For One Young Actress, Summer Is A Life Of Fairy Tales And Theater

By Shannon Hicks

Fairy Tale Theater will open its 2003 season on Saturday, July 5, and with the celebration of the new season comes another commemoration: Thanks to the growing popularity of the musical play series for children, the company’s performances are moving this year from the grounds of Richter Arts Center to Wooster School on nearby Ridgebury Road in Danbury.

Going along for the ride will be Newtown resident Diana Cucuruto who will be performing with the company for her fourth season. Diana, who begins eighth grade at Newtown Middle School in September, will be joined by fellow Newtown residents Alyse Brautigam, Nick Petrovich, and Sydney Russell this summer as members of the company.

Performed by an ensemble of young actors under the direction of Elyse Jasensky, this season’s productions include The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff (July 5), The Frog Princess (July 12), Selections from Aesop’s Fables (July 19), and Pinocchio (July 26). Each hour-long show is introduced by Mother Goose (Ms Jasensky) and includes arts and crafts activities, plenty of audience participation, and special surprise guests.

Diana Cucuruto will be playing Nanny, one of the Three Billy Goats, on July 5, and then will be one of the princesses in the following weekend’s presentation. Saturday’s season opening performance will be just the latest for Diana, who began acting when she was 8 years old.

Her first roles were in school plays including Johnny Appleseed while in third grade, and then Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when she was in sixth grade at Newtown Middle School.

“That first show was so much fun I wanted to do more shows,” Diana recently said. “That’s what started my interest in acting.”

Diana’s introduction to Fairy Tale Theater came when she was in third grade. Her voice teacher mentioned that Richter auditions were coming up and that she thought Diana might be good for the company. Jackie Gaudet, the owner and director of Newtown Music Studio, said this week she thought Diana was ready for something like Fairy Tale Theater.

 “I always try to let kids know about auditions, especially during the spring when there are tons of opportunities,” Ms Gaudet said. “Fairy Tale Theater is the coolest thing. It’s amazing –– these kids put on a brand new show every few weeks. It’s scaled down a little but still, it’s interactive and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s run very professionally.

“With Diana, she’s always had this pretty soprano voice, and she’d been taking dance lessons, so she was ready to do more,” continued Ms Gaudet. “She’s a solid kid. She’s a deep kid –– you can tell she’s pretty smart, she’s focused, and she’s very centered.”

So Diana attended auditions in the spring of 1999, and found they were not as frightening as she had feared they would be.

“I decided to take a chance and was nervous but excited at the same time,” she recalled. “It actually turned out easier than I expected.”

Unfortunately the directors did not think she was quite ready for their company, and Diana was not invited to join Fairy Tale Theater that year.

Undaunted, Diana tried again the following year and this time was accepted into the company. She has been involved in every show the company has presented the last three summers, including a few lead roles –– she has played Cinderella, Goldilocks, and Rapunzel just as comfortably as she has tackled the roles of The Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, Tiger Lily in Peter Pan and roles in Alice in Wonderland, The Dancing Princesses, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Aesop’s Fables.

The young performers traditionally have two practices during the week leading into each of their shows, and then a run-through before the audience arrives the morning of each show.

“They’re expected to learn their scripts, and they do a lot on their own,” Linda Cucuruto, Diana’s mother, recently pointed out. “It’s amazing how they pull it all together.”

In November 2001 Diana participated in “An American Picnic,” a special one-time event at Edmond Town Hall that raised funds for victims of 9/11. She performed “On A Wonderful Day Like Today,” and “she just knocked everybody’s socks off,” said voice teacher and event coordinator Jackie Gaudet.

“When she sang at the 9/11 concert it was the first time she really acted out her song. She’d taken her performance level up a notch and she was just great,” Ms Gaudet said. “She was very comfortable and her moves looked very natural. I can see her doing lead roles in the future, especially classical musical theater if that’s what she decides to do.

“She always lives up to any challenge I give her,” added Ms Gaudet.

Adding another entry to her résumé, television work, Diana recently joined Fairy Tale Theater director Elyse Jasensky for an episode of Center Stage, a Charter Communications program created by Newtown resident Gene Rosen. A fairly new production, Center Stage is a weekly program designed, says its creator, to highlight local and regional theater and personalities in Charter’s viewing domain and surrounding areas.

Mr Rosen was very impressed with Diana’s interview.

“She has a wonderful stage presence,” he said. “She was fantastic in front of the camera and not the least bit pretentious. She just seems to enjoy sharing this gift of hers.”

Ms Jasensky, who selected Diana to join her for the program, agreed.

“She was very poised and had wonderful anecdotes to share,” Ms Jasensky said. “She was a great advertisement for us,” she added with a laugh.

In addition to voice lessons, Diana has also been dancing since the age of 3. She studies at Dance, Etc, a Newtown-based studio, and plans to add to the jazz and tap classes she has been taking for a number of years. Diana admitted the dance lessons –– and the naturally graceful movement that comes with studying dance for a number of years –– have probably helped with her on-stage comfort and poise.

“I just love being on stage,” she said, adding, “I don’t usually get nervous.”

Fairy Tale Theater director Jasensky says that Diana’s love of acting carries over to the audience.

“She’s an extremely dependable human being,” Ms Jasensky recently said. “She’s kind, lovely, caring, smart… all the things you would wish for your own child. I just think she’s a wonderful kid.

“She has fun on the stage, and the children really respond to her.”

Linda Cucuruto says her daughter had a presence from an early age.

“I remember her first grade teacher telling me how she would love watching Diana do Show & Tell,” Mrs Cucuruto shared. “She was very comfortable and very animated. She’s a very different person when she gets on the stage.”

In addition to the performance of The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff for this Saturday morning –– not to mention the homework and tests that had to be taken care of during the final weeks of seventh grade –– Diana has also recently been attending rehearsals for A Century of Song: Broadway Through The Years, a full production by Brookfield Theater Company that opens Saturday night. The rehearsals for this show have sometimes run until 10 pm, but Diana has been able to juggle school and theater. In Brookfield she will be playing the role of Sunshine, a child conceived in the 1960s.

When there is free time available, Diana enjoys playing basketball and she loves singing. She has already put together a CD where she sang some of her favorite songs, and gave copies to many of her friends. She enjoys the annual trips to Cape Cod to celebrate her mother’s birthday, and also enjoys just relaxing on occasion.

While this summer’s schedule will keep her busy on two local stages, the Cucuruto family is not yet planning any trips to Hollywood for Diana. There are trips to see Broadway shows about once a year and Diana also attends as many shows as she can that are presented by Musicals at Richter (the adult theater company this is the umbrella for Fairy Tale Theater), but Linda and Jim Cucuruto are not ready to send their daughter into adulthood too quickly.

“Fortunately there’s a lot of local things available for all of us to enjoy right now,” Mrs Cucuruto said. “We’re not ready to do too much traveling right now. I think [Diana] needs her childhood and there’s enough to keep her busy… although she tries to talk us into taking her to California.”

Grounds at Wooster School, on Ridgebury Road in Danbury, open at 10:30 for the 11 am Fairy Tale Theater shows. Bring blankets or low chairs for seating on the lawn. Tickets are $5 each (children under 2 are free) and may be purchased at the gate. For ticket reservations and further information, call the Richter Arts Center box office at 748-6873 or visit www.MusicalsAtRichter.org.