Last Christmas MCCT performed a radio play on WFHB titled The Plot to Overthrow Christmas and it was a hoot! Members from all over Monroe County came together to meld their voices to create something spectacular!
Read the IDS review about it HERE.
Recording will occur this weekend for the MCCT/WFHB/Firehouse Follies Christmas 2015 radio production of The Plot to Overthrow Christmas by Norman Corwin.
Co-directed by Roy Sillings and Zilia Clara Sellés
Producer: Yolanda Valdivia
Sound Engineer: Brant E. Hughes
The Cast (in order of appearance):
Narrator: Ken Ganza
Sotto Voce (1): Janet Templeton-Heise
Voce Sotto (2): Gwen Livesay
Messenger: Carter Makice
Nero: Kevin Makice
Mephisto: Becky Stapf
Haman: Denise Valkyrie
Ivan: Ken Pimple
Salome: Hannah Leigh Jones
Attila: Kevin Knight
Caligula: Joel Watson
Lucretia: Mary Emma Heaps
Legree: Pip Chamberlain
Traveler 1: Maryann Iaria
Traveler 2: Roy Sillings
Traveler 3: Andrew M. Bowen
Traveler 4: Owen Walters
Reporter 1: Jason Lopez
Reporter 2: Sarah Mae Ruggles
Reporter 3: Katelin Vessely
Santa: Frank S. Buczolich
After 3 1/2 months of extremely hard work by cast and crew, Macbeth opened to a packed house on Friday October 16th and played a sold out weekend at Blockhouse Bloomington.
Ken Pimple submitted the following review:
I’ve seen Macbeth live at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Indiana University theater, as well as a couple of movies. Guess what? This was the best, hands down. As one would expect of an amateur troupe, the acting is uneven, but the key characters – Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and Macduff – were played brilliantly.
Macbeth’s dramatic arch – confident warrior, hesitant traitor, determined murderer, guilt-ridden victim of his and his lady’s ambitions, sleepless paranoid, and defiant warrior – was masterful.
Lady Macbeth was charming, alluring, composed, and brutally insane.
Banquo was the most ghastly ghost I’ve ever seen.
Macduff broke my heart when he learned that his “pretty chickens and their dam” were gone.
There were also several humorous moments. The porter’s scene was bawdy and energetic, and Lennox’s description of the unruly night, capped by Macbeth’s response, was hilarious. You had to see it to believe it.
MCCT’s first collaboration with WFHB Community Radio 91.3 is coming online. The radio play hit the airwaves at 6pm on Halloween night as a part of WFHB’s Youth Radio program to great reception. Richard Fish, who played the Radio Announcer and has extensive experience in radio theater as host and director of WFHB’s Firehouse Follies, enjoyed the show so much that he gave NOTLD an encore performance on the November 1st edition of the Firehouse Follies!
If you missed both airings, you can now listen to it on SoundCloud –
Thanks to all involved in this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline.
To the cast and crew of William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, fantastic job!
To Cymbeline’s sponsors and donors: Christina McGinley-Hughes at Farmer’s Insurance, Dr’s Fadi, Souheil, and Alejandra Haddad of Bloomington, the United Presbyterian Church, the Yellow Brick Road, Academic Scholarly Books, Pygmalion’s Art Supplies, Indiana Festival Theater at IU, and our friends from ISU: Mark, Kathie and Allen. We could not have done it without you. Your support was a tremendous thing.
And a shout out to WFHB radio for the use of it’s recording facilities and Bloomington Parks and Rec for the use of the 3rd Street Stage!
Also thanks to the AUDIENCE of Cymbeline for being there rain, shine or lightning!
I owe a bunch of people some songs…In October 2013, I participated in the Bloomington Playwrights Project’s biggest fundraising event, the PlayOffs. I had to beg, browbeat, and cajole folks to donate on my behalf in order to be competitive as an actor… it’s a complicated process…Anyway… I promised the folks who donated for me that I would make each of them a YouTube video in which I would perform a song of their choosing.
