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Two in Tow & On The Go | French Toast Theatre taking an intermission

Wyatt in Newsies Jr. in 2024.

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Wyatt’s favorite after-school activity ended last month, when his local children’s theater group announced it was going on hiatus. In a tearful goodbye speech, French Toast Theatre Productions LLC founder Madelyn Hunter said she was closing out this chapter of her decade-long business after its May production of Shrek Jr. The Musical. The announcement, not entirely unexpected, still left some wondering what happened and whether the beloved Gig Harbor youth theater program would be back.

The good news? Hunter tells me this isn’t a goodbye. It’s an intermission. When French Toast announced its hiatus, I did what reporters do. I asked questions. I sat down with Hunter, better known to hundreds of local families as “Miss Madelyn,” to talk about budgets and logistics. But what I also heard was a story of sacrifice, life as a small business owner, and the inevitable burnout that can come with living out your passion with little help. 

“I’d say we’re … taking some breathing room,” Hunter told Gig Harbor Now. “With my goodbye speech, I wanted the kids to feel a good sense of closure.”

“The worst thing I could do was make a big promise and then not follow through on creating the community that I really want them to have,” she said later. “I sounded so final because I want the kids to make sure they have some closure. But most of all … I wanted them to know they were loved and it’s not ‘goodbye’, it’s ‘we’ll see you later.'”

But before we dive in, a quick disclosure

Mama giving Wyatt a rose during his first stint on Stage Crew for French Toast’s recent production of Cinderella.

Today’s column does a slightly unusual thing. It blends our family’s experience with a professional interview and some local business reporting.

If you’ve followed my work over the years, you know that I’d normally separate a personal experience piece from a news-interview story. But Two in Tow & On the Go has always been about exploring our community through the places, programs and experiences the kids and I have. And French Toast Theatre is one of those places.

Bowen, Clara and I have watched Wyatt perform onstage, paint sets backstage, snap on stage shoes and haul props through the dark between acts. That’s two and a half years spending every Tuesday and Thursday evenings sitting in rehearsal parking lots wondering how many chicken strip baskets from Dairy Queen count as a balanced diet on a school night.

So yes, I have a personal connection here. But I’ve also spent more than two decades as a journalist, and I take that responsibility seriously. My goal isn’t to write a French Toast commercial. It’s to tell an honest story about a program that impacted local families, its future and the challenges of keeping the arts alive in a small town.

Sound good? Cool. Here we go.

A bubbly high school theater kid from Portland, Oregon, Hunter started French Toast Theatre Productions LLC in 2016 in her early 20s. She estimates the organization has enrolled about 1,000 families over the years. It all started with teaching a ballet class for seven little girls with PenMet Parks in her early 20s. Hunter continued teaching ballet to kids with nine classes a week until about 2025, branching out into other providing programs along the way. What many families may not realize is just how much of French Toast Theatre and her other kids programs depended on only her. She has no dedicated office staff, and pays just one other director. French Toast Theatre grew from Hunter’s desire to create a welcoming space where children could learn acceptance, kindness and respect while celebrating what makes each kid unique. Through theater, dance, art programs, camps and leadership opportunities, the organization blended performance training with confidence-building and creativity, giving young people a place to learn stage skills, make friends and discover their own voices.

French Toast never had its own rehearsal space, much less a dedicated theater for performances. Instead, they’ve bounced around as spaces become available, renting what they could and running without a staff.

“Right now, the kids don’t have someplace to go,” Hunter said. “I want them to see their face framed on the wall in a place where everyone is accepted and welcomed.”

After nearly a decade running her business (and at one point, managing 80-hour work weeks), Hunter, 31, is stepping back to rest, regroup and pursue a new vision for the organization. Her goal is to transition French Toast Theatre into a nonprofit that can pursue grants, build a staff, expand educational opportunities and eventually secure a permanent home. A re-opening date, she added, could come as soon as fall 2027.

“I would come back as the executive director and direct plays. Right now, I’m lead for sets, costumes, all of the cues, stage manager, lighting, sound and I’m acting as this whole list of people who help put in a show — but it’s just me,” she said. “At a high school production … we counted six adults helping to put on a show. … With a nonprofit, I can get an actual staff. I just want the kids to be able to experience the educational side of theater with the tools that I can’t provide right now — like a dedicated set-building department.”

A career

The bulk of Hunter’s career has been spent teaching ballet classes in the day, leading theater rehearsals in the evenings, and handling administrative work from 7:30 to 9 p.m., after the students went home. During the summer, she also hosted a string of summer camps, nature programs and leadership gigs. For a long time, her only day off was Saturday — but only if all of her emails, student registrations, and related paperwork for her many classes had been completed. If it hadn’t, she didn’t get a day off.

