Over his 15 years with the company, First Stage Children Theater’s Associate Artistic Director John Maclay has worn a variety of hats, only one of which was a giant Shrek head. In addition to his miscellaneous acting roles, including a star turn as the popular green ogre in a 2013 production of Shrek, The Musical , Maclay has written and directed for the company, adapting two productions last season ( Anatole and Nancy Drew and Her Biggest Case Ever ), while overseeing its high school actor training program, the Young Company. He spoke with the Shepherd about First Stage’s evolution and the key to a successful children’s production.
You play a number of roles at First Stage. Were you always interested in writing and directing?
I wasn’t. I was trained as an actor. Coming out of acting school I never thought I would be a director or a writer or even a teacher, and now that’s the core of my career, and a lot of that was working at First Stage. The writing really came out of First Stage being so committed to the development of new work. Working there as a director, as part of the artistic team, you’re so constantly immersed in adaptations of new literature, and workshopping new plays and working with new playwrights, that part of working at First Stage means being involved with the process of writing. So it’s been great training, working here. There’s no doubt that it’s been a life-altering opportunity for me.
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How has the company changed in the time you’ve been there?
Well, it’s grown. There have been a lot of changes in that time. The biggest has been the growth and development in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. In 2005 when First Stage and MYSO, the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, opened MYAC, the Milwaukee Youth Art Center, suddenly we had the ability to offer an incredible number of new programs and training opportunities and connections with the community that we just didn’t have the space to do before. And so I think over those 10 years the artistic wing of the company, which has always been committed to new works, has become even more committed to new works. We also present a larger season; we now have shows for the youngest people in the family. And with MYAC we were able to develop this Young Company program, so we have not only opportunities for teenage actors to act and perform, but we’re also offering content that we hope appeals to high school audiences.
What’s the secret to putting on a good show for a younger audience?
Just put on a good show period, I think. I think that’s really true for all ages. When we look for how we’re going to produce a play, I don’t think we change the aesthetic principals of producing great art because children are in the audience. If anything, you can get away with less because children will let you know. They’ll let you know if they don’t like it, if they don’t buy it or if they don’t believe it. The main difference between theater for a 6-year-old or theater for a 16-year-old or theater for a 40-year-old is simply the point of view of the content. So if you want to do a great play for a 16-year-old, then you’re looking at plays that have challenging content and at the same time reflect that age’s point of view. But the important thing is it just needs to be good. It needs to be well acted, and that’s why the training is so important.
One of the challenges of the Young Company must be that you’re always losing talent as each class graduates.
It is, and that’s true in any training program. But on the other side, because the students are so young and they’re learning and they’re training, they’re also always getting better. So as one class of actors leaves and you think, “How are we going to do next season, because we’ve lost all these fine actors that we’ve trained,” then the next group makes these great leaps and grows into their craft. So I think it’s a system where students are constantly leaving, but it’s also a system where the stores of ability are constantly being replenished.
The Young Company presents Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at MYAC, March 13-15. Visit firststage.org for tickets.
