater in Charlottesville is the sense of community with the cast. The camaraderie you build is so strong. The show I am working on now, Finding Neverland, is very intense, and everybody is very professional. We are all still close, but I do feel the pressure to up my game. What I love about Finding Neverland is that I get to work with other boys (the boys are like my brothers) and with dogs!

Words of advice?

Start with community theater. If you don’t get the part you want, do the show anyway and stick with it. Try not to be nervous during auditions—remember that everyone wants you to succeed. Keep auditioning and participate in as many shows as you can!

Anya Rothman

11, sixth grade

Current role: Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

Charlottesville acting opportunities:

Fiddler on the Roof at Ash Lawn Opera

Getting Near to Baby at Live Arts

Annie, Once on This Island and Cinderella at DMR  Adventures

The Sound of Music at Albemarle High School

Les Misérables at Charlottesville High School

Alice in Wonderland, The Sound of Music and Seussical with Black Box Players

(Previously, Anya played Sweetie Pie in Because of Winn-Dixie at Delaware Theatre Company and Annie Who in the national tour of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.)

Training:

• Master classes in acting, singing and dancing; private coaching; DMR All Stars troupe, DMR Dream

• Team troupe at DMR Adventures with Melissa Charles

• Tap and hip-hop at Charlottesville Ballet Academy

• Tap at Live Arts

What is your favorite project to date?

It’s hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to choose, it would be Because of Winn-Dixie. I especially loved working with the dogs and all the people involved. Plus, since it is a new musical still being developed, I got to work directly with the writers, Nell Benjamin and Duncan Sheik, which was an incredible experience. I made some wonderful friends in the show, too, who I still keep in touch with.

Words of advice?

Work and train hard, keep auditioning, learn from your mistakes and don’t give up. Actors don’t get most of the roles they audition for—that’s a normal part of the business, so don’t take it personally. And don’t be jealous of others—celebrate each other’s successes. Pursue other interests that are not theater-related in the times between shows and auditions. That way you can have many kinds of fun and success.

Mila Cesaretti

15, Charlottesville High School sophomore

Current project: The 39 Steps at CHS, which will compete at the Virginia Theatre Association festival in Norfolk.

Charlottesville acting opportunities:

Annie with Black Box Players

Annie and Snoopy: The Musical at Four County Players

Into the Woods Jr. and Broadway & Beyond cabaret with DMR Adventures

Adrenaline Film Project with the Virginia Film Festival

Training:

• Filmmaking at Light House Studios

• Dance lessons at Charlottesville Performing Arts School

• Voice lessons with Elaine Brown and Doug Schneider

How do you find acting opportunities?

I found out about a few training opportunities in New York City from others in our passionate local theater community. I attended Broadway Artists Alliance’s musical theater intensive in New York City for two summers, studying voice and acting. While I was in New York, I was picked up by a New York talent manager  and, subsequently, an agent. Last summer, I trained more intensively in acting at the Stella Adler Studio’s Teen Summer Conservatory in NYC. I got support and training for that audition from local experts like Boomie Pedersen, and recommendations from my CHS teacher, David Becker. I’ve also performed in Richmond, playing Shprintze in Fiddler on the Roof at Virginia Repertory Theater.

What is your favorite project to date?

Probably Fiddler on the Roof, as I liked the intensity and professionalism.

Words of advice?

No matter how talented you are, you will always face rejection in this field. Don’t let the “no’s” get you down—just keep doing what you love, and your passion will keep you going.

Age 6 months: Finally sleeps through night.

Age 9 months: Stops sleeping through night.

Age 1: Finally sleeps through night. I mean, sometimes?

Age 1.5: Can eat all allergen foods. Wait, except peanuts. No, wait, do you now introduce those before 1? Gah.

Age 2: Potty trained. Just kidding.

Age 3: Preschool! Everyone in household comes down with cold that will last for next 10 years.

