“Show Biz Kids: Local children, Logan Rowland and Rachel Mracna, in the spotlight on Broadway and tours - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” plus 1 more |
| Posted: 23 Jan 2011 06:37 AM PST Show Biz Kids: Local children, Logan Rowland and Rachel Mracna, in the spotlight on Broadway and tours Logan Rowland got word that he would make his Broadway debut as Pugsley in "The Addams Family" on Saturday, after deadline for the print editions of this Post-Gazette Sunday Magazine story. NEW YORK -- Logan Rowland, a freckle-faced kid who feels right at home navigating a century-old Broadway theater, bounds up the winding staircase that leads to his dressing room. He leads the way up and up through the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on West 46th Street, just off Broadway. We pass a rack of clothing that occupies the nook outside Nathan Lane's dressing room door and a paper thermometer that indicates the tens of thousands of dollars raised by the cast of "The Addams Family" for Broadway Cares charities. With his elders breaking into a sweat from the seemingly endless ascent, 12-year-old Logan smiles and says, "This is it," and ambles down a narrow hall and into a tiny room with one long dressing table and two mirrors bordered with bright lights. The one window is obscured by an Advent calendar, blocking a gray mid-December day. One spot at the table is for Adam Riegler, who plays Pugsley in "The Addams Family," a bona fide musical hit that has been on Broadway since March 8 of last year. The other is for his understudy and ensemble member, Logan, a 12-year-old from Pine who came up through the CLO Academy programs and won the role in August, after a grueling audition process that whittled dozens of would-be Pugsleys down to one. The invitation to join the Broadway cast came after several call-backs and back-and-forths between Pittsburgh and New York. "I was at my house and my mother rushed in and I said, 'What's the matter?' And she said, 'You got it.' And I just was so happy. It was amazing. I started to cry," Logan recalls. Then reality set in. It was decided that Shannon Rowland would accompany her son to New York, where they now reside in an apartment that's walking distance to the theater. Her husband, James, has stayed behind with oldest child Connor, 17, and Logan's sisters and aspiring performers Sydney, 10, and Teagan, 6. Mrs. Rowland tries to get home for a week at least once a month, when her stepfather comes to New York to stay with Logan. She and Logan get home, too, sometimes flying back after Sunday matinees and staying through Monday, when Broadway theaters are dark, and arriving back in time for Tuesday's curtain. Splitting up the family for however long this Broadway adventure lasts tugs at Mrs. Rowland, although she said it was never a matter of whether to do it so much as how they would make it work. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is what he loves to do; it's his passion," Mrs. Rowland said in a recent phone conversation. "To deny him that would not be fair to him. It's not that it was an easy decision, it really wasn't, but we would have done it for any one of our children. On the other side of the coin when you stop and think what you're doing ... my family's very supportive, which makes it easier. My husband, my mom, my stepdad, my children -- everyone is pitching in to make this happen for him. We couldn't deny him, this is too big and he's worked so hard. So we are making it work as a family." Mrs. Rowland works with her son on his education, which he maintains through the PA Cyber School, usually working up to four hours on days when his show and rehearsal schedule and dancing lessons will allow. Although he has not yet gone on as Pugsley, Logan has responsibilities as an ensemble member. He sings with the chorus of ghostly Addams ancestors and operates puppets -- a tentacle seen during the song "But Love" and birds that are part of Uncle Fester's flight scenes. The tentacle was difficult to master. "Do you know the crutches that have that thing that goes around your arm?" he asks, wrapping his fingers around his forearm. "Then they have this handle and another handle with a string that goes through the tentacle, and when you pull it, it makes it go back. It took me a while to get used to it. That was hard." Got started at CLO camp Logan's mother says there were early signs he might be headed to an entertainment career. His favorite movie was "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and he would memorize songs and re-enact Jack Skellington's walk in the moonlight by climbing on the edge of the couch. A couple of summers ago, Logan saw his sister, Sydney, in a production at the CLO summer camp and decided that would be a fun thing to try. At age 10, he went to the camp and surprised his parents and himself by winning the role of the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast." "My husband and I didn't even know he could sing," Mrs. Rowland recalls. "I didn't know I could sing," Logan says. He went on to the CLO Academy pre-professional program and featured roles in the company's "Oliver!" and "The Full Monty" and "Will Rogers Follies" at the West Virginia Public Theatre. The experience helped prepare him for "The Addams Family" auditions. Also helping him along the way was voice teacher Amy Stabnau, who has sent several local performers from CLO programs and the Rogers/CAPA performing arts schools on to college theater programs, Broadway and national tours. Along with Logan, her students include 12-year-old Rachel Mracna, now in the touring company of "Billy Elliot," and Elon University graduate Courtney Markowitz, on tour with "Spring Awakening." Teaching a boy who is pre-puberty is exactly the same as teaching a young girl, she says. "Singing is very physical," so after assessing a pupil's strengths