Peter Pan flies “second to the right and straight on till morning…” to get to Neverland in playwright J.M. Barre’s original Peter Pan. Barre’s lyrical words grew into “second star to the right” and became the title of a popular song written for the 1953 Disney film adaptation. Over 40 years later, Jane Wingard fancied “2nd Star” as an appealing name for her theater company.
Now into its sixteenth season presenting live plays and musicals at the Bowie Playhouse, 2nd Star Productions performs alongside several popular community theaters in a building owned by the City of Bowie. But 2nd Star is different. Nicknamed the “Little Theater in the Woods,” the Bowie Playhouse that hides at the back of the White Marsh Recreational Park is the only stage that 2nd Star has ever called home.
And 2nd Star is not a community theater. It is a sole proprietorship owned by Wingard.
With over sixty successful shows under her belt, Wingard enjoys a solid reputation for delivering high-quality productions. She has no trouble recruiting outside talent from an extended theater family made of kindred souls and artists, and community and semi-professional performers. Sometimes equity actors appear on her stage (under assumed names) for free. A few occasionally get paid.
Wingard is retired from her job as an art teacher after 28 years and baby-sits for her grandchildren while their parents work. Since she spends most of her time at the theater, so do Vivian and Noah; both have performed in musicals. Vivian (now in her teens) started out as a “prop” when she was just a toddler – one of Wingard’s proudest moments was hearing Vivian sing ‘Wick’ with Zachary Fadler in the musical adaptation of The Secret Garden last year. Noah isn’t always happy about performing, but Wingard cheerfully twists the eight-year-old’s arm whenever she needs him.
Wingard’s husband is also a regular stage presence. Years and very many shows ago (long before grandchildren), Marty Hayes was cast in his first play with a community theater in the couple's hometown of Annapolis. But, the show’s director and sponsor argued so bitterly that the sponsor walked.
That was the first time that Wingard pulled out her checkbook. Ten Little Indians did go on, as all shows must, at the Old Playhouse Theater on Main Street, and Wingard became initiated to risking her money on theater. 2nd Star Productions is Wingard’s second theater company. Her first, Onstage Annapolis, lasted only for the one production – just long enough to recoup her investment.
“It’s his fault that I do theater,” Wingard says, pointing to her husband. “For years I didn’t have a name. I was Marty’s wife, as in ‘You can get Marty’s wife to do it.’”
Happiest working behind the scenes, Wingard hates to act (although she’s been known to fill in for an absent actress only hours after having a colonoscopy). Schooled in visual arts education, her first passion is production design. Wingard approaches theater as she does any performance art – blending colors and form and movement, and fitting function to all the dynamic pieces of the puzzle that flow into a living show.
“The elements of the arch are the same whether it’s dance, whether it’s visual, whether it’s theater…,” she says. “They’re basically the same when it boils down.”
Before she retired, Wingard taught a class at Surrattsville High School that explored the similarities and differences between music, theater, dance, and the visual arts. Funded by a grant, Wingard bought season tickets to dress rehearsals at the Kennedy Center. The audience was allowed to sit in on notes, and Wingard and her students got to see the tiny, wheelchair-bound Agnes DeMille (choreographer of the world famous ballet, Rodeo) in action.
Wingard isn’t a theater purist; she’s a consummate showman. Caring nothing for the introspective acting style that you’ll find on minimalist sets like black box theater, she won’t back away from a technical challenge when inspired. Second Star’s recent and excellent ensemble production, Be My Baby, put on a set design extravaganza that pulled off 27 seamless scene changes without missing a beat.
Wingard does, however, appreciate the classics.
About the time she started directing one-acts in community theater in the nineties, Wingard attended a series of professional teacher development workshops through the Text Alive! Program, sponsored by the Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC, through her day job. She and 11 other Prince Georges County public school teachers studied with working actors and producers. Wingard learned script interpretation from Kelly McGillis, the “wonderful Shakespearean actress” who co-starred with Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
“I had to take what I learned, interpret it, and teach it back to my high school kids. The best way to internalize something is to have to explain it to someone else…It was excruciatingly exciting.”
Wingard’s vision to start her own theater company started to root in 1995, when she was teaching and painting sets for high school musicals by day, and serving on the Board of the Pasadena Theater Company (working on costumes and more set design) after hours. She met John Guyton behind the scenes of Pasadena’s Oklahoma, made a great friend, and began painting nature pieces for opera at Corporate Creations, Guyton’s scenic design firm.
Community theater can be very hard work, and non-profit groups frequently face logistical challenges. The Pasadena Theater Company sadly lost its home at Baldwin Hall in Anne Arundel County that winter and began scrambling to find a new venue before the lease ran out.
Wingard was directing Lee Falk’s Home At Six by then, with Guyton tech directing and sisters Joanne and Lynne Wilson working on the set. The small group of artists quickly bonded into a formidable production team.
As the Pasadena Theater company sputtered and spun through “lots and lots and lots” of nonproductive meetings that were attended inconsistently by too many people, a frustrated Wingard and friends stepped boldly out on their own.
“The Home at Six production team at Pasadena became the heart of Second Star’s production team,” says Wingard. “We weren’t happy with the way that Pasadena was being administered. One day, we were riding down Route 3 in Bowie and John said, ‘Well, why don’t we do our own company?’ And I said, ‘How hard could it be?’”
