Masons, Magic and Making a Difference

 
Magic is something you surrender to age. Old enough to know that there is no Santa Claus, that there is no unicorn in the woods, nor mermaids in Barton Springs. Life forces upon you so many facts and figures, you become wedded to reality and fantasy is banished to the movie theater, the television screen, or the video game console. The age of enlightenment seems to be getting younger and younger in our cynical age. My eleven-year-old nephew recently condescended to tell me that there was no Easter Bunny. But magic is strangely resilient and through the art of live theater, it can jolt awake the child inside of us all.

Founded in 2004, the Scottish Rite Children's Theatre conjures the magic of live theater for children ages eighteen months to eighty years. Producing six or seven shows a year, the company is headed by the Kelso family. Gordon is the executive director, his wife Rita is the costume manager and technical director, and their daughter, Gwendolyn, is the company manager and frequent lead actress.

Children's theater gets a bad rap. Gordon Kelso says Scottish Rite Children's Theatre is different: "When most people think of children's theater, they think it is kids playing on stage. We don't do that-for any number of reasons-but the chief reason is children need to be in school studying."

The casts are usually four professional actors who double-up roles playing multiple characters. A recent production of Sleeping Beauty saw the same actress playing both the queen and the bad fairy, Penelope The Professional Party Pooper.

"We try to put on stage the very, very best that we possibly can," he says. "Quality sets, quality sight lines, the best costumes, and the best technical (skills) that we can provide that will best enhance the story and the theater experience for the kids."

Gordon Kelso knows about quality theater. He was a sound engineer for the 1968 revival of My Fair Lady starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and he met his wife, Rita Kelso, when she was a professional ice skater in the Ice Follies with Peggy Fleming. Later, the two of them worked and toured across the country with Disney before returning to Austin to open the Erwin Center in 1977 with Gordon Kelso as the original stage manager. "What we bring to the table is a knowledge and understanding of first-class, Broadway quality staging. And that's what we insist on having as the creative bar," he says. So if you think you'll be seeing a large purple dinosaur singing mind-dulling ditties, think again.

Setting the scene

Quality magic begins at the front door. The Scottish Rite Children's Theatre is located in a historic Masonic Building at Eighteenth and Lavaca. The original edifice was built in 1869 to be the theater, gymnasium, bowling alley and beer garden known as Turner Hall. William Sidney Porter, who would later became famous under the pen name O. Henry, met his wife there when she was a young ingénue in the opera. When the Masons bought the building in 1910, they replaced the old stage but continued to use the priceless hand-painted backdrops that are still featured in current productions. Entering the lobby today is like wandering through your great-grandparents' stately old living room. Portraits of Masonic leaders grace the walls and heavy leather furniture fills the room.

The theater itself is a Texas treasure-a beautiful blend of a stately auditorium and an elegant playhouse with a white elevated stage and painted blue ceiling with stars. Most of the action of each play takes place on the five steps leading to the stage and there is a taped area in front where the children in the audience sit.

Each show is preceded by a reading of the rules. Characters from the play come over the loudspeakers, saying, "Please do not scream in our production. If any of you have parents who scream or cry, please take them to the lobby." The characters come out, get the kids to stand up and sing, get some of that energy out. A hundred little voices chant that "We watch with our eyes, we listen with our ears, and we keep our mouths closed. We put bottom glue on our bottoms. When we sit down, we're gonna be stuck." The audience is placed in control of their own behavior and they learn that they are part of the play.

As a classically trained actress from the prestigious Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts in St. Louis, Gwendolyn Kelso explains the unique challenges in performing for children: "You have the fourth wall (in regular theater) and the audience is looking in on a 'slice of life.' But in children's theater, if you have a fourth wall, you're gonna lose them. So you take the fourth wall and extend it past the audience and make the kids just another part of the play."

Throughout the production, the kids are constantly involved as the story unfolds. They shout out names for the newborn princess. They yell that the bad guy is hiding under the sofa. Two precious little girls are selected from the audience to walk on stage, put on pink fuzzy wings, wave a sparkling wand, and bless the new baby.

"It's very interactive and improvisation is key," claims Melissa Rentrop, a company actor and princess in last year's production of Aladdin. "In Jack and the Beanstalk, we asked them what a beanstalk was. One little boy yelled out. 'It looks like a snow cone,' and you have to work with it. (We) rigged the beanstalk to grow on the stage and we got the children to stand up and grow with the stalk. There was a light change and it just felt magical."

The plays are written to involve the children directly. Scottish Rite Children's Theatre usually writes its own scripts from well-known tales in the public domain. Gwendolyn Kelso explains the process: "We decided to do Jack and the Beanstalk and I was reading through all these published works. There was one where the ogre beat his ogre wife. I'm like, 'Oh, I could never do this!' I needed something that would be suitable. Our audiences are so young. You can't have the ogre beating his ogre wife-ever, really, but especially not with an eighteen month old. So we rewrote a lot of the scripts."

The rewriting allows the company to reach every demographic in the audience, even those of us with mortgage payments and credit scores. While Sleeping Beauty is awakened with a kiss on the hand, the upcoming Rumpelstiltskin features a king with financial problems inventing the IRS (much to the dismay of all his kingdom). Such cross-generational content is deliberate and evocative. "While I was touring with Disney," says Gordon Kelso, "I would slip out and look at the audience. There was this marvelous happening where three generations of the same family were each enjoying the show at their own levels. The grandparents, of course, were enjoying the other two generations reacting and little ones were enjoying watching their grandparents react to certain aspects of the show."