and weaknesses, "I have them do a series of vocalises -- exercises for the voice -- to assess the level of skill for certain vocal benchmarks ... to develop their instrument." With hard work, muscle memory kicks in, and only then does Ms. Stabnau begin to discuss appropriate repertoire. The commitment and drive of youngsters like Logan and Rachel, who won the role of Debbie after attending an open casting call for the tour of "Billy Elliot the Musical," has stopped amazing her. Rachel, who would be a sixth-grader now in the North Allegheny School District, started with Ms. Stabnau and the CLO Academy at around age 7. The young actress says the drive to excel comes naturally. Rachel's experience as Debbie, the dance teacher's daughter who befriends Billy Elliot, is traveling from town to town accompanied by a guardian and a cast with children of varying ages. There are three tutors who work with the kids for a couple of hours, five days a week. Speaking by phone from the tour stop in North Carolina, Rachel said the cast and crew are like a family, playing games backstage, eating together and going on field trips in the different cities -- her favorite was Minnesota's Mall of America. The girly girl in her comes out as she describes the indoor amusement park and the shopping, but she is all business when it came to discussing her young career. She said the CLO Academy prepared her particularly for acting and staying calm during the audition process. "My whole life I just wanted to sing and dance and act," Rachel says. Working with voice teacher Stabnau, she learned "to keep up with my voice and keep it safe and to do that, you always have to practice, always have to train." "A lot of the kids I have on Broadway now started with me at around 6, and they really want to do it. There's never a fuss," Ms. Stabnau said. "They acquire correct habits and at that time it's more of a monitoring process than developing voice. With Logan, the more he sang, the stronger he got and he was able to increase his range -- he can sing much higher than he's required to sing for 'The Addams Family.' It's the same with Rachel." Winning the role of Debbie was just the first phase of getting Rachel on tour. The Mracna family waited until Rachel won the part before deciding she should have a personal chaperone with her. Rachel formed a bond with child wrangler Anne Leonard while getting ready for the tour, and they have been together ever since. Rachel hit the road about three months ago and was delighted when the tour stopped in Cleveland, where friends and family could come to the show. It would be a dream for the tour to come to Pittsburgh, she says, so she could bring cast members home with her and have a party for them, as one of her younger castmates did in New Jersey. "That would be great, to be on my home stage with everybody there," she says. Ms. Stabnau, who now gives private lessons in Emsworth, was among the fans in Cleveland. "Rachel is a delightful student who loves to sing and perform. Logan, too. Both of them have a lot of stage presence, which is really something that can't be taught. There's a charisma about both of them," she says. "They are both so sweet, I miss them. Fortunately, I get to teach Logan's little sisters. They are both extremely talented as well -- the Von Trapp singers," the voice teacher says with a laugh. Hoping to go on The family atmosphere at "The Addams Family" has enveloped Logan since his arrival. A handwritten note on the dressing-room wall full of them reads: "Happy Bway Debut Logan." "That's from Katy," Logan explains. He points to the remote-control helicopter on his dressing-room table, a gift from the show's child wrangler, Katy Lathan. Among other duties, she keeps the atmosphere light for the preteen members of the cast. At the stage door entrance, at the bottom of that long flight of steps, Logan points through a doorway to another wall covered with paste-ups and pictures and big letters that read, "AFPOTW" -- Addams Family Person of the Week. He explains that taking over as Pugsley's understudy means he inherits the weekly job of interviewing a member of the cast or crew, getting his or her picture and giving that person a place of honor on the AFPOTW wall. What he has yet to do is go onstage in front of an audience as Pugsley Addams. Sitting in his dressing room, he sings a few bars of "What If," a ghoulish song about the horrific possibility that his sister, Wednesday, won't torture him anymore. His voice is strong and clear and hopeful as he sings: What if she never tortures me anymore? How would I manage? What if she never nails my tongue To the bathroom floor? "I'd love to go on as Pugsley," he admits. That's the attitude that sustains the Rowland family as they make it work. "I'm not going to lie, it's tough being separated from my husband and my other three children," Mrs. Rowland says. "It's tough on Logan being away from his family, too, away from normalcy. I tease him here and there: 'Are you ready to go back to normal life?' And he goes, 'No!' He loves it." Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. First published on January 23, 2011 at 12:00 am This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Stuck in limbo, families fight to bring kids home from Nepal - msnbc.com Posted: 23 Jan 2011 09:28 AM PST Last summer, Vicki and Jed Taufer excitedly traveled from their home in Illinois to Nepal to adopt a baby girl. "We'll be back in September," Vicki wrote Aug. 4 in a new blog named after their daughter-to-be. That hopeful timetable didn't hold. Only this Sunday, after six challenging months in Nepal, is Vicki finally due home with 19-month-old Purnima. For most of that stretch the couple was divided, with Jed back at his job in the U.S. trying to minimize the huge financial hit resulting from the delay. The very day of the Taufers' arrival in Katmandu — Aug. 6 — the U.S. government suspended adoptions of abandoned children from Nepal due to concerns about unreliable and fabricated documents such as birth certificates. As an example of the problems, U.S. officials cited a case where a child put up for adoption to America was being searched for by her Nepalese birth parents.
