Star Theatre

David Schulz, Managing Artistic Director of the Star Theatre.

The general manager of this iconic downtown destination for live theater recounts how the Star has continued to provide local access to the arts.

Photo by Paul Friedman

The pandemic has effectively shut down in-person live productions — the foundation of the Star Theatre’s mission. Annually, the Star Theatre produces six full productions, two show choirs and an adult acting academy and provides a full service rental venue. Our first big decision: Do we shut down and use what resources we had to wait out the pandemic, or do we try to stay engaged and continue to provide whatever we could to our community? 

The Star Theatre is much more than its productions and its venue. It is a place where community gathers. A place where people can overcome their differences and discover empathy. 

All communities suffer from some lack of empathy — particularly during our current turbulent and conflicted times. At the Star, empathy is our superpower. Today, more than ever, we need places where understanding and compassion are encouraged, where we fill social and political divides with communication creating empathy. We provide not only a venue but also the productions, classes and camps that allow everyone in our community to participate — as an actor, technician, volunteer and audience member.  We do this by creating a “safe” place for all to become all they can be. Physically safe, of course, but just as importantly a place where we replace competition with encouragement, empowering the spirit to accomplish more than ever imagined while teaching all how to put themselves in others shoes, creating empathy. 

Thus deciding to move forward as best we could, we reached out to experts in virology, theatre and pandemics to ensure we stayed up to date as our world was rapidly changing.

First, we focused on keeping our community entertained while in lockdown. We accomplished this by providing digital content both old — Star’s Flash From The Past, full recordings of past productions — and new — Star Quarantine Karaoke, where a performer at home sings along to a song they sang live on our stage, and we mix the live stage video with the quarantine home audio into a fun karaoke version.  Along with these offerings, we also wanted to be part of the ultimate solution of Testing, Tracing and Treatment, so we created a fundraiser not only to keep our theater alive but also to contribute to COVID-19 resources and to provide information via our fundraiser website page. 

As this unfortunate time has continued way beyond our expectations, we have come to realize that producing any live theater in 2020 or even in early 2021 is a long shot.  While we all need to be safe, we also need to be able to express ourselves creatively and continue to grow artistically as a community. 

We are now focusing on small group day camp-style workshops — initially in summer camp formats and now after school.  These provide opportunities for all ages to interact in small, socially distanced, mask-wearing groups and continue to have fun acting, dancing and vocalizing.  We are also working on a pandemic version of our next show. 

What is our future?  Well, every day we review where we are and where we can go safely and in accordance with federal, state, county and local protocols — so, every day there are potentially new opportunities to provide access to the arts to our community. 

But, no matter what, we are dedicated to remaining a shining “Star” in Downtown Oceanside, creating empathy in every way we can, as long as we can.  For more information about the Star Theatre, its camps and workshops, or to sign up for its newsletter, go to startheatreco.com.