Monday, February 27, 2012

Styles: Workshop Players

Looks like a nice place for a MYSTERY.

Amherst was not incorporated as a "city" until 1962. Long before that Amherst Village had this adorable one-room schoolhouse, which is today the home of Workshop Players.

Class of 1948
We performed in this room tonight.

Can't say enough about this space. Director Dave Cotton and his staff of extremely kind and dedicated volunteers look after the outreach tour like we are visiting relatives.


The space is traditionally "in the round" with one hundred seats on four sides. For the tour they lose a bank of seats on one end, sacrificing ten seats. They take reservations for our touring appearance or they would not be able to meet the demand, and there may be chaos. There's absolutely no standing room.

Emily and Michael discuss how to fit our set onto this small stage.
(Or "your caption goes here.")

We take the Workshop Players space into account when designing the tour. Terry made the set so that the "wings" could be abandoned, if necessary. This turned out to work very well.

Tasty, hot soup.

Because there is no lobby, they open the building, and the house, at 7:15 prompt. So we were all early to knock the set up and get downstairs for fresh, hot soup, and chicken salad sandwiches. I really love the Workshop Players stop.

Full house!


The full house was wildly appreciative. Having a deeply thrust stage was unique, and gave us the opportunity to play around with the blocking, moving in circles, putting our backs to different parts of the house, facing each other directly across the stage. It brought out some wonderful new discoveries. Our audience was in a mood to laugh, but were also up for a great mystery. Some revelations produced previously unheard murmurs of realization.


In addition to a deeply devoted number of Workshop Players volunteers, we were again this year joined by a contingent from Amherst High School. They were very sympathetic towards Hastings, and didn't like this feckless Cynthia person one bit. At least, this was true of the girls.

Drama students from Amherst Steele High School

Post-Show Discussion
Notice the shortened set?

The post-show discussion was hilarious, it was more like a rap session. A very warm feeling. It's strange to think tonight's performance marked the end of our gigs in Lorain County. From now on its just a few in Cuyahoga and six more performances in Summit County. Tomorrow we will perform at 1 PM at the Northwest Branch of the Akron Public Library. This performance is free and open to the public.

But first, let's have some of Dave Cotton's homemade vanilla and strawberry ice cream!

No comments:

Post a Comment