Arts

If it sounds exhausting, for the actors it’s exhilarating and an enviable career step when many a recently graduated theater major is stuck serving up lattés between rounds of auditions. “It’s the joy of being a professional working actor and being able to recreate [the show] every day, and the challenge of keeping it fresh when some shows we might do 120 times,” says Perez.

His colleagues agree. “Children won’t tell you they like something just to make you feel better,” says actor Rob Jenkins, who toured in the fall for a second season with Theatre IV’s Hugs & Kisses. “So to truly be able to entertain kids and at the same time teach them lessons, to make a child laugh and to give them joy, is one of the most amazing things you can do.”

Back in September, on a small stage inside Theatre IV’s downtown Richmond home, Jenkins and the other four young cast members of Hugs & Kisses were rehearsing a scene. No brooding piece of contemporary angst, this was classic musical theater—singing, dancing, big gestures, bigger expressions, so buoyant with pep and animation it nearly fizzed. So it might seem surprising that the show, one of Theatre IV’s signature, award-winning original productions, was created to protect children against sexual abuse. With its upbeat tone, however, Hugs & Kisses focuses on a positive message, celebrating all the good, healthy ways people share affection—a hug from a parent, a kiss from a sweetheart—while helping children understand that they never have to let themselves be the victims of abuse. Co-produced with Theatre IV by Prevent Child Abuse Virginia and the Virginia Department of Social Services, Hugs & Kisses has been seen by more than 1.3 million Virginia schoolchildren since 1983 and has helped thousands of them come forward to seek help.

Today the cast was rehearsing the opening scene. The set was simple—a few stage flats hinged together—yet cleverly designed so that a flip of one and a flop of another changed the backdrop. Four doors were built into the flats, and the actors ran through them and around the ends of the flats in a complicated, rapid-fire choreography of entries and exits, spoken lines, comic bits and character changes; with only a prop, a gesture or a shift in tone of voice, the actors somehow morphed from smitten teenagers to parents with their children to an elderly aunty come bearing sloppy kisses.