THE PLAY'S THE THING Theater Manager, Playwright, and Performer Makes Brentwood His New Base of Operations
	MAY 2005

by Steve Kinsella
Photos by Russell Byrne

I’m in the process of creating a new level of the performing arts in Brentwood. I’m bringing a full-blown theater program into the area, complete with three separate thespian groups, for children, teens, and adults. I’m offering courses in acting at all three levels, conducting both one-on-one and group classes. During the recent holiday season, for example, we staged a professional-level, critically acclaimed, original production, called Christmas at the Biltmore.

My wife and I, almost on a whim, chose Brentwood as the place to locate our theater activities. I had been invited by the Arts Commission in a nearby city to begin an adult theater company in their community. A blue-ribbon panel, consisting of eight people, was chosen to oversee the appointment of an artistic director for the company. They were seriously interested in my standing in for the position. However, I attended a meeting of the Arts Commission and was dismayed by what I saw. Those people were doing the Hatfield/McCoy feuding thing among themselves and putting on a depressing spectacle. So I left the meeting, ended up driving up Vasco Road, and found Brentwood.

The last time I was in the area, Brentwood was a rural, sleepy kind of place. I was a little shocked by the growth I saw all around me. It occurred to me that if I were going to begin a theater conservatory and production company anywhere in the area, perhaps this new, thriving Brentwood would be the place to do so. I brought my wife out to look at homes. We made a quick decision on a home we saw, made an offer, and bought the place. Five days after we wondered whether we should move to Brentwood, we had our own house.

It was a whirlwind decision, but I really didn’t make it completely in the dark. I had looked on the City’s website, read minutes from the Arts Commission meetings, and tried to find anything going on that was along the lines of what I planned to do. All I could find was a single program for children. I had found the place to get to work.

First Steps in my Performance Career
My story began in a little Midwest town called LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, which was a great place if you wanted to play pro football; the little village produced no fewer than three NFL football players. But there was nothing for people who wanted to practice the performing arts until high school. I have 11 brothers and sisters, however, and we grew up entertaining each other.

My brother encouraged me to audition for a high school production and I was fortunate enough to come under the tutelage of Robert D. Manahan, a high school and regional theater director. I learned from him a life changing truth that guides my work until today, “Whatever the age of your performers, they are able to do theater at a professional level; and you should always challenge them to aspire to nothing less than that.”

I was trained from those earliest theater experiences to put a fine point on all parts of a production. By the time I was 12 I had learned to always do my best, shine my shoes until they glistened in the footlights, and to respect the audience. I had been given a vision of the craft that would ultimately become worth imparting to others.

I entered junior college as a business major. My first summer I auditioned for a summer stock production and got the lead in a musical called Company. A graduate student from Illinois State University directed the production. Her mentor saw me on stage and suggested that I study for the theater. The suggestion implied a big turn in my life, since I had been planning to take over my father’s Roto Rooter business, and had, in fact, been working in the family business since age five.

The junior college I was attending had an agreement that music majors could have their applied lessons — in my case voice training — with professors at the University. So I began commuting, got the music degree, and put Roto Rooting behind me forever.

My Life as a Rock Star
My career took a strange and in some ways wonderful detour when I began traveling with a rock band. I had been putting myself through school by working as an emcee. I was plugging a show on a local radio station when I got a call from a rock band. “We’re looking for a lead singer,” they said. I suggested my older brother.

I took my brother to the audition and was messing around with a mic for what I assumed was a sound test. I didn’t realize that they were, in fact, auditioning me. To my surprise (and my brother’s chagrin) I ended up being offered the job. I had never thought to be a rock singer, but the band offered me a salary much higher than anything I ever received for my emcee gig, so I ended up as lead singer with a successful bar band.

I showed up at the first rehearsal to find the room in chaos with 30 guys, 40 women, and two half-kegs of beer. “What are these people doing?” I asked the leader. “Well, they’re getting ready to party later,” he answered. That reply suited me very poorly. “If I want to party, I’ll stay at school!” I told the guy. “If I’m going to drive an hour to rehearse with you, then I want to have something to show for my efforts.”

I made a deal with him. “If you get rid of these distractions and let me bring my opera training to bear on the rehearsals, I’ll have us performing in really major venues in just six months!” I was a little surprised the next time we got together to see that the hangers-on and the kegs were nowhere in sight. We worked hard. And before long we got some great venues. It was a personally validating experience; if I can bring structure and discipline to a rock band, I can bring it to any group!

I showed singers how to control their breathing as opera singers control theirs, so that the sound comes from the diaphragm not from the throat. The technical term for this is “intercostal diaphragmatic breath control.” This kind of disciplined breathing is helpful for any kind of singing. After learning this, anything a person does vocally becomes remarkably easier. We would do four sets a night and in one epic stretch did 21 shows in 23 nights. After an experience like that, we probably would have been coughing up blood if we hadn’t been using proper mechanics in our singing.

Learning to Rock Opera
Remarkably, my rock-singing career later aided in my training for opera. I had a chance to study with the great voice coach, Kathryn DeHaven. In one marathon session Kathryn worked with me for three hours and it was a high-powered event. Conductor David Lundgren was playing piano and Steven Covington, an interpretation coach, was present.

I was working on an aria from Puccini’s La Bohème. “You’re working too hard,” Kathryn said. “How would you sing this if you were back in your rock band?” I tried the passage in my best rock band voice. “There!” she said. “Now put your sound behind that!” I went through that passage that had a sustained high C 25 times and it was like I had become a tape player, the music began to flow so effortlessly. I had learned to release the sound rather than to simply muscle through it. The combination of that great teaching and my rock background had worked together for me to make a tremendous leap forward in my singing ability.