Age 4: Stops sucking thumb. Just kidding.

Age 5: Kindergarten! Even though you couldn’t wait, spend all of week one sobbing over baby pictures.

Age 6: Rides a bike. Or did that one time. Now scooters exclusively.

Age 7: Lies on floor every afternoon sobbing over math worksheet that would take six minutes to complete if they would actually do it. On the other hand: WHY DO THEY HAVE HOMEWORK.

Age 8: Wants a phone.

Age 9: Wants to read The Hunger Games, and
you let them because at least it’s not a phone.

Age 10: Can finally tie shoes. Not that they have ever before now had shoes that weren’t slip-ons.

Age 11: Middle school! Overnight they have B.O. and pimples.

Age 12: Suddenly actually really fun to watch their sports games.

Age 13: Teenager! Even though you couldn’t wait, spend all of week one sobbing over baby pictures.

It’s Thursday at 9:45pm, and your child is crying. They have a big project due, oh, tomorrow. They have no outline, they have no poster board; in short, they have no clue. What do you do?

“Late-night runs for supplies are acceptable,” says Lori Linville, a parent of two high schoolers. “Doing work for my children, or giving them a ‘pass’ from school for work that is not completed is not.”

Since Linville is also an eighth grade language arts teacher at Burley Middle School, she has perspective on both sides of the homework help issue. As a parent, she wants to assist her children and get invested in their education—and she hopes the parents of her students feel the same way. “But,” she says, “I remind myself that this is the right time in my children’s academic career for their work and the results of it to be fully theirs.”

Village School math teacher Linde Tassell also recommends that parents take a hands-off approach to homework help, if only so teachers can better assess students’ progress.

“Parental assistance can undermine a child’s progress toward becoming an independent learner, one who is confident in their ability to figure things out,” she says.

Beth Gehle, a world history and AP human geography teacher at Charlottesville High School who both teaches high schoolers and parents two of her own, adds, “I don’t offer my own kids help on homework, although I do ask about what’s due and what’s coming up.”

And that’s the kind of help she says she’d like parents of her students to offer.

“The best way for a parent to be involved with homework is to help make a weekly plan of what times can be set aside to do it, and what assignments can be completed in each available timeslot.”

Aka no more Thursday night meltdowns.

But are all the other parents doing their kids’ homework for them? If you don’t help, are you putting your kid at a disadvantage?

Not necessarily, according to Celia Castleman, parent to two elementary schoolers. “I never offer homework help,” she says. “My husband automatically does, but when he’s on a business trip, the kids are on their own.” She appreciates her husband’s willingness to sit with the kids and encourage them, but says, “I’m more laid-back. I think if we do a lot of things for our children, it can atrophy their ability to become independent and self-motivated.”

Summer as a kid was pretty glorious—no school and a succession of bright, hot days to revel in boredom. Summer as an adult is more complicated. As it turns out, the vast majority of jobs run year-round. Bummer. If you’re a stay-at-home/work-at-home parent, your children are home, too, complicating your schedule considerably. How to balance a need for childcare with keeping the fun in summer?

Kate Bennis, parent to a 10- and a 12-year-old, says, “My dream is for a 1970s-style carefree, kids-on-their-own summer. But the reality is not so sweet.” Because camps fill up quickly, Bennis says her family’s planning begins in January. For Meghan Murray, whose kids are 8 and 9, spring break is often the jump-starter.

But regardless of whether the family rhythm is set by the school year, these parents agree that summer should be a time to unwind. As Cale Jaffe, the father of three elementary- and middle school-aged children, puts it, “Our neighbor, a retired librarian, commented that she didn’t see children lying in the grass on a sunny day with a book enough anymore. So we might start to worry, ‘Oh, the kids are missing some enrichment opportunity that they don’t have time for during the school year.’ But then we remind ourselves—what could be better than an afternoon spent under a tree with a good book?” To that end, Jaffe and his wife, Katie, juggle both of their full-time schedules with a few short camp sessions for each kid (“just enough to keep them from getting bored,” Cale says) and a week of family travel. And in between? A lot of pool time with a sitter.

