Interview: Lyndsay Burch Talks About the 20th Anniversary of the B St. Theatre's Family Series

The B St. Theatre is celebrating twenty years of bringing its Family Series magic to the community. Local children have been enjoying B St. programming for even longer, as it was started in 1986 as a touring theatre to bring live performances to area schools.

The next show in the Series begins this weekend and showcases the stories of some very special youngsters. Tiny Trailblazers: Kids Who Changed the World shows how some of the smallest humans can make the biggest impact. BroadwayWorld spoke to Lyndsay Burch, B St. Theatre’s Artistic Director and CEO, about this very special anniversary and their impressive lineup of upcoming shows.

The B St. Theatre is celebrating twenty years of its Family Series! There aren’t many live performance offerings available for children to see in our area that I’ve found. How is this program unique?

There are a couple of ways. We are celebrating twenty years of Family Series, but the B St. Theatre was actually founded as a theatre for children that was a touring theatre in 1986, so we are getting ready to celebrate almost forty years of our mission of bringing theatre to young audiences. We are the only professional theatre in the Sacramento region that brings theatre for young audiences and also now, unfortunately, after the pandemic, the only professional theatre in California that does a full series of plays for young audiences using professional actors, playwrights, directors, and designers. Therefore, this is a unique offering not just in the Sacramento community, but for the California community at large.

What did this program look like at its inception? How has it evolved?

The tour in its inception would bring professional actors and theatre artistry to kids throughout the region. It started as a touring production that was going to go to auditoriums to present a specific play to these audiences and that evolved into the resident Family Series, which meant that kids were coming to a theatre to see all the elements that are present in theatre. The Family Series opened in 2003/2004 and was really an experiment to have a show for kids that was resident, not touring, and to see how the students and the Sacramento community would respond to that. It blossomed into a full series, becoming four shows a year and encompassing the entire school year where kids were coming for a limited run that became four, five, and six week runs. It's really grown, not just in scope of the productions but in length of the run, number of students attending, and number of shows in the season.

The first Family Series show of the fall is Tiny Trailblazers: Kids Who Changed the World. What can you tell us about this show?

This is a show that was conceived by myself and written with one of my dear colleagues, Sean Patrick Nill. The idea came from a couple of things. We have an advisory board called our Education Ambassador Board and it consists of speakers, administrators, and district leaders who meet every quarter and talk about what the needs of these folks are. One of the things that came out of these meetings is that they’d love to see stories about exceptional children portrayed on stage. I had this idea that we would portray this through this lens of exceptional women who are brought together at one dinner table to discuss their accomplishments and, from that, Sean took this idea and created a story of over nine children, tiny trailblazers, who changed the world. It’s really a fun vignette piece of many stories told of children around the world who changed their communities or our global experience, and we also have some students featured who changed their own Sacramento community. There’s also a throughline of a kid who must write a paper on how they’re going to change the world and it helps them realize that any younger person can make a difference. I think that’s really the core of the story, that any young person with a passion, drive, and interest can make a difference in any community.

You’re having a VIP event after the show on October 20th. What can we look forward to experiencing there?

On October 20, which is the closing of Tiny Trailblazers: Kids Who Changed the World, the event will be open to anyone in attendance for that show, and this is really a way to collectively as a team, audience, and community, to celebrate twenty years of Family Series. Immediately following the show, there is going to be a brief talkback and panel. We’re very fortunate that many of the cast members in Tiny Trailblazers were a part of the very first Family Series show, which is a testament to the impact of the work that these actors keep coming back to deliver high-quality performances for young people. After that there will be a lot of activities in the lobby, the library will be present, and there will be activities for kids and adults alike. There will be a celebratory speech and toast to commemorate this very special occasion for the organization.

The rest of the season looks excellent! You’re offering shows about Marie Curie, The Hardy Boys, and Shakespeare! Those are all very different subjects. What goes into choosing a Family Series Season?

Thank you! I’m glad you’re excited for the season and we are, as well. As I mentioned before, we do have an Education Ambassador Board that gives us a lot of valuable feedback as to what educators are looking for when they are selecting field trip opportunities for their students so we can correlate what we’re offering on the stage to what they’re doing in the classroom. Really, there are a lot of things that go into it. As a team, we think about what stories we’re excited to tell. Stories that maybe we haven’t seen on stage that we can tell in a different manner with our resources and talent. We had a piece last season about Nikola Tesla and we wanted to tell a story this season about a woman in STEM. Out of that was born a story about Marie Curie, a figure that we’ve been looking at for some time. We also look at books or novels or stories that have recently come into the public domain, which was The Hardy Boys at the start of 2024. We really want to be on top of that because then we can take these classic stories that, of course, the parents and teachers are probably familiar with from their childhoods and maybe give them a level of modernization that continues to make them relevant for the current young audiences who are seeing them today. Our staff and team come together and pick certain titles and put together a season that we feel appeals to different academic and emotional topics, as well as featuring as much representation as we can in terms of stories that we’re telling. We also want to put together a season that appeals to different age groups and grade levels because we know that not every student and classroom is looking for the same thing.

Those are all written by B St. Theatre Company members. Do you commission them to write specific plays or have these already been written?

The titles that you’re going to see have been directly commissioned. Sometimes company members, staff members, or guest artists will pitch an idea and if we find ourselves excited about that idea and it fits into the season directly, we will encourage them to write that idea and program it. Of course, sometimes, there are things that folks have that they’ve written previously that they may submit and we find what season it fits into, but most often it’s the case that we’re looking for a specific story and we select a writer to tell that story.

I recently came across my children’s books from Frankenstein and a couple of other shows that we saw when the Family Series was still at the old theatre. The cast members had autographed the books and my children loved that part of the experience. Do you offer something similar now?

