Staging a Web Site

Several years ago, Jim Barker found himself jobless. He’d been a disc jockey, most recently at KKBZ in Santa Paula. When the station went out of business, he said, “I decided to get a real job.”

A week after enrolling in a college course in computer science, Barker found himself employed as a word processor and today describes himself as a “computer nerd” for a government contractor based in Camarillo.

What does all this have to do with theater in Ventura County? For several years, Barker has run--virtually unrecognized and without charge to anybody--a Web site called the Ventura County Theatre Page at https://www.barkerductions.com.

“I started playing around with the site at least three, maybe four years ago,” he said. “As far as I was concerned, the perfect [function] for a Web site is to promote the theater scene.”

His target may be local--from Ojai to Agoura Hills--but Barker says his server reports “hits” from as far afield as Germany and Japan.

In addition to his day job, Barker has participated in numerous local community theater productions, most recently acting in the Santa Paula Theatre Center’s “George Washington Slept Here.” He’s also one of a crew of local actors who works for the Monterey Movie Company, recording talking books for its Soundworks division.

The Ventura County Theatre Page carries lots of information--calendar listings for numerous groups, news of auditions and links to local performers’ Web sites, among them. Barker designed the page, and it’s a work in progress.

“It’s such a hodgepodge of styles and formats,” he said. “I want to get some cohesiveness to the thing. My original idea was for every company to get its own look.”

Barker is also compiling a list of past local productions, in part to assist local companies in planning their upcoming seasons.

“There are so many plays available,” he said, “and everybody does the same few plays.”

While the listing is far from complete--he only hints at the flocks of “Nunsense” and “Godspell” productions that hit Ventura County a few years ago--he reports that the most frequently produced show appears to be “The Fantasticks,” followed by “Guys and Dolls.”

And although the listings are often complete and accurate, information on some companies isn’t up to date.

This, Barker says, is the groups’ fault: They simply don’t keep in touch. “You’d think they’d drool for new places to publicize their productions,” he said. “I sent letters to the groups explaining my offer to them; when I go to a show myself, I put in a word for my Web site. Some groups I hear from every week; others just turn their noses up. I heard that one group said that since I didn’t charge anything, it must not be worth anything. That hurt me.”

In addition, a few local groups have mounted their own Web pages, some far more up to date than others. Among them are Thousand Oaks’ Conejo Players at https://www.conejoplayers.org; the Young Artists Ensemble, https://www.yaeonline.com; the Ojai Shakespeare Festival, https://www.ojaishakespeare.org; Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre, https://www.rubicontheatre.org; the Santa Susana Repertory Company and Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, https://www.1bc.com/ssrc; and the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, https://www.simi-arts.org.

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Todd Everett can be reached at teverett@concentric.net.