The actors proved their drawing abilities during auditions, but they had a week-long boot camp of drawing classes and choreography to hone their skills before rehearsals.
“They are still exhausted from it,” Power jokes.
Child’s play: Find family-friendly theater in unexpected places
Jamie Gahlon, JB Tadena, and Joe Brack act — and draw — in “Astro Boy and the God of Comics” at Studio Theatre. (Photo: Scott Suchman)
But the result is something decades in the making. As a grade-schooler in Japan, Power became captivated with Tezuka’s books and started creating handmade comics with her brother. (“We would bind artwork with Scotch tape and make a magazine,” she says.) She even went to visit the cartoonist when she was in sixth grade and asked to be his assistant after showing her work to him.
“He said, ‘Well, it’s very good, but you should finish middle school,’ ” Power recalls. He told her to come back in three years if she was still interested, but he died 18 months later.
“Promise not kept, right?” Power says.
Not exactly. Power took Tezuka’s words of wisdom about diversifying her interests and fashioned a career out of them.
She says he told her: “If you’re serious, and if you want to do this, a good cartoonist shouldn’t just read comics. You should go see movies, you should go see plays and you should listen to music and all these other things.”
Feb. 15-March 11. Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. www.studiotheatre.org. 202-332-3300. $30-$35; $19 rush tickets available for full-time students 30 minutes before curtain on a seating-available basis (except Saturday evenings).
Best for age 5 and older
After a Helen Hayes recommendation and the box-office success of last season’s “Jack and the Bean-Stalk,” the powers that be at First Draft and 1st Stage decided to give the kid-friendly collaboration another go.
Playwright Mario Baldessari and director Kobylinski are once again teaming up, this time to tell the tale of Goldilocks’s search for the perfect porridge, chair and bed. But audiences can expect a few twists — this “Three Bears” is an a capella musical, and Goldilocks, er, Sergeant Goldilocks, is played by actor Gannon O’Brien.
“It’s a lot of laughs,” Kobylinski says. “And it’s definitely aimed at a younger audience, but there are plenty of laughs for adults. In fact, probably far more than kids ever realize.”
That’s one of the most important ingredients for a successful show, according to Kobylinski, who calls this brand of theater “programming for kids and their families” to hammer home the point that all parties need to be entertained. That includes the most difficult-to-please audience members: teenagers. Luckily, Kobylinski says, some of the high school set took a liking to last season’s show.
“I think they were surprised, because a lot of them were sort of arms crossed, ‘Really? I’m going to sit through “Jack and the Bean-Stalk?” ’ And by the end they were laughing their heads off,” she says.
That being said, the production is not without challenges. Like “Jack,” “Three Bears” will run concurrently with another 1st Stage production, which means the kids show will share a set with the adults-only “Almost, Maine.”
But the potential benefits far outweigh the obstacles.
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