We do. I also remember that, when we would have a specific book associated with a show. Maybe it was, of course, a book like Frankenstein that was directly associated with that piece or maybe it was something related. Since the pandemic, we had to cut back with the amount of interaction the actors were having with the audience; however, recently we’ve had the actors start coming back out into the lobby to sign programs. We have not resumed the book program, although during the Family Series public performances we do have local book vendors who come and are present during the lobby, which is wonderful; however, I agree that was just such a wonderful memory and whenever these kids can have their programs signed or their picture taken with the actors, I think it really elevates the experience for them because maybe they’re so young that they feel as though the actors are those people, only they’re old enough to understand that they just saw theatre. In that case it instills a greater appreciation for the arts and for the art of theatre. We love to continue that and we’re very glad that now that we’re far enough outside of the pandemic that the actors can come out and interact with the kids and the families.

What ages would you say your upcoming shows are geared towards?

We do say that all of our Family Series shows are appropriate for ages five and up; however, of course, certain ages might appeal to different works more. Trialblazers is definitely five and up, as well as ‘Tis the Season: Folk Tales and Fables. I would say Marie Curie probably would be best suitable for about ages eight and up. Hardy Boys will be five and up, as well. One of the challenging things about the Family Series is, as kids get older, what they enjoy and what they connect to changes, so we really strive for the Family Series to appeal not just to children of all ages, but also to adults. We hope that our younger audience members can enjoy the productions as well as our middle schoolers and we hope that our adult audience members gain something from experiencing the story, as well.

Your new Main Stage season also looks exciting! I’m particularly looking forward to Dog Mom. What would you like to tell us about upcoming shows?

We’re very much looking forward to the upcoming season and, of course, Dog Mom was a favorite and the winner of the 2024 New Comedies Festival. Coming up we have the remainder of our 2024 Mainstage Season with What the Constitution Means to Me, which is the Obie Award winner, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the New York Times Critics’ Pick, and the most produced play in the country for 2023-2024, so we’re very excited for that. That’s followed by our own adaptation of A Christmas Carol. We’d love folks to come out for the holidays and see that. That is going to be appropriate for about ages ten to twelve and up. Some of our younger audience members can join on us on the Main Stage, which is very exciting. I’m really excited for the entire 2025 Main Stage season. We’re opening with The White Chip, which is a play that just received rave reviews in New York and is being done everywhere regionally about sobriety. Then we have Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, which is a fantastic depiction and adaption of the classic P.G. Wodehouse stories and, as you mentioned, Dog Mom, which we’re all quite excited about. It’s going to be an exciting next twelve months here at the B St. Theatre.

Your take on A Christmas Carol is something I’m looking forward to as we go into the holiday seaason. I’ve seen many different renditions that have all been similar. How is this one original? You mentioned that it’s appropriate for younger children, as well.

This adaptation of A Christmas Carol is going to be three actors playing all of the roles and will also feature music. I think that’s how it makes it original and very B Street as you probably know from seeing several of our productions on both the Main Stage and the Family Series. One of the things that we’re very grateful to have our actors who are chameleons and can play many different roles and embody those roles truthfully and quickly and then switch into another role. That’s what you’re going to be seeing in A Christmas Carol, plus the addition of music with the actors playing many of the instruments used to underscore the piece. It is kid-friendly, and we are recommending twelve and up because of some of the more high-brow jokes. Any kid from ten and up who is able to sit through a full-length two-hour production would definitely be encouraged to see this show.

What are some shows that you’d like to bring to kids at the B Street that don’t exist yet?

That’s a great question. It’s slightly difficult because they haven’t been written yet and you don’t know what you don’t know, but founding member and Director of Education, Greg Alexander, is working on this new musical piece called Grace and the Butterfly that was workshopped at the Goodspeed Opera House this past February. It’s about kids or young people can help combat climate change and how their actions, however seemingly small, can really make a global impact. I think one of the things we would love to work towards is, at this time, we definitely feel more compelled or obligated to feature stories with known titles or known names, such as Marie Curie or The Hardy Boys, which are great to retell or adapt for a modern audience. We would love to generate enough of an audience base both from our parents who are bringing their kids on the weekends and our teachers, parents, and chaperones who are bringing their kids during the week to hope that they can entrust us to potentially tell some new stories, specifically relating to challenges that our current society and world might be facing that directly affect kids that they can make an impact in addressing. I do think that, as we go forward, we hope to expand our repertoire to include lesser-known titles and have the trust of our audiences to come along for the ride and realize that those stories will be very valuable for our young people to hear.

What do you hope to see in the future for the Family Series?

Continuing to build the trust of our audiences and a willingness to take a leap on stories that are maybe not necessarily as known, like Frog and Toad and Junie B. Jones, and to bring kids out to see new tales that are speaking to the current moment and the current things that young people are experiencing. I mentioned earlier that we started as a touring theatre for children with school tours and one of our goals for the next three to five years is to be able to take our Family Series productions to tour regionally and statewide, so that not just kids in the Sacramento and Northern California region get to see these plays, but kids across the state and maybe even other states would get to see this high-quality, educational, inspiring programming for young audiences. I hope the next twenty years includes that vision being realized because I really believe in the work of our playwrights, directors, artists, actors, and everyone who is contributing to this series. I think that it should be seen beyond the walls of the Sofia.

Tiny Trailblazers: Kids Who Changed the World plays at the B St. Theatre through October 20th. Tickets may be purchased online at BStreetTheatre.org, at the Box Office at 2700 Capitol Avenue, or by telephone at (916) 443-5300. For more information about the upcoming Family Series and Main Stage offerings, visit BStreetTheatre.org.

Photo credit: Rudy Meyers

 

 

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