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SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 2017
Siuslaw News
Community Voices
Film acting in Florence
How 2 area youth caught the Hollywood bug and brought it home
B Y C HANTELLE M EYER
Siuslaw News
W
hen Florence residents
think about opportunities
for youth acting in the area, they
think of Children’s Repertory of
Oregon Workshops (CROW) and its
six years of mainstage musicals, or
Last Resort Player’s years of includ-
ing youth in musicals and plays
spanning all ages. However, when
they think of acting, 16-year-old
Hope Garcia and 7-year-old Jonah
Vollmar think of the big screen.
Both youth have worked with
CROW, and both have filmed with
studios based in the Northwest, but
there, the similarities end.
HOPE GARCIA:
FULL CIRCLE
For Hope, being on stage is a
hereditary trait. Her great-grand-
mother was a radio actress in World
War II, and she has relatives who
sing, write aongs and act.
She thought about acting for the
first time while she was still living in
Idaho, where she lived with her fam-
ily up until they moved to Florence a
year ago.
“In 2013, I remember being in the
car and seeing a billboard. I don’t
know what inspired me, but I said,
‘Mom, I think I want to do some act-
ing,’” she said.
Rosa Garcia, Hope’s mother,
said,“She just decided she wanted to
try it all of a sudden. As soon as she
had an appointment with an agent,
they signed her on the spot. ... She
did her first commercial and she just
loved it. She loves being in front of
a camera and acting.”
Hope was the main character in
the upcoming short film “Missing
Indigenous,” premiering in March at
Filmapalooza, a film festival in
France.
Director Laronn Katchia said,
“We make all our stories impactful,
and Hope knew just how to repre-
sent that. We needed her to be able to
sing and act without talking, and she
was extremely professional.”
Katchia described “Missing
Indigenous” as “crazy intense and
surreal,” and said that Hope’s
singing and acting fit the feel of the
short work about native women who
disappear at a high rate.
“I wasn’t aware of what was hap-
pening until I got on set,” Hope said.
“It’s definitely one of the most
important roles I’ve done. I’m hon-
ored to be representing that.”
Katchia said Hope’s acting elicit-
ed chills in the theater when they
showed “Missing Indigenous.”
Hope now has her own IMDb
page detailing several of the inde-
pendent films she worked on,
though she has also done commer-
cials.
But the Internet Movie Database
doesn’t show all the work Hope puts
in.
For one, many sets are in Portland
or on location, requiring a several-
hour commute.
For another, acting takes a lot of
practice, especially for a teenager
busy with settling into a new town
and getting ready for the school year.
“Hope is really shy and quiet,”
Rosa said.
Acting has been a way for Hope
to cope with situations and come out
of her shell.
“Even if she’s going to do a report
in front of her class, Hope pretends
it’s a script and she nails it,” Rosa
said.
Hope is drawn toward drama,
regularly playing serious roles in her
handful of films.
“Every role has been intense —
except for the Sonic commercial I
did first, when I just got to drink a
really good milkshake,” she said. “I
feel like I can play that the best,
which is why I do want the chal-
lenge of a happy, giddy character so
I can get the feel for it.”
Rosa said that actors need “to be
able to do it all,” so Hope studies
with Portland-based actor and pro-
ducer Brian Sutherland and takes
classes that include humor and
romance.
She also works locally with
CROW. This summer, she helped
with Song and Dance Camp as a
teen helper, and she will appear
onstage this weekend in the one-act
shows the Advanced Acting
Program is performing.
“I enjoy stage acting with
CROW,” Hope said. “It’s really fun.
I like working on set a lot, too.”
She described stage acting as
being in the moment, while a film or
commercial allows herself to see the
final product afterwards.
“It’s cool to see that and know I
put my hard work and heart into that.
I could watch it over and over,” she
said. “It’s really awesome, perform-
ing either way.”
This school year, Hope will also
take video production, though
Siuslaw High School does not have
a theater class.
“I’m so excited for you,” Diane,
Hope’s aunt, said to her. “I turn 70
this year, so this is pretty neat to see
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JONAH VOLLMAR:
LOVE AND THE LIMELIGHT
For Jonah, he took to acting out
of his family’s love of performing.
