GARY STANFORD Jr.  Discusses the Award-Winning Musical "ONCE ON THIS ISLAND" In an Exclusive Interview with Iride Aparicio |
SILICON VALLEY, CA -- In a telephone interview with Cultural World Bilingual, GARY STANFORD, Jr., Director/ Choreographer of " ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, " (The 2018 TONY® Award-winner musical for Best Revival of a musical) talks about his presentation of the classical musical, that, on streaming format, will be available to the public from December 5, through December 20, 2020. He introduces himself to our readers by saying: "I am a Bay Area native who was born in San Francisco, and has been in performing arts since I was a kid with my younger brother Kevin, because my mother had a performing company. I started doing Musicals, when I was in High School and had performed in over eighty shows, during my career. I have lived in the Peninsula, in Belmont and now in Woodside for the last eight years. For fifteen years, I was a computer Engineer (He is a SJSU graduate student in Computer Engineering) but now I am in performing arts professionally. I love performing and feel very blessed to be able to direct the "ONCE ON THIS ISLAND" show during this time when most theaters are shut down. The show has a wonderful staff (from Sunnyvale Community Players). Who helped me get this production on its feet?"
C.W.B. How did you make the transition from actor to Director? G.S: "I made the transition by first being a dance choreographer for a number of shows , then by learning how things work behind the scenes, and then, after choreographing for six or seven years, I was invited to direct BRIGADOON, and that was so much fun that I wanted to direct more shows. " C.W.B. If I am correct, you also started your own theatre, didn't you? C.W.B. Will you be hiring playwrights? C.W.B. Where is your theater located? C.W.B. Now, going back to "ONCE ON THIS ISLAND" that I understand you choreographed and will be directing, why did you selected this musical? C.W.B. What is your vision for this show? G.S: "My vision of the show is definitely to have a very ethnic cast, which we have achieved. We have Latino, Filipino, African American, and Black actors in the show to represent the roles that require ethnicity. It's been a very interesting summer because we (The show's producers are BRUCE CAMPBELL and BRENDA JACKSON) have been forced to figure out where to perform the show, and how are we going to perform the show (Because of the pandemic) so we found a very unique solution. We are going to perform it outdoors, on my property. At my house we are building dressing rooms and we are going to build an area for the actors to perform. We have seven hundred pounds of sand so we are building our own beach, and my actors are going to dance barefooted in the sand." C.W.B. When it opens, will you show it at your house also? TICKETS for the Live Streams of ONCE UPON THIS ISLAND are on sale now until December 20th at $24.95 plus $2.70 for Show Tix4U so each ticket is $27.65. Aand after purchasing the ticket, the viewers can access the entire purchased Live Stream recording up to 4 hours after the event start time. DATES and SHOW TIMES: You may also contact https://sunnyvaleplayers.org/ for more information.
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