Portland’s Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre expands acting, dance, and vocal classes to second location in Salem

The company’s first show to be staged in both cities, “G.I. Holiday Jukebox,” opens Dec. 5.
Clara-Liis Hillier (left) teaches adults dance at Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre in Salem. Although her "greatest joy" is teaching upcoming performers, Hillier says, "there is something exceptionally beautiful and inspiring about teaching adults who are ... just doing it for the love of performing." Photo by: David Bates
Clara-Liis Hillier (left) teaches adults dance at Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre in Salem. Although her “greatest joy” is teaching upcoming performers, Hillier says, “there is something exceptionally beautiful and inspiring about teaching adults who are … just doing it for the love of performing.” Photo by: David Bates

Salem’s lively theater scene this summer got a little bigger and deeper.

Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre, which has been preparing young people in Portland for careers in theater arts since 2017, set up digs on one of downtown Salem’s busiest blocks. They’re upstairs in the Salem Arts Building on Liberty Street, about a minute’s walk from the Reed Opera House mall.


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Last month, the school wrapped up its first eight-week “triple-threat” class, where students ranging in age from 10 to adult received training from theater professionals in acting, vocal work, and dance.

Already, the seeds planted under the tutelage of Bridgetown founder Rick Lewis are sprouting on stages around the Willamette Valley.

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Bridgetown theater’s first dual-city production, G.I. Holiday Jukebox, opens Thursday in the company’s black box stage in Portland, running Dec. 5-8, with 7:30 p.m. shows the first two days, and 2 p.m. matinees the final two. The following weekend, it moves to Salem, where four performances will be staged Dec. 12-15 at Reed Opera House, with the times for evening shows and matinees split the same way. Tickets for the Salem production are available here.

In that production, seven young performers who took classes in Salem will join the cast. They are Coleman Casebeer, Allison Hall, Emily Irvin, Tyson Miller, Aven Thornhill, Theo Ueng, and Neil Yeh-Crawford.

Written, arranged, and directed by Lewis in 2010 and first performed at Tigard’s Broadway Rose Theatre, the show is a tribute to the American Theatre Wing’s Stage Door Canteen of World War II. It is hosted by four (fictitious) Hollywood “stars” who entertain troops with holiday music. The younger actors, appearing only in the Salem version, portray cast members of the (fictitious) film The Kids, the Kit and the Kaboodle!

The popular music of the 1940s and World War II is singular as a musical genre,” Lewis says in the press notes. “Some of the last century’s most beautiful lyrics and melodies were written during one of the darkest moments in history. These are the songs that our grandparents grew up with, the music that got us through WWII.”

But it’s already clear that productions by other companies will benefit from students who studied with Lewis and his team. That, really, is the point.

One youth, whose mother drove him to Salem every weekend for the eight weeks of classes, was cast as Lazar in a production of Fiddler on the Roof now in rehearsal at Gallery Theater in McMinnville and set for a February run. One of his instructors will appear in the same production.

That’s an example of the cross-pollination that’s a staple of the mid-valley theater scene.

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Bridgetown's Beth Sobo Turk (center) and Rick Lewis teach Sydney Bennett during the vocal performance class in Salem for older teens. Photo by: David Bates
Bridgetown’s Beth Sobo Turk (center) and Rick Lewis instruct Sydney Bennett during the vocal performance class in Salem for older teens. Photo by: David Bates

“Rick is definitely a game-changer for Salem,” said Alex Casebeer, whose son, Coleman, appears in the Salem production of G.I. Holiday Jukebox. “His track record is strong, his connections are deep, and his passion for theater shines so bright.” Coleman, a 12-year-old in the seventh grade at Abiqua School in Salem, told his father that “Rick is easily one of the best directors he’s worked for.”

Lewis moved to Portland in 1993 after 15 years of working in New York, where he racked up an impressive resume of off-Broadway and cabaret shows as a music director, pianist, and arranger. A seven-time Drammy Award winner, he was the resident musical director for Portland Center Stage. Offering private vocal lessons at his own studio, he came to realize that — in Portland, anyway — there was sufficient demand for instruction in the theater arts.

In even the few short years of training young people through Bridgetown in Portland — years that included a pandemic, no less — Lewis has seen his students go on to establish careers in theater.

“I have one student who came to us when she was 12,” he told me. “She was one of three American students selected to go to the Royal Conservatory of Scotland. That was amazing to watch that student’s journey. I would have killed to have a program like this when I was younger. It truly is amazing to be able to help someone open a door.”

Opening doors comes easy for the crew that joined Lewis in Salem this fall. All have worked professionally, and all have connections with both regional theaters and theaters around the country:

Dance instructor Clara-Liis Hillier’s day job is as education manager for the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg. She’s worked in the Portland area with the Broadway Rose Theatre, Lakewood Theatre Company, Northwest Children’s Teacher, and Corrib Theatre; she helps out at Sprague High School in Salem where her husband teaches theater.

Music instructor Beth Sobo Turk, originally from New York, has worked in regional theaters around the country and appeared in a nationally touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar. She hails from McMinnville, where she’s a regular at Gallery Theater and will, along with one of her fall-term students at Bridgetown, appear there in Fiddler.

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Acting instructor Gavin Hoffman works with the youngest students, including Coleman Casebeer (right), ages 10-15, at a recent class in Bridgetown’s Salem studio. Photo by: David Bates
Acting instructor Gavin Hoffman works with the youngest students, including Coleman Casebeer (right), ages 10-15, at a recent class in Bridgetown’s Salem studio. Photo by: David Bates

Acting instructor Gavin Hoffman of Portland got his BFA in acting from Ithaca College and is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. A four-time Drammy winner, he’s lived and worked all over the country and also has TV credits that include Grimm, Portlandia, The Librarians, Shrill, and The Big Easy

And all, of course, have worked with Lewis and were asked by him to teach the Salem classes.

