Every year on her birthday, Susan Strohmer goes to Toys R Us, where they'll announce your name over the speaker on your special day.
“They say, ‘Do you want us to announce your age?'” she says. “And I say, ‘No.'
“Then, they say, ‘Attention shoppers: we have a special shopper with us today. It's Susan! If you see her, say ‘Happy birthday.'
“Then I stand in the middle of the store and yell, “IT'S ME!”
If only Strohmer could come out of her shell.
Strohmer, 41, is known as “Miss Susan” to the thousands of kids who have come under her kooky spell at Grand Rapids Civic Theatre.
A 14-year Civic veteran, Strohmer wears a lot of hats, including a sparkly tiara she dons at the beginning of summer camp season and rarely takes off until fall. You might spot her at Meijer wearing it.
She runs the popular summer theater camps, which attract close to 700 youngsters each summer, teaches theater classes during the school year, creates the theater's education programs, hires and trains the teachers and works on costumes.
As an actress in a slew of productions, she's knocked the socks off theater reviewers, who've called her “bombastic,” “delightful,” and “a scene stealer.”
And this month, drum roll please, she makes her main stage directing debut with “Night of the Living Dead,” a zombie-stuffed play that opened Friday. Cue the shivers.
Effervescent and wacky, Strohmer teaches kids how to sing Beyonce songs using only cat meows. There's a dance that goes with it. Break out your claws.
She has legions of former student fans, many in their 20s now, who still squeal at the sight of her.
Her husband, Patrick, tells how they were out to dinner the other night when their server took one look at her and blurted out, “Miss Susan! I love you!”
It happens all the time.
At a theater class for sixth-graders the other afternoon, Strohmer was all energy, her big earrings swinging, as she led kids through a whirlwind of wicked witch voices, hollers of “zip, zap, zop” and a mysterious exercise called “feeling the cheese.”
Strohmer shouts “woo!” a lot. She cackles. She meows for no reason.
“She's the strangest person I've ever met,” says Penelope Notter, Civic Theatre's associate director. She smiles. “I used to think I was.”
Is all this kookiness for real?
“Absolutely,” Notter says. “There's nothing fake about Susan Strohmer. It's all real, right down to her toes.”
While kids know her for her silly songs and her wacky cat obsession, there's something deeper going on as Miss Susan's young students memor-
ize lines, craft their costumes and work together to make magic on stage.
“We're all so different, but everyone fits in,” Strohmer says. “We have kids who are shy, who can open their mouth and barely squeak. We have kids who don't fit in at all at school. They're not in sports. They're not academically outstanding. You see a spark in them when they realize ‘I fit in here.'
“It gives them confidence,” she says. “They can say, ‘I'm weird, but that's OK.' We say, ‘Yeah, you're weird. So are we. Welcome.'”
“There's always a kid who feels like the odd one out,” says Rachel Sironen, 16, who's been taking classes from Miss Susan since she was 5. “Susan always goes up to that kid and includes him and soon, everybody's a big family.”
That's really important to Strohmer. Because she always felt kind of weird growing up, too.
She's a West Side girl, and she adds a “woo hoo” after she shares that.
She went to Harrison Park Elementary and Union High School, and grew up with parents Darlene and Robert Smitter and big brother Robert.
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