Disney dos and don'ts

The homage to Disney has its drawbacks. Kids, for the most part, are familiar with the general storyline of each show, but they'll defend to the death the details from the Disney line. When the king and queen invite the audience to name their young Sleeping Beauty, the audience is doggedly devoted to the name of the princess given in the movie. Gwendolyn Kelso says, "Aurora is from Disney. We have our kids in the audience-participation part, and we ask them for names for the baby. We were going with Barbara, with Troy, with whatever the kids threw out...So we yell, 'We shall name the girl Rachel!' Two hundred and ninety-nine kids are like 'Nooooooooo!' They will yell and scream and holler and stamp their feet, until you change the kid's name to Aurora, because that's what they expect from Disney. 'Aurora!' Or they won't let the show go on."

Adults, too, have a hard time letting go of Disney storylines. "Parents have called and said Rumpelstiltskin is not a family-friendly show," says Gwendolyn Kelso. "But if you've seen any other shows here at SRCT, we rewrite them to make them family friendly, very family-friendly. (Originally) Jack in the Beanstalk does not end with the ogre and the mom hanging out afterwards. He plummets to his death, but we don't do that here. Everyone lives happily ever after here."

Gordon Kelso concurs. "When you use new stuff, folks don't follow quite as heartily as they do the known pieces. Perfect example: The Sword and the Stone was pretty popular. That was our very first production with our company. Everybody knows that story. But the next show that we did was absolutely brilliant. Gorgeous show called The Clown Prince. It was extremely well cast, imaginatively blocked, costumes were gorgeous, and the cast was probably one of the best we've ever had. It was just a stunning production. But we learned from that production. One, it was not a familiar story. Two, it did clowns. Not all kids like clowns. We learned a hard lesson."

But as learning curves go, Scottish Rite Children's Theatre is ahead of the game. Halfway through its second season, it has already gained a reputation for excellence. In her review of Charlotte's Web for The Austin Chronicle, Heather Cole wrote, "Most impressive about the production are the high standards invested in family entertainment. Quality counts in Scottish Rite's Charlotte's Web…."

The Austin Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the entity that owns the building where Scottish Rite Children's Theatre operates, shares these sentiments and has deeded the property to the theater company-a five million dollar vote of confidence.

The connection to the Masons runs deep, as both Gordon and Rita Kelso are active members of the society. Gordon Kelso's office is filled with books, plaques, and diplomas proudly trumpeting his affiliation. In a quirky twist of coincidence, a trailer for The Da Vinci Code flickered across the television screen behind his chair during our interview. That best-selling book spins great conspiracy tales of the Masons and their secretive origins, but as Kelso explained, the Mason's charitable work is neither secret nor controversial. "We believe very seriously in trying to do what we can for children. That's the Mason's way. In this world that we live in these days, idealism and altruism aren't understood particularly well. Ideally, if children are exposed to good, wholesome traditional theater in an historic setting, they will grow an appreciation for theater and the general lessons of morality and ethics that are at the heart of everything we do here."

Sure it sounds a little a quaint and old-fashioned. But the little girls who attend the show dress up in their very best princess gear: tiaras, glitter, and strappy sandals compliment long flowing dresses. Watching their faces light up as they boo the bad fairy and clap when the princess is awakened, there is something wholesome and intensely reassuring in the discovery that entertainment doesn't have to involve the video violence of Grand Theft Auto or the vapid cuteness of SpongeBob SquarePants. Grownups need magic and hope, too. Sometimes we find it watching the audience as well as the stage.

What lies ahead

The theater has great plans for the future. Gwendolyn Kelso talks of producing Shakespeare for kids and even has a shortened version of A Midsummer Night's Dream cooking in the background. Scottish Rite Children's Theatre is in talks with the city to produce A History of Austin for fourth and seventh graders, narrated by Judge Edwin Waller, original signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and architect of the City of Austin. They hope it can complement the current Star of Destiny production, a theatrical retelling of the history of Texas, presented at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum across the street.

But the Kelsos don't want to abandon the work they're already doing. "The future goal is to become an established regional children's theater-producing entity," says Gordon Kelso. "There are nine Scottish Rite Theatres in the state and the plan is to produce a show here and take it on the road. So we can just truck that show right around and keep professional actors working and actually developing children's audiences in every one of those cities."

These dreams are ambitious but very real. After each show, the audience files out into the imposing lobby made soft and whimsical by green frogs embroidered on pink pillows and beanbag chairs. Every actor in the show is in the lobby and they greet each child, sign the playbill fashioned into a coloring page, and give a taste of celebrity culture without bare midriffs and Britney pouts. Gwendolyn Kelso, a veteran of these lobby scenes, speaks right to the heart of what the Scottish Rite Children's Theatre is all about: "When we were doing Charlotte's Web, the kids would come up and say, 'We hate that Charlotte died. We're gonna go home and we're gonna rewrite it. We're gonna change it.' The kids would go home and they'd rewrite it and they'd act it out for their families. You see them smiling. You see parents smiling. They're creating and they're communicating.

"Theater has been used for years as that place you get away to and you learn. You go in and you don't know where you'll be transported. And if you let yourself, you can go anywhere. That, in and of itself-if the show is done well-is just amazing."

Challenge the voice of cynicism inside of you and take a trip to the Scottish Rite Children's Theater. The faces of children under the stage lights can be an inspiring event. Almost magical, some would say.

Bonnie Neel is still in the habit of blessing small babies with sparkly wands. Don't worry, she's mostly a professional by now.