Decades after playing the title roll, Hermosa’s Elizabeth Blake-Thomas directs ‘Daisy Pulls it Off,’ at the 2nd Story Theater
The cast of “Daisy Pulls it Off” demonstrates the possibilities of their minimalist staging during a rehearsal this week. Photo
Elizabeth Blake-Thomas is a veteran actor and director from Hermosa Beach by way of England. In recent years she has focused on film projects, but she was raised on the stage. She loves the “physicality of theater,” and finds the more minimal equipment demands artistically liberating.
But when Blake-Thomas approached producer Julie Nunis earlier this year with a proposal to put on a play in Hermosa, liberated wasn’t exactly the feeling.
“Theater changes the pace you can work at. When I first approached Julie with this idea, she said, ‘Oh my gosh, only eight weeks? Only eight weeks to do all this?’ But the cast has been brilliant,” Blake-Thomas said.
The result is “Daisy Pulls it Off,” a revival of a work by British playwright Denise Deegan that enjoyed lengthy runs in the United Kingdom when it premiered in the 1980s and starts a brief run at the Community Center’s 2nd Story Theater next week.
Putting on the play is a homecoming for Blake-Thomas. At 12, she played the title role, a spunky student who finds herself a bit out of place in the starched-shirt world of elite British boarding schools. Now, she is in the director’s chair, while her adolescent daughter Isabella will be among the players.
But Isabella, won’t be playing Daisy. In a casting twist, all of the students will be played by adults, while the adult roles will be filled by kids. It’s a decision that producers say they had the luxury of making because of the sizeable selection of actors they had to choose from. Casting took place at Film Independent in Los Angeles, and many of the child actors are Nickelodeon and Disney stars.
Isabella, who has previously appeared in movies and television shows, including Showtime’s “Shameless,” said she is excited about the chance to play an adult. Because most of her work has been on screen, she rarely gets the chance to play an adult. But she said it doesn’t require much new from an acting perspective.
“From such a young age, acting was always a passion. I like to be able put yourself in a role that isn’t you. So playing an adult isn’t all that challenging,” she said.
Producer Nunis also serves as the co-director the Sunscreen Film Festival West, which is held each year at the Community Center. She said that the compressed timetable has forced the production to get creative. Rehearsal space, not easy to find in the South Bay, has been donated by Shade Redondo Beach. Food is brought to the set, and the actors often eat while working. Nunis said the behind-the-scenes crew would be working on wardrobe while the actors were rehearsing, and sometimes the crew would suddenly introduce a new prop while actors were going over blocking.
“It’s a testament to the power of theater. It’s so magical to have these actors, who have been in big commercial productions. There’s a lot of talent in this cast, and it’s kind of rare to be able to pull it off,” Nunis said.
The staging is sparse. Fixtures include a podium and some benches, but the actors are mostly alone on stage. Although this decision was guided in part by the relatively short amount of time the crew had to prepare, they realized part way through that it also made the production a more attractive candidate for booking at other small theaters around Southern California, because there is little set-up required. Nunis and Blake-Thomas are considering a partnership with local schools, and they think that the play would connect well with the Hermosa Beach City School District’s “mindfulness” program.
It isn’t even past
Setting a work of art in the past is usually a way for the creator to reflect on the present. Arthur Miller, for example, set 1953’s “The Crucible” at the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s to condemn McCarthyism. Another layer of complication presents itself for the revival of a play that was already historic when it debuted. Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” written amid English anxiety over succession of the throne from the heirless Queen Elizabeth, became an acute anti-fascist allegory in Orson Welles’ famed Federal Theater Project staging during the Great Depression.
“Daisy Pulls it Off” takes place in another time, the 1920s, far from Hermosa Beach, at the Grangewood School for Young Ladies. The play debuted in London in 1983, at the height of Thatcherism in the U.K., and it’s tempting to read it as a comment on class conflict and pseudo meritocracies.
Daisy comes from a poor East London family, with a deceased father and an opera singer mother struggling to provide for her and her brothers (their names all start with “D”). She sees the fantasy world of boarding school as a step toward middle class respectability, and her daughter becomes the first scholarship student at Grangewood. But Daisy finds it isn’t all field hockey and midnight snacks when her classmates resent her intrusion into their upper-class world. Blake-Thomas said she expects the play’s themes of poverty, discrimination and bullying to resonate.
“Americans will absolutely be able to relate to these messages. In fact, they probably come across even louder today than the playwright originally meant,” she said.
But those bringing the work to life emphasize that the play is designed for audiences of all ages. It features a zany plot about a treasure hunt, and has plenty of humor, while Blake-Thomas expects that the world of British boarding school to be a “cheeky” draw.
The play’s approachable-but-aspirational ethos is part of the crew’s hope belief that exposure to theater has real benefits for young people. And while it’s easy to put off going to the Geffen Playhouse or the Broad Stage because of traffic on the 405, Nunis and Blake-Thomas wanted to stage the play where they live and envision a performance as a cap to dinner at a local restaurant. Proceeds from the production will go to charities, including the Hermosa Valley Parent-Teacher Organization and Women in Media.
The pair says they are doing everything they can to make sure the play is seen by as many people as possible in their limited run. Curtains rise at 7 p.m. as opposed to the traditional 8 p.m., to draw more families with children. Tickets have been priced more cheaply than what is commonly found at small theaters in Southern California. There’s also a sneak preview reading the day before opening night at Uncorked wine shop on Pier Avenue that will be preceded by a wine tasting.
Getting people to the theater, or theater to the people can take some creativity. Speaking of the Uncorked event, but also providing a good summary of the production’s approach, Blake-Thomas said: “We can’t just do what we used to do. Where can we have this in a way that engages the community? We have to think outside the box.”
‘Daisy Pulls it Off’ runs March 28-30 at the 2nd Story Theater at the Community Center. All performances begin at 7 p.m. A preview reading will take place at Uncorked on March 27, with social hour starting at 6 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at daisypullsitofftickets.eventbrite.com.