Oakenboard Youth Theatre

Realizing how ridiculously desperate most parents seem to be about getting their child on stage and showing the world that she or he is a star, Mitchellson Mitchellson decided twenty years ago to capitalize on the parents' dashed dream of personal stardom by forming the Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Festival Under The Stars Festival Theatre Youth Comrades.  This was when Mitchellson was undergoing some sort of personal communist revival as a reaction the the felling of the Berlin Wall.  He began wearing olive drabs and famously made the public announcement that, starting that year (1992), he would no longer draw a paycheck from Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Festival Under The Stars Festival Theatre.  This was met with astonishment by the board, staff, design team and actors of Oakenboard, because it was well known that Mitchellson drew a hefty paycheck; as his longtime creative partner Lew Wiwwy maintained the books, the precise amount was not known.  Lew is notoriously tight-lipped.  But with a mainstage that boasted 423 seats, at $35.00 a pop (remember, this was 1992, that was a lot of money back then, particularly for a quasi-regional community theatre in the far, far East Bay suburbs), and with shows that -- owing to the proximity of no less than five retirement homes, two retirement communities, multiple schools attending every Wednesday matinee -- always sold out, Oakenboard made $14,805.00 on every performance.  How, exactly, they sold out, I'll get to in a minute.  For now, let's continue with math: two shows Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, one show Thursday and Friday comes to eight performances a week; sold out, that means $118,440.00 income per week. With a six week run, that comes to $710,640.00 total income per production. Not counting possible extensions, remounts and their black box space -- I'm only calculating the money the mainstage brought in.

While they have cut back their season considerably in the last ten years, consider, now, that in 1992 they did eleven full mainstage productions per year. I know that's odd, the math is impossible: with a six-week run, that becomes 66 weeks. Well, Mitchellson Mitchellson decided that Oakenboard Tavern Festival Theatre Under The Stars Festival Theatre was going to outdo all its competitors (by which he meant Theatreworks, ACT and Berkeley Rep -- a comparison at which those theatres still chuckle) by doing eleven shows per season.  That's two more shows per season than the far more manageable (and sane) number of eight or nine shows per season.  When he announced this sometime around 1988, the audience actually stood up and cheered.  Mitchellson was charismatic that way.  Sometimes, he still is.  But he could make hundreds of people, many of whom were veteran pilots of WWII, engineers, physicists from the Labs in Trevarno, Livermore and Tesla -- people with math skills, I'm saying -- Mitchellson could make these people believe that there were 66 weeks in a year. The audience and, apparently, the board of trustees, swallowed this eleven-shows-per-season idea hook, line and sinker.  

The staff and designers were infinitely (and silently) practical and pragmatic about Mitchellson Mitchellson's astounding announcement.  They all knew, instantly, what would come.  Every stage manager's inner calendar immediately went into overdrive, calculating and calibrating until -- eventually -- its gears jammed and the tension built and the calendar exploded with a great big cuckoo-clock Ragnarök.  To stage managers who for years had dealt with Mitchellson Mitchellson's increasingly unstable emotional state, his night-and-day changes of schedule, changes of temperament, changes of show lineup, his sudden mid-rehearsal re-casting (no explanation, ever, because Mitchellson believes an artist never explains himself), this inner cuckoo apocalypse was the sound of blissful release.  Because they understood.  Mitchellson's season was impossible.

With fourteen extra weeks per season, this meant that the 1988 season would no longer end in December with Mitchellson's celebrated production of A Christmas Carol [wholly plagiarized from ACT's production via grainy VHS bootleg, to which Mitchellson was utterly faithful -- even in his misunderstandings brought about by static and rolling picture: blizzard! Earthquake! Tsunami?], which he insisted on running through Christmas right up to New Year's Eve (with a gala NYE party afterward, at which all cast members were required to appear in costume  and in character, injuries or personal lives notwithstanding; one Scrooge was fired and banished from Oakenboard for having been overheard whispering to his wife that he was miserable from a sprained ankle sustained on Mitchellson's "daring" raked stage -- the only daring thing about it was the extreme angle of the incline and the fact that someone -- guess who? -- felt that insurance was a waste of money for a non-profit theatre).  Instead, the season would end fourteen weeks later, on April 9, 1989. Which, of course, meant that the next season would be ending one year and fourteen weeks later on July 15, 1990. The next season after that would end on October 20, 1991. The next would end on January 26, 1992.  This cycle was going to continue until some ancient Mayan appeared to correct the calendar with ancient Mayan magic, because that's what it would take to get Mitchellson to change his mind.

