Isabella Negrete and Tom McKoy in 'Pinocchio & Carlo Collodi' (photo by Chip Scheuer)
A 20-foot blue whale comes floating down Soquel Creek when suddenly a rowboat carrying two passengers emerges from the mouth of the leviathan. The astonished onlookers gathered on the banks gasp at the sight, then gasp again as the boat and its passengers are sucked back into the giant maw. This drama repeats several times as the boaters paddle madly, only to be consumed again and again, until at last they free themselves from the watery beast to the delighted cheers of the people on the shore.
It happened in 1991 as part of the premiere performance of Pinocchio & Carlo Collodi, an adaptation of the Pinocchio story that sprang from the mind of local author Stephanie Golino. The “stage” was Golino’s picturesque Capitola back yard, but the performance had far greater reach than the venue would suggest: the play indirectly inspired a number of Santa Cruz children to become theater professionals. Next weekend, when Pinocchio & Carlo Collodi returns to the West End Studio Theatre for a two-weekend run, it will open with several original cast members (in new age-appropriate roles) and against a rich backdrop of deep community involvement going back 20 years.
The Playwright
Stephanie Golino didn’t set out to write plays. Entering her fourth decade, she was busy being a wife, mother and dancer when she experienced a creative burst, writing and producing two plays in a single year. A chance remark from her father-in-law, a Dante scholar, inspired the first.
“He told me that Carlo Collodi wrote Pinocchio to pay off his gambling debts,” says Golino. “I decided to write an adaptation of the Pinocchio story from the perspective of the author, his loan shark, his landlady and his long-suffering girlfriend.” The play opened with a cast of adult and child performers.
“Twenty years ago I had friends in their thirties and forties who were all in the arts and also had small children,” says Golino. “I wanted to write a show that worked on multiple levels, both intellectually and pragmatically. The idea was to provide an opportunity for my friends to be in a show with their children and to engage both mindsets.
“The 1991 production was a watershed that created a passageway into theater arts for several of the original cast members,” she continues. “Several kids from the original group transitioned into regular members of Creating Theatre, a program I started that morphed out of the Pinocchio experience. Twenty years later it’s gratifying to see the lives these kids and others have built around their love of theater arts.”
The Marionette-Turned-Fiancee
Erin Johnson was one of the original child actors in the landmark production, playing a marionette. She went on to earn a degree from the prestigious College of Creative Studies at UC–Santa Barbara and interned at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Her training with Golino remains a strong force in her life and emerging career in holistic healing.
“The way Stephanie works is that she sort of meets people and casts them, and they’re usually amazing in the role that she sees for them,” says Johnson. “That early experience with her gave me an outlook that everyone has a secret talent or something inside them that may not be apparent. It’s taught me that everyone has amazing potential.”
Johnson returns to play Carlo Collodi’s exasperated fiancee, Angela, who is also a counterpart to the fairy. “Like the fairy, Angela is Collodi’s guiding light, but she’s spicy. She won’t marry Collodi because he’s not a grownup,” says Johnson. “She wants him to become a real man.”
Johnson also has a recurring role as a rag lady, showing up whenever someone wants to sell something. “She’s sort of on the make,” says Johnson, “always buying little objects that are important to the story and passing them on to the other characters. Pinocchio doesn’t know what money is. She shows the world of money and the reality of being hungry.”
Johnson says Golino’s compassionate approach to characters and humans allows for an expansive view of human potential. “Stephanie looks at characters and people in a magical way that lets you love them for their faults,” she says, “such as Carlo’s gambling problem. She doesn’t make excuses for them, but you still see the character as a whole person. Stephanie believes, and I would agree, that what inspires great art is everything from your life. You might be broke and hungry or maybe you’re in love. Some of the most amazing art comes out of nothing.”
The Gambler-Turned-Better Angel
In the original production Collodi was played by local actor Tom McKoy. Now in his sixties, McKoy returns in the role of Geppetto, although with a twist. In Golino’s version, Geppetto is Collodi’s publisher, a positive force who encourages Collodi to “man up.” “Collodi’s publisher inspires him to get to work,” says McKoy. “There’s this notion of Geppetto urging Collodi to use his creative abilities and apply himself. Geppetto is both a father figure to Collodi and also the creator of Pinocchio through the imagination, through the pen of Collodi. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which is the creator and which is the character. That’s the way Stephanie wrote it.”
McKoy’s son Tommy was in the first Pinocchio. “That was part of the attraction,” says McKoy. “Tommy did some theater at Santa Cruz High, and I think working with Stephanie helped him move into that. He’s now a content designer for online textbooks. Over the last 25 or more years I have worked in local theater and it’s always been a delight. It’s a short step from being an ingénue to being an old fart. Working with Stephanie is always lots of fun.”
The Cat-Turned-Playwright
Erin Bregman played the cat in the second of three local productions of Pinocchio & Carlo Collodi and went on to participate in the first Creating Theatre group. An award-winning playwright with a string of credits and commissions, Bregman now earns a living as a teaching artist for the San Francisco Opera Company. Additionally, she runs Little Opera, a children’s opera company. She has led more than 40 classes of children through every aspect of creating an original opera.
