Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
February 21, 2008 issue
Get Out and PLAY
Blowing Rock Stage Company Launches Cabin Fever Theatre
Story by Anna Oakes
It’s February—make that mid-February. After spending more than three months shut up indoors, you can’t wait for spring and you’re just itching for an excuse to get out of the house. The Blowing Rock Stage Company has a solution.
Cabin Fever Theatre, a new program by the Blowing Rock Stage Company, offers High Country folks the chance to enjoy theatre a few months before the summer theatre season begins. Its slogan is Get Out and Play! and the inaugural performance will be held Saturday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m. for one night only in the second-floor multipurpose room at the Hayes Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock.
“We don’t normally produce theatre in February,” said Kenneth Kay, producing artistic director of Blowing Rock Stage Company. “Our main purpose is just to get potential audience members out of their house on a chilly winter night [to] go see a play or two with friends and have some fun.”
Local actors and Stage Company staff will perform four short plays: Mrs. Sorken, a comedy by Christopher Durang; Anything for You by Cathy Celesia; The Philadelphia by David Ives; and Term Limit by Viki Boyle, a Stage Company regular who most recently performed at the Hayes Center in the Stage Company’s productions of The Christmas Bus and Jan Karon’s Journey to Mitford.
For Term Limit, Boyle won the Best Play award at the last year’s 15-Minute Play Festival in New York and won Best Actress for her performance in the play.
Cabin Fever Theatre provides a space in the Blowing Rock Stage Company’s repertoire for a wider variety of styles and subjects—including serious issues and absurdist comedy—that typically do not have a place in its summer season, Kay said.
“There are a lot of great short plays out there that just don’t get a lot of production opportunities,” he said. “We hope that all of them will be entertaining.” The great thing about a 10-minute play, he says, is if you don’t like it, it’ll be over in 10 minutes.
The evening will be especially “heavy on the comedy,” Kay added. “There’s nothing like having a couple of laughs and sharing them with your friends.”
The room will be arranged cabaret-style, with tables and chairs, so that audience members can enjoy snacks and beverages at their tables while watching the show. Kay said the multipurpose room has space for about 60 to 80 people when arranged this way.
A Hayes Center concession stand will offer snacks and drinks, including soda, beer and wine, for sale. It’s not dinner theatre, Kay said, but if people want dinner theatre, that may be possible in the future.
“It just depends on what people want. We definitely want to hear from people,” he said.
If the first installment of Cabin Fever Theatre is successful, the Blowing Rock Stage Company plans to do more in the future. Kay said the company could produce about three Cabin Fever programs in February and March, with productions running multiple nights. Future editions of Cabin Fever Theatre could include stand-up comedy or an improvisational night.
Tickets for Cabin Fever Theatre are $10 for adults and $3 for students and may be purchased at the door or in advance by calling the Hayes Center Box Office at 828-295-9168. The Hayes Center is located at 152 Jamie Fort Road, just off of U.S. Highway 321 in Blowing Rock.
“The whole evening will be about an hour for everybody,” Kay said. “This is meant to be a relaxed, fun evening, and we’ll see how people take to it.”
Short and Sweet (or) Winter Shorts (or) The Short List
The Blowing Rock Stage Company will perform four shorts—plays that last about 10 minutes—during its inaugural Cabin Fever Theatre program on Saturday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hayes Center multipurpose room. Here’s a short description of each.
Mrs. Sorken
Diana Haas performs Mrs. Sorken, a monologue written by Christopher Durang. Mrs. Sorken is a middle-aged suburban matron scheduled to give a lecture on the meaning of theatre, but she has lost her notes. Forced to rely on memory, the overarticulate, somewhat dotty woman welcomes the audience and discusses theatre and the meaning of life. Paul Haas directs the piece.
Anything for You
Written by Cathy Celesia, Anything for You finds two longtime friends, Gail and Lynette, meeting for dinner at a restaurant. Then Lynette springs a shocking proposition on Gail: an affair—with each other. Gail is put in an awkward situation as it is revealed that she has secretly always been in love with Lynette. The play stars Jennifer Gray as Gail and Meris Gantt as Lynette and is directed by Julie Richardson.
The Philadelphia
The Philadelphia by David Ives is the story of a young man, Mark, who has fallen into a state of “A Philadelphia”—a Twilight Zone-like condition in which he cannot get anything he asks for. His only way out of the dilemma is to ask for the opposite of what he wants. Mason Davis plays Mark, Eugene Jesel plays Al and Jesseca Terhaar plays the waitress in the piece directed by Robert Miller.
Term Limit
Viki Boyle, an actress and playwright who has starred in several Blowing Rock Stage Company productions, is the author of Term Limit, a short play centered around a conference between a lawyer and the White House secretary he is defending. Boyle submitted Term Limit to the 2007 Turnip Theatre Company and American Globe Theatre’s 15-Minute Play Festival in New York, where it won Best Overall Play and Boyle won Best Actress for her performance.
Term Limit is performed by Diana Haas as Grace and Mark Suggs as Peter and directed by Paul Haas.