Eric Hoit leans on a small bistro chair, rehearsing actors in A Witless Rogue—a 19th-century comedy with a Shakespearean flavor, featuring romance, deception and villainy.
Hoit, '80, his blue eyes a match to The Great American Melodrama theater's signature color, directs with a calm “sorry to interrupt . . . but it's my job,” then tweaks the performers' pacing, movement and diction.
The rehearsal is complicated by the imminent departure of a lead actress. Elizabeth Helitzer has been tapped on short notice for a part in an off-Broadway show. Hoit could have held her to her contract—but what diehard theater professional would deny such a great opportunity?
Instead, he has pressed company manager Suzy King into Helitzer's roles in both Witless Rogue and Showdown at Slick Rock Ranch, the theater's second summer offering. Although King has acted before, she has only a week to learn her lines and blocking for Witless Rogue. “I knew Suzy could do it, and I thought she might kind of like the opportunity to get on the stage, too,” Hoit says. “And I was right about that!”
Just another crisis for the artistic director and business manager of The Great American Melodrama, which—as its name implies—features crisis after crisis after crisis on its wooden stage.
Hoit has played one role or another at this Oceano, Calif., theater since 1980, when a Stanford friend alerted him to an acting job. The following year—passing through on a drive down the Central California coast from Palo Alto to Los Angeles to look for work—he was offered the position of financial manager. “Okay, sure,” he said, and unpacked his car. “Basically, I never really made it to L.A.”
He had enrolled at Stanford with the idea of becoming an engineer. Almost immediately, life took a stage-door detour, via Ram's Head. He not only acted, sang and danced, he also handled production duties and directed. “The Ram's Head gave me the tools to do this job,” he says now.
In the 28 years since graduation, he's managed to make his living in the theater. Not thee-ah-tah, as in Royal Shakespeare, but stints choreographing everything from Pippin to international circus performances, serving as wardrobe master for a national company, and singing and acting for 11 months in a touring production of Me and My Girl. It's a résumé that helped him develop all the skills needed for running the Great American Melodrama.
Owned by John and Lynne Schlenker, The Melodrama, as locals call it, has been in operation—five nights a week, year-round—since 1975. The scripts are drawn from America's Lost Plays, a series from the heyday of melodrama, at the turn of the century.
Why focus on melodrama? Budgetwise, it doesn't hurt that the plays are in the public domain, but that wasn't the entire motive. “I always loved that Victorian period,” says co-founder John Schlenker, who ran the theater full time until retirement. “It's not the greatest written stuff, but it was street theater; it was a good way to put on fast plays, to meet the needs of the immigrants, the down-and-outs, during the Industrial Revolution.”
Music used to telegraph and heighten emotions is just one of the characteristics of true melodrama. “There's a very clear delineation between good and evil, and very high stakes in every situation,” Hoit says. “It was very popular and very populist—the big industrialists were the bad guys; the people were good. In theater for the masses, good always wins out.”
The theater, housed in a former drugstore, holds 40 small, round, cloth-covered tables, raised back and side benches, red velvet stage curtains, and a snack bar featuring hot dogs or baked potatoes with chili, and beer or iced tea. (The actors bus tables and serve as cashiers when they're not on stage.) Musical director Jordan Richardson gets a vigorous workout every night at the upright piano.
With titles like Drac in the Saddle Again and Snow White and the Five (Don't Ask) Dwarfs, a spectator might expect an evening of unrestrained, twirl-the-moustache camp. But The Melodrama manages to tread the fine line between cheekiness and cheesiness largely because the actors are professionals, most with degrees in drama or theater arts. Hoit recruits at a national audition each spring in Memphis, Tenn., typically eight players for each production. Many actors return for several seasons. “We could ask them to play it hokey, but we choose to treat the material with respect,” he says.
While Oceano, not far from Pismo Beach, is a tourist destination, a large part of The Melodrama's audience is local. Annual attendance is 55,000. On a summer Wednesday (coupon night—tickets were $3 off the regular price), almost all of the 250 seats are filled. The evening kicks off with a sing-along ("By the Light of the Silvery Moon"—the words are printed in the program) and a survey of the audience for those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. “We position ourselves as a family theater,” Hoit says. “People often don't even ask what we're putting on—they know they can bring the kids and there won't be a problem.”
Bob and Lynne Reed, full time RV dwellers based in Lancaster, Calif., fit the demographic perfectly. Married for 39 years, they've been attending The Melodrama at least once a year for the past two decades, along with their now-married daughter, Jennifer Patterson. This year the family—joined by Jennifer's husband, her 4-year-old daughter June (on her third visit), and Jennifer's in-laws—took in Showdown at Slick Rock Ranch, booing and hissing at the dastardly doings of El Diablo. June contributed the occasional “Oh no, Mommy!” at appropriate moments.
The second half of each performance is a company-written cabaret, and Hoit says it's tricky finding humor and cultural references that have cross-generational appeal. This summer's revue focused on cruise ships, opening with a story about the Titanic that mixed historical fact, allusions to the Oscar-winning movie and a narrative set to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. In the next skit, a nefarious pirate (think Jack Sparrow) turns up on The Love Boat.
In all, the theater does seven productions a year: including two melodramas in the summer and a traditional Christmas “spectacular,” which features a short version of A Christmas Carol, house-written operatic fractured fairy tales and a sing-along finale of Christmas chestnuts.
“One of the things I love about this theater is the diversity we get in our audience in terms of ages,” Hoit says, “as well as the fact that people who may not attend other theaters feel comfortable here—maybe because they can drink beer and eat popcorn while they watch!”
SUSAN CABA, a Knight fellow in 1997, is a journalist based in St. Louis.
