Avalon Players Turns 50: Dennis Soens Would Be Proud of His Summer Theater Program
Dennis Soens
A Broadway actor, the late Dennis Soens, introduced the Avalon Players to Seven Mile Beach when he launched the summer theater program 50 years ago.
Others who helped form the Avalon Players were happy to be along for the joy ride.
“Dennis was the white-hot heat that everyone was drawn toward,” says Liz Matt, who along with Ginny Lynch assisted Soens in founding the company in 1968. “He was an inspiring, theatrical and talented man … a Pied Piper who lived to perform.”
Soens, Matt and Lynch were teenagers then, working teens who created a local theater company in their free time. Soens had long been a lifeguard. Lynch worked as a cashier at the Avalon Supermarket and Matt cashiered at The Pioneer Market, which was on 21st Street.
When the trio established the Avalon Players, Soens led the way. He directed and played the lead in every show and did whatever else needed to be done, Matt says. Lynch was the musical director; pianist Louise Keen was also critical in creating quality show music. Matt performed in productions and handled publicity by writing press releases for the Players.
Matt vividly recalls the Avalon Players’ first production, “A Taste of Broadway.” It featured scenes and songs from “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “Man of La Mancha.”
“A Taste of Broadway” was performed at Avalon Comm-unity Hall. It opened with a rousing rendition of “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” from “Hello, Dolly!” The show’s cast included children and teens from ages 6 to 18. Their families provided costumes. Soens had somehow managed to purchase parasols as props, Matt notes. “Every girl had a parasol to twirl.”
Only a handful of adults were involved in helping out with shows.
“We were a bit like the Little Rascals!” Matt quips. “Avalon Players was our Little League,” she adds before noting that some Players grew up to be big-leaguers in various fields.
Brian McDonough, M.D., was one of those Avalon Players. McDonough is the medical editor at KYW Newsradio. He won Emmy Awards for his medical news broadcasts on Fox29. Matt also mentions actress and movie producer Kate McCauley Hathaway, who recently completed a run starring in “Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End” at Cape May Stage. She is the mother of actress Anne Hathaway, as well. Rev. Joe Coffey, an Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest, Navy chaplain, Commander and winner of the Meritorious Service Medal for outstanding service, was also an Avalon Player.
Some might recognize Avalon Players’ Liz Matt from her broadcast journalism days on KYW-TV’s “Evening Magazine,” WPVI-TV’s “AM Philadelphia” under the stage name Lizabeth Starr) and on Fox 29’s
“Good Day Philadelphia,” among other shows. The newswoman and businesswoman played parts in ABC’s Soap Operas “Loving” and “General Hospital,” too.
Clearly, Dennis Soens had a knack for spotting talent.
Perhaps that knack, along with the Avalon Players’ earliest inklings, took root in the Soens family’s backyard. That’s where Dennis Soens first put together shows featuring a cast of neighborhood children, his sister Weetzie Soens recalls. Just as it was with his Avalon Players, nobody was ever turned away from participating in one of Dennis’ productions, she adds.
And, just as it was in their backyard and later with the Avalon Players, Weetzie, who owns Transitional Interiors, created costumes and sets for her brother’s shows. “I made millions of costumes!” the interior designer muses after describing a comical scene created by Soens, one filled with little children running around in black Keystone Cops uniforms.
Her sibling had a gift for drawing cartoons, as well, Weetzie says.
Another stop along young Dennis’ way to Broadway was the former Cardinal Dougherty High School in Philadelphia. Soens chose to attend Dougherty because it presented superb shows, notes Weetzie. After high school, her brother went directly to New York City.
There, in addition to landing parts in a number of shows, Soens also wrote an off-Broadway play, “Pinoc,” about Disney characters visiting the Big Apple.
“Every summer, Dennis came down from New York City on the bus” in order to lead the Avalon Players, his sister reminisces. “It [the Avalon Players] was like a theater camp for children, a free one. There were no fees. Dennis did it out of the goodness of his heart.”
That loving heart stopped with Dennis Soens’ death in 1989. His passing left voids in the lives of countless people who loved him. It also affected the life of the Avalon Players.
Then along came Suzanne Sennhenn.
Five years before Soens died, Sennhenn and her family began spending more summer time at her childhood home in Avalon in order to assist her aging parents. Sennhenn’s children, Sage, Brandt and Zaura, were teens at the time. The Avalon Players seemed like a good place for them to meet friends. So, even as she built her photography business on the island, Sennhenn volunteered to assist Soens with the Avalon Players.
For two summers in a row, Soens landed roles in New York City, roles that made it impossible for him to be in Avalon. By the mid-1980s, the Avalon Players were in trouble.
That’s how Sennhenn, who sings and plays music, found herself in the Avalon Players’ director’s seat at Soens’ insistence in 1985. Her first production was a coming-of-age musical, “Sand in My Shoes.” Sennhenn says she pulled it off with major help from her friends. “My dream was to keep Dennis’ Avalon Players going when he was not able,” she adds.
By 1986, Sennhenn’s wish for the Avalon Players to be “a family affair,” which was also “a town affair,” came true. Her cast included full- and part-time residents, ages 2 to 99.
Shows created to coincide with Avalon’s 1992 centennial year – “Avalon Cooler by a Mile” in 1991 and “Avalon Still Cool” in 1992 – remain Sennhenn’s favorite productions because everything about them was original. “We had a bunch of writers, Bill Beck created an orchestra, Dan Keen wrote music,” Sennhenn says. “Avalon’s then-Recreation Director Dave Haberle wrote the lyrics to a song titled, ‘The Contractor Blues’!”
By 1993, Suzanne Sennhenn’s daughter, Sage Sennhenn D’Amico, took over responsibilities for the Avalon Players and kept them going by introducing Sage Stage.
Today’s Avalon Players continue to thrive thanks to people like: show producer Kathy Tenzinger, who is the busy force pulling it all together behind the scenes; dynamic director and musical director Jen Creed, who is an award-winning singer, vocal coach and church cantor; choreographer Aubrey Conley, who owns the Addicted 2 Dance studio in Ambler, Pa.; costume director Kim Fogarty and volunteers Emma Tenzinger and Rose McNamara, among others.
Players board member Penny Welsh mentions that, once again, the group “started to dwindle a few years back.” Welsh credits both Kathy Tenzinger and Creed with breathing new life into the company: “Kathy hired Jen … and Kathy and Jen revived the Avalon Players.”
This year, the Avalon Players will present “Mary Poppins Jr.” at the Avalon Elementary School, 235 32nd St., from Thursday, Aug. 2, through Sunday, Aug. 5.
The show – as Dennis Soens envisioned it – must go on …
