Like the productions themselves, the makeup of our cast and crew is always a work in progress. It often changes from show to show. This page reflects the cast and crew for our November 2026 show, Then, Now … Always: A Musical Journey Through a Life Well-lived.
Whether leading a cast, making a pie or keeping Oregon caffeinated, EVAN ALDRETE (Director) approaches the task con brio! He’s the founding director of Beaverton’s Lovegood Theatre. Now he’s bringing his skills to NST. He and his wife, Amy, have five kids. They own Insomnia Coffee, seven shops stretching westward from Cedar Mill to Cannon Beach. When he’s not running something, he’s … running something! That includes Evan’s Pie Guild, a men’s baking club.
ALICIA BARRETT ((Music Director) has been leading others musically since she was 16. “The thing I most enjoy is taking a group of amateur singers and building their confidence with music,” she says. “After a few rehearsals, they have a moment when they sing a difficult passage together and you can see the pride and joy in their faces.” A native of Forest Grove, Alicia is the Music Director for Theatre in the Grove. This is her first collaboration with NST.
SHERI HUTCHINSON (Stage Manager) has worked with Director Evan Aldrete at Lovegood Theatre since 2023. Now, she is joining him in their first NST show. Not a song-and-dance person by nature, she enjoys stage managing. “I love seeing such a diverse group of people come together,” she says, “to create something special and tell an amazing story!” Tech Week can be tough, “but somehow it all seems to work out and be great!”
JUDY PRENTICE (Props & Costumes Manager) has been intrigued by the backstage aspects of theater ever since high school. She’s our “Go-To Gal” – whatever needs doing, she does. “I love rehearsals and working behind-the-scenes,” she says. “I used to dream of being a Broadway chorus line performer but have never been a good singer and I’m not built as a dancer. The next best thing is to enjoy any kind of live performances.”
ERIC MARGESON (Sound Lead) was bitten by the dual bugs of TV and tech way back in high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. This led to a 40-year career as a broadcast engineer, including locally at KOIN and KATU. Now that he’s retired, he shares his technical expertise and creativity with NST and with area churches, including Rise Church. During our shows, he is often the busiest person in the room!
MARTHA SEVCIK (Visual Lead) was a member of Salem’s Children’s Educational Theater as a youngster, Martha has worked both onstage and off. She’s performed internationally with the PD Rebels Performance Project, a dance group for people with Parkinson’s. She supports the King City Music Club by video recording their concerts. When not in a theater, you’ll find her out in the field in a ladies’ “rockhound” group.
RACHEL ZIERDT (Choreographer) wears many hats for NST. She’s our president, as well as a performer and a choreographer. Upon moving to Oregon a few years ago, she jumped into performing with both feet … as any choreographer would! She’s a dancer with The Beat Goes On Marching Band. She’s also a Rose City Singer and a member of the Rock Voices Chorus. All of this on top of being a proud grandmother of six!
DIANA MOSSMAN (Choreographer) is an NST featured dancer as well as one of our costumers. She first began ballroom dancing as a young teen with her grandfather — how cool is that! She’s studied with top ballroom professionals and many national champions, learning 13 different dances. Diana loves to sing and dance, and NST gives her many chances to kick up her heels. From expressive ballroom, to mambo, to polka, she does it all!
PATRICK WINTERS (Sound Tech/Videographer) usually can be found onstage for NST shows. But this time, he’s working striclty behind-the-scenes. He’s our Mic Man, wiring cast members up before the show. He also shoots the NST Focus podcasts. When not doing work for us, he’s busy creating a documentary film about the early days of putting sound to film, an homage to “the talkies.”
KEN KANE (Word Guy) often is found performing alongside his wife, Audrey Perino, in NST shows. But this time, he’s attending only to offstage tasks, like writing this show program and interviewing cast and crew members for the NST Focus podcast series. He’s also responsible for our Website and the NST and Friends Facebook page. But don’t worry – he and Audrey still make the circuit of area piano bars!
