Deep into rehearsals for the new holiday production of <i>A Year With Frog And Toad,</i> director and choreographer Art Manke provides a nugget of insight into his work mode. Drawing a vivid comparison between directing for TV and for theater, Manke allows that “in TV everything is instant—it’s like microwaving pizza. Theater requires time, time for the process. It’s a gourmet meal.”
Based on the much-loved children’s books by Arnold Lobel, the co-production of Shakespeare Santa Cruz and the UCSC Theater Arts Department brings a Tony-nominated Broadway show complete with a live band, singing and dancing to holiday audiences. (The production also marks the welcome return of SSC’s holiday show after a two-year hiatus.) Viewers join the adventures of two friends, a cranky toad and a frisky frog, and their woodland companions through the changing seasons of a single year. The director of Bach at Leipzigand this past summer’s The Three Musketeers, both for SSC, Manke has done it all—singing, dancing, acting, directing. In addition to his television work, the founder of LA’s A Noise Within classical theater company has directed many productions for young people at South Coast Repertory, including The Wind in the Willowsand the musicalLucky Duck.
Despite his impressive repertoire, there is, he assures me, no “Art Manke” style of directing. “I approach my work in the same way, whether it’s a musical or drama or children’s play: I like to think I’m realizing the playwright’s intentions,” he says. His boyish face grows momentarily serious. “It’s not about me.”
Manke aims to distill the maximum entertainment value from the play without dumbing down the material. We have one of the most literate audiences around,” he says of Santa Cruz theatergoers. Even in a production clearly designed for young audiences, Manke believes in raising the level of appreciation.
Using a steampunk aesthetic in his overall approach to the material, Manke and his designers have set the adventures of the characters into a charmingly clockwork backdrop of Victorian pulleys, cranks and machinery. “That way the children will get to see how the magic happens—how it is done,” he says. “The set, the seasons, will transform before their eyes.” He cranks up the old-fashioned wind machine, filling the room with the rushing roar of stormy weather, to demonstrate.
The aesthetic extends to costumes. “Instead of dressing the actors up in sort of Disneyfied animal costumes, we’re going to capture the essence of each animal in how we costume the human actors,” he says. Beautiful renderings of actors dressed not with fake beaks or wings but as aviators convey his point. “Aviators fly, birds fly—I think the analogy will be clear to audiences.”
Manke is having a good time with the entire collaborative process. “I have two very seasoned professional actors, Mike Ryan and Nick Gabriel— they are perfect examples for the student players who fill out the rest of cast,” he explains. “And I have professional production people—a set by Kate Edmunds, design by B. Modern,” he says, pointing to a wall lined with costume drawings. “My theory is that if you have a room full of smart and talented people,” Manke says, “you want to use it.”
The set Edmunds has created turns theatrical magic inside out, allowing us to see—in Spielberg-meets-Fritz-Lang fashion—how the backstage operations can transform an empty theater into a summer day on the lake, autumn leaves being raked or a snow field ready for sledding.
Above all, it’s fun—even for the cast and crew. “We leave rehearsals humming the songs,” Manke confesses happily.
A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD
Nov. 19–Dec. 11 at the UCSC Mainstage Theater
Tickets $18–$40 at 831.459.2159 or www.shakespearesantacruz.org
