By Alec Clayton
Love blossoms in rehearsal and deepens during the run of a show, and before you know it there’s a baby on the way. Just ask Jerod and Stephanie Nace, who brought another young actor into the world on March 4, 2012. Or ask Tim and Ingrid Goebel, who became husband and wife in October of 2010.
Then there’s the Hayes family: Ned (husband and father), Jill (wife and mother), and the kids, Nicholas, 9, and Kate, 11 — a family thoroughly steeped in theater. Nick just completed a run of “Oklahoma” at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle and has performed in many shows at Capital Playhouse in Olympia. Ned and Jill have both worked in administration and marketing for regional theaters. They met in Seattle a few years back. Ned was a professional mime and had produced and directed local shows. Jill, who grew up in Olympia, was working for the Intiman and Seattle Children’s Theater. They moved back to Olympia in 2003 and continue to volunteer for several local theaters. “Both children have been cast in major roles in the region, and adroitly balance the demands of theater with other family activities,” Ned says.
He says they thought they had “shaken the theater bug,” but then Kate wanted to do Capital Playhouse’s summer production of “Music Man” and she was hooked. Roles in various summer Kids at Play productions followed, and two mainstage productions at Capital Playhouse – “Annie” and the leading role of Mary Lennox in “Secret Garden.”
Nick also caught the acting bug. He was recently cast as Tiny Tim in “Scrooge” at Capital Playhouse and was in “Oklahoma” at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle. “Theater is awesome and cool,” Nick says. “Backstage, it’s like I have a family away from my family. Cast members become super close to you — like me and my friend in ‘Oklahoma’ became best buds by the end of the run.” He says he wants to go to New York and Broadway, and make a career out of acting.
Kate says, “When you do theater you have a lot of commitments. For example, with soccer, you can miss a practice. But in theater, you can’t ever miss a rehearsal. Your commitment to a show is absolutely something you can’t skip. I’ve been sick in a show, but I still went on stage, and kept my commitment to the show and the cast.” (She was seriously ill with the flu during “Annie” and threw up on stage, but covered it as just part of her character’s act. Ned says audience members never noticed.)
Unlike her brother, Kate doesn’t aspire to a career on stage. “I don’t want to continue in acting past about 18. I might do a show now and then, but not professionally or anything like that. Instead, I want to write books and maybe work in high-tech too.”
Ingrid Pharris (now Ingrid Goeble) met her husband while they were acting in “Taming of the Shrew” for Theater Artists Olympia in 2007. Director Pug Bujeaud, who is herself part of a theater family, cast them as Lucentio and Bianca, because, Ingrid says, “She thought we would make a good couple.” Apparently she was right. Tim and Ingrid were married in October of 2010.
After “Taming of the Shrew” they were cast opposite each other in several plays. “Working together definitely affected our relationship,” Ingrid says. “Tim is a very consistent, reliable, and trustworthy actor, and I remember thinking that if he was reliable onstage, he must be reliable as a man, which he truly is. I love working with Tim.”
They say that working together has been good. “We don’t direct each other or give each other notes or criticize each other. If we took on more critical roles with each other, I think that acting could affect our personal relationship in an unhealthy way. Giving notes is the director’s job.” Ingrid says that one of the only sources of theatre-related spats and conflict has been centered around learning lines. “We have very different processes, and it’s usually best that we learn our lines on our own.”
They say that Theater has provided an endless source of conversation. “When only one of us has been working on a show, it has provided some necessary couple alone time. We spend so much time together that we rarely have the time to do our own thing. Without Tim around, I go to workshops, spend more time at the gym, watch sappy movies that Tim hates, and read more. There have still been some evenings when I felt lonely, and, thankfully, Tim’s directors have allowed me to visit rehearsals to be around Tim and our friends.
“When I was in a show without Tim, Tim kindly helped out as a house manager for many of our shows, so we could spend a little time together before I had to go onstage. There are often opportunities to help out with each others’ shows, which provides the opportunity to see each other and cheer each other on. Balance in general is really important for us. I don’t think it would be a good idea for either or both of us to do back-to-back shows. Our time together is pretty sacred,” Ingrid says.
Pug Bujeaud has been acting, directing and producing theater in the Olympia area since at least 1996 when she met her husband, Marko. She was directing “Pvt. Wars,” for the now defunct group Blackwash Theater. She needed someone to make a complex prop, and one of the actors, Russ Holm, said he knew just the fellow to build it. He said Marko could build anything.