In fact, the pool might just be parents’ secret weapon when it comes to keeping kids occupied in the summertime.

Bennis, who, along with her husband, Hal Movius, works from home, says they get through summer with “three to four weeks of day camp, and then the city pools. The kids can walk to Onesty, and are old enough to go on their own.”

Murray and her husband, Steve Bowers, both work full-time managing their own businesses. “Most summers in the past, we’ve booked the kids in camps every week since [we’re] in the office all day,” she
says. This year they’re taking a different tack: “This summer our theme is free time. We’re planning for a babysitter and
some half-day camps, as well as one two-week sleepaway camp.”

Without the confines of a school year, as with the family of Jen Downey, who homeschools her school-age children, ages 13 and 8 (she also has a 19-year-old, whom she homeschooled through high school), it’s easier to take a relaxed approach. She and her partner, Matt Rohdie, work year-round, but they do have flexibility in their jobs. For their family, summer is not a change of pace so much as a shift in attention and place: “from books to stars, craft drawer to garden, bathtub to pools and stove to barbecue grill. And popsicles,” she says. “There should be lots of popsicles.” 

WATER SPOTS

Here are the area’s most popular swimmin’ holes.

Smith Aquatic & Fitness Center 1000-A Cherry Ave., 970-3072
The 27,000-square-foot Smith Aquatic features two indoor pools (one competitive, one leisure), water slides, a play structure and a lazy river.

Onesty Family Aquatic Center at Meade Park 300 Meade Ave., 295-7532
An outdoor pool near Woolen Mills with water slides, in-water playgrounds, a lazy river, a diving board, lap lanes and a zero-depth play area.

Washington Park Pool 1001 Preston Ave., 977-2607
You’ll find a lighted swimming pool, zero-depth play area, water slides, a diving board and a mushroom waterfall here.

Establishing and building a business is one of the most exciting, intense and stressful experiences life has to offer—and you can say the same about establishing and building a family. So is it possible to do both at once without losing your mind? Might there even be advantages to growing a business at the same time you’re growing a family? We talked to three successful local entrepreneur parents to find out their take.

A bit of a stretch

Owning an exercise studio means leaning on the team for support

Amy Bright and her husband, Barclay, have five children ranging in age from 10 to 18, so it’s hard to imagine how they could each find time to own a business, as well, but, as of three years ago, when Amy became the co-owner/operating partner of Pure Barre Charlottesville, they do.

“It’s been a wild ride!” Amy laughs. “It’s hard and messy at times, but totally worth it.”

Pure Barre is the largest and most-established barre class franchise, with over 300 studios in North America, and Amy works hard to foster a sense of community in her Charlottesville studio. Because the technique is low-impact, focusing on isometric exercises and stretching, it’s appropriate for all ages. “I love that 18- and 80-year-olds can work out together here,” she says.

As for the challenges, she echoes the time-shortage lament: “There is always something to do, and not enough hours in a day to do all that I think needs to get done.” But she also finds that the demands of family force her to be a good organizer of her time.

“Work is like a gas: It expands to fill whatever space you give it,” she says. “It would take over if I let it, and having a family helps me manage that.”

Her transition from being a stay-at-home mom to working outside the home full-time was a challenge for their family, but Amy credits Barclay, himself the co-founder of a local private equity firm, and her kids with being very supportive, and expresses gratitude for her “incredible team” at Pure Barre, who enable her to turn work off when she gets home.

For other parents thinking of starting a business, Amy has this to say: “You don’t have to be perfect. Don’t listen to the parenting guilt, or hear any message that says you aren’t already enough, because you are. Take care of yourself, and try to enjoy the ride.”