MELANEY BAKER, a native of San Jose, moved with her husband, Dave, to Oregon City in 2024. After she retired, she rekindled a love of performing dating the back to high school. And she’s jumped right in, in Oregon: in 2025 she appeared in Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean with Sherwood’s STAR Society. In 2026 she’s joined Dave’s readers’ theater project, the Wireless Playhouse, and has appeared in Sherwood’s Theatre Stories series.
BOB BERTALOT was bitten by the acting bug in high school — and he’s been happily performing ever since. From Oklahoma! and Our Town, to the King City Music Club, to karaoke around Tigard and Beaverton, Bob loves being on stage. “Give me a microphone and I’m in my happy place,” he says. A volunteer chaplain for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, Bob’s thrilled to make be making his NST debut!
LINDA BRINEGER grew up on an Oregon dairy farm. She wasn’t so much a singing cowgirl as she was a girl who’d sing to the cows! A few years later she got to sing with Paul Revere & the Raiders. More recently, she joined the King City Music Club, with other NSTers. One singing group led to another and now, here she is! In addition to performing, Linda is also our backstage hair stylist and foremost purveyor of cast hugs!
BONNIE FAZIO joined NST in 2024, but she crossed paths with some of us long before. She and Ron Hansen worked on student shows at the University of Oregon back in the day. And she and Audrey Perino were community choirsters at Marylhurst University several years ago. Choral trips have taken her to Turkey, Uruguay and Argentina. As a Jonathan Griffith Singer, Bonnie’s even recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios.
RON HANSEN has entertained audiences since the age of 12. A University of Oregon theater major, he’s acted, directed or sung in hundreds of productions, both choral and theatric. Some of his favorite roles include Harold Hill in The Music Man, Daddy Warbucks in Annie, Tommy in Brigadoon, Billy Crocker in Anything Goes and Fagan in Oliver. He also works behind-the-scenes as a member of various non-profit theater boards.
Not many people can say their very first stage role was the ghost of Hamlet’s father … in fifth grade. But ROBIN HELÉNE can! The next year she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. How’s that for grammar school versatility?! Robin loves performing because of “the release of real world responsibilities that I feel when I absorb myself in a production.” She joined several other NSTers in October in the Wireless Playhouse production of Murder at Bloodmoor Mansion.
DIA HOWES spent her career in Los Angeles, working mostly behind-the-scenes in movies, TV, radio and special effects. Her projects spanned from Gladiator to Desperate Housewives. She also sang and danced in local L.A. productions before moving to Oregon a decade ago. For NST, Dia performs onstage and everywhere else, depending on the show. Offstage duties include costuming and being our Snack Mom!
Oregon native BECKY KNOPP started playing clarinet in the fifth grade. She quickly became hooked on music. She’s both sung and played Handel’s Messiah. She was a member of Portland’s Singing Christmas Tree for a decade. And now, she joins NST. She loves Scrabble, baking, movies and longarm quilting and, in recent years, she’s started playing the flute. “I play in Lovegood Theatre’s pit band, in church, and wherever else they let me,” she says.
We’re happy that AREANNE LLOYD, one of our stalwart sopranos, has returned to the NST stage after some time away. She first joined NST in 2015 and has served as its president. Areanne comes from a musical family. “My uncle wrote musicals for his synagogue and my aunt became an opera singer in her 40’s. My mother played the piano and my dad, the violin,” she says. In fact, her parents met doing Gilbert & Sullivan in Buffalo.
JEROME MARTIN III is one of NST’s featured dancers and, when you think about it, is there a dance he doesn’t know?! The East and West Coast Swings, the Lindy Hop, the Cross-step Waltz, Night Club Two-step, Salsa, Foxtrot, Cha Cha and Zydeco are just some of the dances in his wheelhouse. Jerome studies with Uwe Hessinger and Colleen Suzanne at Connect to Dance. He also dances with the Portland Tap Connection.