His parents, Scott and Mary Jo
Vollmar, encouraged his sister, 13-
year-old Nyah, to follow her dreams
of singing. To gain exposure, they
signed her up with an agent.
As Scott brought the entire fami-
ly of four kids up to Portland, he got
the chance to place Jonah in front of
the camera, though Jonah had been
unwilling to try.
“He tricked me by telling me we
were just taking pictures (at a shoot),
but it was actually an audition,”
Jonah said. “I actually liked it, so I
started doing it more.”
Scott said, “He went in there and
hammed it up and did awesome. I
told him after the fact that it was an
audition.”
Here in Florence, Jonah has
worked with CROW as a telegram-
mer for 2016’s “Shrek the Musical”
and this year’s “The Addams Family
Musical,” appearing onstage before
the show to welcome the audience
in, and again at intermission to wel-
come the audience back.
Jonah also joined Last Resort
Players’ “Pirates of Penzance” in
November.
“I bugged him for about nine
months about being in Pirates,”
Scott said.
Director Leah Goodwin had ini-
tially brought up the idea of Jonah
playing a character called “Pirate
Pete,” and while the adults loved it,
Jonah had no hesitation in saying,
“No.”
“About three weeks before open-
ing night, Jonah changed his mind,”
Scott said. “He actually showed up
for tech week and rehearsed then. ...
Leah was going to have him just be
a walk-on, but he ended up going
out for four different scenes.”
COURTESY PHOTOS
Hope Garcia (left) and Jonah Vollmar (right) are two local actors who have performed
both on stage and in front of a camera.
People in the audience could eas-
ily pick up his clear young voice
singing along with the merry grown-
up pirates.
Last Resort Players led to a brief
cameo as the changeling boy in
Eugene Ballet’s Florence Events
Center performance of “Midsummer
Night’s Dream.”
“People recognized him from
‘Pirates,’ so it was fun to get him
back on stage,” Scott said.
Soon, Jonah went from doing a
satirical commercial about a
“Trump” truck, to playing the child
version of a lead character in
Portland’s “The Librarians” to flying
to Michigan to be part of a short film
called “Year One.”
Jonah played the role of Chhay, a
Cambodian boy caught up with his
brother in the genocide of 1975-79.
“They made a call for a 6-year-
old Asian boy, so I sent them his pic-
ture,” Scott said. “They contacted us
the next day for a Skype interview.”
Scott and Jonah had to learn the
character’s lines in Khmer, the lan-
help, and encouraged her to come
to Florence to work with local
youth, which she will on Saturday,
Aug. 26.
“We have made multiple six-
hour round trips to Portland to ben-
efit from Katie’s coaching and
expertise, and it’s been well worth
it,” he said. “So to have her come to
Florence, which means we don’t
have to be in the car for six hours,
well, to say the least I am ecstatic.”
O’Grady will teach youth the
basics of auditioning for film from
11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The session
will be $75. Registration is online
at ActingForKidsandTeens.com.
According to CROW Artistic
Director Melanie Heard, O’Grady
specializes in “kids who want to
broaden their horizons” to include
film and TV acting techniques.
“This style of acting is very dif-
ferent than live theater acting tech-
niques,” she said. “This is a truly
outstanding opportunity for our
local young actors.”
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guage of Cambodia. Using Google
translate, they focused on pronunci-
ation first and memorizing lines.
“It was a lot of acting, and only
six lines, but he still had to learn
them, and in another language,”
Scott said.
The Vollmars were able to send in
Jonah’s 30-second audition tape that
same day.
“When the director called us
back, he was amazed at how quickly
Jonah was able to pick this up and
send a video in. He said Jonah was
the only kid to do it in a week.”
To further prepare for the role, the
Vollmars enrolled Jonah and some
other CROW kids in an Acting for
Kids and Teens class.
“He went to the first three days
of an acting class with Katie
O’Grady, and we lined up a private
lesson with her to help him act it
out and prepare for his role.”
O’Grady operates Acting for
Kids and Teens and is a coach and
actor.
Scott was grateful for O’Grady’s
Heceta Beach
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