Although he’s been all over the world studying and being a part of theater productions, Aaron Ganz has chosen to land at Odessa College as its new theatre director.
Interviewed Aug. 22, Ganz was hitting the ground running hosting auditions at The Globe Theatre for “Wouldn’t It Be Lovely: A Modern Fairytale.” The production is an adaptation of “Pygmalion” and the stage musical “My Fair Lady.”
The production will have a limited run. Previews will be Nov. 2 and Nov. 3 and it will open Nov. 4 with shows on Nov. 9, 10 and two shows on Nov. 11. Previews are a rehearsal with an audience and what happens will shape the show.
Ganz loved the movie “My Fair Lady” growing up. He never saw the musical live, but he was enamored of Audrey Hepburn (Eliza Doolittle) and Rex Harrison (Henry Higgins).
“Those are very iconic roles and performances. And I always like that. I like that challenge. I want to take that story that sings in your heart. I know today in modern audiences, not everybody, not all the students here, not everybody knows from My Fair Lady, but it is iconic and it is a universal human story about somebody who is special, has rough edges, is willing to work harder than anybody else and soars, finds the most of herself and finds an independence out of that and I think that anyone can relate to that story,” Ganz said.
The story is also funny, romantic, confident and full of belief, he added.
“These are the things that I think theater should be about. So I take this love of ‘My Fair Lady,’ and I look at the best way to tell it today,” Ganz said.
He started with George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” and updated and adapted it for modern audiences. Threaded through the production will be moments and songs people recognize but used in a different way.
“I always thought the honesty of musicals is that when emotion, when truth can’t hold it in words anymore; things burst out into song. I wanted those heightened moments in our play for our actors to burst into to express themselves in song. So I’ve threaded through the pieces of the music, iconic moments in the movies, into Shaw’s Pygmalion and then blasted it with modern music and modern dance,” Ganz said.
“It’s not something that we see. But it’s a show that that gets felt, that’s pumping in the veins, that someone can’t check off so easily after it’s over,” he added.
Ganz is from Toronto, Canada, but his mother is from New York so he has dual citizenship and got a chance to go to the Big Apple and study and spend his late teens and early 20s there.
He earned a bachelor of fine arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a master of fine arts from Harvard University aiming to take his work to the next level. Harvard’s graduate program is famous for being in partnership with the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia, which is renowned for being like the “Yankee Stadium of theater companies,” Ganz said.
Deciding not to return to New York, he decided to go to LA instead. Ganz started Theatrum Elysium, a nonprofit theater there, but moved it to San Pedro, Calif. There, he said, he spent 15 years developing a teaching theatre model where all the directors, teachers and actors were also mentors.
“If a teacher taught something in the classroom, a student got a chance to watch them in rehearsal and see how that stuff played out; saw a teacher have fallibility and how they pick themselves back up again. We had students who were understudies who stepped into roles that the teachers, or famous movie stars were in but movie stars felt funny about dancing or doing this thing the way I asked them to do and I will go to the mat for anybody. I won’t give up on a soul unless they give up on themselves. I’ve had students step into those roles and soar and then that creates something of itself — a tidal wave of saying no one’s bigger than anything else. We all work hard. Stand on each other’s shoulders, but then we can see more than just the cliche of what’s in front of us right now. Not just chase after other people’s wanting to accept us, but trying to set the tone of what we could be and learn how to play well with people who speak different languages than us,” Ganz said.
He also favors non-traditional performance environments like a battleship and approaches like starting the audience outside the theater.
Since his arrival, Ganz has recruited people from all over the campus and community to try theater. It was pointed out that the Permian Basin has a lot of talent.
“There isn’t a person I’ve met in the cafeteria, who helps out in maintenance who, who I’ve said, ‘Have you ever thought about acting before?’ Because I don’t mind spending years turning people on to what’s possible; changing the way that they look at what we’re doing over here to make it life’s work,” Ganz said.
Ganz has a puppy he adopted, or who adopted him, named Bauer.
Dan Sorensen, interim department chair of the Visual and Performing Arts, said he’s glad Ganz has joined OC.
“I’m excited. Aaron has a lot of energy. You can tell because he’s just ready to get going, so I’m really excited to work with him and I think he’s going to do great things and build up the program. I can see it. (He’s) already getting involved in the community and getting out there and bringing people together, so I think it’s going to be great,” Sorensen said.
Pervis Evans, senior dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Education, said Ganz’s experience as a master instructor is a “huge plus” for the community.
“But beyond that, he has a true heart for people, for humanity and it just resonates from his being that he wants to see people as the best representation of themselves. I think he will as he’s teaching students and directing the performances he will use his gift of pulling the best out of people so that they can grow and know things that they didn’t know about themselves that will help them along their path going forward,” Evans said.
“That’s just part of who he seems to be — very passionate, excited, willing to support the college and the community in any way that he can,” Evans added.
