Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series going behind the scenes with the Great American Melodrama’s owners, cast, and crew. The first part, “Party like it’s 1975,” ran on June 5.
Like many artists the Great American Melodrama attracts, artistic director Johnny Keating is a California transplant. His career’s colored with performing arts gigs in Arizona, Florida, Washington, and other states.
After relocating from Minnesota to Oceano in 2008 to act in his first Melodrama show, he became fast friends with his peers at the company offstage, partly thanks to their living situation.
The Melodrama’s inclusive housing, offered as part of the company’s contracts with actors and creative team members since the theater’s inception, allows artists traveling from afar to jump right into a production’s rehearsal period without worrying about finding a place to stay.
From the Melodrama’s beginning in 1975, the company’s lodging options have always been within walking distance of the theater, since a lot of out-of-area talent would fly or bus in “without cars,” Melodrama co-owner Lynne Schlenker said.
Schlenker and her husband, John, currently own two properties—a five-bedroom house and a three-bedroom condo—they’ve designated to house Melodrama employees.
During the theater’s early years, however, the couple rented a handful of different spots in Oceano where they offered housing to employees. Staying on brand with an optimistic and cost-effective outlook, the pair bought the three-bedroom condo about 30 years ago. Less than a decade later, they purchased the five-bedroom house.
Between the two properties, Melodrama managing director Stacy Halvorsen said that local talent also regularly use the company’s housing.
Some Melodrama regulars have taken advantage of the option periodically over several years, and they’ve experienced different iterations of either household—comparing it to different seasons of a reality show. Billy Breed is one such actor.
Born and raised in West Virginia, Breed lent his acting and dancing skills to theaters in New York, Tennessee, and other states before first stepping onto the Great American Melodrama’s stage in the late ’90s.
After a few shows with the company, he ventured to Illinois. But he couldn’t get the Central Coast out of his head and returned about five years later to work with the Melodrama again.
“They’re like a theatrical family, and a very unique theater in what they do,” said Breed, a recognizable face for anyone who’s been to a Melodrama, PCPA, or SLO REP show in the past two decades.
Later this summer, Breed will join other notable figures in the Melodrama’s pantheon to begin rehearsals for the theater’s 50th anniversary celebration, described as a song, dance, and comedy showcase with selected highlights from past years’ productions. Performances open on Aug. 8 and will run through Sept. 20.
The people Breed’s collaborated with and befriended via the local theater community are a big part of what’s kept him here for so long, he said. But what really drew him back to the area after living in Chicago wasn’t related to theater at all, Breed admitted.
“Chicago is a great working actors’ town. But I thought, ‘I cannot stand these winters,'” Breed said with a laugh.
Channeling that chilly attitude comes in handy whenever Breed gets to play Ebenezer Scrooge, the role he’s most frequently reprised during his time with the Melodrama, as part of the theater’s annual winter production, The Holiday Extravaganza.
If Breed ever gets a real-life visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, it might take him back to Christmas Eve 2008. He was staying in the same cast house as Keating at the time.
“We had a lovely dinner, and all of us brought our mattresses into the living room like a sleepover and had a fire in the fireplace,” Keating recalled. “We all had waffles in the morning. That’s a really clean, sweet version of all the wild times we had there.”
Keating said that the Melodrama’s newest actors, many in their 20s or 30s, seem “much more subdued” than past generations who’ve used the housing.
Melodrama managing director Halvorsen agreed.
“They’re not drinkers or real big partiers,” Halvorsen said. “The only problems that come up are like, ‘Oh, we need another controller to play Mario Kart.'”
One day before rehearsals started for the theater’s current production, a spoof of Les Misérables aptly named Less Miserable (onstage now through June 14), first-time Melodrama actor Madeline Gambon unpacked her belongings in the cast house she’s staying at.
“It’s been really lovely so far. We’re all cool with each other,” said Gambon, originally from Ventura County. “It’s very nice because I like being able to come home and know that I’ll be able to hibernate in my space of need or that we can all hang out. We’ll chill in our rooms but we’re willing to chill with each other.”
Gambon’s first impression of the Melodrama once her work on Less Miserable began was: “This place is a well-oiled machine.”
Keating hired Gambon for the Melodrama after meeting her through the Unified Professional Theatre Auditions program, which was also Breed’s gateway into the Melodrama back in 1998.
Another thing Gambon and Breed have in common is they’re not immune to snack bar cravings after most shows.
“I’ll just snack on whatever’s available at the end of the night,” Gambon said. “There tends to be a couple baked potatoes, and nacho cheese, and the chips.” Δ
Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood, from New Times’ sister paper, the Sun, is grabbing extra jalapeños. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 12-22, 2025.