Brings Experience, Innovation
The Jewel Box Theatre’s new Artistic Director, Laurel Watt, can’t put an age to when she became involved in theater. It’s been “pretty much forever” by her recollection.
The Southern California girl was exposed to theater from a young age by her mother and aunt, who themselves were in theater productions. As a little girl at one time living in San Gabriel, Calif., Laurel remembers a huge old mission playhouse there, a fully rigged, old-fashioned theater, that had a fiesta pageant every year. She says she had a wonderful time participating in that pageant. One afternoon when the fiesta was finished, she sat watching stage hands changing from the fiesta theme to the next production’s theme; watching one make-believe exchanged for another. “My goodness,” she thought, “This is magic. This is for me.” She fell in love with it then and there.
“In the theater you can play a role and be somebody else the next time,” Laurel says. “It’s just for a little while, like experiencing a lot of different lives and connections without having to travel far to do it. I think that’s what hooks people into theater and that artistic expression — then moving on to something else.”
In seventh grade, she wrote an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and talked her teacher into letting her direct her class. “That was kind of the beginning,” she says.
She acted in high school plays, majored in drama at California State University in Los Angeles, and studied and acted at the original Pasadena Playhouse. The playhouse was a dream of young Laurel’s, “I always imagined I could go there,” she says. And she did.
Laurel’s love of theater translated into a career as a professional actor, director and theater educator. She has appeared on numerous stages in Seattle, California and Canada, including the Seattle Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Empty Space Theatre and Tacoma Actors Guild in Washington and New Play Centre, Queen Elizabeth Playhouse and Shakespeare in the Park in Vancouver, B.C. While living in California she performed with the Berkeley Repertory and Marin Theatre Company, ran a conservatory for young actors and taught acting to children and adults.
One of Laurel’s best theater experiences happened at the Cinnabar Theatre in Northern California’s Sonoma County. She had the opportunity to play Mrs. Warren in “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” a George Bernard Shaw play directed by Michael Fontaine. “That was a highlight in my life,” she says. “He did such a wonderful job and the cast was so great.”
In between theater productions, she found time to get married while living in San Francisco and raise two daughters. Today, her daughters live in the Santa Rosa area of Northern California. Both (which comes as no surprise) are involved with theater. “They were around the theater all the time they were growing up,” Laurel recalls, “That was a lot of fun.” Her oldest daughter, Megan, was a professional ballet dancer who toured internationally. She now teaches dance and drama, and does dance choreography for regional theater companies. Her youngest daughter, Bronwyn, is an artist who takes on the creative and technical work of set design.
And just as her daughters are familiar with life in the theater, Laurel is familiar with life in the Pacific Northwest. More than 20 years ago, Laurel and her family lived on Vashon Island for a time. While there, she and a group of friends began a drama group that’s still in existence today.
Laurel has been an Indianola resident for nearly eight years. She was attracted to the JBT not only because it was closer to home, but because she had seen productions and thought the organization was doing great work.
“They do things in a simple, honest way,” she says. “They do things the other area theaters are not doing. They’ve been willing to take some risks (with shows) and there’s an audience for that.”
She met former JBT Artistic Director David Speck more than a year ago when she auditioned for “Wit.” (She has the lead role as Vivian Bearing in the upcoming production beginning Feb. 2, 2007.) David suggested that she consider the Artistic Director position. Laurel is confident that she has a solid background in all aspects of theater and can use her skills at the JBT to continue the theater’s primary focus and expand into even more challenging productions using more local actors.
“I want to build and audience and expand our place in the community,” she says.
Laurel, ever the innovative soul, also likes the idea of expanding adult theater education classes, creating programs for children and providing opportunities for children to perform. She knows from past experience that it’s good for children and brings more people into the theater.
Her future plans for JBT include encouraging new local and regional playwrights by developing a summer festival with readings or minimally staged readings over a period of several days and get feedback and comments from attendees. And Laurel has the experience to do it. Several years ago she began a new play festival in Sonoma County that’s still going strong. What began as a venue for local playwrights now has grown to a festival that attracts scripts from all over the state of California. She’d like that to happen here in Kitap County.
“I’m interested in new talent,” she says. “That’s the future of the theater.”
Although David Speck, a JBT founder, is stepping down from his position as Artistic Director, he will continue to be involved in other aspects of the theater, such as acting and educational workshops. The JBT family and Kitsap County community thank David for his tremendous contributions to making the JBT a lively organization that produces quality shows.
By Darcy L. Himes
Jewel Box Theatre Communications