Couple Koly McBride and LJ Brewer have been running Paper Wing Theatre for the last 20 years – she the founder and the CEO, he an associate producer. Since McBride’s new projects are pulling her away from Monterey County, the experienced couple found their equivalents, a young married couple, to gradually inherit the responsibilities.
Starting this August, Paper Wing will have a new project manager/associate producer, Justin Gaudoin. His wife, Sarah Gaudoin – a photographer, a filmmaker and a choreographer – has been doing social media for Paper Wing for a few months now. They will lead the company forward.
“You just don’t work on something for 20 years and then just hand it over,” McBride says, promising that she and Brewer are committed to putting another four to eight years into Paper Wing. “But we’ve been thinking about the succession. We’ve been looking for people with similar mindset – theater-making as an art rather than a hobby – because there’s a job to be done.”
They met Justin Gaudoin when he was in a Paper Wing show in 2018. They all seemed to click. “Justin is not only capable but willing to do the work,“ Brewer says. “And he is an amazing vocal teacher. Sarah is an amazing photographer with an eye for staging.”
Justin was born in Monterey and graduated from Monterey High School in 2012. After getting a B.A. in music, he returned to Monterey County and got involved in theater, first performing then deciding that his place is “on the production side,” he says.
“Being directed by him is a joy,” Brewer says. “He is very kind. No sarcasm, no frustration.”
Justin and Sarah met as Hamlet and Ophelia in a Monterey Peninsula College production. Sarah, a former dancer who studied film and video, was raised in Salinas. She will continue supporting both Paper Wing and her husband with media content creation.
While the actors in Paper Wing change with every production (anybody is welcome to audition), the production team has been working together for years. The theater’s current season is underway. Next up is Evil Dead, and then the annual Halloween-season presentation of The Rocky Horror Show.
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