Guyton recruited Gordon Gustin (his high school music teacher) as Music Director and the trio founded 2nd Star Productions in January of 1996 as a “benevolent dictatorship.” Wingard put up the money. At about the same time, Pasadena’s Home at Six was chosen to compete in the Maryland Community Theater Festival.
“We swept the awards for the Maryland State competition for Pasadena,” says Wingard.
That February, Wingard received the Cliff Smith Excellence in Directing Award for Home at Six. The show also won Best Production, three members of the cast were named Outstanding Actor, and the tech crew (which included Marty) received the Ed-Ro-Char Award for Technical Excellence. Home at Six advanced to the Eastern States Theatre Association Festival in Pennsylvania a few months later and won the Judges Discretionary Award for Set Design.
By that time, Second Star’s first production, Lend Me A Tenor, was up and running at the Bowie Playhouse. “How hard could it be?” had become a 2nd Star mantra.
When Wingard pulled out her checkbook for the second time in 1996, the company was set up as a sole proprietorship because Guyton’s firm was experiencing financial problems and couldn’t shoulder any risk. The 2nd Star founders began working out of Guyton’s shop and Wingard became a partner in Corporate Creations.
In the beginning, Wingard allowed Guyton, who wanted 2nd Star to become a semi-professional company, to run the theater. Concurrently, Corporate Creations installed the interiors of two casinos and did a lot of the décor at Six Flags America.
Unfortunately, Corporate Creations sank into financial quicksand.
“John over-committed us. He had dollar signs in his eyes and we ended up having to close the company,” Wingard explains. “The theater has always been a sole proprietorship in my name. He lost my money and I took the theater company. It was a custody battle that he couldn’t win. His name was not on the birth certificate.”
Guyton and (a while later) Gustin and then Lynne Wilson moved on, but 2nd Star Productions still operates out of the original shop and continues to perform at the Bowie Playhouse. Today, 2nd Star is registered as a non-profit organization led by Wingard as President on a five-person Board that includes Joanne Wilson as Vice President.
Wingard has overcome her share of obstacles over the years. Another 2nd Star motto, “to be not bad is not good,” is a direct quote from Home at Six. “If it’s not bad,” she says, “ we fix it and make it good. Period.” Wingard’s never had trouble making difficult decisions when it comes to ensuring the quality of her shows.
2nd Star lost money on A Little Night Music in its third season, partly because the Board was dissatisfied with the male lead’s performance, fired him during tech week, and hired an equity actor to do the job. (Musicals are inherently expensive to mount, typically requiring an outlay of $20-25K before paying out rent or an equity salary.)
“I hate the political and business end. I’ve been told I am a control freak but I don’t think it’s control as much as it is standards. I don’t like sloppy work. Perfectionist is too strong a word, but if we can’t keep up with the standards we set for ourselves, then I don’t want to do it.”
Although she can wax tough, Wingard’s whimsical theater philosophy shines through not just in her production artistry and choice of 2nd Star for a name, but in frequent playbill references to the “sandbox” as a metaphor for the stage as a place to play. 2nd Star welcomes inexperienced performing artists as well as pros to the sandbox. Wingard loves working with novice performers.
Second Star, Jr., which is presently on hiatus with hopes of restarting this year, presented Cinderella’s Magical Cruise in 2004 and, most recently, Tink (the story of Peter Pan from Tinkerbell’s perspective). Both are hour-long shows designed for K-Primary grade audiences.
Wingard perceives acting to be a childlike activity. She wants 2nd Star Productions to be a company that fosters innocent wonder – a family-friendly theater offering performance artists of all ages the opportunity to play. And she wants to continue to provide real-time educational opportunities to children coming up, onstage and off.
But sadly, artistic temperaments don’t always play nice in the sandbox. Wingard’s darkest moments have been caused by friction between people.
“I don’t like internal discord. Gifted people are sometimes stubborn people. There have been occasions when stubborn people have caused major discord between the folks who are supposed to be making the show run beautifully…it’s only happened twice, but that’s twice too many...If I’m playing politics, asking people to be nice, and trying not to piss people off, I’m not having fun.”
As much as Wingard dislikes playing politics, she counts many more moments as her finest. Ironically, the most famous person who’s ever performed on the 2nd Star stage is a real politician who was serving as our State Lieutenant Governor at the time.
“We opened Damn Yankees every night with the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ It was an add-on because the show starts with Old Joe watching a baseball game on television in the front room. We did sort of a split screen, and we did half as the stadium with the baseball players and one person singing. Michael Steele has a beautiful singing voice, and he did it for us one night.”
2nd Star productions has been awarded three Ruby Griffith Awards from The British Embassy Players, who adjudicate an amateur theater competition every year to promote excellence in the DC and surrounding areas.
Man of La Mancha won the 2008-2009 Ruby Griffith Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Musical, Mame won the 2003-2004 Ruby Griffith Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Musical, and Guys and Dolls was 2nd Runner Up for the 2002-2003 Ruby Griffith Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Wingard says that all of her shows are the brightest moments. 2nd Star’s production team has reformed over the years, but Wingard, as its pulse, remains constant. And even though she doesn’t like to act, Wingard doesn’t appear to ever want to grow up.
by Patti Restivo
