The Verdugo Woodland Dads’ Club Presents: Fathers’ Follies – “Frozen Things”

By Lynn SHER

Members of the Verdugo Woodlands Dads’ Club are busy this week with final rehearsals for the annual show of Fathers’ Follies. This year’s production, “Frozen Things,” is an amalgamation of the beloved Disney movie “Frozen” and the equally adored streaming series, “Stranger Things.” There will be two performances this week, on June 2 and June 3 at 6 p.m. at The Verdugo Woodlands Dads’ Club, 1728 Cañada Blvd. in Glendale.

Fathers’ Follies is a long held tradition in the Glendale community, dating back 76 years. It started as a variety show, with skits and singing and dancing. About 20 years ago the members started implementing one overall story for the show, with singing and dancing interspersed throughout.

“Frozen Things” was written for the 2020 Fathers’ Follies but because of the COVID-19 epidemic it was subsequently shelved. In 2020 and 2021 shows had to be written that would work in the streaming realm and since last year, which was the Fathers’ Follies 75^th anniversary, a show was written around that.

Dads’ Club President Andy Hagelshaw and Vice President Chris Corbett worked together to rewrite “Frozen Things” to present as this year’s show. They updated the script and wrote some extra scenes to make it more relevant. For example, they added a scene in which “Active Dad” James Demerjian will be performing the first ever guitar solo in a Fathers’ Follies production in a recreation of an epic “Stranger Things” scene from the show’s most recent season finale.

While Fathers’ Follies has always been a fundraiser for the PTA and the Verdugo Woodlands Elementary School, it is far more that. Demerjian said, “The main point is tradition … the pure tradition of it … that just so happens to also be a good fundraiser.”

According to the Dads’ Club website, the history actually goes back to the 1920s when the Verdugo Woodlands PTA had an annual event called “Father’s Night” when dads would gather for a meeting. In 1948, the husband of PTA president Kay Gurash had the idea that “it might be fun for the guys to do it [the meeting] dressed as their wives. Swearing each other to deepest secrecy, they raided closets and thrift stores, cut up mop heads for wigs, wrote several skits, put make-up on their faces and added a few songs and dances, and performed in the school cafeteria.”

It was such a success that the event was produced annually, eventually becoming Fathers’ Follies.

Tradition and fundraising aside, Demerjian, who has a 9-year-old in fourth grade and a 7-year-old in the first grade at Verdugo Woodlands and a 6-year-old who will be attending Verdugo Woodlands in the fall, said “The Dads’ Club is a really interesting way for dads to get involved in their kids’ lives at school.”

In addition to playing guitar he is also dancing in the show for the second consecutive year.

“You feel special when you leave your house in the evening to go to rehearsal,” he said. “It’s not like you’re out for drinks with the guys or a work event or traveling for work. When you leave the house to go the Dads’ Club to volunteer and rehearse, [the kids] smile and they’re happy cause they know that we’re doing it for them.”

Mike Shaughnessy shares a similar sentiment. He started out in the Dads’ Club as a singer in 1993 when his children were in elementary school and became a producer in later years. He is lovingly categorized as an “Ancient Lovely,” which is a dad whose children are above grade six.

His era, he said, was a time when it was rare to see dads in the PTA. So joining the Dads’ Club was a chance for him get involved in the school life of his kids while also making connections with other dads in the community. He went on to write the show’s theme song, “Bring on the Follies,” which opens the show every year.

Shaughnessy said the song is a “comical tongue-in-cheek look at the ridiculous kinds of things that go into the show.”

He encourages everyone to come out, saying that Fathers’ Follies is “a once a lifetime experience … a spectacle.”