We were lucky to catch up with Lexi Collins and Renee Wylder recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lexi Collins and Renee Wylder, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
We put a lot of thought into what we’d like our theater company to be called. One of the ways that we talked about setting ourselves apart from other theaters out there was wanting to make patrons feel like they get a whole experience walking through our doors or hiring us for their events. In thinking about our mission, naming our company after a “climbing vine” seemed very fitting for how we want to impact the community. The Wisteria Theater is a place where we want our students and creatives alike to be able to “take root and grow” and wisteria represents strength, progress, partnership, endurance, promise, and friendship. In some cultures, wisteria is a symbol of good luck, success, and longevity. Together we will be climbing the vine to our success and even bigger aspirations.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
We’ve both been in love with the arts pretty much our whole lives and started doing musical theater and taking acting and singing lessons at a young age. We both decided to go for “the dream” and move to Los Angeles after studying performing arts in college. We both have such a passion for performing, whether it’s portraying a princess at a 5 year old’s birthday party or being in a full blown musical production. We simply can’t imagine life without it. We also both know how hard you have to work in order to have success. You can’t just wait around hoping success will find you, you have to go after it with everything you have. Therefore, we both started working on our own original projects to be able to strengthen our craft and get our work out there.
Our first project where we collaborated together was “Topsy Turvy,” our original princess musical for kids. We both love working with kids and wanted to create a message that inspired children to be their truest unique selves. Growing up, we both struggled with constantly comparing ourselves to others and wish we could go back and tell our younger selves that its “cool to be yourself!”This was the inspiration for writing this story and musical. Since we first came up with this idea we have been learning and growing and expanding this show and actually now have our original music on all streaming platforms! You can check it out under “Wisteria Theater” wherever you get your music. Being able to use these songs in our own kids classes and hearing them sing a long to the lyrics is truly incredible.
We can also tell you more about what we offer! Since becoming our own company, we wanted to have a kids’ portion of the business. We offer performing arts classes taught by “princesses” for kids ages 3-8 years old. Whether it’s a private series or a public class, our goal is to focus on what makes each of our students unique. Whether they shine at singing, acting, or dancing–we want to highlight those skills and build confidence in other areas. We also offer birthday party entertainment for kids! From Queen Elsa herself to Captain Hook, we love bringing the magic to our clients!
We are also currently growing our musical productions repertoire, and a creative work we are very proud of is our original Hocus Pocus parody show called, “SISTAHS!” This idea started last October 2022 when we wanted to add the “Sanderson Sisters” to our character list but with the help of other creatives/friends we ended up creating a hilarious parody show that we’ve been re-vamping for different holidays for the past year! Through this show, we’ve been able to make all sorts of connections and meet new clients. And not to mention have SO much fun!
Overall we want our clients to know that we give our all when it comes to anything we do. We care so much and pour our hearts and souls into our work. This is our dream and our passion and no matter if you schedule a birthday party or come to one of our productions, we will work hard and do everything we possibly can to make it a success.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
It’s kind of crazy to look back and think about how every little gig we took along our journey ended up becoming a building block that helped us better inform our business now. Every little skill we learned, sometimes in jobs that didn’t seem to even really align with our actual goals and aspirations has helped us as we grow our business. For example, Renee worked in the restaurant industry for years and learned a lot about how to start a business from her boss that opened the restaurant she worked at. Lexi worked for a company that does “Mommy & Me” classes which helped her grow as a teacher at our company. Lexi and Renee both worked for multiple princess party companies over the years that informed their business now and helped their passion for working with kids become fully realized. We could go on and on about the lessons we’ve learned on this journey and the people that have taught us along the way, but having the opportunity to take all of the things we love to do and put it all into one big effort has felt like our greatest accomplishment as people.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
We met back in 2014 working on a show about superheroes at a small theater in Hollywood. The show itself was definitely not our favorite project to work on, but we bonded over our shared level of commitment to stick with it and follow through on our word. From this experience, we developed a deep friendship with one another and have been playing each other’s “sisters” in the big city of Los Angeles both on stage and in real life for over 8 years. We have both been playing “The Frozen Sisters” professionally for over 8 years and in fact, you may witness Lexi’s personality to be akin to Anna’s quirks and Renee’s to a powerful Ice Queen. Hence why we wanted to use these characters in our every day lives and create classes inspired by them.
Sharing a strong passion for musical theater, magical fairytales, and working with children we both have earned the ability to never really grow up and live out their dreams of starting a theater company.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wisteriatheater.com
- Instagram: @wisteriatheater
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wisteriatheater
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnMCtKV4yFDjZtnTV8yybqQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-wisteria-theater-los-angeles-2
- Other: Check us out on TikTok! @wisteriatheaterco
Image Credits
Brayden Hade Photography