PAGE 6 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, June 17, 2021 • The BuLLeTIn
CENTRAL OREGON ARTS SCENE
bendbulletin.com/gosee
Bend father of 3 takes an active role
in family’s theater activities
BY DAVID JASPER • The Bulletin
M
any parents back their kids’ hobbies and activities, providing time, transportation and other support. When it comes to being involved in their kids’
theater activities, Randy and Amy James take it to another level of involvement. On stage and backstage, community theater is a family affair for the
James family of Bend, with all five of its members sometimes involved in a show.
“It started because my husband and I have always loved
theater,” Amy said. “We did a lot of performing in our youth,
before we had kids. … It had been a while. So kind of our
kids are the ones that got us into it.”
Amy in the Seattle area and Randy grew up in Cave Junc-
tion, where he’d been active in school productions and
church pageants as a kid.
“You grow up in Southern Oregon, there’s not a lot of
opportunities for the arts,” he said. “That’s probably one of
the things that motivates me for our kids. You grow up in
a town of 1,500 people in Southern Oregon, a significantly
more conservative part of the state, the arts aren’t going to
get spent on; it’s people focusing on being able to eat and
keep the lights on.”
The two met in college at George Fox University, a Chris-
tian college in Newberg, where Amy had been roommates
with Randy’s sister. Amy took classes in music and theater,
but Randy, who was a couple of years ahead of her in school,
did not.
“Coming from an economically deprived area, when I
went into college, I was very focused in terms of focusing on
what I needed to do to get there, graduate, and not go back
to Southern Oregon,” he said. “Very purposeful. That was
one issue, and the theater community at Fox, at that particu-
lar time, was a little closed off.”
The two married in 1997. After Amy earned her master’s
degree in teaching, they moved to Bend in 1999, where they
became active in theatrical dessert performances at their
church before beginning their family. The James family is fa-
ther Randy, mother Amy, daughter Katey, 14, and sons Ca-
sey, 17, and Tucker, 9. Randy, who works for Lucidly, a soft-
ware and coaching education company, and Amy teaches at
Oregon Family School, a charter school in Bend.
The first real hint of their family’s future theater commit-
ments came in 2012, while aboard a Disney cruise, which
had a talent show that was open to guests. Katey, who was 6
at the time, wanted to participate.
“She has been a budding performer her entire life,” Amy
said. However, “We hadn’t signed her up for it. We didn’t re-
alize that was a thing we had to do, and so she was very up-
set with us.”
Instead of attending the talent show, the family ended up
Submitted
Members of the James family during the 2016 presentation of
“The Little Mermaid” from TMP.
going to see another on-board show, which happened to fea-
ture professional singer Susan Egan, who originated the role
of Belle in the 1994 Broadway musical adaptation of “Beauty
and the Beast,” among other credits.
The determined future thespian, however, was still not
happy.
“Katey, sitting there, having no idea who this person is,
was just completely irritated that this woman got to sing on
the stage, and she was denied her opportunity to sing on the
stage,” Amy said, imitating Katey’s folded arms and indig-
nant stare.
“She’s had an innate desire to stand in front of people and
have them watch her perform since, I think, she could walk
and talk,” Randy said.
Afterward, the family approached Egan, and Katey took
the opportunity to sing a song for her.
“And Susan turned to me and she’s like, ‘You have to get
this girl in community theater.’ I was like, ‘OK!’” Amy said.
At first, they couldn’t find anything she was old enough
for, but an opportunity came when Katey joined the cast of
“Wizard of Oz,” an August 2014 show that featured adult
and some 40 youth performers, staged by the then-new
Thoroughly Modern Productions.
They saw other parents involved in the show and were
inspired to get involved themselves. Before long, Amy au-
ditioned for the next TMP show, “Beauty and the Beast,” in
early 2015, and Randy crewed its summer 2015 show, “Pe-
ter Pan.” Older son Casey had meanwhile gotten involved at
BEAT Children’s Theatre.
Eventually, they established a rule that they had to do the
same shows.
“We got tired of doing the back and forth thing, so we
were finally like, ‘Hey, we’ve all got to do the same show, and
so (Casey) ended up doing a show with TMP,” Amy said.
Tucker being a bit younger than his siblings, “The Add-
ams Family,” a 2018 production at 2nd Street Theater in
Bend before it shuttered, is the one show the entire family
has appeared in together.
“It was super fun to (have) the realization, ‘This is the first
one we’ve all done!’” Amy said.
The COVID-19 pandemic over the past year-plus has, of
course, put a damper on the family’s collective efforts.
“We’ve been framing this last year as a time for refining,
training and exploring new skills over performing,” Amy
said. Katey stayed active with dance, and will have her first
live performance in over a year. Casey stayed active in the-
ater at Redmond Proficiency Academy, and Tucker is en-
rolled at BEAT Children’s Theatre this summer.
She’s been working with Ellipse Theatre Community, a
production company launched last year, to develop future
projects and establish its infrastructure, and Randy’s using
this time to evaluate the time he has available to commit to
theater, and what projects he wants to invest time in.
Where their kids take theater in the future is unwritten.
Randy has a feeling that Katey, at least, will always stay in-
volved.
“I’m 100% convinced that whatever Katey does, theater
is going to be part of her life for the rest of her life, in some
fashion,” he said.
“The point … that is for me, the most interesting in terms
of being a parent and watching your kids go through theater,
is how differently they interact with it.”
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David Jasper: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com