In fact, singing became too effortless for me. A Chicago agency that represented me told me one day, “Your face doesn’t look pained enough when you sing, Steve.” I made it look too effortless when singing arpeggios, sforzandos, and fortissimo passages that others had to work at. The agency actually coached me in how to grimace appropriately when singing. I was angry and embarrassed, but came to appreciate the comical overtones in the thing. And I also learned the lesson that I shouldn’t make singing Verdi, Rossini, or even Andrew Lloyd Webber look too easy. The audience has to feel my pain even if I don’t feel it myself. (This is only theater, after all!)

Word of mouth has created a career for me. I discovered that the Diablo Light Opera needed a tenor for a showcase group. I hadn’t sung in three years, but it turned out that the accompanist knew my primary coach, Jerome Lomanco, from the New York City Opera. I showed up for the audition and the conductor, Diane Kamrin, one of the Contra Costa County Arts Awards winners, said, “This group has been performing all year. It is not right to bring you in; it would be too difficult for you to blend in with them.” And then she added what she imagined was a final showstopper, “Do you have a tux?”

Well, I got the hint. “Maybe I’ll audition next year,” I said. They were doing a piece from Brigadoon. My hair was pretty long at that time and one of them called to me, “Hey hippy, come down here and give it a shot.” I sang the song and afterwards Diane said, “Let me find you a tux.” That started me in the showcase group and I actually landed the lead role, playing Charlie Dalrymple.

After that ended they said, “You need to try out for the next role,” which was Strauss’s operetta, DeFlatermouse. I not only got that role, but received a Shelly Award for my interpretation. A representative from Berkeley Opera met me backstage and invited me to try out for their production of The Marriage of Figaro. I was cast as Don Basilio, under the baton of Jonathon Khuner of the San Francisco Opera.

Teaching, Coaching, Directing, Producing
I became a contract stage director, which means that municipalities and community theater groups would call me in if they aspired to create a musical or theater work at a level that would attract the admiration of performing arts critics. People kept calling me because they knew that I would manage all parts of the production with a professional and intelligent intensity. “Heaven is in the details,” as far as I’m concerned, and I work with every part of every production I’m involved in.

I produced Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat in an East County church. Stephen Schwartz, the author of the musicals Godspell and Wicked, attended a performance and afterwards said, “I never imagined I would see professional theater in a church.” Of course, the performance wasn’t professional — we simply produced it to professional standards.

I make sure that things are done right. The set never rocks back and forth, for example, when a character in one of my plays slams a stage door in anger. Part of my respect for my audiences is to ensure that they don’t have to endure shabby staging or acting.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” they used to say, and I guess it’s true. Naked necessity forced me to create my own system of stage blocking notation when I was cast in the lead roll as Tony in a professional production of West Side Story. We were limited to 12 rehearsals so I desperately created a system of pass-pattern notations to show me where I was supposed to be at every moment in every scene. It was a John-Madden-type system, with lines, circles, and points indicating places on the stage and movements of the people. The system turned out to be as simple to learn as it is practical to use.

I can use my system with an eight year-old inexperienced actor and all the staging and blocking will be working by the end of the third rehearsal. It is wonderful to see how the system gives young, budding actors a great boost in their self-esteem. They never say, “What a great system, Steve!” Instead they say, “I’m good at this, aren’t I?” Of course, that’s exactly the response I want them to have.

Now my system is apparently being used all over the world. Someone came back from a London production and said that a stage manager was using a page with familiar notations. “That looks like Steve Kinsella’s system!” he exclaimed. “Yes,” the manager replied, “I studied with Steve and learned it from him.”

In spite of my concern for details, I stay loose in productions. I’m good at ad lib, following the advice of one of my teachers, who said, “Stay relaxed and your genius will emerge.” Very often it does.

The Kinsella Conservatory Theater Story
I developed an umbrella group at Brentwood that I named KCT (The Kinsella Conservatory Theater), which is the organization responsible for managing adult productions. Two subunits, located beneath the KCT umbrella, The Brentwood Teen Theater, for young people ages 13-19, and a Junior Conservatory Theater, for 8-15 year-old young people.

We put on our first presentation last October with a Brentwood Teen Theater production of the Tony Award-winning musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. In December KCT produced an original play, called Christmas at the Biltmore. The Junior Conservatory Theater is currently working on a rollicking version of Spam Spade Pig Detective. The Brentwood Teen Theater is starting to work on Nancy Slew.

My productions have goals that go far beyond simply staging a play or a musical. I want to change people’s lives; I want people to grow and succeed. My plays are production oriented, and include a masters class in singing, acting classes, and sessions that include everything from teaching audition skills to scene studies. My plays and musicals are performed by amateurs, but they exhibit top-drawer style and production values. I’m a crusader against shepherds in bathrobes. “Christmas at the Biltmore,” was a production that everyone took pride in. A professional actress, for example, attended one of the performances and was astonished at the quality.

I enjoy helping people to success; I always try to work my way out of every teaching and coaching job I ever get. If my students learn well, then I’m out of business. That’s the whole point, after all. I don’t merely teach people to be good singers and actors, I teach them how to be successful performers.

One of my former students, for example, a college coed, once got a tryout for the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. The audition landed right in her lap because someone saw her and thought she looked right for the part. She became the youngest person ever accepted to the Rockettes dance troupe and made $35,000 while on spring break. Afterwards she told me, “I got that break because I was ready for it. You always taught me to be prepared.”

We’re going to have a great time in Brentwood! Performing arts are going to thrive. People are prepared for the services that I’m bringing into East County. Equally importantly, I think, I’m prepared myself to help facilitate the marvelous changes that are going to take place.