Getting the most out of our ORDINARY DAYS - a conversation with Mickey Bryce, director of Zao Theatre's upcoming production

Mickey Bryce

by Julia Bashaw

Out in Apache Junction you'll find a theater that's set inside a church.

Zao Theatre company, which runs out of Centerstage Church, has presented such Tony winning shows as Ragtime and The Elephant Man and this weekend they open the smaller, lesser known musical Ordinary Days. The musical's director, Michael “Mickey” Bryce, was a music pastor for 26 years and started Centerstage Church in 2004 and created Zao ten years later.

“It has been wonderful to see the combination of the two,” Mickey expressed. “The culture that we try to create is one that is inclusive, loving, truthful, biblical, kind, and really good at what they do. That is our goal.”

The show Ordinary Days may not be that well-known but that is what Mickey loves about it.

“Our nitch is doing shows nobody else will do,” he said. “It’s all music, it’s more like a pop opera. It’s fast moving and rather short, only an hour and a half or so. I think it’s a good expression of the driving culture and many needs of millennials which is to find people that they can trust, relate to, and have fun with.”

Twenty-one songs, no lines of dialogue, just songs and a cast of four. Mickey was presented with this musical by one of the cast members. He loved it and immediately had in mind some actors who would be right for this production.

Zao is very unique since it shares its home with Centerstage Church, which means stage pieces and props cannot stay on stage.

“Saturday night we are a theatre, Sunday morning we’re a church,” explained Mickey. “When we are a theatre we want to be viewed to look like a theatre but we also want when people go to church for it to look like a church. So we don’t have huge set pieces sitting on the stage during church. Instead, everything rolls off, everything is portable. It moves to create the varies scenes in New York City.”

Mickey is urging people to see this show, hoping that it will open audiences eyes to the way they live their life.

“I hope audiences take away that they should notice the things in life that we tend to ignore because we are either so busy or selfish,” Mickey stressed. “We miss so much good stuff, and when I look back on my own life, the things that are most precious are about people. I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had with people and that’s what this show is about; it’s about experiences with human beings. The motif of Ordinary Days is that in every ordinary day there is something beautiful if you stop and pay attention to it. That's what I think that people should take away from us.”

Ordinary Days opens on January 18th and runs until January 26th and Bryce hopes more people will make the drive out to Apache Junction because they know they will surprise you.

“There are still people that haven't heard of us and there are people who think it’s too far of a drive. Until they drive there and they have such a good time. Because every time we do a show, somebody new to it, the testimony they would give is ‘well this was worth it’. So we are proud of that.”

CLICK HERE for more information on Ordinary Days, which runs January 18-26