This Is Your Last Chance to See 'Lake Balboa,' the Musical

In 2006 the community of Lake Balboa was named after its manmade lake. Perfect for fishing, the lake also has pedal boating and smooth, curving walking pathways.  Erica Stux’s new musical revue Lake Balboa uses song to tell the story of the lake and the people who go there.

This world premiere musical is about life, love and heartbreak, birdwatching, fishing, meeting lovers and friends, or just enjoying the scenery.  The show features Skeeter Mann, a real singing cowboy, plus a cast of eight professional singers.  After the show, there is encore musicmaking just for the sheer fun of it at no extra charge.

Lake Balboa was written by Erica Stux, a published author of children’s and young adult books, songs and plays.  She moved to Chatsworth 12 years ago from Ohio where she majored in chemistry at the University of Cincinnati.  “I first began to write when my children were young,” she said. “I used to read to them and one day I got the idea that I could write what I was reading.”  Her poems were published in children’s magazines.  She moved on to short nonfiction, eventually giving up on the chemistry and continuing as a fulltime writer.

 “I enjoy writing about nature and the environment for children, and I also write poetry, both serious and light verse, and occasionally I write a humorous essay that is prompted by a funny experience,” said Stux. “I realized living with a husband and children leads to humorous situations, so I started writing about them. The result is my latest published book titled Who, Me? Paranoid?  I also have a booklet of humorous verse.”

After she had been writing a while, she turned to biographies.  Erica Stux says, “I always felt girls need to have more role models in the literature available to them. So I have two books to fill that need: Eight Who Made a Difference: Pioneer Women in the Arts and The Achievers: Great Women in the Biological Sciences. Another of my books is Sequins and Sorrow, a memoir of my co-author, a black dancer raising an autistic son while searching for a true love for herself.”

Stux has written two other biographies. One is Writing for Freedom: A Story About Lydia Maria Child, a 19^th century American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and remembered for her verse “Over the River and Through the Woods.”  The other is on the Nobel Prize-winning Italian-American physicist who developed the first nuclear reactor, Enrico Fermi: Trailblazer in Nuclear Physics. Other publications include The Wonder of Wings, Heidi: The Musical, and the collected works of her husband, William S. Shore, Expressions of Nature Through Photography and Words.

Lake Balboa closes at the , 10620 Magnolia Blvd., just a half a block west of Cahuenga in North Hollywood, on Oct. 2. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $18, $16 for seniors and students, and groups of 10 get 50% off. For reservations call 818-762-7883. Quoting one of the lake people: “So come. You’re sure to enjoy it also.”