So stubborn, in fact, was Mitchellson Mitchellson, that he insisted on sticking to his original plan for the 1988 season, just cramming in two more shows underneath it; this meant that there was a show rehearsing while A Christmas Carol performed, so that it would be ready to open the Wednesday following New Year's Eve, requiring rehearsals on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.  How did he get away with this egregious abuse of actors' time?  Simple: while he did start with Equity actors, he eventually lost them all because of his stupid schedule; he recast the entire show with non-Equity understudies and newbies, maintaining that the audience was so old that they wouldn't know the difference.

Most of these actors, being both new and/or not professional (by which I mean unequipped mentally and emotionally for the rigors of constant theatrical "employment"), did not have the chops to survive such a schedule.  Injuries increased.  Morale dropped. The quality of the shows began to flag.  The audience and, eventually, the critics, noticed.  Oakenboard began to lose money.

There was a time, friends, when Oakenboard really was good at what they do.  I promise you.  It wasn't that long ago.  Before Mitchellson's brilliant sixty-six week season scheme, they really did sell out every performance.  Sure, they did the same family blockbusters in an unending and only slightly varied pattern (Annie, HMS Pinafore, Oklahoma, HMS Pinafore, Oliver!, HMS Pinafore, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, HMS Pinafore, The Wizard of Oz, HMS Pinafore, The Music Man, HMS Pinafore, A Christmas Carol and HMS Pinafore), but they sold out. Which is saying something.  

Mitchellson Mitchellson did not see the connection between his grueling schedule and the loss of quality.  He always assumed that he was working with professionals, and he demanded a performance to match his assumptions.  Meanwhile, word had gone out among the Equity actors in the Bay Area: do not approach or deal with Oakenboard. Repeat: do not approach or deal with Oakenboard.  Mitchellson Mitchellson, ever deaf to any but his own voice or Lew's, went blithely about the business of single-handedly destroying the theatre he'd built.

Which is precisely what the stage managers knew would happen when they calculated his schedule.  It's also why they were all four of them completely gung-ho about making sure it happened precisely as Mitchellson wanted it.  For the next four years, those four stage managers ran every single moment of that theatre like clockwork.  Every available space was used for rehearsals, Mitchellson was run ragged with their incessant pestering that he be on time -- they even began giving different calltimes to the actors and Mitchellson so that he would actually arrive when he was supposed to.  When he began to figure that out, they started making actors ferry him about in their cars, in one case making sure they cast the same actor in every single show for two years running, so that he would drive Mitchellson everywhere he needed to be.

Mitchellson Mitchellson fell into disrepair along with his theatre; shoulders stooped, belly sagging, unshaven, unkempt, temples rapidly greying, he became depressed. He began to identify with the oppressed people of the Soviet Union.  He even -- and this is true -- began hoarding toilet paper.  Some say he stopped wiping altogether, and that it may be a habit he has yet to resume.  

It was in this state of deep mental and physical exhaustion that he devised the Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Festival Under The Stars Festival Theatre Youth Comrades.  Touted as a superb opportunity for the youth of the region to learn the art and craft of theatre from the very best the Bay Area had to offer, it was in fact Mitchellson Mitchellson's desperate attempt at grabbing more money for the theatre.  Classes would run for two weeks, beginning immediately (he had, as yet, no staff to teach the classes), at a price of $900.00 per student.  Five classes each, running from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm every weekday, with 30 students per class.  That was the plan.  Never mind that there was no room, no time, no staff and no curriculum.  Those were details.  What mattered was the math.  Numbers are powerful.  Show a group of otherwise intelligent adults a string of numbers, tell them it means something, and they'll sign on to just about any idea.  This is what happened when Mitchellson met with the board after his big announcement. The reason they asked to meet with him -- something they almost never did -- was simple: Mitchellson had followed his announcement of no-more-paycheck with the announcement that his entire staff, designers, crew, and all future casts would be doing the exact same thing.  The silence that descended over the gala that night was so thick and heavy that even the injured actors had stopped whimpering.

