Play time
Cheri Barbre spends free time acting, directing
EPHRATA - Cheri Barbre started acting as a high school student, learning from well-known local resident, Mabel Thompson.
Now Barbre is preparing to direct her 54th play - "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
By day, Barbre is a bookkeeper and secretary at Knudson Land Surveying. By night, she is involved with whatever theater production is in the works.
Rehearsals in August will last two to three hours each night, four nights a week. For a regular play, rehearsals are six weeks long. But for a musical, the cast will spend eight weeks practicing.
"I grew up in a wheat field west of Ephrata," recalled Barbre.
Barbre, a lifetime resident of Ephrata, said she has never seen another place she wants to move to.
"I guess I'm a small-town gal," she said. "The climate - I like the climate, the fact that you do get to know your neighbors, and you can leave your car unlocked downtown if you want to, that you can call a store and ask for references of people to hire."
Barbre noted she is of the same Barbres who have lived in Ephrata since 1945 or 1950. Sometimes people wonder if she married into the family, but she would like to clarify for the audience, "No, I'm a spinster."
When Barbre was a high school junior in 1974, she was prompted to sign up for drama for something to do.
"I wasn't athletic," she said.
But Barbre was involved in the music department - she is a singer and guitar player.
She said she learned well from Thompson.
In 1981 and 1982, Barbre became involved with Masquers Theater in Soap Lake. When she began taking medication for a sudden onset of epilepsy, Barbre could no longer perform.
In 1997, though, Barbre started again, as an actress in "Lost in Yonkers."
The first play she directed was "Catfish Moon," in 1998.
"You learn (in directing) to control your temper, and tact, and thinking of ways to get your point across, and boil down the essence of a character to as small a picture as you can for the actor," Barbre said.
On the other side of the stage, Barbre's experiences as an actress can be interesting. Sometimes, people make judgments about her based on her character's personality traits.
"Sometimes, the audience can't get past the idea that it is a part," she said.
Once, Barbre played a character who did not like her mother-in-law. People called and asked friends of her mother how she treated them.
When given a choice between acting and directing, Barbre most enjoys acting - she believes most would respond the same way. She continues to do both.
"We take turns at (directing)," she said. "There's no one director, and I think there are like four or five of us who will direct."
Directing comes when a person gets enough experience to feel comfortable directing others on stage, and when directors the person respects encourage them to "take the plunge."
She said a lot of the job is organizing, and getting a vision of what she would like to see on-stage. Then, comes the part of doing her best to convey her vision to staff.
Her experience is the plays usually come out better than her vision.
"If you can cast a play well, you've got it made," Barbre noted.
"We have a very good core of actors, regulars we call them, in the (Columbia) Basin, who we can rely on to give good performances," she said.
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" is about family, and the love within a family, she said.
"It's zany. It's wild," Barbre said.
The story is by Larry Gelbert of M.A.S.H, and Burt Shevelove. Words and music are by Steven Sondheim.
"It's a lot of one-liners, characters who are off the wall," Barbre said.
Characters include a husband and wife who are constantly bickering but realize they love each other, and their son who falls in love with a girl promised to a Roman soldier. A slave who wants to be free tries to get the son together with the girl, who is a courtesan.
Barbre said she is still looking for men to act in the play. Rehearsals begin Aug. 4 and Aug. 5 at 7 p.m.
For more information, call Cheri Barbre at 509-754-3354.