When thinking of musical families, there can be many options to choose from including The Bees Gees, The Osmond Family, the Beach Boys, Reggae artist Bob Marley and his children and countless other examples. The Village of Sea Cliff has its own musical family, right next door in Glen Cove.
Whether at the Sea Cliff Arts Council, Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church, or the village library; Fred, Liz and Joe Stroppel have spent years singing, performing and educating in Sea Cliff.
Liz has been teaching early childhood music for over a decade and advocating for the wide array of benefits that children enjoy from music. The 62-year-old, who was raised in Brooklyn, said that her mother, Betty Cash, loved to sing.
“
We were always singing.” she said. “She was always involved in something.” The fifth of six children, Liz added that she would often go with her mother to rehearsals at the community theater production. After retiring from stage performances, Liz said that her mother became a director.
It was on the set of her mother’s production of “A Good Man” in Manhattan in the early 1990s where she met a playwright named Fred Stroppel.
“I was working at the box office,” she said. “He was the playwright and we would talk before the show, at intermission, at different times during the production, and then as soon as it closed, we went on our first date.”
That was just the beginning. Following their marriage, the Stroppels stayed in Brooklyn for a few years before moving to Glen Cove in 1999. They welcomed their son, Joe in 2002. Liz recalled taking him in the stroller and walking towards the neighboring Sea Cliff, a block from her house.
“We went to the library there, and we went to the music classes there, and we went to the playgrounds there,” she said. “That's kind of where we met all of our friends.”
Fred, who grew up in Glen Cove for most of his life, viewed Sea Cliff as the artsy town off to the south. However, their new house was only a block from the village after moving back to Glen Cove and his perspective changed.
“I sort of knew Glen Cove very well already, I was there all my life,” he said. “So, Sea Cliff was a different place to start hanging out and connect. I also had some plays done there years before and it is a very welcoming town, so it's easy to fit in there.”
The 68-year-old playwright has been gathering local actors to perform his one-act plays for the community over the last several years. The production, titled
“Twisted Shorts,” has been performed throughout Sea Cliff for more than a decade in places such as St. Luke's Church and the Sea Cliff Arts Council.
Fred wrote and directed the plays, Liz worked the lights and Joe acted as well as sang at the most recent “Twisted Shorts” on May 10.
This type of family collaboration happens consistently at performances, according to Fred.
“It is great for us all to work together,” he added that “we know we can depend on each other and I think you know the idea of carrying it on to the next generation is sort of a dream.”
It was also Joe’s first time acting out one of his fathers’ plays in front of a live crowd. “It was wonderful. I loved it,” Joe said. “I think, I think he writes some of the best dialog I've ever, I've ever seen, read or heard.”
An enrolled student at Hunter’s College working towards a Bachelor of Music degree, the 22-year-old remembered listening to full Broadway cast albums of different vintage Broadway shows with his family and credited the influence of both of his parents for his interest in singing.
“I think the most important thing to me is that they understand what I'm wanting to do with my life,” he added that he believes that “because they all come from theater and all that stuff, I think that they have a level of understanding of my love, what, what I'm what I'm choosing to do with my life.”
While his parents helped form his interest, Joe’s love for singing emerged while he was 14-years-old at Camp Center Stage; a sleepaway performing arts camp in Raymond, Maine.
“I'd never been to summer camp before,” he said. “I was terrified, but I made some of the closest friends I still have to this day, and it was the first time I sang in front of an audience, and I got a standing ovation.”
He will be singing a selection of songs from Broadway and the American songbook at the Sea Cliff Arts Council on June 1 and the Stroppels will continue singing, supporting each other, performing and teaching throughout the village.
“It's interesting having this theater family that performs all the time,” Fred said. “Coming out of Glen Cove and going to Sea Cliff, I feel like I'm part of two communities here. And it's just great to come together.”
