What Are We
Going to Play
Today?
Christina Stroeh:
A driving force
By Noah Griffin
A
theater is more than
bricks and mortar, a stage,
floodlights, a proscenium and
curtains. It’s the flesh and blood of
the driving forces that build, nourish
and sustain it. In the case of the soon
to be reopened Novato Theater, that
driving force is Christina Stroeh.
If that name is familiar to you, it
might be for a myriad of reasons.
Her dad, J. Dietrich Stroeh, is one
of the foremost civil engineers in
the county. And since Stroeh was
a teacher for 27 years, including
at Terra Linda and San Rafael High
School, if you have a child who
attended one of those schools,
chances are she either taught them
or they saw one of her productions.
So who is this pert, wide-eyed
dynamo who bustles with the energy
and enthusiasm of someone half her
age?
The oldest of three sisters, Stroeh
grew up in Novato, living in her
imagination, and pulling her sisters
right in there with her. Each day she
remembers as an adventure. “What
are we going to play today?” she
would say.
By the time she was 9 years old, her
budding talents blossomed into a
feature role in a 4-H production of
A Bicycle Built for Two, which she
remembers fondly as the childhood
performance that put her on her
life’s trajectory.
Her maternal grandmother, Maxine
Silvernale, was first violin in the
Marin Symphony, so a love of the
MARIN ARTS & CULTURE 21