Entertainment/Ticket

Thursday, Jun. 26, 2008

Young director finds his niche with new production company

Ryan Cordero discovered theater at Cal Poly; now his production company is getting ready to bring its first play to the stage

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Ryan Cordero’s first stage was in a cul-de-sac in Danville, Calif.

With help from his sisters and his friends from the circle, 10-yearold Cordero would put on backyard shows for the cul-de-sac residents.

“I’d be the emcee of the night,” Cordero said, “and we’d have music numbers and little comedy bits and things like that.”

Now 22, Cordero has started his own theater production company, which is rehearsing its debut, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a musical that will premiere in Arroyo Grande next month.

While anyone can put together a small production, getting a show at the Clark Center with a cast of 22 actors and an 11-piece jazz orchestra requires investors, which is one of the things that makes Cordero’s Sorcerer Productions unique.

“I don’t know a whole lot of people who would be willing to put up money for a show from a 22-yearold,” said Donna Sellars, a local stage veteran who is involved with the show as a producer and costume designer.

The son of a fireman and a 911 dispatcher, Cordero thought he was finished with the theater after high school. He entered Cal Poly as an agriculture major, looking at teaching as a possible career.

“I took the introduction to ag class, and I immediately knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do,” said the expressive Cordero, who makes even the blandest lines sound dramatic.

While agriculture didn’t grab his interest, an introduction to theater class with associate professor Josh Machamer did.

“The way he talked, and his passion for everything made me fall in love with it,” Cordero said. “And I knew right then that that was what I wanted to do with my life.”

By the end of his first year Cordero was a theater major.

While at Cal Poly, he acted in several productions, including “Crimes of the Heart” and “Round Heads and Pointed Heads.” In his sophomore year, he began directing with “Little Shop of Horrors.”

He has also been involved with productions outside the university, including shows like “Razzle Dazzle” at the San Luis Obispo Little Theatre. Now he’s directing shows at Nipomo High School and the San Luis Obispo Little Theatre while teaching middle-school students in Paso Robles.

“As I graduated, I started getting jobs directing,” said Cordero, who will also direct the Little Theatre’s season opener, “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” set to open in late August. “They always say if

you’re making money in the theater world, you don’t run away from it because it’s a very, very hard thing to do.”

While he was getting work, he still had bigger goals. So one day, while sitting with friend Natalia Berryman, a veteran actress who has appeared in productions with Cordero, an idea surfaced.

“One of the questions she asked me was, ‘What is your dream?’ ” he recalled. “And I looked at her and said, ‘Well, I want to get my master’s degree in theater so I can at least teach at the collegiate level. But one of my big dreams is to open my own production company.’ ”

Berryman, who had considered the idea herself, asked Cordero what show he would do. And after Cordero gave Berryman a CD with music from “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” she was so inspired she agreed to be his first investor.

Investors pay for rehearsal

space, theater rental, publicity, performance rights and various fees all crucial to the production.

“To have your own production company at 22 years old, to have people who believe in you that way and the cast ... to have them behind you 100 percent—I’m speechless, Cordero said.”

He has some lofty goals for his company. For one thing, he wants to start paying actors — possibly as soon as the next production. And for every musical, he wants a live orchestra.

“Too many companies in the area do the prerecorded music,” he said. “When you go down to Los Angeles or you go to San Francisco or you go to New York, you see these professional productions, and you hear the orchestra warming up before the show, and that adds another dimension, another layer to it.”

He also wants to offer opportunities to talented, but unknown, actors.

“When I started my company, I wanted it very clear that I wanted new people who haven’t been given the chance yet,” he said.

Though it’s yet to be seen how those goals will fare with veteran actors here, Sellars said the fresh perspective is a good thing.

“If you’ve been doing something for a while, you tend to repeat yourself,” she said.

While Cordero has new ideas, she added, he’s also willing to listen to those with more experience when they say something won’t work.

“It is a flexible group,” she said.

Like Cordero, “Thoroughly Modern Millie” represents something new in the area, having never played here. When Cordero heard the music from the show (based on the 1967 movie of the same name) in college, he knew he wanted to put the musical on some day.

The story, which takes place in the 1920s, follows Millie Dillmount, who has just moved from Kansas to New York City in search of a wealthy suitor. Along the way, she encounters an unexpected love interest and an orphan slavery ring. The musical features romping ’20s jazz, flapper fashion and numerous dance numbers, which the troupe recently rehearsed at Congregation Beth David off Los Osos Valley Road in San Luis Obispo.

As the two leads performed a scene in the temple lobby, Cordero laughed, gestured and clapped his hands, occasionally contorting his body before offering suggestions, like “Specificity—that’s what I need from you now” and “You need to have more fun with that line!”

When offering direction, Cordero offers examples of how it should be done, becoming the character himself.

“Subconsciously, I know he really wants to be up there (acting),” said Mike Feldman, the 18-year-old Atascadero High School graduate who plays the lead male role, Jimmy Smith. “If he wanted to, he could play every role in the play, but he can’t.”

Still, Cordero’s perspective as an actor helps him relate to other actors, said Lindsey Geibel, who plays Millie. “He knows how to communicate with an actor,” she said. “It’s not like he’s directing because he can’t act.”

When Geibel was auditioning for the show, Cordero told her she was being proud instead of determined, and she knew exactly what he meant.

“He’s really clear with what he wants, which is nice,” said Geibel, 21, who has one more year in Cal Poly’s theater department. “There are no contradictory messages going out.”

Already the show has created a buzz with those involved.

“The first time I heard them sing, my jaw hit the ground,” said Sellars, who was also impressed by Cordero’s young choreographer, Zach Johnson.

Cordero, who works as a bank teller during the day, still has his sights set on teaching at the college level. And someday he would like to take his production company on the road, transforming it into a professional acting company.

But for now he’s content directing locally, trying to get the best from his actors. Because he knows that it’s in both their and his interest to put on the best possible show.

It doesn’t take a seasoned veteran to figure that out.

“After the show is done, the audience will go up to the actors and say, ‘That was fantastic— that was great,’ ” he said. “But the second the show flops and it’s bad, the first person who is blamed is the director.”

Reach Patrick S. Pemberton at 781-7903.