“For our first eight-week session, I had the pleasure of teaching with Rick every other class,” Turk said. “He’d pop into the Salem location, and together we’d work with the students and give feedback. Rick is a hoot, he keeps me laughing. His humor and wit, paired with his passion for training these young artists, makes him a fantastic coach and collaborator.”

That Bridgetown landed in Salem at all, Lewis said, was a product of serendipities that began with an unfortunate event: the closure earlier this year of Enlightened Theatrics in Salem. Their last production was James and the Giant Peach in December. A month or so later, the company’s board announced that economic challenges meant they would “go dark for the time being.”

Lewis said Enlightened Theatrics initially approached Bridgetown about a merger, but he decided that “probably wasn’t in our mutual interest to do that.” But Lewis pledged to fill the void with education programming, which the Salem company had been doing on a smaller scale.

Bridgetown did some one-day workshops in Salem and finally held an open house over the summer to gauge interest in something more permanent, and the room was packed.  Classroom space on the mezzanine of the Salem Arts Building was available, just up the street from the Reed Opera House where productions by another Salem theater company that ran aground during the pandemic, The Verona Studio, were mounted. Bridgetown was happy to fill both those voids as well.

“There was just an eagerness in Salem for it,” Hoffman said. “There’s a real desire here to learn.”

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Bridgetown student Sydney Bennett sings, accompanied by Devin Desmond, in a Bridgetown Salem class. Photo by: David Bates
Bridgetown student Sydney Bennett sings, accompanied by Devin Desmond, in a Bridgetown Salem class. Photo by: David Bates

On a sunny, crisp Saturday morning this fall, I dropped by Salem Bridgetown’s digs and got a look at how it works.

There are three groups, kids ages 10-15, teenagers 16-19, and adults. From hour to hour, they would rotate among vocal, acting, and dance classes. The instruction is appropriate to each group’s skill level. The younger kids, for example, aren’t learning long monologues, but they do theater games with Hoffman that help get them out of their shells.

“There are plenty of lessons I was taught in school — and even at the collegiate level — that didn’t make sense to me until after school had ended,” Hoffman said. “Some of the things that we do, they’re not going to put it together until maybe five or 10 years down the road.”

As rewarding as it is for Lewis and his staff to see the young students grow and go on to appear on other stages and get theatrical careers off the ground, Hillier said teaching adults — a few of whom sign up simply because they drove their child an hour to get there and figured they might as well have fun while they wait — is also something to see.

“It is my greatest joy to be a teacher for upcoming performers,” she said. “But there is something exceptionally beautiful and inspiring about teaching adults who are making this three-hour commitment for themselves, getting there each weekend, wanting to explore their strengths in theater but also their weaknesses, and just doing it for the love of performing. It really is amazing to see that each week and lead dance class with them.”

Along with the previously cited example of McMinnville’s Gallery Theater, other area theaters will almost certainly benefit here and there from the artistic lift offered by Bridgetown. Keizer Homegrown Theatre is a relatively new theater in Salem’s “sister” city, having launched in 2012. Across the Willamette River in West Salem up in the hills, Pentacle Theatre has been going strong for more than 60 years. In Rickreall, Struts & Frets Theatre Company has been mounting Shakespeare productions since 2016. Newberg has Gather Repertory Theatre and Penguin Productions.

And some students do go on to make this their living.

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Teachers at Bridgetown's Salem location include (back row, from left) Rick Lewis, Gavin Hoffman, Beth Sobo Turk; (front row, from left) Dru Rutledge and Clara-Liis Hillier. Photo courtesy: Rick Lewis/Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre
Teachers at Bridgetown’s Salem location include (back row, from left) Rick Lewis, Gavin Hoffman, Beth Sobo Turk; (front row, from left) Dru Rutledge and Clara-Liis Hillier. Photo courtesy: Rick Lewis/Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre

Mallorie Mendoza, 24, studied under Lewis in Portland from 2016 to 2019 and went to work in New York after graduating from the Manhattan School of Music.

“Bridgetown is such an important school for young people, because it gives them a safe space to learn, create, and become the best versions of themselves,” she said. And those connections also helped. “Rick knew me so well and knew the Manhattan School of Music would be a great fit for me, so he brought the program to my attention. I’m so grateful.”

She’s also employed, appearing in a production of A Christmas Carol at the Tuacahn Amphitheatre in Ivins, Utah.

Back in Oregon, Lewis is excited about the company’s first dual-city gig. “It’s gonna be fun,” he said. “We’ve not done this before, but we’re changing the nature of the show for the second half of it. It’ll keep the adults on their toes and the kids are excited about it. I’m very excited to see how it works.”

The next round of classes, meanwhile, will be held in the spring, with a class aimed at college-age performers added to the mix.

“It was a bit of a gamble for us,” Lewis said of the decision to expand into Salem. “But it’s one of the most exciting things we’ve done.”

David Bates is an Oregon journalist with more than 20 years as a newspaper editor and reporter in the Willamette Valley, covering virtually every topic imaginable and with a strong background in arts/culture journalism. He has lived in Yamhill County since 1996 and is working as a freelance writer. He has a long history of involvement in the theater arts, acting and on occasion directing for Gallery Players of Oregon and other area theaters. You can also find him on Substack, where he writes about art and culture at Artlandia.

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