“I wonder if I would be able to do the jobs that I do if not for those early experiences with Stephanie,” says Bregman. “So much of what I do involves trusting children and really having high standards for their creativity. It’s about trusting the kids enough to let them lead and guide the process.”
Bregman cites Golino’s influence in her writing, as well. “Stephanie’s plays all have movement and music. I don’t think I’ve written anything that doesn’t have that,” says Bregman. “It’s not dance theater per se. I’m more of a musician than a dancer. But it’s all the performing arts combined in a really natural way that’s pretty rare. My work is different from a lot of playwrights in that it’s very visual, too. It’s an approach that lends a rhythm. I don’t think I would do theater at all if it hadn’t been for her. She’s 100 percent responsible for everything I’m doing now.”
The Child-Turned-Star
“I fondly remember Stephanie as a woman who trusted us—young children—with our instincts and creativity,” says actress Kira Sternbach, who had a small role in the play as a child, then returned to play Angela as a young adult.
Sternbach has subsequently logged more than 20 professional theatrical performances and appeared in 10 film and television productions, four of them in lead roles. Most recently she was seen on CSI, and will soon be guest-starring in The Closer.
“She made me believe in myself, at a very young age, in a very difficult profession.”
The Marionette-Turned-Director
Golino’s idea of turning her house and yard into a theatrical space has perhaps most significantly affected Daria J. Davis. Davis played a marionette in the original production and is now a successful director in Chicago and at the University of Texas in Austin.
“The concept of directing a play to be site-specific has become a buzzword,” says Davis. “But Stephanie pioneered this and it has definitely influenced me. I do plays in found spaces, not necessarily on a stage. The audience is called and led from scene to scene, changing the landscape for themselves. It’s so theatrical and so magical. I don’t just go to a dark theater. I take a journey. I’m always thinking about how I can influence that experience.”
Golino’s core artistry as a dancer and the focus on giving children experience in playwriting also influences Davis’s art. “The work I make is directly influenced by the whimsy Stephanie manages to project on the canvas of her plays,” said Davis. “She fuses the physical with the narrative so beautifully. My work has a very rigorous physical score that’s rooted in my dance experience. It’s what makes me a different kind of director.
“The most influential thing for me about training with Stephanie was when we would write our own scripts,” she adds. “It gave me experience in playwriting and choreography and responsibility for creating a whole performance. It taught us to be artists ourselves. On a personal level, emotionally as well as artistically, we needed her and it was really wonderful.”
The Little Kid-Turned-Dancer
“The whale inPinocchio was the first big set piece I ever saw,” recalls former student Sebastian Grubb, now a professional dancer and trainer who tours nationally with AXIS Dance Company. He was so young in the first Pinocchio he doesn’t remember his role. “Stephanie’s group is where I had some of my first spoken lines. She was my main and most continuous theater teacher.
“On a personal level Stephanie continues to be a guide and a mentor,” he says. “She’s very generous. She checks in, gives me advice. It’s been an invaluable association.”
Art Imitates Life
Over the years, the play has taken on a life of its own. In addition to three previous productions in Santa Cruz County, The Ukiah Players Theatre produced it in 2009. Bill Peters, a professor of theater arts at San Francisco State University, also mounted the production as part of his master’s degree thesis. The play now bears the fingerprints of many people.
“The current production includes music by Paula Bliss from the original,” says Golino. “Bill Peters added music by composer Joann Goldwater. And now we have original music and sound effects by Shiloh Hellman, as well as some traditional Italian songs and music by Nina Rota, who was Fellini’s composer.”
Now, as the play returns home to the Central Coast, it does so with some innovations of its own.
“I picked Pinocchio because I wanted to work with Stephanie,” says Terri Steinmann, artistic director at West End Theatre. “We just had to figure out how to handle the whale. Diane Marvin designed the original whale and has returned to create the new whale for our production. The result is very much a part of Stephanie’s physical theater background. There’s a huge ‘aha’ moment in the play.”
Additional actors in the West End production include Lori Rivera as Carlo’s landlady and Pinocchio’s employer. Salvadore Benavides plays Collodi, and Jaye Wolfe plays a villainous banker to whom Carlo is indebted. Fourteen additional actors round out the cast, most in dual roles straddling both worlds.
Pinocchio & Carlo Collodi illustrates Golino’s philosophy of art imitating life. “To me, this adaptation of Pinocchio has its own moral that goes beyond all the little cautionary tales already in the story,” says Golino. “It’s how all these little events in your life can become the grist for your creative life. And it’s about the creative process and how mistakes and unfortunate events can be spun into gold. You take a low moment in your life, like being in debt and fighting off creditors, add a little alchemy and you’ve got yourself a beautiful story.”
PINOCCHIO AND CARLO COLLODI Fri–Sun, May 11–20
West End Studio Theatre (check website for times)
402 Ingalls St., Suite 3
$18 at door
