Theater group presents
family shows to help social services

By Dawn Gibeau
The Catholic Spirit

For more than 20 years, Minnesota’s only charity theater has been presenting large scale, family-style musical shows in the northwest Twin Cities metropolitan area, with proceeds benefiting area food shelves.

The theater is Cross Community Players, which originated in 1981 to raise funds for C.R.O.S.S. — Christians Reaching Out in Social Services — a food, clothing and social services organization.

Over the years, more than 4,400 cast and orchestra members, technical and production crews have taken part, donating tens of thousands of hours to such shows as this year’s “Robin Hood” and “West Side Story.” Their efforts have allowed the theater to contribute tens of thousands of pounds of food and more than $70,000 to local charities.

Amateurs are beginning rehearsals for “Meet Me in St. Louis.” This will be the theater’s 29th show, said Greg Janssen, a member of the local, unpaid board and past board president. The show will be presented in February 2004, probably at the Osseo Senior High School. “Brigadoon” is scheduled for next summer as the year’s major production.

Tony Johnson, a parishioner at St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, will direct “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and his wife Laura will choreograph the show. They are among many participants from area churches.

“We both have been doing theater all our lives,” Laura said, “but we never had the opportunity to work together before. It is a lot of fun.”

They are involved together also at St. Joseph the Worker, where Tony is a lector at 5:30 p.m. Sunday Masses, and Laura, along with Tony’s mother and sister, sings in the choir. His dad is a eucharistic minister.

Tony’s “day job” is working with Ultra Creative, an advertising and design firm that specializes in food and packaging. “I come up with games for the back of cereal boxes,” he said.

He has been a member of St. Joseph the Worker “since the doors opened” in the late 1970s, he said, and his involvement with Cross Community Players “stems from our church.” His high school youth group leader, Julie Emerson, for many years was on the theater’s board and recommended that Johnson, when he was doing “temp” work as an actor, give his resume to the board. That led to Johnson directing the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1998.

“Meet Me in St. Louis” is the first musical he has directed, and he loves musicals, he said. The show was originally envisioned as a small one in contrast with Cross Community Players’ large summer shows, but more than 100 people auditioned, and 40 were cast, along with a 25-person orchestra, so it too will be a big production.

Every cast member in every show contributes eight hours beyond rehearsal time to production, Janssen said.

“We get actors and technical people” to join the show teams “because we are the charity we are,” he said. “They want to donate” their time.

“We try to pick shows people love. We want to do family stuff,” Janssen said. Because nine of 10 shows are musicals, “we have a huge following of musicians,” he said. “Their time is entirely donated.” Directors and a few other key personnel are paid.Janssen added that “we try to cast families,” explaining that community theater is a “unique environment,” a family activity in which “parent and child can participate on an equal footing.”
The theater’s mission, in addition to funding local charities, is to provide quality community theater and a quality theater experience for participants, Janssen said. Its proceeds go both to C.R.O.S.S. and CEAP, the Community Emergency Assistance Program.

In recent years, Cross Community Players has contributed $4,000 to $6,000 a year to these charities. But “that may drop to $1,000,” Janssen said, because the Osseo School District this year instituted a charge for using its facilities for the shows.

Area churches support the theater indirectly, by making their facilities available for rehearsals and auditions. Among these are two Catholic parishes — St. Joseph the Worker and St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park — along with Lord of Life Lutheran, Osseo United Methodist, Shepherd of the Grove Lutheran, Emmanuel United Methodist and Advent Lutheran.

Cross Community Players incorporated as a separate charity in 1998, said Janssen, a member of Lord of Life. Now grants, from such sources as the Minnesota Regional Arts Council, the Target Corporation, Wells Fargo, Thrivent and Boston Scimed, are one of three sources of income, he said. The others are ticket sales and individual contributions.

Each show involves about 200 people, Janssen said. Among them are a cast of 40 to 80, an orchestra with 15 to 25 players, and 30 to 40 working on props, set, costumes and other aspects of production. About 2,700 patrons are on the theater’s mailing list.