Amanda Earls was a member of two casts recently nominated for the Colorado Theatre Guild’s 2006-07 best ensemble Henry Award. She played Lucy in the Aurora Fox’s “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and, oddly enough, Tricia (otherwise known as Peppermint Patty) in The Avenue Theater’s award-winning “Dog Sees God.”
Earls is now starring in the title role of a teacher in the Arvada Center children’s theater production of “Miss Nelson Is Missing.”
Q: So what is this thing with you and Charlie Brown?
A: And I promise you, right now, I am wearing a Peanuts shirt. It is odd. I must be obsessed.
Q: So of late, you have played a stripper, a drug-and-alcohol- and-sex-driven Peppermint Patty, and a heroin-chic Kit Kat Girl. So you know my question – what the heck are you doing in children’s theater?
A: This is my first real children’s show, and it is very different from falling on the ground drunk and high (“Dog Sees God”) or being nude onstage on heroin (“Cabaret”).
Q: Just to be clear: You don’t do any of that in “Miss Nelson Is Missing.”
A: None whatsoever.
Q: So, if you play Miss Nelson, and you are missing, am I to take it that you are not actually in this play?
A: I’m onstage a lot at the beginning, and I am onstage a lot at the end. But in the middle I am nowhere to be seen.
Q: Tell us about the story and this other character you play.
A: The “Miss Nelson” books were my real-life favorites growing up. Miss Nelson is a completely nice, wonderful, warm-souled woman, and her kids are a complete nightmare. So she has the idea to dress up as a crazy, mean witch lady named Miss Viola Swamp. I get to be so terrible to these kids. She whips everybody into shape so when Miss Nelson comes back, they are a much better-behaved class.
Q: I just assumed from the title that these really rotten children just have her killed.
A: Oh, my gosh, did you really?
Q: No. Sorry. But it does sound as if the moral of the story is that teachers must be incredibly wicked to get results.
A: I think so! Every day I get teachers saying, “Can I rent you?” Kids will say, “Oh, she’s so mean,” and I’ll say, “Well, do your homework, and she won’t come after you!”
“Miss Nelson is Missing” plays through Nov. 2 at 10 a.m. and noon most weekdays, and at 1 a.m. and 3 p.m. Oct. 28, at the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. 720-898-7200 or .
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
Hear the entire podcast
Listen to John Moore’s entire podcast interview with Amanda Earls starting Thursday afternoon at .
