June 2005

UMUC and the Yokota Players Wow Them with Grease!

By Stefanie Johnson
Special to FYI Online

Robert Rosser with Michelle Harvey, who serves as president of The Yokota Players and who played Miss Lynch in the production.

For five nights in April, a group of professional adults went back to high school. The Yokota Players, a community theatre group that rehearses and performs on the Yokota Air Force Base in Tokyo, Japan, put on a production of the popular American musical Grease! —the leather-jacketed, soda-fountained, slick-haired portrait of a group of high school students in 1950s America. The production, directed by Robert Rosser (academic director of English, communication, and humanities) played to packed houses and rave reviews.

Beauty school dropouts…

“UMUC has a lot to be proud of when it fulfills its academic mission,” said Charles McGeever, a UMUC Asia faculty member who attended the production, “but UMUC should be equally proud of its community service, and this production italicized the University’s commitment to a complete learning experience within and beyond the classroom.”

UMUC and the Yokota Players enjoy an informal relationship that dates back to the 1980s. Though UMUC does not officially sponsor Yokota productions, UMUC faculty and staff provide much of the fuel for this community theatre group. For Grease!, eight roles, from director to house manager, were filled by UMUC personnel.

Rosser, who was at the helm of this production, boasts 40 years of experience in the theatre. He has directed or acted in more than 50 theatrical productions and received formal training in acting and directing while completing his PhD in rhetoric, linguistics, and literature at the University of Southern California.

“I became aware of The Yokota Players just as they were looking for someone to direct Grease!,” said Rosser. “I volunteered because I was eager to get involved with theatre again after a five-year hiatus during which I had been traveling the globe teaching in a number of different countries.”

Not everyone in the company came to this production with such a wealth of experience. The male lead, for instance, was played by Daniel Capps, a UMUC program designer who was an acting novice when he won the part.

Greased lightnin’…

“Community theatre, of its very nature, brings together people of enormously varied backgrounds. That’s part of its significance and charm,” says Rosser. “It is not difficult to blend these varied levels of experience when everyone agrees that our purpose is to create good theatre—not showcase individual talent.”

For Rosser, the greatest challenge to creating good theatre involved juggling the rigorous training schedules of base personnel with the job responsibilities of UMUC faculty and local nationals. And money is as scarce as time for most community theatre companies.

“When I first encountered the complexities of commitments which ruled our lives, I began to wonder if mere exigencies might compromise our end product,” admitted Rosser. “But the generosity and dedication of all involved refused to let those obstacles forestall our success.”

The company rehearsed over a period of two months, and the hard work paid off. Grease! smashed all previous Yokota Players’ attendance records, drawing over a thousand people to its five-night run. The production featured period costumes and a live orchestra made up of volunteer members of the PAC-AF military band.

“Our audience is primarily drawn from military personnel and their dependents residing on Yokota Air Base,” said Rosser. “Nevertheless, we always draw a substantial number of local nationals as well. For Grease!, we were delighted to have two large groups of local nationals who are students of English—tutored by a cast member in one case and by a UMUC administrative staff member, Bren Shuler, in the other.”

Faculty and staff members—including Joe Arden, director of UMUC Asia, and his wife, Lan—came out to support the production, and Sue Ellen Gerrell, who teaches an introductory theatre class for UMUC Asia in Yokosuka, had her class travel by train to attend the event.

“The effect of our involvement was to put UMUC very much in evidence as a local supporter of the arts,” said Rosser.

Grease! was such a success that production is already underway for Trial By Jury and Guys and Dolls. Two additional events are slated for the Yokota Players before the end of the year.

“Theatre may be unique in its dependence upon communal effort for success,” said Rosser. “To the degree that we do not communicate effectively, we continue to be influenced by fear of the unknown and its resultant bias and aggression. But, to the degree that we communicate effectively, we build a better world.”