TOM TITUS -- Theater

* EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth and last in a series reviewing

this year in local theater.

The most valuable player awards in community theater are earned by

those practitioners who possess talents in more than one aspect of the

craft -- actors and directors who also are capable of designing sets and

conducting orchestras, for example.

These individuals rarely are between shows. They are in constant

demand, and they generally are the types who enjoy the back-to-back,

often overlapping assignments. There are, it is generally conceded, not

enough of them to go around.

Two of these adrenaline-charged people, fortunately, ply their

multiple trades in our own backyard, and they take the spotlight today as

the year draws to a close. They are Damien Lorton and Terry Miller

Schmidt, the Daily Pilot’s man and woman of the year in theater for 2000.

Both Lorton and Schmidt -- who are based, respectively, at the Costa

Mesa Civic Playhouse and the Newport Theater Arts Center, but are not

restricted to those two venues -- had productive years fraught with

obstacles. That they overcame those setbacks and prevailed brings them to

the spotlight today.

Lorton is a character much in the mold of the CivicPlayhouse’s

founding director, Pati Tambellini, a person who seems to do everything

at once. When the theater elected to present an entire season of

musicals, he drew the directing assignments for all of them, five in

succession, including the previous year’s season closer.

He doubles as musical director and takes reservations in his spare

time. That’s his voice on the playhouse’s answering machine.

After mounting a terrific production of “Gypsy” to wind up the 1999-00

season, Lorton headed into the musical season by staging “Bye Bye Birdie”

and “The Sound of Music.”

Awaiting in the new year are “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor

Dreamcoat” and “Into the Woods.” Not the best time to tackle a potential

threat to the existence of the theater itself.

Yet that’s what occurred late in the year, when the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District’s plans for the Rea School complex, of which the

playhouse is a part, appeared to earmark the facility for renovation,

leaving the theater out in the cold.

Lorton, whose side job is teaching at Newport Harbor High School,

joined Lynn Reinert, the playhouse’s president, in a campaign to drum up

support for the 35-year-old playhouse. In between, Lorton found the time

to take on the title role in “My Emperor’s New Clothes,” a summer

children’s musical at the Newport Theater Arts Center. Quite a year for

the 27-year-old theaterholic.

Schmidt, who directed that particular show, also has packed a plethora

of productions into her year, among them “Coastal Disturbances” at Costa

Mesa (in which she turned the stage into a beach), “The Cemetery Club” at

Costa Mesa’s Menorah Theater for the Jewish Community Center and

“Morning’s at Seven” at Newport.

Yet she managed to find enough time to audition for, and win, a

leading role in “Legends” at the Huntington Beach Playhouse as one of two

old-time actresses with little admiration for one another. However, on a

visit to New York City, she fainted on a subway, was diagnosed with high

blood pressure and ordered to slow her hectic pace and give up the

“Legends” role.

As an aside, it must be noted here that her departure opened the door

for another excellent actress who stepped in on two weeks’ rehearsal and

nailed the part with a vengeance. That performer hasn’t gotten a lot of

coverage in this column because, for 13 years, she was your

correspondent’s wife, and conflict-of-interest rules apply, but Beth

Titus deserves a tribute of her own for her 30-plus years in the

spotlight.

Schmidt, who’s been heavily involved in theater since playing Wendy in

a grade school production of “Peter Pan,” also puts her sets together

with the help of her husband, Dick. Her list of directorial credits at

Newport includes “The Price,” “The Pajama Game” and “Bells Are Ringing.”

Lorton and Schmidt exemplify the drive and dedication typical of

people who do it all in community theater. They are well-deserving of the

title of the Daily Pilot’s man and woman of the year in theater for 2000.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Thursdays and Saturdays.