7 minute read
Setting the Stage for Maricopa
Setting the Stage for Maricopa by Blake Herzog
Western Pinal County’s largest theater company was born 12 years ago from Carrie Vargas’ “show must go on” ethos.
An arts-focused academy she had been teaching folded just before its first production, The Importance of Being Earnest, was scheduled to debut. “In like two days’ time, I partnered up with the City and it went from being this School for the Arts show that it was going to be, and that’s when I founded Maricopa Community Theatre and we had our first show,” she says.
The all-volunteer nonprofit has staged numerous musicals and plays, from The Music Man to Sweeney Todd, supported by ticket sales, sponsorships and a few donors.
Current and former Maricopa residents, performers from the Phoenix and Casa Grande theater scenes, Central Arizona College students and others bring their talents to the stage. Vargas and three more members of the board of directors trade off directorial duties with a handful of others in the community.
The season typically consists of two musicals, one play, one kid-oriented show under the Maricopa Community Youth Theatre banner and one spun out of its summer youth camp program done in partnership with the City of Maricopa.
The next show will be Aladdin Jr., featuring the summer program’s students, July 14 to July 17 at the Maricopa Community Center.
Vargas says smaller productions are now staged in the recently opened community center, housed in the City’s former library, and larger musicals are hosted by Leading Edge Academy’s auditorium.
Maricopa Community Center shows eventually will move to the current police station between City Hall and the new library, which is scheduled to be converted into a theater and art gallery after a new police headquarters is built.
Shows on deck for the upcoming season include Seussical in the fall, Shakespeare’s Henry V for the winter, Never Eat a Talking Lobster by the Maricopa Community Youth Theatre for spring and LinManuel Miranda’s In the Heights in the summer.
Henry V has been reimagined by one of the company’s directors, Christopher Goodrum, who took on Vargas’ challenge to set the 16th century battlefield drama in the modern day and make the cast predominantly female, addressing a pitfall Vargas says she frequently encounters — “Gentlemen are hard to come by in theater, sometimes.”
“He’s set it to this whole idea of a large-city mayoral race,” she says. “The gist, the vibe, the essence of what that story is trying to convey is still there in the script.”
She says a few Maricopa Community Theatre performers have pursued bigger careers, but the theater’s main goal is to make live performance accessible and affordable to locals — ticket prices are generally around $10 to $15. “We want them to enjoy live theater, it’s so different from any other art form in that you really get to assume and feel what people are feeling,” Vargas says. “With movies, you feel, on the TV screen, you feel, but it’s deeper and more magical when you’re in the theater and surrounded by collectively feeling all of that together.
“Having an opportunity to provide that to Maricopa and Pinal County, that’s very humbling to be able to do that.”
Learn more: www.maricopacommunitytheatre.org
Mamma Mia
Rent
Continued from page 55 Q foremen here over the past year and a half that kind of affected us. But they were with us for 15 and 18 years, so they felt it was time for them to move on. And good for them.
Golden Corridor LIVING: What do you think of Casa Grande with all the growth, Eddie?
You were born and raised here when it was probably very small.
Eddie Mankel: I graduated in 1980, and I think there were 14,000 people here.
Casa Grande? Do you think it’ll finally become what we thought it would with the freeways and the rail and everything?
Eddie Mankel: Well, I like the growth, but I don’t know, I’m also concerned in some areas. I don’t like some of the growth, but I guess that’s more of a personal preference. I think the city’s doing good so far where we’re growing. I like all the industry and stuff like that.
Paula Leslie: It does bring more traffic.
Eddie Mankel: I think we’re better off than Maricopa because Maricopa’s a bedroom community of Phoenix. Where we have our industry, we can support our community, for sure. Paula Leslie: We have a sense of community here where there are people who live here, work here, and we don’t have as many commuters as Maricopa has. But it has definitely changed. When you mention Mi Amigo Ricardo’s, there used to be, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, you could walk in there and you wouldn’t get to your table before you said “Hi” to 20 people. And now you can walk in there, and I ... We know Robert, the owner, but that’s about it.
The Mankel family
Golden Corridor LIVING: And it’s strange to drive around in May when it’s 100 degrees and see there’s people around. And it’s not just a snowbird community anymore. You’re wondering,
“Where did all these people come from?”
Eddie Mankel: I’m always amazed. The change that I get a kick out of is on Sundays; when I was a kid, everyone stayed home and everything was closed. Now I go down Florence Boulevard, it’s like any other day now, except a few places are closed.
Golden Corridor LIVING: And you guys spoke to this, but where do you see the future of Mankel? You mentioned that Shea will take one arm and Vaughn will take the other arm. Is that the direction that you see this going the next 10, 20, 30 years?
Eddie Mankel: They definitely want to grow it. It will definitely happen. The logistics will definitely grow. Vaughn’s dream is to get up to 50 employees, which is attainable.
Golden Corridor LIVING: OK.
What do you like to do in your free, fun time? Paula likes to travel.
Paula Leslie: Yes, yes, yes. I’m planning a trip to Georgia and the Carolinas; I talked Lex into going with me. And we also went to Alaska in February. My granddaughter had her choice of Alaska or Hawaii, and she chose Alaska! I can’t remember the coldest temperature we saw, but I took a picture of it. Was it negative 3?
My mother recently passed away, and Hawaii and Alaska were the two states she’d never been to, that’s why I picked them. And so we took her ashes with us to Alaska and spread them out. We were ice fishing, and the Northern Lights were coming up over. And that’s when we spread her ashes ... that was cool.
Golden Corridor LIVING: Eddie, what do you like to do in your free time?
Eddie Mankel: Ride my motorcycle or go camping. I like to cook. Nothing too exciting. She’s the world traveler; I’m not.
Paula Leslie: I like to sit on my porch and write.
Golden Corridor LIVING: Paula writes as one of our Voices in the magazine, too. What would you say has been the best thing about the journey and probably the worst thing about the journey?
Paula Leslie: When we first went into business, I still worked for Dr. Yang for several years. And then when I decided to become completely self-employed, it gives you so much more flexibility in your life. Vaughn was the only one in school at the time, but I was able to pick him up from school. It was more of a bonding thing with him, and then being able to help raise my grandkids has been the greatest. Yeah. Just the freedom, and I think a sense of accomplishment. I’m really proud of what we built and what we’ve maintained through the market crashing and us thinking we’re going to have to close our doors.
We were one of the survivors of the construction industry. There were several big plumbing companies in town that closed shop. But the downside is the financial stuff. You’ve got to pay your employees first, and sometimes you get paid last. It’s the stress of owning a business.
Eddie Mankel: It is a sense of accomplishment, going through the struggles and surviving that, and also after ... like I tell everyone, I’ve paid my doctorate in business many times over. All the things I’ve learned, the money we’ve lost. Or the money we’ve been cheated out of, the lessons that we’ve learned.
But keep fighting, and you’ll survive. And try to be honest, and it always comes back through rewards.
Paula and her granddaughter ice fishing in Alaska
