Actors are often worried about being flat at the beginning of a performance.
It happens to John Ambrosino - every time, all the time.
That's because the Avon native, 28, plays the title role in the Intramusical Theatricals production of "The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley," based on the popular children's geography program and book series.
The children's book series by Jeff Brown is about a student named Stanley Lambchop. One night, the bulletin board above Stanley's head comes loose and falls on top of him. The next morning, Stanley wakes up flat . . . really flat.
But Stanley makes the best of it. He can slide under locked doors, roll up like a mat or become a trampoline. His friends even fly him like a kite. But Stanley wants more, and decides to put himself in a big envelope and travel the world as a human letter.
Flat Stanley has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon as an educational program, involving 6,000 classrooms in 47 nations. Classes send their cutout Flat Stanleys to friends and family all over the world, and the Stanleys return home with a wealth of information about new places and experiences.
Stanley has been seen at the Oscars with Clint Eastwood, with President Bush at the White House, campaigning with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, and on the "Today" show.
It is the first national tour for Ambrosino, a graduate of Thayer Academy in Braintree and Bates College in Maine who spent summers in Scituate. He is finding it exhilarating to perform the 70-minute show two and three times a day.
"It's a challenge keeping your energy up," he said in a phone interview from the tour bus en route to Dallas. "I barely leave the stage."
After college, Ambrosino began his professional theater career as the founding artistic director of the Animus Ensemble in Boston, where during his five-year stint he directed a series of critically acclaimed works. His direction of "Promises, Promises" earned him a nomination for Best Director of a Musical from the Independent Reviewers of New England.
He worked on several projects as an artistic associate in the Wang Center's Artistic Programming department, helping to produce the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's critically acclaimed production of "Hamlet" on the Boston Common, and producing "American Voices," a play-reading series of American classic dramas.
Still, he yearned to get back to acting, which he did in the fall of 2006. Ambrosino auditioned in New York last fall for two family shows, "A Year with Frog and Toad" and "Flat Stanley," but the part he most had his eye on was Frog in "Frog and Toad." He was one of two finalists for Frog, but in the end the producers wanted him for "Flat Stanley."
He originally declined, but the producers asked him if he would return to New York to perform the role in a weekend workshop.
"I fell in love with Bryan Louiselle's music during that workshop," he said. He joined the tour, and has had no regrets.
Along the way, he's getting the chance to see many young first-time theatergoers, an enthusiastic but demanding group.
"Children are an amazing audience," said Ambrosino. "In some ways, they're more picky than adults. You have to keep it real or they'll check right out."
Seeing the youngsters brings him back to his first live theater experience, a 1987 revival of "Cabaret" with Joel Grey at the Colonial, the same theater where "Flat Stanley" will be for five shows this weekend. "I'm very excited to be performing at the Colonial," he said.
Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com.
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