About the Park Dale Players
The Park Dale Players has been a fixture in North County Children’s theater for the last 35 years. Beginning as a company of adults performing original plays for children and teaching drama workshops in schools, PDP began its student musical theater program in the Encinitas School District in the fall of 1999. Since then, we have produced four original musicals a year, all of them written by PDP’s own playwright and lyricist Pat Lydersen with music by composer Wendy Woolf. Over the years, this program has provided thousands of students the opportunity to hone their acting, singing, and dancing skills, and to experience the excitement of working with others to present a polished performance on stage.
Our Goal
The Park Dale Players is not just for the experienced student with a strong interest in theater. It is for everyone, whether they are outgoing or shy, whether they have been in numerous shows or have never set foot on stage. We believe that theater is the perfect vehicle to help foster a child’s natural creativity and to help them gain in confidence, self-awareness, and self-esteem. With that in mind, our plays are written specifically to give every child a special character to play. There are no “chorus” parts in our productions. Everyone has lines, everyone sings, everyone dances. Our goal is to have our students come away from a Park Dale Players experience with the sense that they have taken part in something very special.
Who We Are
Pat Lydersen: Playwright, Lyricist, Director
Pat is the founder of The Park Dale Players and co-director of our musical theater productions. She has written all the plays performed by our company. These plays (and musicals in collaboration with composer Wendy Woolf) have been published and produced throughout the nation, as well as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Pat has a master’s degree in theatre from Penn State University and over forty-five years experience as an actress, director, teacher and playwright. She began her career in Denver as an actress and teacher with the Colorado Children’s Theatre Company, and then as the director of the Gove Community School Children’s Theatre Ensemble, a company composed of high school students developing new plays for children. After a move to Corning, New York, Pat worked as a drama and dance teacher and received a grant to form Tell-A-Tale Theatre, another company of high school students performing original plays for children. While in Corning she was also active with the Community Free Theatre, which produced her first two musicals - Christmas Pudding and Ogres, Trolls, and Dragon Wings. Next stop was Kansas City, where she founded the Heartland Players, a company which produced numerous Lydersen-written plays including There’s a Monster in This Box!, which was presented at the first Johnson County Community Theatre Festival.
Joanna Griffin: Director, Choreographer
Joanna co-directs with Pat and is the choreographer for our musical theater productions. She also runs all our after-school programs and teaches drama at several schools in the Encinitas area. A competitive gymnast during her high school years, she has a degree in Theater and Dance from UCSD and spent several years in L.A. where she had numerous jobs as a dancer, and as a choreographer for Santa Monica City College’s Synapse dance concerts. In San Diego, she was a performer and teacher for Eveoke Dance Company downtown, taught theater and dance for the San Diego Junior Theatre in Balboa Park. and started up both the Park Dale Players’ hip hop program and her own youth dance company, Co-Motion.
Wendy Woolf: Composer
Though now limiting her theater work to composing, Wendy for many years was the music director of the Park Dale Players as well as their “one woman band.” Although she has a BA in Biology/Genetics from UCSD, she grew up playing piano, oboe and guitar and has composed and published music for Pat’s plays since the mid 1990’s. Besides her duties with Park Dale Players, Wendy is a talented oil painter and has taught art and science in Encinitas and Carlsbad schools.
More About Our Programs
Summer Camps
During a two-week period in the summer, we rehearse and perform a full-scale musical theater production. Rehearsals run Monday through Friday from 9:00 until 2:00. Performances, complete with full costume, props, sets and lighting, are on Friday and Saturday evenings of the last weekend. These camps are open to all student in 3rd through 10th grade.
Schoolyear Productions
These are full-scale musical theater productions rehearsed in the evenings over two months during the school year. Like our summer camps, these are open to 3rd through 10th grade.
After School Programs
These productions take place in various elementary schools in the area and are for 2nd through 6th grade. Rehearsals take place at school immediately after the school day with dress rehearsals and a final evening production at the end of the session.
Tell-A-Tale Theater
Younger students in grades K-2 can participate in Tell-A-Tale Theater, a creative drama workshop that focuses not only on teaching children the basics of drama and dance, but also on developing their natural imaginative skills. Each class centers around a grade-appropriate story which students will be helped to bring to life through theater games, improvisations, movement exercises, and role-playing.
