A man with a plan: New Stages Bloomington director ready to perform

Give a kid a script, a bag of glitter and a good director, and sit back and anticipate.

Stages Bloomington is Bloomington's theater dedicated to educating youth about theater as well as having them perform quality works, "not just children's shows," as past executive director, the late Pat Gleeson, would often stress.

COVID-19 combined with Gleeson's sudden death in 2019 notwithstanding, Stages is finally ready to hotfoot forward. The first big news is the July hiring of a new full-time executive director, Rick Armstrong. This is a man with a plan, many in fact.

For Stages to be the best theater experience for children in the Monroe and surrounding counties is Armstrong's Plan A.

"I'm still trying to find out what Pat Gleeson did," Armstrong said. That in itself could be a full-time job, since Gleeson not only directed, produced and took students to plays, but would also cook for them. (Her garlic chicken and chocolate chip cookies usually disappeared rapidly from the plates, as did her quiche.) Armstrong, however, comes with a load of credentials, both educational and theatrical.

The second big news is that auditions, rare for Stages, are coming mid-September. Stages and Jewish Theatre of Bloomington are working together to produce "13 the Musical," which Armstrong will direct. The musical is about a middle-schooler whose family, due to divorce, relocates from New York to Indiana. The best bar mitzvah he can dream up becomes his goal. Audition dates will appear soon on Stages' website, stagesbloomington.org/.

Armstrong, long on verve, has been trying his luck at attracting the real thing.

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"When Rick mentioned something about getting a real rabbi (in the cast), I thought he was just musing; didn't think he really meant it!," said Audrey Heller, artistic director of Jewish Theatre Bloomington, in an email. (And, soon, she'll announce her JTB new theater season.)

News item No. 3 is Stage's recent request for both volunteers and paid workers, for a variety of positions. That, too, is on Stages' website, and Armstrong encourages people to apprise him of interests they have, from prop-making to teaching and directing.

"I'm building a list," he said.

Youth can take two kinds of classes at Stages: those that end with students performing ticketed shows upstairs at the Waldron Arts Center and those where students learn about theater, doing perhaps a non-ticketed showcase, not a full show, at the Warehouse.

Stages is a pay-to-play theater; however, people in the community donate money to enable some children who might not be able to afford tuition to participate.

Armstrong does, as in his name, bring strong arms — and plenty of ideas. A fourth-generation Monroe Countian, he taught high school chemistry and biology, as well as working in his high school's theater department, for three decades. He has also sung and acted (mostly at Greene County's Shawnee Theatre), directed, assembled props, designed and constructed sets, stage managed and assisted with lighting. He was a student at Fairview Elementary, growing up in a trailer park on Bloomington's west side. At Indiana University, he majored in education and chemistry, minoring in math and biology. His master's degree is in "arts in teaching."

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"Everyone can learn from Stages' programs," he said, referring to the different levels and types of talent and personalities.

He wants to use lots of projections with "13 the Musical." "I'm going to make our big splash with this one."

Watch, also, for the return of Stages' Teen Artist in Residence Program; applications are forthcoming. This is a pair of semesters of training, outings and networking for high school juniors, seniors and college freshmen.

"No other theater company in the area offers a program like this," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Rick Armstrong begins as Stages Bloomington executive director