Paul Boerger
Mt. Shasta Herald
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Director and writer Jerry Alden deal filmed “Dreams Awake” in Mount Shasta this summer using local citizens for the crew and three locals in speaking roles.
Leonardo Gonzales, Joan Lucas and six year old Jessie Massari came to their roles from divergent backgrounds and had similarly divergent experiences on the set.
Lucas has 60 years of experience in theater, while Gonzales is a house painter who once has acted in his own video shorts and once had a film role as a stunt double.
Jesse, the daughter of Mount Shasta Repertory Theater founders Amy and Michael Massari, brought her experience playing roles in her parents’ productions.
The “Dreams Awake” plot revolves around members of a disconnected family from southern California whose lives are transformed after coming to Mount Shasta
“I got to pretend to be something I’m not and it was fun,” Jesse said of her experience. “My mom and dad helped me learn my lines.”
Jesse said at times “it was hard,” but also “fun making new friends” and “being up on the mountain” where several scenes were shot.
Jesse said her challenges included learning to not look at the camera, waiting on the set and acting sad.
“It’s hard not to look at the camera,” she said. “I had to pretend something else was the camera.”
She remembered waiting five hours on the set one day.
“It was hard,” she said.
As for the sad scenes, Jesse said, “It was hard to be sad and get the tears coming. My daddy helped me by crying. They pretended they threw people off a cliff. I pretended they were my mom and dad.”
Her only criticism was reserved for her voiceovers, for which actors dub lines in a sound studio.
“Doing the voiceover, they had me be happy and then sad,” Jesse said. “They should have had it the other way around, sad and then happy.”
Overall, Jesse feels the experience was “really fun.”
Leonardo Gonzales, who makes his living painting houses, brought a background in music and videomaking to his role as a Native American shaman who has an impact on the film’s family, especially the mother
Playing the shaman at age 60 and age 100, Gonzales describes the experience as “an amazing turnaround for me.”
“I asked the film continuity supervisor ‘how do you make money at this?’ She told me nobody really makes any money. We’re all just artists who do it because we love it. I realized that none of my efforts had been wasted. Nothing ever has to happen. We can be content with doing our art”
Gonzales said his previous movie experience was as a stunt double in 1985.
“In the first film, I really studied those guys,” he said. “I knew it was what I wanted to do. I auditioned for the shaman and got the role. They wanted a tall actor, but they chose me because the medicine man had to have a way about him. They told me to be myself. I had the poise.
Gonzales said he enjoyed working with Deal, with whom he had crossed paths earlier.
“It turns out I knew Jerry,” he said. “I had painted his house while he was working on the script.”
Because he had acted on his own video shorts, Gonzales said he felt prepared for his role in “Dreams.”
“You have to focus,” he said. “There are a lot of people around you on the set. They are focused on what they are doing, but it’s all for what you are doing.”
Gonzales cannot say enough about how the experience changed his life.
“I am totally pleased with the experience. It was worth it to hear what the continuity woman told me. It lifted a whole burden off me,” he said. “To her, it was a passing remark, but it was so deep for me.”
No stranger to theater, Joan Lucas began learning dance at age eight, got her first professional stage role in high school and now has a theater career that spans nearly 60 years, including 10 years on Broadway as a chorus line dancer. She has done community theater, is a choreographer and theater teacher and director.
Her lone previous movie part was in the 1952 production of “Singing in the Rain” that starred Gene Kelly.
“I’m in the chorus line and actually visible to the naked eye.”
At 77, Lucas shows no signs of slowing down as her dedication to theater not only brought her to “Dreams Awake” but she will be the narrator in the upcoming Shadowbox Players production of Dreams of Broadway.
Her part in “Dreams Awake” was as a waitress serving the family, a role that called for a woman in her 50’s, heavy set and “kind of mean”.
“I qualified for one of the three, I’m heavy set,” Lucas said.
She notes that in her entire life the only jobs she had outside of the theater were as a cook and a waitress.
“It prepared me for the ‘Dreams Awake’ role,” she says with a laugh.
Lucas said she only had two lines in the film, “Okey-Dokey” and “Need anything else?”
“I screwed up the Okey-Dokey,” Lucas said. “It’s not easy to screw up a line like that.”
She said, however, that it was her intensity in saying those lines in the audition that got her the part.
“Jerry told me he had never seen anybody create a character so well with only two lines.”
When she got the part, Lucas said her old theater blood got to boiling.
“I was thrilled. There is still that competitive edge in anyone who has been in theater,” Lucas said. “It was a lot of fun. It took me back. I thought, ‘I can still do it’”
With her high energy, quick laugh and sharp twinkle in her eyes, there is no question the Lucas can “still do it.”
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