Family business

Entrepreneur mixes work and family with help from her son

LaTrina Candia is a familiar face to many in the Charlottesville area due to the outrageously creative and popular wrestling personas she’s devised as one of the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLAW). When she’s not dominating the sport of charity ladies’ arm wrestling, Candia runs her own business, LeopBird Concepts, and single-parents an outrageously creative (go figure!) 6-year-old boy named Cyrus.

Candia founded LeopBird Concepts in 2013 as a gathering place for her various interests and ideas, and her company’s mission is to encourage others to “unthink life.” Her most successful product to date is Luna Cream, which she describes as a “magical body cream from the moon.”

“Breaking the barriers that challenge your imagination benefits both your work and family life,” Candia says, and it informs her strategy of balancing work and family by bringing the two together.

Being able to bring her son along to LeopBird Concepts meetings and strategy sessions both suits her needs and “feels great.”

“Six-year-olds are the best business partners because they are honest and full of ideas,” she says, so she strives to actively include Cyrus in the ideation process, where they’re both able to “make suggestions, learn and grow.”

She acknowledges that intertwining family and business is tricky, and rarely seamless, but thinks having the opportunity to build a business as a family is worth the struggle.

Her goals for the future? Managing the media exposure and advertisement necessary to keep Luna Cream selling well. Plus, “Cyrus loves inventing, and I would like to continue to cultivate this interest and step back and be amazed.”

Picture perfect

Photographer mom makes family the priority

Sarah Cramer Shields has a passion for understanding people, and a keen eye for the little detail that makes a moment special, which, combined with her prodigious talent for photography, has led her to establish two successful ventures: Cramer Photo, which she started in 2005, and Our Local Commons, a 3-year-old joint business venture with photographer Andrea Hubbell. All this and two boys, Albert, 2, and Cramer, 5 months. As Sarah puts it, “Life is crazy, but awesome.”

She and her husband, Matt, both work full-time (Matt is a physics teacher at Charlottesville High School), and Sarah stresses that they couldn’t get by without help from friends and family.

“Matt’s parents are local and amazing, and our next door neighbor, Lorretta, is a saint. Truly,” she says.

Sarah often works weekends, which leaves Matt in charge of the kids. When things get too nutty, the family blows off steam with trips to the park or a walk downtown, and they regularly enjoy dinner as a family. Sarah says the hardest part of combining a growing business with a growing family is the ever-present sense of competing priorities.

“There is never enough time, and you’re never able to turn your brain off,” she says. But she also feels that having so much going on forces her to create boundaries and structure.

“I work hard in the designated time I have for business, and I cherish and appreciate the family time,” says Sarah. She recently built a studio in her backyard in an effort to keep work at work while remaining close by. Even so, baby Cramer occasionally “assists” from his baby carrier, and Matt “wears a million hats for Cramer Photo—he’s my sounding board, web guy and biggest cheerleader.”

Sarah offers this advice for parents scared to try balancing work and family: “There is never a perfect time to have kids. If you want to have a family and run your own gig, just go for it. It’s really beautiful to have a family to work for.”

It’s 8:45pm on a cold November night. The tech rehearsal has been going since 4pm, and I’ve been at the theater since 11am. My shoulders have inched gradually up to hover around my ears. The cast is running the finale with lights and sound, and in my capacity as assistant director, I’m sitting next to the director taking dictation of her notes. In pairs and small groups, the cast converges from various points to hit their final stage picture. All is going well until… My 6-year-old son doesn’t enter on cue, leaving a gap. We stop, and the director calls his name. The stage left Stage Manager calls back that she can’t find him. I’m half annoyed, half alarmed. After a pause, the stage right Stage Manager sticks her head out to say she’s found him sleeping on a bench backstage. She rouses him, we start the song again, and he finishes strong. The rehearsal is finally over. We give notes to the cast, and I wearily collect my things for the half-hour drive home. “My things” in this case include my son and my 9-year-old daughter, my husband, and four scripts, water bottles, pencils, coats, and bags of dinner remnants. We struggle to the car, load our gear, buckle up, and head out. I turn to my son, who hasn’t been to bed on time in six weeks.

