Photo Flash: MARVIN'S ROOM Opens 5/1 At The Catonsville Theatre Company

Catonsville Theatre Company, a committee of the Catonsville Chapter of the CCBC Alumni Association, presents the drama/comedy, Marvin’s Room, by Scott McPherson, Fridays, May 1, 8, 15 at 8:00 PM, Saturdays, May 2, 9, 16 at 8:00 PM, and Sunday, May 17 at 3:00 PM. All performances will be held in the Barn Theatre on the CCBC-Catonsville Campus, 800 S. Rolling Rd 21228. Ticket prices are $18.00 General Admission, $15.00 Students, Seniors (60+) and alumni, and $12.00 Children under 12. Special group rates are available. For tickets or information call 443/840-4400 or email catheatrecompany@aol.com.  

Bessie lives in Florida where she cares for her aunt and ailing father, Marvin. Aunt Ruth has several collapsed vertebrae and has to wear an electrode pack on her waist with which she can both control her constant pain and open and close her garage door at will. Unable to speak, and confined to his bed for years, Marvin's only entertainment comes from someone bouncing beams of sunlight, reflected from a small mirror, around his room. Bessie learns amidst all this illness that she has leukemia and that her only hope is to contact her long-estranged sister Lee to see if her bone marrow is compatible for a transplant. Lee reluctantly makes the trip to Florida from Ohio, bringing along her two sons, one of whom has just been released from an institution after a wave of arson. The reunion of the sisters is uneasy at best, with long buried recriminations coming to the surface even as love slowly overwhelms Lee's veneer of selfishness and glib denial. Bessie's challenge becomes to reunite Lee and her son Hank before he rejects her forever for her years of neglect. One by one, Lee and her sons are tested for the transplant, but none of them will be able to donate to Bessie who, for the moment, seems to have gone into remission. Against Lee's urging that Bessie take it easy, Bessie refuses to condemn Aunt Ruth and her father to nursing homes, claiming that only by caring for them herself will she make her own illness bearable. During a trip to Disneyland, Bessie collapses. Lee and Hank, however, have finally begun to communicate as a result of Bessie's attentions to them both. As the bad news accumulates, the play ends with Bessie taking shelter in her only refuge: In answer to her father's cries of discomfort, she selflessly abandons her own despair and helps him to bounce the day's remaining sunlight around his room.

In the late 1980’s, a group of then-Catonsville Community College alumni and former Barnstormers (the campus theatrical club) first talked about a stage production as a Barnstormer reunion.  By the mid-1990’s and after a year’s research of all the musicals ever performed on campus, they approached the then-CCC Alumni Association with a proposal for creating a retrospective show. This coincided with the planning of the Alumni Association’s 30th Anniversary celebration and seemed a perfect complimentary event. The reunion show, Barn Yesterday, gave rise to the Alumni Theatre Company, renamed Catonsville Theater Company, as a committee of the Alumni Association, and to the creation of the Lloyd Goren Memorial and Scholarship Fund in memory of a departed friend, former classmate and Barnstormer.  

Among the audience-pleasing shows produced by CTC are Nunsense, The Cemetery Club, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell, Frankly Sinatra, Steel Magnolias and The Diary of Anne Frank. Recent productions which have been singled out by BroadwayWorld.com are Real Women Have Curves, winner of top honors for set design, Driving Miss Daisy and Rounding Third, both of which were considered for Best of Baltimore Community Theater awards.

CTC is open to participation by any alumni, CCBC students, faculty, staff and community members who have an interest in theater arts. With proceeds from box-office sales, fund-raising events, donations and the generous support of the Catonsville Chapter of the Alumni Association and the College, CTC has raised over $30,000 to-date. Moneys from the Lloyd Goren Memorial and Scholarship fund are earmarked for scholarships, improvements and maintenance of the theater, and to fund future CTC productions.

Photos by Steve Teller

Karen Ross and Richard Blank

Karen Ross, Melanie Bishop-Cahill, Joan Corcoran, Victor Thompson, and Matt Knauer