For us, our time with French Toast began with registration for Disney’s Newsies Jr., a shorter version of the Broadway musical about the New York City newsboys strike of 1899. French Toast had just left Fox Island’s Nichols Community Center as a main rehearsal space and opened the season at Gig Harbor’s Boatyard House at Eddon Boat Park. A few weeks later, rehearsals moved again to Harbor Fit, a small fitness studio on North Harborview Drive that’s now closed. For that show, the cast took the stage at a Tacoma high school.

Miss Madelyn and Wyatt on stage for Newsies Jr. in 2024.

After that, we stayed on for shows of The Addams Family Jr., where Clara joined Wyatt for one season to act out scenes about everyone’s favorite spooky (and “all together ooky”) family.

Wyatt and Clara as ensemble ghosts in the kids version of The Addams Family Musical in 2024

Clara liked the stage but ultimately left theater life for an after-school running club. Wyatt stayed on for Cinderella, Beetlejuice and, most recently, Shrek The Musical, a trio of shows over several seasons performed at a professional theater in downtown Tacoma. Somewhere along the way, Wyatt also discovered he loved life backstage, trading acting roles for stage crew responsibilities, helping paint sets, organize props and bring the productions to life behind the scenes. We bought him a special “Stage Crew: I Work in the Shadows” shirt and never looked back.

Wyatt painting set signs for Shrek Jr. The Musical in May.

The children’s musicals Hunter led were bright, funny, and full of moments that were both adorable and dramatic. The kids liked her, she was welcoming to all, gave parts to everyone who wanted one and somehow still kept a room of 30-plus kids in the ages 5 to 12 bracket in check. Each show season, the kids gathered twice a week for a few months to rehearse with French Toast until the big show, usually on a weekend. The musical itself took place on professional stages because Hunter wanted to provide as much of a real-world theater experience as possible. Much of the work also happened behind the scenes. As she described it, Hunter served as director, stage manager, costume coordinator, set lead, and lighting and sound coordinator.

In musical theater, those are roles usually designed for at least a half-dozen staffers. Instead, it was just Hunter, until she eventually hired one employee – her BFF and music director, Liv Tagorda, 25, of Lacey. Tagorda (aka “Director Liv”) taught the kids choreography and vocals for stage shows. Meanwhile, a volunteer mom with an art background painted most of the big backdrops and sets, primarily on foam-core for easy movability to and from shows. 

The cost of putting on a children’s theater production is eye opening. Hunter later told me that it cost $24,567 to produce Shrek. The largest expense, nearly $14,000, went to renting Theatre on the Square for three days. The rental included the venue itself plus professional lighting, sound, dressing rooms, backstage facilities, security staff and ushers, according to Hunter. The production also required all those weeks of rehearsal-space rentals, and a slew of expenses including approximately $1,300 just for script usage rights alone, she added. For the parents, Shrek registration was $399 per student at signup.

A full theater at a recent French Toast production.

After that, maybe I was just out of the loop but as a parent I didn’t know the full budget or staffing situation. Hunter never complained to us (the parents of the theater kids) or was negative or appeared worried in any way. She always stood out as a positive go-get-it type of person who just wanted to make the experience for the kids special.

What parents also didn’t know was Hunter balanced theater responsibilities with side gigs and day jobs to keep the business afloat. For a time she was a preschool teacher. Then there was the sales work, DoorDash and Instacart. She even coordinated a wedding, sold tea at farmers markets, and was hired to photograph a spelling bee. 

“I always try to have an income coming in that’s not from my own businesses because you never know,” she said. “And with theater costs, between registrations and fundraising, there’s always a gap. So if fundraising wasn’t doing it, I would just work really hard getting extra work wherever I could. I rode around in an ice cream truck one year. I’d find anything to make up the difference.”

She laughed at the array of odd jobs she’s had, adding “if you have enough confidence you can do anything.” (Remarkably, in 2023 Hunter even joined the Pierce County Arts Commission and campaigned to be a Pen Met Parks Commissioner, all while patching together income streams to keep her vision for community theater alive).

Fundraising

Sure, Hunter would host parent meetings and tell us $7,000 still needed to be raised to cover the cost of the show. But she never said “Don’t worry guys, I’m doing Instacart runs after these long rehearsals to make up the difference.” Had we known that, I might have offered to help more. But then, thankfully, during the last two, maybe three musicals, Hunter began asking the parents to donate more money or time where they could, such as by selling a certain amount of tickets per show or donating gift baskets to auction at intermission. Most parents were happy to help. We formed volunteer committees for fundraising, set design and costumes. Parents and kids found supplies around our homes and secondhand stores to help.

Looking back at my own receipts, at one point Hunter also added an area in the fine print marked “NEW,” saying all fees and costume charges had to be paid before the season ended, and that parents had to pay additional money toward their students’ shoes, dance wear, costumes and show tickets (although she donated a complementary two tickets for the family of each performer).

