Director understands challenges of being 'Married Alive!'

Marriage changed director Stacey Flaster. Before she tied the knot in 2005, she loved being onstage in musicals.

"After I got married, I decided to have a family," she says. "I just didn't feel that need to perform. That need to audition and get a part wasn't in me anymore."

Flaster evolved from a singer, dancer and actress into a director and choreographer. So it's fitting that someone so altered by family life should direct the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre's production of the regional hit, "Married Alive!" by Sean Grennan and Leah Okimoto.

"Married Alive" is a musical comedy about the myriad ways marriage changes us - something the director clearly understands.

"I started dancing seriously in the fourth grade in Deerfield," Flaster explains. "I wanted to be a ballerina. I took private lessons. Then I went downtown every day to study dance at Ruth Page."

At New Trier High School, her interests expanded to include acting and singing. "I discovered I had a voice," Flaster says. "I started taking voice lessons."

Flaster graduated from the University of Illinois in 1993 with a degree in dance. She got her first professional job in theater at Pheasant Run in St. Charles soon after college, and her career blossomed from there. She spent most of the next 12 years performing, mostly in musicals, both locally and nationally.

But Flaster set aside that part of her performing life when she started her family. She got her first taste of working offstage when she began choreographing dances.

Choreography is basically directing for dancers, so it was a short step to directing stage productions, mostly musicals. Her directing credits include stints at the Paramount Arts Centre in Aurora, Light Opera Works, the Porchlight Music Theatre and the Theater at the Center.

"I am so not interested in being onstage," Flaster continues. "I am much more interested in the behind the scenes. And I love working with actors. I enjoy making people feel confident and I love that I am responsible for making them feel good. So I can get the best thing out of them."

The folks at Metropolis approached Flaster about directing "Married Alive!"

"In the show we follow two sets of characters, a young couple who is getting married and a more mature couple, who is at the wedding and are a little further along into their marriage," Flaster says. "The older couple is looking down on the younger couple - at how naive they are."

Just beginning their lives together, the young couple is oblivious to the challenges and changes all married couples face.

But change is not always bad. Sometimes it can lead to growth. That's one of the messages of "Married Alive!" - and Flaster's career proves it.

“Married Alive!”

When: Runs through Sunday, June 17, at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 West Campbell St., Arlington Heights. For more information, visit MetropolisArts.com or call the box office at (847) 577-2121.