Christine Mani takes new gig as Solano theater instructor

After 17 years, Christine Mani has taken her final bow as Benicia High School’s drama teacher. However, she will have a new role as a full-time theater instructor at Solano Community College.

Mani cites the need to help Solano’s theater department— which suffered drastic budget cuts in 2012— as her reason to leave Benicia High, an institution she still regards warmly.

“I love Benicia High,” she said. “I love the students, I love the location, I love the people and I love working for them, but like Mary Poppins, I have to leave Benicia because there’s somebody who needs me more. Right now, Solano— which used to be quite the hub of theater in our area— needed a little extra help, and I’m happy to be that help.”

Mani became a drama teacher to fulfill a lifelong love of theater.

“I love telling stories and becoming someone you’re not and the psychology of investigating human nature,” she said. “It goes a little step further than psychology, which is that we not only investigate it, we actually try to replicate it. It’s a challenge and a joy when we actually succeed.”

Shortly before the 1999-2000 school year, Mani learned that Benicia High was looking for a new drama teacher, and she accepted. For the first two years, she taught drama and English as well as computing during her second year. In 2001, Benicia High established its dance program, and Mani had become the school’s primary drama and dance teacher ever since. In addition, she also taught drama productions, which instructed students on the behind-the-scenes technicalities of theater productions such as set building, lighting, costume design and more.

During her time at Benicia High, Mani directed more than 30 of the department’s student productions, including “42nd Street,” “A Chorus Line,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Crimes of the Heart,” “The Elephant Man,” “Xanadu” and “Seussical,” the latter of which had been directed by Mani twice, once in 2007 and again in 2016. Mani had also produced many of the school’s dance shows, which have been performed annually in the winter and spring.

Mani says her favorite directing gig is a tie between Benicia High’s 2010 production of “Into the Woods” and “Spring Awakening,” a rock musical which Mani directed at Solano in January.

“They were incredibly complex emotionally, and I was able to take a script as it was and put my own thought process in it in a very fulfilling way,” she said. “Both casts were also superb and really flawless.”

As an instructor in drama and dance as well as a director of productions that have drawn in cast members who might not have taken other drama classes, Mani has worked with well over 1,000 Benicia High students in her 17 years, and she describes them as “genuinely good people.”

“Sometimes they really needed drama as an outlet for their emotions and their life of teenage turmoil,” she said. “I was very happy to be a part of that and to walk them through the hallways to adulthood.”

Among things Mani will miss are the students she has worked with and the city of Benicia, which she says has been very supportive.

“I kind of lived in Benicia more than I lived in my own hometown for the past 17 years,” she said.

Mani also says she has received tremendous support from fellow faculty members— who she regards as being like family— in the wake of her decision.

“They’ve all been sad to see me go but happy for me at the same time, and that was more than I could have ever hoped,” she said.

Mani will be handing the reins over to Nathan Day, a former drama teacher at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. Mani had gotten to know Day over the years as the two schools would compete in the annual Arty Awards, which honor theater productions in Solano and Napa counties. Most of the awards in the high school categories would go to either Benicia High or Rodriguez High, and the two had talked in the lobby one day about having their students view each other’s work.

“His school would come see my cast perform, and my cast would go see his cast perform on a dress rehearsal day,” she said. “Originally, it was kind of nerve-racking, but after the first time, the students bonded so closely and they realized that theater is a larger family than you’ve ever known.”

These meetings enabled Mani to trust Day, and she assures that BHS drama students will be in good hands under Day.

“He’s really a professional and inventive director that I think the students are gonna adore,” she said.

Mani is looking forward to working at Solano, where she has directed productions in the past and is already set to direct the fall play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” written by comedian Steve Martin, in November. She is also working on establishing an outreach program to help out high school drama programs in Solano County.

“I’m hoping to help programs in the area grow and become a bigger community,” she said. “I’m also working with some of the local youth theaters as well because the different high schools that don’t currently have drama programs, I’d like to make sure they have access to working with theater even if they don’t have it at their school.”

Despite the new position, Mani says she is happy to keep communications between her and Benicia High and will be available to help when needed.

In regards to last year’s drama students who will remain in the program, Mani gives the following advice:
“Don’t be afraid of new adventures. Change is always difficult for people, but you have to look at each moment of change as a moment of possible adventure. When you work with different instructors, different directors, etc., you’re going to learn different things from each one of them. That alone will make you a better, more well-rounded performer and psychologist in a sense about human nature.”