January/February 2000

Youtheatre Production of CHARLOTTE'S WEB

Last year marked the 66^th year of the Fort Wayne Youtheatre and the 21^st for executive director Harvey Cocks. "It�s been the best job I�ve ever had in the theatre," says Cocks. "I�ve had some luck in professional theatre, in Broadway hits and TV. But this has been the most fulfilling part of my life."

He says that kids today are more sophisticated and knowledgeable than they used to be, and as a result, they tend to be less focused on theatre. "Many years ago," he says, "I�d have a group of 10-14 kids who, if they weren�t acting in a play, were working in the crew. The number has dwindled because kids are involved in so many other activities now. They used to zero in on one thing and stick with that, but now they want to try everything -- which I think is more normal. The world has changed so much in 20 years. I think it�s wonderful for children to have exposure to so many things."

However, the growing number of activities available for young people in Fort Wayne has not slowed down the mini-cattle calls for Youtheatre productions. With 141 children aged 7 to 16 auditioning for the upcoming production of CHARLOTTE'S WEB, 23 were cast, and two were given the additional responsibility of being stage managers.

About a third of the cast members are students of Youtheatre classes and roughly half the cast is comprised of acting newcomers. "We're always trying to incorporate new kids into the casts," says Assistant Managing Director Dianne Giannakeff, who is directing CHARLOTTE'S WEB. "It's to our advantage to have a good base of people to pick from. There are a lot of talented kids out there."

Giannakeff has been drama director at Trinity English Lutheran Church for eleven years and taught English and directed plays for 13 years at Concordia High School before coming to the Fort Wayne Youtheatre three years ago. "[She is] very versatile," Cocks says. "Very talented. Very altogether."

In between productions, Youtheatre holds sixteen weeks of theatre classes for grades kindergarten through high school. In addition to Cocks, they also contract in five other part-time instructors.

"We offer scholarships for kids who want to be involved with theatre but whose parents can't afford the classes. We have pre-creative drama for the kindergarten through second grade," he says. "For third and fourth grade we have creative drama. We usually have about three classes for fifth through eighth grade. We have puppetry, we have dance, we have three levels of voice. I�ve offered classes in playwrighting and directing, but they don�t fill up."

The rest of the classes, however, are filling up at a record rate. "We have approximately 200 students," Cocks says, "but we finally have to have a waiting list. We don�t want the classes too big. We can�t give the kids very personal attention that way."

Besides the classes and resident productions, Youtheatre has a readers' theatre called "Hoosier Voices" that Cocks wrote. "It�s been touring for about twelve years now," he says. "It�s a compilation of writings of famous Indiana authors. It�s been very successful. It�s educational as well as entertaining."

The Youtheatre has two other programs: a creative drama class in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club, and a program with four Fort Wayne elementary schools for special education students. "That�s my favorite program of all," Cocks says, "but I have two teachers doing that for me. I don�t have the time to do it all."

The Youtheatre has come a long way from Cocks� beginnings. "When I first started," he says, "it was all me. We only did three plays. It was a school tour program. They had probably five classes. They were only doing three weekend performances and one school performance.

"But now," he says, "we�re doing twelve performances of each play. The schools bus kids in. We average about 6000 kids seeing our shows. The Lincoln Foundation for the past ten years has leased the final two dress rehearsals, and we do those on Thursday and Friday, and Lincoln Foundation brings their families. We do our two Saturday performances [for the public] and one on Sunday. Then two a day on Monday through Wednesday for the schools."

CHARLOTTE'S WEB is proving to be one of the most popular plays that Youtheatre has done, according to Giannakeff. "Some of the other plays may be just as well written," she says, "but are not as well-known. Adults have read the book as children, and it's one of those classics that just crosses the generation gap."

However, surprisingly, Giannakeff has never read the book "Charlotte's Web."

"I always heard about it, but I missed it as a kid," she says. "It wasn't until I read the script and I thought, 'Oh, I understand now!'"

She hasn't read the book since starting production, so that she can concentrate on the adaptation. Several cast members have read the book, including Lydia Dahling. The 4^th grader at Wynekan Lutheran School in Decatur plays Fern, the little girl who saves the life of Wilbur, a runt pig, and visits him and his animal friends on the Zuckerman farm. "Lydia says there are a couple of characters [from the book] she wishes were in the play," says Giannakeff.

Is Lydia disappointed in the adaption? Not at all. "She's a really upbeat kid and she's having a wonderful time," says her director. "The opening scenes are her favorites because she has a lot of interaction with Wilbur. Once he settles in with the animals, she kind of comes and goes. She of course is growing up and by the end of the play she has her friends she wants to hang out with."

Joseph Robinette's adaptation, the only dramatization authorized by E.B. White's estate, seems to have stuck closely to the book in terms of theme and events. "It's about keeping promises and being a friend in every sense of the word," says Giannakeff, "It's about not drawing boundaries when you've committed yourself to a friendship. I think Charlotte proves that to Wilbur, and Wilbur certainly proves that in wanting to have as much of Charlotte after she's gone in wanting to have her babies to stay with him. He's so sad when they all seem to be leaving him."

Charlotte's babies will be portrayed by some of the youngest cast members ever to cross the Youtheatre boards. "I've double cast a couple 7 year olds as the baby spiders to give some of the much younger kids a chance to be onstage," she says. "And when they're not playing baby spiders, they're humans, part of the crowd scenes. They're really cute."

As cute as the production will be, it is not lacking in heart and sentiment, just like the classic book on which it is based. "In that sense I feel as comfortable working here as I do at Trinity English Lutheran Church, because the values and morals and ethics are the same. We [at Youtheatre] always try to have something that kids can take away with them. I think that's the nature of a children's classic. This is such a warm, loving story that you walk away feeling good, and you might not realize it's because it's about people helping each other."

Harvey Cocks, a man overwhelmingly generous with his time and resources, knows all about people helping each other. "[We get] great support from Lincoln National, let me tell you, thanks to Ian Rolland," he says with enthusiastic gratitude. "He�s done so much for the arts."

Like Charlotte's friendship with Wilbur, the friendship Mr. Rolland, Mr. Cocks, and Ms. Giannakeff have with Fort Wayne theatre is a mutually rewarding one that will outlast them all.