Michael Baron: Education Coordinator, Stage Director

Michael Baron, coordinator of the Arts Literacy program, has taken his love of theater from his childhood living room to one of the country's most respected regional stages, Trinity Repertory Theatre, where this month he's directing the timeless Dickens classic,"A Christmas Carol."

by Dionne Montgomery

He's gone from childhood pretending and coercing relatives to perform skits in his living room to directing a main stage production at one of the country's most respected regional theaters.

"All grown up, and all innocence aside, Michael Baron, education coordinator for the Arts Literacy project, has come full circle.

"I remember getting my brothers and cousins to act out 'Annie' when I was about seven," laughed Baron."We even had a girl with curly red hair who played the part of Annie. Those were the days."

And these days Baron is directing Charles Dickens'"A Christmas Carol" at Trinity Repertory Company. Still a lucid orchestrator, Baron is quite the buzz in his office, which is suitably tucked away in the Castle-like Barus building on Manning Walkway.

As coordinator of the Arts Literacy project housed at Brown, Baron places local actors with middle and high school teachers in Providence and Central Falls, who use classroom acting workshops as a vehicle for teaching literature.

"I started out as one of the actors brought in to be paired with a teacher while I was earning my masters degree at Trinity," said Baron. "I was hired at Brown as the coordinator full time last December."

A scholar of the theatre, Baron has a Master of Fine Arts from Trinity and a Bachelor of Arts in theatre from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. After directing at several theaters (including Brown's Summer Theatre), he made his directorial debut at Trinity last season in"The School for Scandal." Taking on the Dickens holiday classic is a true challenge to Baron, but one he truly loves.

"This is one of the biggest productions I've done so far, and it's a wonderful show. It's got flying ghosts, smoke, elevators, hundreds of costumes, live music and dancing."

The show, which opened Nov. 20 and runs through Dec. 28, features two casts of children who perform on alternating days.

"When one group is on, the other is off, but I direct both so I'm there all the time," explained Baron, who concedes to being tired — but wouldn't change a thing.

Baron's version of the timely classic is filled with surprises and lots of laughs.

"During the play there's a section where we recruit a child from the audience to participate," he said."Every show we've been lucky to get the most adorable child, and they get the biggest laugh of all.

"One of our Scrooges is played by a woman, and there's a line in the show where (she) says,'Can you ever forgive a foolish woman...uh I mean man,' and the entire theatre erupts into laughter," he added. "It's fun."

The play has been well reviewed; The Providence Journal called Baron's offering of the annual staple"memorable" and a"very fine (show)." And he won't get the chance to dust off his director's chair anytime soon. In January he will begin production of a rock musical called"Hot Star Nebraska," written by Paul Grellong '01, at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston.

The ties between Brown and local theatre were drawn tighter last May when Brown University and Trinity joined together to establish a new graduate program in theatre arts.

"The Providence theater community is such a small tight community, and Brown is always part of it," Said Baron."Now with the collaboration of Brown and Trinity, it'll just get better and better."