Since 1995, youth performing arts group Starstruck Theatre has been known in Fremont for bringing high quality musical productions.  From shows such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cats” and “Les Miserables,” the theatre group has been wowing audiences with almost every show accomplished.

The founder and owner of Starstruck Lori Stokes originally started up Starstruck for the benefit of her own children when she couldn’t find any other youth theatre group in the area for them to join.  With her own background in theatre and having a theatre degree from San Diego State University, she was confident in pulling it off.

The first two years were spent working with a small group of kids at her house, to put on together and performing 20-minute theatre reviews at various community events.

After two years, Stokes made the decision to put on a fully staged production of “A Little Princess” at Broadway West in Fremont.  For seven years she put on shows there, but they were always relatively small scale due to the theatre’s capacity. 

It wasn’t until 2003 when Stokes received an opportunity to put on bigger scale productions at one of the theatres at Ohlone College.

“Normally the space would be so booked up you could never get one weekend in there because they had so many different things going on,” she explained.  “Somebody dropped out who had the theatre booked.  I heard about it, I got in there and I’ve been there ever since.”

Now on a yearly basis, most of Starstruck Theatre’s shows are done in the theatres at Ohlone.  The group regularly puts on two big productions, each running for three weekends, along with two theatre workshops for smaller scale productions during the summer.

Starstruck Theatre hasn’t always been called by that name; during the first five years of the group’s existence, it went by Kids On Broadway.  Stokes has her reasons for the name change.

“I changed the name for two reasons,” she said.  “One [is that] in the year 2000, I went non-profit and so when you go non-profit, you have to do a name search to make sure that nobody else has your name that’s also nonprofit, and there was actually, in San Diego, a children’s day care center that was on [a street called] Broadway, and so that was the name of the day care group — Kids On Broadway!”

The other reason was also in the matter of altering people’s perspectives on children involved in performing arts.

“Sometimes [when] being a children’s theatre, people have a certain way of thinking about what the quality of the show is going to be,” Stokes explained.  “So I wanted to just be known as Starstruck Theatre and the name kind of speaks for itself and it’s its own brand in a way.  To me when people come see the shows, I want everyone to be entertained, whether if you know someone in the cast or not.”

When asked exactly how she’s able to pull off these high quality productions, Stokes said how it’s all about the deep love, commitment and dedication, as well as being surrounded by people — mostly volunteers — who care just as much about the outcome of the final product.

Despite the growing popularity of musical theatre in pop culture within recent years, Stokes never gave much thought as to whether or not it has affected the number of kids and adults interested in joining Starstruck.  When she does think about it though, she admits to noting a little bit of a rise in participation in the kids around the time “High School Musical” came out in 2006.

She enjoys this enthusiasm, saying any outer influence that draws kids to the performing arts is something she is all in favor for.

Already, Stokes is preparing for a busy summer with rehearsals for the summer production of “Legally Blonde: The Musical” underway and theatre workshops for the productions of “13” and “Dear Edwina.”

Looking into the future, Stokes hopes that the City of Fremont will one day consider establishing their own performing arts center for not only Starstruck’s benefit but the benefit of other performing arts groups as well.

“My ultimate dream is to one day have Fremont have their own performing arts center and being able to perform in a performing arts center that Fremont has,” she said.  “That would then give me the capability of doing more shows a year; opening it up, getting a little bit bigger.”