'Annie Get Your Gun' to Hit Stage in Scotts Valley

The life of rough-and-tumble sharpshooter Annie Oakley will come to life in the Scotts Valley Performing Arts Association’s fall production of Annie Get Your Gun opening Friday.

The show, which features a cast of 27 people who range in age from 8 to 63, is filled with 20 big musical numbers, from the popular “There’s No Business Like Show Business” to “You Can’t Get a Man With A Gun” and “Anything You Can Do.”

The cast has rehearsed five days a week since Aug. 1 and learned all of the vocal and dance numbers in just two weeks and the entire show in one month, according to director Paul Sawyer. Fine tuning has taken place ever since.

“This is just such a great cast,” Sawyer said. "They are so much fun and it translates to the stage."

Annie Get Your Gun, an Irving Berlin musical that debuted on Broadway in 1946, has typically been a big show with a lot of spectacle and tricks, but with this production, Sawyer said he wanted to bring it back to what is really important—the characters.

“It’s a very large-scale show, and the big thing we wanted to do with this production was to take some of the spectacle out of it,” Sawyer said. “There is a definite heavier emphasis on character, because that’s what drives the show. We have this character who is a piece of Americana, and we wanted to bring it back to who she really is.”

Sawyer added that the actors who play Annie and her husband, Frank Butler, Zina Urquhart and David Jackson, did a tremendous amount of research on the characters to really understand and portray them better.

“That is usually something only the director does, but they have really gotten into it,” Sawyer said.

This is Sawyer’s first time working with Scotts Valley Performing Arts, and he says when he heard the organization was going to stage Annie Get Your Gun, he came running.

“I was in the cast of the 2005 Cabrillo Stage production, and I love this show. It is such a great show,” said Sawyer, who has both bachelor's and master's degrees in theater arts and also teaches theater in the Campbell Union School District.

He says that working with SVPAA has also been a great experience.

“They are a phenomenal bunch,” he said. “You’ve got people who have come together who have such a passion for the arts and such a connection to the community and want to see one get with the other,” Sawyer said.

The SVPAA is a nonprofit organization that began in Scotts Valley 12 years ago and puts on three productions a year—a fall musical, a spring cabaret and a youth Shakespeare production. This year, the organization is adding a fourth show, a Christmas production.

“We want to bring professional-grade theater to the local community,” said SVPAA board member Ray Gorski. “This is an opportunity for everyone around the county to participate.”

And in a true community-theater way, Gorski says SVPAA productions live solely on volunteers to help produce the shows and on ticket sales and advertising to help fund them.

For Annie Get Your Gun, cast and crew have come from as far as Redwood City and San Jose to right in our own backyard in Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz.

“These people are not paid; they are doing it for the love of the craft and for the love of the community, and they come out and work so hard,” Sawyer said. “It’s like shooting up an emergency flare, and everybody comes running. We know there is art to be made, so let’s do it.”

Annie Get Your Gun opens Friday and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Oct. 16 at the Bethany University Community Theater, 800 Bethany Dr., Scotts Valley. Tickets are $25 for premium seating and $20 for general admission. For tickets or more information, visit svpaa.org or email anniegetyourgun@svpaa.org.