The Human Race Theatre Company's Musical Theatre Workshop/Weekend Comes To The Loft 7/17-19

A musical about mayhem behind the scenes at a soap opera, another about the space love leaves behind when it goes, and a third about whatever a talented group of area teens decide to make it about are all coming to downtown Dayton as part of The Human Race Theatre Company's Musical Theatre Workshop/Weekend July 17-19.

The Human Race has long had a national reputation for musical theatre development, and this is the second year for that development to take the shape of a big weekend festival, with three shows each getting two performances.

Two of those shows are professional creations at the workshop stage, selected from numerous submissions. "Each of the writing teams has a history with The Human Race," says HRTC Executive Director Kevin Moore, "and we're thrilled to be able to continue to develop their new shows."

It's backstage to backstab in The Trimble Wars. Human Race Resident Artist Sean Michael Flowers wrote the music and Hamilton native Patrick Vaughn the lyrics and book about a soap opera where the action off camera is, well, a soap opera - complete with love, daytime drama and a wavering line between fact and fiction.

The Trimble Wars' large cast is loaded with local favorites - Scott Stoney, Aaron Vega, Patricia Linhart, Jamie Cordes, Sara Mackie, Daina Michelle Griffith, JJ Tiemeyer, Will Hutcheson, Kristen Hurley, Renee Franck-Reed, Alexandra Finke, and James Roselli. The workshop will be directed by Moore.

Flowers and Vaughn spent a 10-day residency at The Human Race last fall, working on their first act. The Human Race premiered their first musical, Prometheus Dreams, at a workshop during the 2000-2001 season.

The Trimble Wars will be presented in a staged reading format, as will rightnextto me, the latest creation of Gregg Coffin, whose work has often been seen and heard in Human Race productions, whether full musicals like Convenience and Five Course Love, or arrangements for Drawer Boy, Proof and A Christmas Carol. This will be the show's third workshop and will include rewrites of earlier presentations in Kansas City and Sacramento.

rightnextto me is a series of monologues, vignettes and scenes connected by the idea of disconnection. It will be guest-directed by Melissa Rain Anderson, who appeared with The Human Race in Convenience, and have a cast with several Broadway veterans, including Jim Poulos, who was also Convenience at The Loft, Stacia Fernandez and Melissa Dye, as well as Jamie Cordes, head of the Musical Theatre and Acting Preparatory Program at Wright State, who was just in the Human Race production of Wait Until Dark.

The Trimble Wars and rightnextto me will be staged in the Human Race's Caryl D. Philips Creativity Center at 116 N. Jefferson. The third presentation, a full production of a musical conceived, produced and performed by area teens, will be on stage at The Loft Theatre.

The teen production is under the aegis of the internationally-renowned Lovewell Project, led by both local and Lovewell instructors. It could end up being about almost anything - ideas originally bandied about ranged from zombies to homelessness.

The Musical Theatre Weekend is sponsored by the Miriam Rosenthal Memorial Trust Fund, with additional support from The Producer's Circle and the National Fund for New Musicals.

The performance schedule is:

Lovewell Friday July 17 at 8pm, Saturday July 18 at 3pm
The Trimble Wars Saturday July 18 at 8pm and Sunday July 19 at 7pm
rightnextto me Saturday July 18 at 11am and Sunday July 19 at 2pm

Tickets are $15 for each performance, available by calling The Human Race Theatre at (937) 461-3823.

Black Crook: Jamie Cordes and Patricia Linhart at the 2008 workshop of The Black Crook Project
A Novel Insight: cast of the 2008 Lovewell production A Novel Insight

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