Meet Tia Wooley of Desert Foothills Theater in North Scottsdale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tia Wooley.

Tia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My very first theater experience was in high school. I played one of the dwarfs in the Hobbit. Opening night, I missed my entrance because I had to run to the bathroom and then ripped my costume rushing out through the door. Another on-stage experience, more than ten years later, as I was getting ready to go on stage, the stage manager told me to remove my glasses… an unexpected event. I promptly walked into a wall and knocked over the entire set. The show had to be stopped while the crew re-set. I had no place to go after that, you don’t get any lower – so I could only go up!

I’ve spent the last 25 years working in theater, after college, I took a longer route to get back to it, with three kids, three daughters in laws and one grandkiddo, two dogs and a very supportive husband, I finally made the plunge to become active again.

At this point, I’ve done something in every aspect of theater, directing, lights, sound, stage managing, costuming, building sets, selling concessions, setting seasons, booking musicians, scheduling rehearsals and promotions (and flashmobs), as well as the dirty work that the general public has no idea about like chasing away vagrants, or wet vacuuming up a flooded theater right before a show is to open.

For the last several years, I’ve enjoyed Managing Theaters. That title means a lot of different things, but in a nutshell, you select a season, set a budget and then ensure all aspects, people and their needs to succeed are met from people support to marketing.

The journey to Desert Foothills Theater was initiated by the fact that my husband’s parents live here, that alone was enough to make me look for something in this area. I hadn’t expected to find anything for at least five more years, so this was exciting!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Theater is one of those things that you just hope what you’re doing is the right thing, from selecting a show – will the public like it? will anyone audition? will the director do a great job? will anyone come to see it? Those are the mental challenges. No theater makes money on their shows. Sure ticket sales help, but without sponsors, donations and grants, not to mention the incredible assistance of volunteers, a theater just couldn’t maintain. So, the struggle is to continually stay on top of the scene so to speak, keep getting out there so that people in our community will continue to support our theater.

The road is definitely not smooth, Sometimes, things just happen and it is a series of unavoidable sequences of events, and as the Managing Director, you just have to jump on it and try to mitigate any damages. That sounds bad, but its pretty much a daily event, from sick actors, advertising deadlines, directors that drop shows, venue issues, budgeting complications, design details, volunteer coordination, event planning, as everyone out there knows, the devil is in the details, and there are always moving parts in a theater. At any one time, we have a show auditioning, educational classes operating, productions in rehearsal shows in performances, workshops, presentations, cabarets and all of them need people, budgets, space, time and advertising. anything can go wrong at any moment… and something will. The trick is to solve the issue before something else becomes an issue. So, no, it’s not a smooth road, no part of it is smooth, but it’s all interesting, fun, exciting, and when audiences come to see a show or parents come to see what their kids have learned, there’s a feeling pride and accomplishment that makes it all worthwhile.

Desert Foothills Theater – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I manage a theater that provides classes to the area schools on performance, singing, dance and script writing, spring break camps, and summer camps and community theater performances.

This is my first season in Scottsdale, and I’m just setting the season for next year, we have the regular season schedule and I am adding in Playwright Festivals to the calendar for next year in addition to our educational programs, camps, and workshops. I’m also adding in some “pop-up shows”, reaching out to the local communities and venues for specialized performances of a specific, small cast, single set productions.

The Playwright Festivals are something I’m really looking forward to starting here at Desert Foothills Theater. I’m working with playwright Andrea Markowitz to establish parameters for the various festivals, but in the end, we’ll have original short plays (ranging from one minute to 10 minutes) from playwrights around the world that we get to perform! It’s pretty exciting. We’ll have a “Play in a Day” festival where playwrights write and the director and actors rehearse and perform within one day, again original works. I also have a playwright festival called “Kids Korner” where second graders from select schools write plays (without adult input – no story help, no grammar help, no input from adults at all) and Grown-ups perform them. It was wildly successful at my last theater, and I’ve had a great response from schools and actors about being involved with it. As with all things, I really hope it’s successful here too.

The bottom line is that as a theater, in the northern reaches of Scottsdale, we are in a pretty remote area. The actors are from all over Maricopa County, some traveling over an hour each night just to get here so they can rehearse and perform. We just want an audience. Like everyone else, in any job anywhere, we want to be liked. There is nothing like performing before an audience, and even though I’m behind the scenes making all the puzzle pieces fit into the picture, I’m so proud of our design team, our production staff, our teachers, interns, our Board of Directors, and especially my right-hand man Chris Knudsen, who runs our box office, social media and does everything to get us ready for each and every show, I appreciate everyone it takes to make these performances happen. It just feels good to have the reward be a nice round of applause! I recommend everyone try it in their office – you’ll get a sense of what we are working towards!

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were just starting out?
Well, contact lenses come to mind right away. Knocking over a set is the first thing I’d eliminate off my list of wish I’d done differently.

Seriously though, I would have kept better lists from the start – how did I solve that problem when it arose and what led up to the issue? Because now, I know that the exact same thing will eventually happen again (from a patron heart attack during a performance, to a complete power outage during a huge musical number), I would have tracked better in the beginning.

Since then, I have a friend that helped me lay out everything just like a project manager would, lists with lists to back it up, because at some point anything that happens will make that list so I can go back and not re-create the wheel. It has helped tremendously.

Some things you wish you’d handled differently, but the end goal is to make sure everyone really does know that you appreciate them, their time and their talent, whether they are the ones selling concessions or acting on stage. Differently, perhaps, but what I did do led me here, and this is a pretty great place to be.

Contact Info:

• Address: Desert Foothills TheaterOffice: 34250 N. 60th St, (Orion Bldg)
  Scottsdale, AZ 85266Performances: Cactus Shadows Fine Arts Center
  33606 N. 60th St.
  Scottsdale, AZ 85266

  Camps, Live Performance Theater, Adult and Children, Festivals

• Website: www.DFTheater.org
• Phone: 480-488-1981
• Email: tia@azfcf.org
• Instagram: @desertfoothillstheater
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/dftheater

Image Credit:
Headshot: by Chris Wooley, Heads & Tails Photography, Show images by: Larry Wooley (Wonka), Mike Benedetto (lady trying to kiss the man dressed as a lady), Camp Images: Meribeth Reeves

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.