By Khalida Sarwari
At 75, Rosalie Price is busier than most people her age. On a typical day, she can be found in her garden tending to her plants and flowers, sitting in front of a book with a needle in her hand knitting a blanket, out and about volunteering, Taiko drumming or standing atop the stage at West Valley College.
Price is a student in the theater department at West Valley and has been one for five years now. Gathering her courage and going to an audition of The Crucible to try out for a part in the fall of 2008 was one of the best things she ever did, Price said.
“I didn’t realize going to The Crucible would open a door,” she said. “After that, they couldn’t get rid of me; even if I couldn’t act, I helped backstage.”
While most students are focused on fulfilling prerequisites and leaving to pursue other ventures, Price is happy exactly where she is in her rehearsal and performance class. She’s not there for the credits, but for the experience of being involved in theater productions.
Price’s love of theater can be traced back to her youth in San Francisco, where she was born and raised. As a little girl, her mother took her to see plays at the Herbst Theatre. In elementary school, she acted in school plays and those put on by her Girl Scout troop. All that changed, however, when after celebrating her 12th birthday she was struck with polio. The disease sent Price to the hospital for six months, followed by years of physical therapy. She was required to wear leg braces and use crutches. And worse, she was forced to give up one of the things she loved the most for some years.
But it wasn’t long before Price found her way back to theater. While attending San Francisco State University for her undergraduate degree, she helped out backstage in the university’s theater department. After receiving her teaching credential from the California College of Arts and Crafts, which is now known as the California College of the Arts, Price and her husband, John, moved to Palo Alto, and there she found herself at home with the Palo Alto Players Theatre Company.
Price and her husband lived in Palo Alto for 41 years, raising their son Michael, now 49, who works in the tech field in Southern California. While her husband worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley, Price spent 20 years with the Palo Alto Players before the couple moved to the Saratoga Retirement Community eight years ago.
In her tenure at West Valley, Price has taken on a myriad of roles, both on- and off-stage. She’s been an actress, a director and assistant director. She’s helped with making costumes and building scenery and props. She’s also served as a dramaturg, a person who deals with research and development of plays or operas.
This summer, Price is involved in a new and exciting capacity: as a producer in the production of two plays she wrote 40 years ago. The first, titled Even the World’s Most Beautiful Freeway, was written in 1973 and is a one-person play about a man who dies in a crash on the highway and becomes a ghost. Price said she was inspired at the time by the newly constructed Interstate Highway 280, which she found beautiful. The second play, titled Healing Our World, was written a year later and was submitted in a local radio station contest. The play centers on “the ecological destruction of our world,” Price said.
As a producer, Price attends rehearsals, addresses questions that come up and works closely with the directors. She said she chose to take on a more hands-off role this summer because she’s preparing to go on a six-week vacation to Europe with her husband to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. But Price said she’d throw herself into theater as soon as she gets back.
“I love the theater,” she said. “I enjoy being with the people; the kids are so darling. I love getting dressed up.”
Because of her polio, Price said she never could join team sports of any kind. Working in theater has given her that experience of being a part of a team that she always felt she missed out on. In theater, she said, “you’re a part of a group and each person is valued, each person is contributing.”
The theater department is presenting Price’s plays as part of its sixth annual “Alpha Project,” which will culminate with a theatrical event featuring 12 short one-act plays and two student-choreographed dance numbers.
Price’s plays will be presented at the Main Theatre July 25-27 at 8 p.m. and July 28 at 2 p.m. General admission is $5. For additional information, call 408.741.2058.