These videos never got made… because I’m a slacker…So — I’m putting on a show for ONE NIGHT ONLY where I will perform ALL of the songs that were requested… plus a few of my own favorites… all to benefit my favorite community theatre organization, MCCT!!!
All proceeds collected at the door will go directly to MCCT !
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Can’t be there in person but still want to support MCCT? Just visit www.mcct.org/support and make a secure, completely tax-deductible donation via PayPal!
by Matthew Waterman, Bloomington Herald-Times, Jul 21 2014
Reginald Rose penned “12 Angry Men” in 1954 as a 60-minute teleplay for CBS, later adapting it into a stage play and a black-and-white feature film. That 1957 film, directed by Sidney Lumet, is widely recognized as the quintessential American legal drama. Six decades later, Monroe County Civic Theater presents not “12 Angry Men,” but “12 Angry Jurors” as its second show of this summer.
The traditional cast of all white men is diversified in this production, incorporating men and women of differing racial backgrounds (a warranted update from the original script). Eric Van Gucht makes his directorial debut with this show.
At the outset of the play, 12 jurors are faced with the heavy task of deciding the outcome in a murder trial. A troubled young man (who never appears onstage) is accused of patricide by stabbing. The penalty if he is convicted? Death by electrocution.
The evidence for his guilt seems overwhelming; a man downstairs heard the incident, a woman across the street saw it and the alleged perpetrator had purchased the murder weapon that very night.
Once they’re settled in, the jurors elect to take an initial vote. The foreman calls out “guilty” and eight hands shoot up … then nine, then 10, then 11. The foreman calls for “not guilty” and a lone hand is raised. It’s the hand of Juror No. 8, played sensitively in this production by I. James Torry.
“It’s not so easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first,” explains Juror No. 8.
Over the course of an hour and a half or so, the jurors spar back and forth about the case, dissecting the finest details, only to find that nothing is what it seems. Some jurors are unflinchingly stubborn, while other falter easily. The only trait they all share is a desperate need to be listened to.
Like all Monroe County Civic Theater productions, this is a low-budget volunteer effort, and the cast is composed primarily of amateur actors. In Friday night’s performance, many actors stumbled over lines and struggled with pacing. Despite these issues, all the performers displayed strong senses of their characters.
Steve Scott portrays Juror No. 3, the play’s belligerent antagonist. Scott’s performance mixes fiery rage with undertones of vulnerability, to a compelling effect. Yolanda Valdivia (Juror No. 11), Rob Hunter (Juror No. 9) and Patricia Blanchfield (Juror No. 6) also turned in laudable performances.
The decision to place the cast’s only black woman in the role of the bigoted juror is a questionable one; it feels as if the play is trying to teach us that black people can be prejudiced too. A white man using prejudice as an appeal to other white men (the playwright’s intention) would be more believable and resonant than a black woman using prejudice as an appeal to a diverse jury. Nonetheless, Whryne Reed tackled the part with impressive energy and commitment.
Monroe County Civic Theater’s courtroom (or, technically, jury room) drama is sure to provoke thought and discussion about our legal system in the United States. What exactly is “reasonable doubt”? What roles do prejudice, impatience, hard facts and personal feelings play in the life-or-death decisions made by juries? “12 Angry Jurors” won’t definitively answer these questions, but it might take us a step closer.
JUROR 1 Jennifer Whitaker
JUROR 2 Kelsey Carlisle
JUROR 3 Steve Scott
JUROR 4 Bill Goveia
JUROR 5 Lydia Stewart
JUROR 6 Patty Blanchfield
JUROR 7 Ryan Thiery
JUROR 8 Aaron Hart
JUROR 9 Rob Hunter
JUROR 10 Whrynne Rasheed
JUROR 11 Yolanda Valdivia
JUROR 12 I. James Torry
GUARD Taran Snodgress
