BWW Previews: PLAY-WRITE PROJECT at Carousel Theatre Of Indianola: Five World Premiere Plays Debuting Over The Next Five Weeks

In March of 2020, when other theatres were having to make decisions to shutter their productions due to the pandemic, Carousel Theatre was hoping to finish the second weekend of their run of "Eurydice." Fortunately, they were able to complete the run before rules about gatherings started to change. As it became clear that theatres wouldn't be opening up soon, they began brainstorming ideas of how they could still produce projects, even if they didn't have a live in-person audience. So far, the public has seen two virtual cabarets, but Carousel was also running a unique program for them throughout the pandemic. That program was Carousel Theatre's Play-write project.

A few years ago, they had brought in Missoula Children's Theatre to offer a week-long camp for children in Indianola and the surrounding communities. What was unique about this was that it was an educational opportunity for adults, and it was also going to be a multi-month commitment. Five artists decided to take a chance on this endeavor.
They gathered twice a month on zoom along with facilitator David Dubczak. What came out of this workshop were five one-act plays.
Part of the original goal was to present the projects as part of their 2021-2022 season. They didn't know the impact Covid would have on their season, forcing all their shows to be postponed a year. After two zoom meetings were held in February, which I had the pleasure to participate in, a dilemma faced Carousel. They wanted to honor their commitment to include the shows as part of their 2021/2022 season, but they were placed with the issue of where in the season there would be time to stage and rehearse the five shows. So just like Carousel did early in the pandemic, they went back to the drawing board to come up with a new solution. That was to stage all five shows and then film the performances the stream online.

When the opportunity came to stage these plays, I was excited to participate as a co-director for these shows. What excited me even more about this was that I would get the opportunity to work with Mickie Larche, the other co-director, who was one of my play directors in middle school. One of the great parts of being involved with Carousel is that it's continuously given me opportunities to work with Mickie onstage and backstage. I knew with Mickie, a director I had a large amount of respect for, that this would be an amazing opportunity.

Since we were going to film these plays, we decided that we would hold rehearsals in person. We knew it would be easy to manage who was at the building we would use for rehearsing and filming with the small cast size. Where it would be harder to manage the number of people was going to be at auditions. So we decided to hold auditions online. This means setting up a schedule for those auditioning to sign up and setting up a zoom meeting that people could use for their auditions. The auditions went reasonably smoothly, and having scheduled auditions is something I will consider in the future moving forward when I am doing auditions.

As we headed into initial read-throughs for each of the five plays and rehearsals, I found myself loving the progress each show was making. That is due to the incredible work each artist was putting in outside of rehearsal. What I loved were the discoveries we were able to make about these characters through each rehearsal. Some of my favorite discoveries were found when cast members opened themselves up and told stories about how they could relate to the play. This happened many times and brought the plays to new, unexpected heights, making for an even better viewing experience.

Hopefully, reading this has you wondering when and how you can see these shows. The shows will start premiering weekly on July 9 at 7:00 PM and can be found on the Carousel Theatre of Indianola's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/theatrecarousel/ and YouTube Channel at https://youtube.com/channel/UCJg92wZJt113g8_j9TyIoLQ. The schedule of shows can be found below. While these are presented free of charge, donations are recommended. These donations will be used to offset the cost of staging and filming and prepare for the shows scheduled to open in the 2021/2022 season. To find out more about Carousel Theatre of Indianola, visit https://carouseltheatre.org.

Carousel Theatre's Play-Write Project
July 9, 2021-"Game Night" by Karin Hooper
July 16, 2021-"A Powerful Placebo" by Joan Boskovich
July 23, 2021-"Long Time, No See" by Michael Stout Martin
July 30, 2021-"A Prayer for the Lost" and Found by John Claes
August 6, 2021-"Last Call" by Randy Stone

Carousel Theatre's 2021/2022 Season
"[Title of Show]"-August 12-22, 2021
"And Then There Were None"-October 22-31, 2021
"Next to Normal"-March 18-27, 2022
"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"-July 14-24, 2022

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