Me: “Were you nodding off backstage, buddy?”

6-year-old: “I was just resting my eyes. I was still listening, though.”

9-year-old: “Pffft, yeah right. You missed your cue!”

6-year-old: “I DID NOT MISS MY CUE!”

9-year-old: “Did TOO.”

6-year-old: “Did NOT, I was AWAKE!”

And they’re off. The family that plays together, stays together—and bickers in the car all the way home from the theater. Crabby Husband and I snap for quiet, and I switch on the continuous Christmas music station, a guaranteed crowd pleaser this November. The play we’re working on is A Christmas Carol, and it helps us get in the mood. Among all the firsts on this work experience—my first full-length stage adaptation, my first directing experience, my first time working alongside the kids—the fact that it’s the first time we’ve all belted out “Faaaaallllll on your kneeeees!” along with Martina McBride is the one that surprises me most.

My husband and I are longtime theater enthusiasts raising two hammy children, so perhaps doing a family play was inevitable, but our experience last fall came together by accident. I had committed to adapting and assistant directing A Christmas Carol, and early on the director and I made the decision that I would also perform as the Ghost of Christmas Future, so we didn’t stick another actor with a non-speaking role. Then my daughter asked to audition, and did well. My husband read on a whim when he came to pick her up, and he was great, too. The director mercy-cast my son so he wouldn’t have to stay home with a sitter while the rest of his family did a show together during the holidays. Et voilà, family play!

I went into rehearsals with a lot of anxiety about involving the kids. The anticipation of months of rushed meals and late nights triggered my Fun Police alert system. I worried they were too young to take on the challenge, and I hoped all the hard work would feel worth it.

And as my opening anecdote suggests, we had some stressful times. Parenting is hard, parenting while working is hard, parenting people who are working hard is hard, and doing it all at once was… Well, hard. It was cool to have our kids get to know us as parents and people in a very different context, and also a little weird.

I found myself having conversations I never would have imagined, like this one, with my son backstage on opening night:

Me: “I need to do your makeup. Go get the eyeliner.”

Son: “I’ll have to steal it from Dad. He’s hogging it.”

My daughter also loved the makeup. As we got ready for dress rehearsal, my husband watched her shellack on layers of lipstick. After layer five, he suggested she might have on enough, and she snapped back, “Dad, I am actually allowed to wear makeup, and I am GOING TO ENJOY IT.”

As the show got going, we had fun opportunities for backstage bonding. I paged the curtain for 9-year-old’s first entrance as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and we became so familiar with the text of the preceding scene between Scrooge and Marley that we could do a fully silent lipsynced performance of it, complete with overwrought gestures and dramatic facial expressions.

Another ritual I loved was waiting for the curtain call with my 6-year-old. I wore a big, billowing cloak as the Ghost of Christmas Future, and my tired little guy would escape the chill backstage by creeping under it and resting his head against my stomach. To the outside observer, we would have looked like one head, one black pyramid of body, and four feet.

Our show closed on a matinee performance, and we spent several hours striking the set before going out to dinner with a family of friends from the cast. Bedtime was a tearful, over-tired affair, but finally we were tucking in covers and snapping off lights. I heard my daughter choke out a question to my husband clouded by the last of her tears: “Daddy? Is it always this hard?” And his gentle answer: “Only when you’re lucky.”

Patience is a virtue I missed out on. I’m not great with temperance or diligence, either, but patience is in especially short supply. And you know what quality really comes in handy in parenting? Patience. But sadly for you, my child, I have very little patience with you and your “reasons” a.k.a. excuses. You’ll eat this nice dinner I made, you’ll go the heck to sleep, you and your stuff will get to the bus stop on time, and you’ll do it all with minimum backchat. What’s that? Of course you can’t sleep—you’re standing here talking to me! BACK TO BED. You do too like squash! EAT IT.

