Actor celebrates 25 years and 3,000 performances at Oregon theme park
By Mirandah Davis-Powell for Salem Reporter, The Oregonian/Oregon Live — August 6, 2025
Bentley Michaels has performed at the Enchanted Forest Theatre since 2000, when he was still in high school. He recently reached a new milestone in the number of shows he’s performed.
Every time Bentley Michaels finishes a show at the Enchanted Forest Theatre, he retreats to the green room to tally his performance.
It’s been a tradition at the theatre since at least 1985, when performers began writing on the walls of the backstage room. They do so to immortalize a hilarious quote from a co-star or to count the number of times they performed in a show.
On Friday, Aug. 1, Michaels marked his 3,000th performance, dating back to his first show in 2000. His tally marks on the ceiling cover at least a foot. No other Enchanted Theatre performer has ever gotten close to Michaels’ total.
“I didn’t think I’d have that many,” Michaels said, noting that he used to make his tally marks much larger. “I keep coming back. So they’re just getting smaller and smaller.”
He said he feels he ought to leave some “real estate” for other performers, especially the young students that he teaches.
Though he’s taken time away to go on tour with bands and lived in Los Angeles for a three-year stint, Michaels has always come back to the small theater in the theme park off of Interstate 5, and says he can’t imagine it any other way.
“This is my life, man. This is the fun part,” he said.
The theater stages one play each summer season, which runs from May to September. The performances are included in admission to the park, which ranges from $23 to $30.
When a power outage in May caused the lights to go out and the sound to stop, Michaels was performing “Jack and the Beanstalk” for about 200 guests. Rather than end the show, Michaels and the cast continued performing through the power outage, interacting with the audience and creating their own sound effects from off stage.
“It was still one of the top five shows I’ve ever done out here. We were goofing off,” Michaels said.
Earlier this summer, four patrons attended “Jack and the Beanstalk,” performed with full music and sound effects.
“They came up to us after the show, saying how interesting it was to see the show with the songs and everything. And I was like, ‘Oh, you guys are rad. That was such a fun day,’” Michaels said.
Michaels said that being at the Enchanted Theatre six days a week brings audiences grateful to see him.
“There are people here in the park who say, ‘Oh, good. It’s you. We were hoping you’d be here,” Michaels said, grateful and astonished by the support and encouragement.
A clear path to the stage
Michaels’ father was a radio host at KYKN and would often bring his son along to events as he was growing up. Michaels remembers having an agent as a child, acting in commercials for companies like Nike and Reebok and for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland.
With a “really great” film teacher in high school and a passion for acting, Michaels began rounding out his talents while at McNary High School in Keizer.
“It just kind of becomes something you do. You’re making short films, you’re playing bands, you’re making your own music videos,” he said. “I told my high school guidance counselor that if I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and I paid all of my bills with things I loved to do, I would be the happiest guy in the world.”
Michaels became fond of the style of performing that the Enchanted Theatre employs – a blend of improv, physical comedy and audience interaction while using reworked scripts of classic stories. This season’s “Jack and the Beanstalk” is a 25 minute adaptation of the fairy tale, featuring original songs and dances.
“It’s a very unique brand of theater – it does break the fourth wall,” Michaels said.
All of the theater’s scripts and songs are written and composed by Susan Vaslev, the director of the Enchanted Theatre. Vaslev is the daughter of Roger Tofte, the owner and creator of Enchanted Forest, and she has been directing the theatre and composing music for the theme park since 1972.
Vaslev is still at the theater, and remembers teaching Michaels when he had just started.
“He’s been trained for so long now that he knows the style, he knows the physical bits. His singing is good, he can dance,” Vaslev said.
Just some of Michaels’ tally marks are jotted down under the name “Matt Allegre” in this photo, noting performances from the 2000s through the 2010s.
And Michaels remembers learning from her, too.
“She was 46 when I met her, and she was still running into walls, doing falls and falling off the back of the door,” he said.
The physical bits are a big part of Michaels’ work. Getting the style just right has been a labor of love.
“It’s a live-action Looney Tune. You know? It’s like I get to be Bugs Bunny in this scenario,” he said. “Sitting around doing voiceovers, being silly, and then coming out here and getting paid to run around like a jackass, like that’s kind of the dream.”
During the rest of the year, Michaels teaches tap dancing classes and works as a professional voice actor.
Giving back
Now it has been over two decades since Michaels first learned from Vaslev. She no longer acts in the plays and made Michaels an assistant director. He gets to lean into the mentor role that Vaslev once served for him.
He works with several students who play the same role and rotate depending on the day. For example, four actors rotate playing the role of Jack in this season’s play.
“Everyone has their own personality and way of learning,” he said. “So it’s about finding the cheat code for every person and getting them all down.”
Michaels is a fan favorite, but he has also become a role model for the new actors at Enchanted Theatre.
Lavender Maceira is one of the students in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” playing Gertie the Goose and Fluffy the Cow. In her high school’s recent production of the satirical comedy “Urinetown,” she played Caldwell, the villain.
When Michaels saw her perform in that role, he noticed that she imitated some of his mannerisms from when he plays villains in the Enchanted Theatre productions.
Maciera has performed in two seasons of the Enchanted Theatre productions, and has seen Michaels play a myriad of bad guys, from witches to giants.
After watching her performance, he asked her, “Hey, are you doing me up there?”
“Who’s meaner than you?” she said in response, jokingly.