JONI MILLER, a Rhode Island transplant, fondly remembers being introduced to part-singing as a kid at summer camp. She’s been singing and acting ever since, as a third-grade teacher, with community theaters and choirs and, since 2017, with NST. She says, “It’s a real thrill to perform in front of a group of people and see the audience reactions.” When Joni’s not onstage, she’s doing her best to get you in our seats as NST’s Marketing Manager.
Both onstange and behind-the-scenes, LYNNE NEILSON has become an NST regular. She’s been singing in choirs and playing handbells for four decades. She’s one of 150 singers in Tualatin’s Celebration Community Choir, a gospel group whose members represent 46 area churches. When she’s not singing or ringing, she enjoys hanging – out, that is, with her two children, five grandkids and eight great-grandkids.
TOM PARKER joins NST with this show. He’s a recent Oregon transplant and, like several others in the cast, found us through the King City Music Club. He started performing in college and, for 20 years, he was a member of the Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre at the famous Galleria in Houston. The roles he’s played are varied, just like the jobs he’s had: film and video production, acting, long-haul trucker, school bus driver and teacher.
AUDREY PERINO was singing “Davy, Davy Crockett” and playing “Oh, Marie” as a toddler, and music has continued to be essential to her being ever since. A chorister for 20 years and an orchestra violinist for 20 more, she attended NST shows for more than a decade before she joined the troupe in 2019. And she can often be found at piano bars and karaoke joints around Portland. As her favorite t-shirt reads, “I don’t always sing … Oh, wait. Yes, I do!”
DIANNE POLIVKA is appearing in her seventh NST production. A native of Ohio, its school choruses and church choirs, Dianne’s been singing as long as she can remember. She moved to the Northwest in 1980 – first to Portland, but then she spent 35 years in Olympia, where she sang with the Olympia Chorale and Light Opera. She moved to King City in 2024 and started singing with the King City Music Club and the Tualatin Presbyterian Church choir.
JAN ROSENTHAL is our resident Canadian, from Winnipeg. She’s been in 80+ shows, and has acted locally with Lakewood, Broadway Rose, Mask & Mirror and Light Opera of Portland, among others. Jan joined NST in 2012, but decades before that she sang before Queen Elizabeth! A career educator, she began teaching high school English 60 years ago … and has come full circle: now she volunteers in Aloha High’s Learning Resource Center.
At age 16, ALI GOODWIN ROSKAM was making records in Hollywood. And she’s never stopped singing! She toured with a Young-Americans type group and played USO shows. She performed in Polynesian and Hawaiian shows at Disneyland and in Las Vegas. She directed and choreographed for the Classy Cats, a female group she founded. In addition to NST, these days you can also see Ali in Mask & Mirror shows at Rise Church.
It takes a certain amount of moxie to sing to an audience in your underwear. And CAROL SCHULTZ has moxie to spare! At our Summer Stock touring show in July, Carol sang Yankee Doodle Dandy wearing nothing but a novelty t-shirt and her star-spangled skivvies. She debuted those patriotic panties several years before at a King City Music Club concert. The bit left George M. Cohan spinning in his grave, but everyone else laughing out loud!
STAS TRILISKY is one of NST’s featured dancers, often pairing with Diana Mossman. He started kicking his heels up at age 4 in Israel. He trained with top teachers, which led to him becoming Israel’s 10 Dance Champion. He’s spread his love of dance through teaching and competing. A choreographer and coach for over 25 years, Stas runs Poetic Motion, his dance business. “I aim to inspire those who are touched by the art of dance.”
PAULA WENZL is a veteran of 20 years of community theater in the North Bend/Coos Bay area, as both an actor and director. Her passion for singing and theater continued once she moved to Portland, where she earned an MFA in directing at the University of Portland. In addition to NST, she leads the King City Music Club, which includes several NSTers, for which she prepares monthly concerts.
