THEATER:Quality control on stage and behind the scenes

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last in a series of four columns reviewing local theater in 2006.

South Coast Repertory has stretched theatergoers’ imaginations in Costa Mesa (and, earlier, in Newport Beach) for over four decades, offering some of the finest stage productions to be found anywhere, not just in the immediate area.

To this end, the company has enlisted some special talents — both on stage and behind the scenes — to maintain the lofty quality of its product. Two of these individuals are celebrated today.

They are two people with several years of experience at expanding the audience’s enjoyment at a South Coast Repertory production. They are Martin Noyes and Tiffany Ellen Solano, the Daily Pilot’s man and woman of the year in theater for 2006.

Noyes, who is a professional actor and a fight director, has made his mark principally behind the scenes, crafting a play’s action scenes, whether it be fisticuffs or swordplay.

Solano has spent the past eight holiday seasons bringing the character of Gracie to life in “La Posada Magica.”

The fight choreography on South Coast’s productions of “Bach at Leipzig” and “Ridiculous Fraud” — the former with sabers, the latter as a knockdown brawl — was applauded in this column’s reviews of the shows. In both instances, Noyes was responsible.

“If the violence on stage isn’t believable, it undercuts the play,” Noyes says.

And though he’s never thrown a punch in anger in real life, he’s made a career out of administering, or choreographing, them for entertainment purposes.

This native Orange Countian, now 33, began his stage fighting at 15 and refined those skills at the University of Alabama. He’s won numerous awards for his craft, but also has been injured on several occasions.

As an actor, Noyes communicates naturally with other actors when choreographing a fight scene, noting that “you want the fight to underscore the brilliance of the play.”

Christmastime for Orange County playgoers can often mean a trip to South Coast Repertory, and for those in the Spanish-speaking community, the destination is “La Posada Magica,” which just finished its 13th engagement.

Solano is the heart of this production, having assumed the role of the disillusioned 14-year-old Gracie for the past eight incarnations. “I’m still very young at heart,” she maintains. “It’s not difficult to feel 14 still.”

In her most recent turn in the show, this column observed, “The ageless Solano, who also possesses a supreme singing voice, once again delivers a wrenching and ultimately heartwarming performance.”

She landed the role after her predecessor, Crissy Guerrero, outgrew it and has made it her own. It’s been the high point of her still-budding career, which began before she entered her teenage years.

Solano spends the rest of the year in other areas of entertainment, such as the “Aladdin” show at Disney’s California Adventure. And altough she’d love to be on a TV series or in a movie, her heart is “truly on stage.”

She’ll continue to portray Gracie “as long as SCR wants me. Who doesn’t want the opportunity to be a kid forever?”

Martin Noyes and Tiffany Ellen Solano are two of the reasons playgoers thoroughly enjoy their experience at South Coast Repertory.