Pending adoptions by the Taufers and about 80 other U.S. families were put on hold and subjected to lengthy new investigations requiring the families to provide solid evidence that the children were indeed legitimate orphans. Many felt compelled to hire private investigators to make their case. Some families abandoned their quest but more than 60 persevered. As of mid-January, 13 of them, including the Taufers, had received U.S. visas for their children, but most are still in limbo after months of uncertainty, separations and financial stress. Many of the families have formed close bonds, sharing skepticism over the U.S. government's decisions and unwavering commitment to seeing their planned adoptions through to completion. "The other moms — they've been my family for the past six months," Vicki Taufer said via Skype from Katmandu. "They are the only ones who understand what we went through." The Taufers first met Purnima Jade, their new daughter, on Aug. 7 at the orphanage she'd entered as a newborn. "She spent this afternoon eating my watch," Vicki Taufer wrote in a euphoric entry on her blog, nimajade.com. "I am going to have to get her some toys to chew on." Taufer at one point gave a hug to one of the other babies at the orphanage. "Nima got jealous and crawled right up onto my lap!" she wrote. "It was the best feeling in the world." Within days, the couple began to realize that their hoped-for timetable had been thwarted by the suspension. They completed the adoption under Nepalese law and moved Purnima into their Katmandu apartment. By early September, Jed Taufer, 36, was headed back to work in Illinois, not to return to Nepal until a brief Christmas visit. "The hardest part of the whole thing was not knowing what was going to happen and when it was going to happen," he said by phone. He said his employers at a printing lab have been supportive, but the photography business that he and his wife started jointly 10 years ago in Morton, Ill., suffered greatly in the absence of Vicki, a 35-year-old professional photographer. One of the employees has been laid off, and they missed out on the peak pre-Christmas season. 'We've been pushed to the limit' Vicki Taufer said she and her husband had sold one of their cars and a mountain bike to raise funds. Eventually, they overcame potential embarrassment and solicited donations via PayPal on their blog. "Staying here with Nima is a decision that makes sense only in our hearts, but makes no sense financially," Vicki wrote in a note accompanying the appeal. She declined to specify how much they raised, but credited gifts with helping Jed afford his Christmas visit. "Even from total strangers, there's been unbelievable support," Vicki said. One of her toughest moments came in late September, when she flew back to the U.S. for a three-week stint to shore up the photography business, feeling guilty as she left Purnima behind in the care of her visiting American grandparents. "I feel so utterly and completely incomplete now that she is in Nepal and I am on my way back to the U.S.," Taufer blogged from the airport in New Delhi. By Oct. 20, she was back in Katmandu, living through many more weeks of ups and downs. Purnima attended Sunday School, created minor chaos at a few restaurants, had her first jumps on a trampoline, and accompanied her mother on myriad visits to parks and shopping malls and local tourist attractions. They bonded intensely with several other waiting families and coped with hardships unavoidable in one of the world's poorest nations. At one point, Vicki rushed to a clinic to check out an injury to Purnima's arm, only to find that the X-ray machine was knocked out by a power failure. Vicki also collaborated with a private investigator who gradually was able to piece together the background to Purnima's abandonment. One benefit, Vicki noted, was obtaining a photo of her daughter as an eyes-closed, angelic-looking newborn. On Jan. 12 — shortly after Jed Taufer had returned again to the U.S. — the phone rang in Katmandu, with word that Purnima's visa had been approved. "MY FAVORITE FOUR LETTER WORD: V-I-S-A," Vicki blogged. "I am ecstatic, scared, hesitant, happy, nervous, excited, anxious, joyful." U.S. officials insist that the suspension and the rigorous reviews of the pending adoption cases were justified by numerous earlier instances where Nepalese children's birth certificates were falsified. Because of unreliable documents and "the general situation of noncooperation with and even active hindrance of investigations," U.S. authorities said they could no longer accurately determine whether a child qualifies as an orphan. Susan Jacobs, the State Department's special adviser on children's issues, expressed empathy with the affected families even as she defended the suspension. "I can only imagine their frustration," she said. "But we cannot be in the business of closing our eyes to what we see as significant problems." Other countries have also halted adoptions Acknowledging some flaws, the Nepalese government has recently taken several steps to improve its adoption system — banning the adoption of street children, requiring better verification that a given child is an orphan, and tightening the oversight of organizations dealing with orphans. But there's no timeframe yet for when these and other possible reforms might prompt the U.S. and other countries to reauthorize adoptions. In explaining its action, the State Department has cited one case in which a U.S. couple discovered that the Nepalese girl they were about to adopt