Here's a little secret about non-Equity community / regional theatre, for those of you who don't know: everyone gets paid except the actors. Director, stage manager, assistant stage manager, designers, crew: all paid. Actors: not paid.  Or, if the theatre is super generous: a stipend of about $250 - $500.00.

Here's a little secret about non-Equity actors that non-Equity actors don't know: they will work for dog shit. They actually think they will get noticed in a dog-and-pony production of Godspell playing in the benighted hinterlands of the farthest suburbs.  In the backs of their minds, everything they sacrifice for their art will be worth it when they land that role on Broadway.  Do they audition in New York?  No.  They stay here.  Mitchellson Mitchellson knows this.  He capitalizes on it.  

Some people thought maybe he was trying to get the board to fire him with his unilateral decision to refuse pay for the entire company.  When the board convened an impromptu meeting with Mitchellson in the dressing rooms, DQ happened to be back there doing laundry.  She overheard them talking and climbed up onto the dryer to peek through the hole they've never patched from the errant cannon ball of 1982's Cyrano (yes, live cannons; yes, in an indoor theatre).  What she saw was Mitchellson writing on a mirror with a marker. What he wrote was 30 x $900.00 x 5 x 33 = $4,445,000.00, then he pointed at each number in turn, saying, "Students, per student, number of classes, number of sessions, how much we make. I'm saving us an entire year of expenses, except for royalties and concessions. And I'm making us over four million dollars. I'd say that's worth a raise."

Mitchellson Mitchellson capped the pen, put it in his pocket and walked out of the theatre. Nobody saw him for six weeks. Several predicted the end of the Oakenboard Tavern Festival Theatre Under The Stars Festival Theatre, but then phone calls began coming in from parents wanting to register their kids for classes. They'd heard bad things about the cult in Pleasanton and were relieved that Mitchellson Mitchellson was in charge at Oakenboard's school. (Yes, someone actually said that. Laurie, veteran stage manager, saved that answering machine message for years. Made an MP3 of it recently. Keeps it among her playlist, on shuffle, so it pops up to delight her out of the blue.)  

The classes for the first four sessions filled up.  Resumes began arriving from potential instructors.  The staff organized things as best they could (which meant better than if Mitchellson had been there to supervise), and on the very first day of the very first class, Mitchellson Mitchellson walked into the rehearsal space, plunked down his tattered olive messenger bag near the piano, and addressed an anxious crowd of thirty-five eager teens and tweens:

"Most of you are worthless. You will never amount to shit. There is maybe one of you who could make it professionally, but if you had a chance you would already be working in New York. You're here to learn about theatre, and your parents hope you'll be a star. You will not be a star. You will work your ass off and you will fail. Unless you can prove me wrong."

Every single one of the thirty-three sessions of the first year of Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Festival Under The Stars Festival Theatre Youth Comrades filled that week. Remember, people had money back then and this is a wealthy suburb. Was a wealthy suburb. Could still be considered wealthy, by comparison to, say, West Oakland, where there is a trapeze school but no theatrical academy of which I am aware. If there is, it's not full of grinning, chirpy rich kids all determined to prove themselves the absolute best actor the great Mitchellson Mitchellson has ever seen.

People say a lot of things about him.  But he was clever.  With that one little speech, with seven lines, with one small paragraph, Mitchellson Mitchellson had secured the most psychotically loyal chorus and supporting actors any theatre has ever seen.  In a mostly white suburb.  In the far, far East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Near some national labs and a town nobody can find.  In the shadow of Mt. Diablo.  In the shadow of Mt. Hamilton. In the Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Festival Under The Stars Festival Theatre Youth Comrades.

For free.