In the kids’ theater

Michelle Astley could barely hold the script in her hands as she walked into the humble schoolhouse.

A case of nerves wasn’t the only reason for her pre-audition jitters ? she had stayed up all night trying to remember the three simple lines she was going to deliver.

“I thought I had the lines down, but when I walked in the door and saw the other children standing in line, I forgot what I was supposed to say,” she said.

As each child walked up to the podium to audition for parts in the play, Astley began to panic about her sudden lapse of memory.

The line moved quickly, and before long she was standing before the two teachers who were casting for the Balboa Children’s Theater’s opening season.

“Then, when I got up there, something magical happened,” Astley said. “I opened my mouth and the exact lines came out. I amazed myself.”

Suffice to say, Astley, the daughter of Welsh immigrants, nailed the part on that day in 1938. Nevermind that it was a nonspeaking role as a chambermaid ? she was happy just to be in the theater’s inaugural performance of “King Midas and the Miraculous Golden Touch.”

In 1938, school teachers Susan Flanagan and Beth Franks created the Balboa Children’s Theater, a group that performed three plays in the waning years of the Great Depression. Astley, who was 11 when she performed in the play, had all but forgotten about her small role until recently, when she came across a single-page playbill and a photograph from her days in the theater company.

“It took me on a journey back in time,” Astley said.

Names like Andrew Ephart, who played Dionysus, and Karen Cartsem, who played Aurora, began to come to life.

“I haven’t even thought about those people in decades,” Astley said. “It’s amazing how a little piece of paper could bring so many memories back.”

She’ll never forget opening night, when about three dozen people gathered in the frontyard of a house. The group didn’t have money to rent a performance space, let alone build a theater, so it decided to use the front porch of a coastal bungalow that belonged to the parents of one of the actors. The performers had to be careful not to slam the screen door when entering and exiting the stage.

“Looking back, I think people were more amused than anything else,” Astley said.

As far as she knows, the children’s group was the first theater troupe of its kind on the peninsula.

Teachers Flanagan and Franks would take the children on regular outings and supervise trips to the beach. In the photograph Astley discovered, the children made outfits from seaweed.

Astley said World War II probably influenced the two teachers’ decision to end the children’s theater after just one year of performances.

“I think the situation with Germany was starting to intensify and people just weren’t interested in watching children performing Greek theater,” she said.dpt.19-goodolddays-BPhotoInfoGI1Q38U120060419ixxxg5nc(LA)Michelle Astley, second from left, stands with other members of the young theater group while on a field trip to the beach.