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closeHeidi Biever is standing with her back to a room full of wiggling, giggling elementary school students. Dressed in black yoga pants, a striped cap perched jauntily atop her blond braids, she surveys the group in the wall-length mirror before her, then strikes a pose.
CDT/Nabil K. Mark
Musical theatre professional Heidi Biever has been teaching and producing shows in State College since 2002 with her company Singing Onstage which is the premiere musical theatre training and performance studio in State College, PA. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
“OK guys — what does this look like?” she calls as she leans back, hands cupped near the side of her head, one leg extended. “Like you’re listening to headphones or something?”
In unison, the children stop fidgeting and try to mimic her moves.
“Good,” Biever says, as 20 or so pairs of hands fly to heads. “Now straighten that left leg but don’t put any weight on it … you should still be able to lift that foot up.”
The students watch as Biever’s 12-year-old daughter, Madeline, puts the steps together in a combination straight out of the movie “High School Musical.”
“Here’s the thing I want you to understand and remember,” Biever says. “We’re doing all the same moves they do in the movie — they just do them a lot faster.”
With that, she’s counting off, leading them through it again.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
It’s just another day at the office for 44-year-old Biever.
She and her husband, Richard, run Singing on Stage Studios, a musical theater training ground for children, out of their Pugh Street home.
It’s the same home where Biever grew up, where her mother, Betty Jane Dittmar, ran a dance studio. Biever once took dance lessons in the same downstairs studio where her daughter now helps her demonstrate steps to a new generation.
“I think it’s pretty neat that my own children are growing up surrounded by music and dance and theater,” she said, flashing a dazzling megawatt grin made for stage. The family’s living quarters are on the home’s second floor, where they were able to convert what had been an upstairs studio to provide four bedrooms.
Downstairs is the business — a true family affair. Richard studies for a Master of Fine Arts in musical theater direction at Penn State and gives private voice lessons.
Madeline helps in the studio. Marshall, 15, gives guitar lessons when he’s not playing professionally for one of three bands in town. Four-year-old Olivia’s job is being a kid.
Heidi runs the business, a job that involves staging 20 musical theater productions a year, and keeps the family on track, including home-schooling the kids. That’s a lot of balls to be kept in the air at any given time, but Heidi’s seemingly boundless exuberance makes it seem easy.
“Boy, do they have some energy,” says Mike Negra, executive director of the State Theatre, where the Bievers stage some professional productions. “They’re so passionate about what they do — as producers, directors. Their talent, their enthusiasm is just infectious.”
“She is amazing with kids,” said Blaire Toso, whose son and daughter take classes with Singing on Stage. “She always relates to them so well — she’s always so positive.”
EARLY START
Heidi was just a toddler when she began dance and movement training in her mother’s studio. The symphonic version of “Peter and the Wolf” was an early favorite.
“By her third birthday she could dance the whole thing, start to finish, with a clear idea of when the music changed,” Dittmar said. “She could hear the various characters. That’s something many couldn’t do.”
As a teen, in addition to cheerleading, she played the flute, involving herself in almost every performing group State College Area High School had to offer.
Despite her talents, Biever said she never really considered a future as a performer. When her high school staged a musical, she was in the orchestra pit with her flute, not in the spotlight.
“All I wanted to do was teach,” she said. “I wasn’t one of those girls who stood in front of a mirror and said ‘I’m gonna be in a show.’ ”
When she was 15, a teacher suggested voice lessons. Heidi says she was hesitant at first, but the more she learned how to use her voice, the more she was hooked. “It was a surprise to me and it kept surprising me,” she said. “And that’s what makes it so meaningful to me working with these kids. They have no idea of what’s inside them, and we help them find out.”
Her voice opened up a whole new world of possibilities, and after high school she left for Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in vocal performance. She thought about becoming an opera singer, but that changed when she joined a vocal choral group.
Richard was also a member of the group, which sang musical theater pieces, and she quickly found herself developing a passion for both.
“Once I got a taste of using the singing and dancing, it just seemed like there was a huge part of myself waiting to be found,” she said. “Musical theater provided that — all the pieces were there.”
THE WINDING ROAD
Before she knew it, she was cast in a succession of professional summer stock productions.
“I guess I had the right disposition,” she said. “I kept my ears and eyes open and my mouth shut. I was really eager to learn.”
She and Richard did so well that, after graduation, a casting agent gave them their pick of shows and touring companies. They chose to reprise college work they’d done in “Little Shop of Horrors,” with Heidi starring as Audrey and Richard as the musical director.
They performed in Hamburg and Dusseldorf, Germany and several cities in Switzerland. They got engaged while on tour, before returning and settling down in Manhattan.
But they wanted to start a family. So in 1992, they decided to move back to Heidi’s hometown, into her childhood home, where her mother still ran a dance school. “I felt very much,” Heidi said, “that I would like to bring what I had learned about the arts back here and teach, and also felt it would be a fantastic place to raise my children. … I felt like this was a beautiful and caring community.”
They offered some musical theater classes and voice lessons. But business was slow, and when their church offered them lucrative jobs in public relations and the church’s publishing business, they decided to break from show business.
For seven years, they worked steadily, moving to Philadelphia, and later Boston. But they missed theater and teaching. The corporate life just didn’t suit them.
“Rich and I are still big kids, and it didn’t allow us to express the childlike side to our nature,” Heidi said, laughing. “My daughter still gets embarrassed if I do something like a cartwheel in the grocery store.”
They returned to State College in 2003. And saw an opportunity.
“In the early ’90s, when we were here, there wasn’t any kind of specialized musical training,” Rich said. “But when we came back, even middle schools were doing full-blown musicals.”
“We thought, ‘What about all those kids who want to be involved in a show but can’t?’ ” Heidi said.
HOME AGAIN
They decided to once again offer voice and musical theater lessons to area students. To finance the business, they sold the home they’d purchased and moved back into Heidi’s childhood home, which at the time was standing empty.
Instead of offering just classes, they decided to have each session culminate with a performance.
“That’s when it really took off,” she said.
It’s not just the Bievers who have reaped the rewards as demand for their classes, and the number of musical productions they stage, has grown.
“What they are doing is a major big-time gift to this community as a whole,” Negra said. “I think it adds to the quality of life in Centre County.”
Amy Moore, of State College, whose son Jesse has been studying with the Bievers for three years, finds Heidi’s irrepressible energy impressive.
“She is probably the most vivacious and motivating teacher you could want,” she said. “She really builds confidence and she’s very, very good at finding their strengths and finding a place for them in the production.”
Still, when 20 little girls all want to play the part of Gabriella, even the best of teachers is challenged.
“If a child really wants a part and they’re not ready for it, that’s heart wrenching,” Biever said. “But our motto is ‘keep the drama on the stage.’ ”
Her satisfaction comes from watching her students discover their abilities. “I get so excited when one of my students really turns a corner or does something onstage they never really thought they could do.”
Back in the studio, Biever surveys the room with long wooden bars, mirrors and a piano. She marvels at her life here, teaching dance and theater in the place where her own mother taught generations of dancers.
“Every day I wake up with wonder at how things have happened for me, to get me to this place in life,” she said. “There have been literally thousands of children that have gone through here, between my mother’s 55 years of teaching dance and what we do.”
She looks around again and smiles once more.
“There’s certain karma in this room,” she said. “It’s a happy, sacred place.”
In Print
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