Where the lack of patience really hangs me up, though, is in teaching my children new skills. Who has the patience to teach an easily distracted and frustrated 5-year-old how to tie her shoes? Well, not me. In fact, my daughter learned to tie her shoes from Caillou’s mom. She sat in front of the DVRed episode where the whiny, inexplicably bald Caillou learns to lace up his sneakers from his treacly, inexplicably saintly mother, and re-played it over and over until she had it figured out. Meanwhile, by the time our second child was ready to learn, I had no more patience with listening to that stupid show, so he wears slip-ons.

I am slightly more patient while teaching things to Other People’s Children. It’s a good thing, too, since I teach a children’s drama class at Live Arts, as well as classes at Four County Players’ summer drama camp, and the occasional substitute drama teacher gig at the Village School. Other people’s children don’t live at my house, and even if they get on my last nerve, class is finite. I can do almost anything for an hour, but parenting is a lifetime appointment.

So clearly adding my children to my drama classes was not a great plan. But it’s one I’ve undertaken multiple times, given the high cost and hassle factor of securing reliable childcare. For me it’s almost always Take Your Kids to Work Day.

Predictably, there was trouble from the start—as in, on the drive over to my first day of teaching for Live Arts. I hadn’t taught in quite some time and I was nervous, not least because I was letting my not notably mature 5-year-old son take a class geared to ages 7-10. Just wrestling him and my 8-year-old into their car seats had exhausted my little store of patience.

Then my daughter broke the tense silence: “Mom, I have a question. Do you even know HOW to teach drama?”

Underminer! With a clenched jaw I muttered, “Well, we’re all hoping the answer is yes.”

Concerns about my children’s behavior in my class proved prescient. My daughter was wont to roll her eyes and sigh if she didn’t like the improv game I chose, or stage whisper some commentary like, “THIS ONE IS STUPID.” My son was prone to lift up my shirt and palpitate my bare stomach pooch while I was trying to bring to order a rollicking class of 14 kids. I’d often have to pull one of them aside mid-class for a teacher/parent-student conference. Halfway through the session of classes, I was frustrated and worn out, and I realized I had to try to get in front of the problem.

On the way to class that afternoon, I waded in.

“Kids, you’re preventing me from being the best teacher I can be for our class. Every minute I spend distracted by your behavior is a minute the class isn’t getting my attention. That’s not fair.”

My daughter pointed to her brother. “He’s way worse than I am.”

I snapped, “He’s way younger than you are!” A pause while I struggled for patience. “Having you two take the class might not have been my best idea, but it’s too late now. So I need your help. I want you each to pick a punishment that I get to use on you if you’re disrespectful or disruptive in class today.”

My son was intrigued. “ANY punishment?”

“Yes, but it has to be bad enough that you really don’t want me to do it. Otherwise, I’ll pick one. I’m giving you a chance to choose your own adventure.”

My daughter nodded solemnly. “O.K., Mommy. If I’m bad today, I never get to have dessert again.”

I almost laughed. Harsh!

My son chimed in. “And I never get any more screen time ANYMORE EVER.”

This was magic! They were so much meaner to themselves than I had planned to be!

In my most serious voice I said, “O.K., deal. If you guys don’t keep it together for the rest of the classes, you now know exactly what will happen.”

And, actually, things did improve dramatically after that conversation, although it was probably the clear communication rather than the threat of draconian punishment that did the trick.

Now, almost four years later, we’re all used to me teaching a class they attend. I was actually quite touched to see the genuine efforts they made in my playwriting classes at the most recent 4CP summer camp. I recognize my limits, though, and I get my trusty co-parent to navigate the horrors of math homework—I can’t even teach myself how to multiply fractions. And I am working on achieving more patience and calm with activities like yoga. Not the 90 minute classes, though—they’re just too long.