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SCROOGE SURFACES: Ken Wheeler, left, plays Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol." Todd Tschida, right, plays several roles in the production. (Observer photos/LAURA MACKIE-HANCOCK).

You can call me ‘E' or you can call me ‘the girl with the funny nose' but never call me late for theater

By Jeff Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

Kids will come up to Gina Stauber in the grocery store and shout, "Hey, E, how's it going?" remembering the role she played in "Vowels."

Other kids remember her from another Eastern Oregon University show, "Playground," that toured local schools. "Hey, it's Jill," they will say, "the girl with the funny nose."

Kids who will dance in "A Christmas Carol," to be staged Friday through Sunday, think of the EOU senior theater major as the angel she played in last year's "The Great Green Christmas Show."

Stauber has traded in the nose, the E and the angel wings for three roles in "A Christmas Carol": the ghost of Christmas past; Mrs. Cratchet, wife of Bob Cratchet, Scrooge's clerk; and Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge's cleaning woman.

Stauber and the other actors in the show will be on a costume-change carousel. Most of the time, she said, there will be adequate time for costume changes. In one instance, however, she will transform herself from Mrs. Dilber to Mrs. Cratchet in the space of about three lines, or the wink of Fezziwig's eye.

Stauber, 21, from Portland, like everyone else in the show, sings, acts and dances. She started dancing at age 9 and did two to four dance shows a year. When she took up theater in high school, being on stage was no big deal.

"Being someone else is a lot of fun," she said. "As a kid, I really liked make-believe. Now I get to make a living in make-believe."

Being on stage means overcoming fears, she said. Think FEAR: face everything and recover.

Fear of failure can be particularly debilitating. A young actor needs to come to grips with the possibility of failing and that the audience won't like him or her — but have the courage to go forward.

Acting is not only about courage, though. It is also about being pushed out of your personal comfort zone, Stauber said. Acting 1 in college is specifically designed to give actors a push in new directions.

Acting, though, is learned not only through attending classes and being in productions. It can also be learned in hallways, cafeterias and dorm rooms. Students at EOU will be standing around and someone will say a line from an old show by accident. Someone else familiar with the show will answer with the next line.

And so on, until the old show is being newly staged before your eyes. After graduation from EOU Stauber, now theater manager for McKenzie Theatre, plans to act, sing and dance, especially focusing on her first love, musicals.

She hopes most shows will have a longer rehearsal period than "A Christmas Carol." Unlike the typical show at EOU, where rehearsals run six to eight weeks, the rehearsal period for "A Christmas Carol" is just four weeks. And thanks to Thanksgiving vacation and the fact that some cast members were also in "A Flea in Her Ear" staged Nov. 21-24, the rehearsal period for "A Christmas Carol" was cut to two weeks.

This presented special challenges for director, Denise Wheeler. Stauber praises her for being a calm island amidst a chaotic storm of preparation.

Stauber said she learns something new from every director she works with.

"Sometimes you learn things completely contradictory," she said, "and you have to be really flexible about what different directors want."

The short preparation time has required "A Christmas Carol" to be Reader's Theater. This means the actors will have scripts on stage.

But all of La Grande is a stage for Stauber.That could be readily apparent the next time she is in the grocery store and somebody comes up to the dance captain from "Annie Get Your Gun" and the goose from "Charlotte's Web."

They might not remember all of those roles. But they will probably remember one.

"Hey, E!" they will yell.