from an orphanage was in fact being sought by her birth parents. It turned out that the girl and her brother had been placed at the orphanage by their father for temporary safekeeping and were not supposed to be put up for adoption. "The whole experience was a nightmare," said Kyla Romanach, who, like her husband, Carlos, is an attorney in Baton Rouge, La. "When we realized there were parents looking for her, we knew we could never bring her back to the United States." Several prominent adoption advocates have criticized the U.S. government's approach, including Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption. He agrees that Nepal's record-keeping in regard to abandoned children is imperfect, but says the U.S. could have campaigned for better safeguards while keeping the adoption process on track. "When you close down a country like that, you prevent even legitimate orphans from having families," he said. "The majority of these orphans who won't find families are going to enter into a world where they will be abused and exploited." To bolster their case, the waiting families circulated a petition to Congress, wrote to President Barack Obama and circulated an open letter from Rob Buckley, an expert on human trafficking in Nepal, saying there was no link between the rampant trafficking problem and the orphanage/adoption system. Irene Steffas, a Marietta, Ga.-based adoption lawyer working with 22 of the families affected by the suspension, says no instances of fraud have been turned up in the reviews of their cases. She contends that U.S. officials overreacted, rather than dealing pragmatically with adoption procedures in a country where poverty and a long-running insurgency fueled widespread child abandonment, impaired record-keeping, and hampered official investigative capabilities. "Understanding the difference between Western regulations, customs and practices from those in Nepal is key," she wrote in a memo. "A fatal error is made when one tries to apply U.S. procedures to Nepalese cases." Among the still-waiting couples are Celia and Chad Bergman, both 45, who say they've decided to sell their condominium in Chicago to help defray the unexpectedly high costs of persisting with efforts to adopt a 3-year-old daughter, Karina. Like many of the other families, they invested thousands of extra dollars to hire a private investigator and an adoption attorney to handle the new requirements. "We don't have any regrets about coming over to adopt her and start our life together," said Celia Bergman from Katmandu, where she and her husband have shared an apartment with Karina since November. "It's hard," she said. "But we'll keep jumping through the hoops we have to jump through." Her husband has just returned to Chicago to resume his job as a professor of theater and deal with the family's financial turmoil. "My heart is pretty ripped right now," he said on the eve of his departure from Katmandu. Even at the peak of international adoptions from Nepal a few years ago, no more than a few hundred children annually were adopted by foreigners — a drop in the bucket in a nation where, according to UNICEF estimates, nearly 1 million children under 18 are orphans out of a total population of about 29 million. Some live on the street, but life can be harsh even for those in orphanages, according to Sharon Vause, one of the American mothers who settled in Katmandu while waiting for her own adoption to be approved. During her five-month wait, Vause said she visited several orphanages — depicting them as chilly concrete buildings which, like much of the rest of the capital, had power only half the day during the winter and posed health risks for the children. "It's a grim situation and one no parent would ever want for their child," said Vause. She sympathized with parents who had no choice but to leave their prospective sons and daughters in orphanages while questions about adoptions were resolved. Vause and her husband, Joe, arrived in Katmandu on Aug. 17 to adopt a 3-year-old boy, Shekhar. Joe returned home to San Mateo, Calif., in early September to go back to work and care for their 6-year-old daughter; Sharon stayed behind with Shekhar and finally got word a few days ago that his visa had been approved. "While I am grateful that we finally are able to travel home, I am worried about the families still awaiting visas — especially the ones where the children remain in the orphanages," she wrote by e-mail. "They struggle to provide the basics such as food and warm clothes," she wrote. "And each of these children is as precious and wonderful as our son." Similar thoughts crossed Vicki Taufer's mind as she made one of her last blog entries before heading back to the U.S. with Purnima. "There are many beautiful things about Nepal," she wrote, "but I wanted to capture the reality of what many of the people's lives are like here in the overcrowded and polluted city of Katmandu. "The hardest thing for me when I visit some of these places is to think about how it is very possible Nima could be one of these children. I am haunted by the faces I have seen. Children with runny noses in freezing cold orphanages, a toddler crying on a street corner because they are cold and hungry, a family huddled around a fire of burning garbage just to stay warm." Preparing for the long flight home, Taufer tried to describe her mixed emotions — joy at the imminent homecoming, frustration that many of the other waiting families remained in limbo, anxiety over what lies ahead. "This experience has created an incredible bond between me and my daughter," she wrote in an e-mail. "But now the realities and fears of returning home to pick up the pieces of everything that has been suffering because of our absence is starting to set in." Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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