In June 2025, Hunter was already trying to scale back following the closure of Harbor Fit, which provided her main income stream via the ballet classes she taught there. At that point, instead of taking more on by finding another venue to rent, she stopped her ballet classes and lessened her offerings elsewhere. Theater rehearsals moved to Peninsula Lutheran Church on 38th Avenue, the same place Gig Harbor operates its senior center. Hunter quickly got another “day job,” this time doing sales for a local manufacturing company from about 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays. After her early morning shift, she comes home, walks her dogs, hangs out a bit with her boyfriend and then, up until last month, did theater business stuff in the evenings.

French Toast Theatre crew hugging goodbye at Shrek’s last show.

Community arts

Hearing Hunter’s story, and all its realities I didn’t know about previously, I couldn’t help but recognize a familiar pattern that exists across so many creative industries. The arts are often sustained by people who love the work so much they’re willing to sacrifice their personal lives for it. Directors, musicians, artists, writers, dancers and yes, even journalists. The passion and impacts are big. But the paychecks and opportunity for downtime are often not. When you care deeply about something, it’s easy to convince yourself that one more late night, one more project or one more season is worth it. Eventually, though, even the most dedicated people hit a wall. Burnout isn’t a sign that someone cares less. Often, it’s a sign that they’ve cared too much for too long.

“… that’s why I need support and help,” Hunter said. “I can’t sacrifice my family anymore. I missed my god son’s soccer game for example, and I just want to be able to see those things.”

(For the record, I had to pull any sentiments of struggle out of her, as she was reluctant to be negative in any way and saying multiple times that she didn’t want to come off as ungrateful or selfish in wanting time of her own outside of work).

Then last week, about two weeks after Shrek ended, Hunter texted me to say she attended her 3-year-old godson’s swim-class graduation. With lots of heart emojis and exclamation points, she told me it was one of the best feelings she’d had in a long time.

So, with that, I’m going to end this bajallion-word column by saying I do hope Hunter can find a way to make a nonprofit comeback happen. Because I’ve seen firsthand the magic her theater program can make. And I’ve also seen how things could get better with more paid employees to help.

I’ll also leave you with this excerpt from Tagorda’s goodbye speech at the Shrek show about Hunter’s dedication to French Toast Theatre.

“Seeing you seize every opportunity for growth with open arms, bright eyes and tenacity and courage is inspiring,” Tagorda said to Hunter during their Shrek show speeches. “And watching you face every one of those challenges head on with unwavering determination, hard work and grit never fails to leave me in awe. You worked tirelessly for a decade straight to bring your vision of what could be to life through sheer willpower. Look around and see what your vision has become and created and all the people you’ve touched because of it. You are constantly redefining what’s possible and none of this would be possible without you.”

How sweet is that?!?

So here’s to the next chapter where, with any luck, Hunter’s new vision shapes up with a team of support staff and a new home to call their own.

What to do until then? Here are some other South Sound organizations offer theater, acting, musical theater and filmmaking programs for young performers of all ages:

• Ghostlight Theater (Gig Harbor & Fox Island) – Summer theater and musical theater camps for ages 7-17 through PenMet Parks, held at Sehmel Homestead Park. Website: www.ghostlightpa.com/
• Actorcraft P2S (Gig Harbor) – Year-round acting classes for ages 8-17 plus summer filmmaking camps at Kinship Studio. Website: actorcraftp2s.com
• Code Ninjas Creative Camps (Gig Harbor) – AI filmmaking and stop-motion animation camps for ages 8-16 through PenMet Parks. Website: www.codeninjas.com/wa-gig-harbor/camps
• Tacoma Musical Playhouse (Tacoma) – CampTMP offers year-round acting, dance, camps and youth productions for ages 5-18. Website: tmp.org
• Western Washington Center for the Arts (Port Orchard) – Summer theater workshops and youth productions, including Junie B. Jones Jr. The Musical. Website: wwca.us
• Kitsap Forest Theater (Bremerton) – Outdoor musical theater camps and productions in a 460-acre forest outdoor amphitheater with a new indoor space in the works for 2027. Website: foresttheater.com
• Kitsap Children’s Musical Theatre (Bremerton) – Summer camps for ages 4-13 focused on singing, acting, dancing and musical theater. Website: kcmt.org
• Tacoma Little Theatre (Tacoma) – After-school, homeschool, improv and dance programs for youth year-round. Website: tacomalittletheatre.com
• YMCA Theatre Arts (Bremerton) – Theater clinics and performing arts programs focused on confidence, creativity and teamwork. Website: ymcapkc.org
• Jewel Box Theatre Resource List (Poulsbo) – Directory of theater programs and organizations throughout Kitsap County. Website: jewelboxpoulsbo.org/kitsap-theatres

See ya out there!

@two.n.tow