“We became acquainted, he started coming to rehearsals, Marko and I struck up a friendship, and it went from there,” Pug says.
Theater people who have worked with them say that as a team they are magic.
Pug agrees: “We both take a lot of pride in each other’s talents. I am the big idea person and he makes them turn in to functional reality. We are both also very picky about how our art is presented. Working with Marko is a double-edged sword. I am his biggest fan, his talent floors me. But sometimes I am not the best at communicating concrete ideas. I actually have a dysfunctional brain, the left half and the right half do not communicate properly so I can be a challenge to work with for him, he gets to using a program on the computer to visualize the set designs, and I am there to clarify things and the cursor is moving around at lightning speed, and it just turns into white noise in my head. That can be challenging to both of us. But after 15 years we are getting better at it.”
Pug is usually the actor or the director, and Marko is usually the behind-the-scenes tech person; but he occasionally acts, and he sometimes fills in for Pug. Their children, Sarah, Caitlin and Ethan often work on shows Pug is directing. Daughter Sarah is a hairdresser and does special effects makeup. Sarah met her husband, Andrew, after Pug cast him in “Nite of the Singing Dead.” Pug says they fell in love while Sarah was putting zombie makeup on him.
Pug says Caitlin has never really liked being on stage, she has been called to it a few times. She has worked for Prodgal Sun and Calpurnia’s Dream as a stage manager, and has run follow spot for Harlequin. Son Ethan, 13, played Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and this year the lead in Hamlet, both at Jefferson Middle School.
“Taking orders from you wife/mom is not easy,” Pug says. “I am, I think, tough but fair with all my actors. I am probably tougher on my family. Nepotism is a sticky wicket. I am harder on them. I have faith in the talents of my family, but I am aware of the fact from the outside it might not be obvious why one of them has been placed where they are, and I am not interested in exposing them to criticism, me I can take it, but it’s my job to make sure they look good. So I work them hard.”
Like the Bujeaud family, the Ryle family — husband and wife Ted and Jen and daughters Alexa, Mandy and Emmalene — are a theater family. Jen is a co-founder with Samantha Chandler of Olympia Family Theater, and Ted and all three girls work with her. “Our lives revolve around the production calendar and our theater camp schedule during the summer and other school breaks,” Jen says.
Ted has appeared on stage in at least a dozen OFT shows, and he and Jen have worked alongside one another as a director/stage manager team for all three of OFT’s youth productions. They have all worked as actors, set painters, load-in and strike crew, stage managers, lighting and sound board ops, ushers, and have helped with costumes and props, made food for work parties and cast parties — truly a family affair. Alexa Mandy are both students at The Evergreen State College. Emmalene will be a senior at Olympia High School next year.
Jen says: “First of all, Ted and I consider ourselves lucky to be able to work together, and alongside our daughters at OFT. Before OFT, Ted and I helped out at school with plays, I directed a few and adapted some stories for use in the classroom, but we weren’t a theater family when the kids were little. We were too busy just being parents and getting through our college degrees — one at a time. The girls took piano lessons and some dance classes, went to Creative Theatre Experience (a children’s theatre education program) a couple of summers, and were in some plays at school. Things really took off with the creation of OFT. It is really family theater for us because we are all in it together.”
One more Ryle family member, Jen’s 82-year-old dad drives down from Duvall to see all of the OFT shows. He’s missed only one in six seasons. When he calls or e-mail’s to tell his daughter what show he’s coming to see he always asks, “How many Ryle’s are involved in this one?”
Jen says the theater is “like our second home. There is always a flux in the upkeep of our household that is reflected in the move from rehearsals into tech week, and then the run of the show and strike. Now in our sixth season I am still saying ‘yes’ to those extra jobs at OFT — building props or repairing some costume or prop item at home. So, the dining room table is often covered with newspaper, glue guns, paints and various craft supplies. As we get into production, it will usually be cleared away but sometimes not for a week or two at a time. Also, we don’t have time or energy for grocery shopping, so my daughters have become very resourceful cooks, and then we also eat a lot of takeout especially during tech week.”
Jen tells a story that probably typifies most theater families: “One evening in the midst of a particularly stressful tech I asked the girls if they thought it was worth it. Were they glad we went on this crazy adventure of building a theater from the ground up or did they pine for simpler days? In unison and with great emotion they said, ‘No way would we want to change a thing! We love the theater and life would be so boring without it!’ We really are a very lucky family, since all of us love the theater. It has given us something to share with our teenagers, and has helped us maintain a closeness that doesn’t often happen between parents and teens.”
