I have been writing readers theater scripts since 2021, and this weekend will see the world premier of my latest: "Not Dead Yet in Mountainville," a cozy mystery-adjacent rom com with 14 players, including Kathleen.
I had acted in two readers theater productions a few years earlier: "The Princess Bride," playing Miracle Max and the Officious Bishop, and as Andy in the two-person "Love Letters." Why I chose to do some deep research on "Young Frankenstein" in the summer of 2021 must have been due to boredom as we were coming out of the pandemic. The nice thing about adpating a script is that most of the good lines are waiting for you... all you need to do is work out how to minimize all the visual scenes that give movies their richness. Turns out to not be so easy.
I found the movie script online but also found the original stage play that Gene Wilder wrote which led to the screenplay. And then I found the script to a music version of the film, which turned out to be a bit raunchy. Certainly not "church appropriate," and the St. Luke's Fellowship Hall was the space I secured for our one performance, on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021.
Nine brave souls showed up for the audition night a week prior, and then I recruited two more (including Kathleen, who had never been on stage before), so we had elevent players for that show. And 75 people attended, all wearing masks, while the players were allowed to NOT wear masks. At some point, all the somewhat haphazard mask wearing will become the stuff we tell disbelieving classrooms of fourth graders...
That show's success led me to think about doing some other adaptations, and I settled on a melding of a Hallmark Holiday movies parody interspersed with famous scenes from holiday movies and TV shows. When we held the auditions for this holiday show, lo and behold but 60 people showed up.
I recall quickly meeting with Jim and Leigh Ramsey, who had founded the Wesley Players in 2000, and with whom I had worked in numerous Wesley Players musicals, up in the front of the Sanctuary as the masses talked and joked before us. Honestly, this was one of those times when sheer panic led to a flawed but "doable" solution.
We had the church booked for one Saturday night. There's no way all 60 could be in one show... there would be so many characters that each player would be investing four evenings (we have traditionally had three rehearsals and then just do the show) for just a few lines.
Our makeshift solution was to split the group into two casts and to present the show twice... in one night. We had an early show and a late show and I asked the cast NOT performing to add to each audience. It was crazy and wonderful and funny and (sometimes) moving. The pandemic had pretty much knocked out traditional musicals and main stage productions, so people were eager for a chance to both get together with others and have some fun acting.
That was a November show and the next year I was asked if I could come up with something for September, early in the school year. That led to "Much Ado," which was based on "Much Ado About Nothing," but with our Ben and Beatrice being teachers at the Mountainville High School. I again "stole" scenes from TV shows and movies that featured high schools.
Then came "A Mountainville Christmas Carol," with Ellie Scrooge as our mendacious character who experiences a miraculous change, and last year another holiday show, "Mr. Kringle Goes to Town," based on "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," a 1938 Frank Capra movie that I first knew through the Adam Sandler movie version.
The Wesley Players moved me to early June and I found out about three months ago, and June is not a great time for holiday shows. So, I opted to try a cozy mystery. They are quite popular and visible right now. The big difference this time was that I had no script to adapt. I just started. And tomorrow night, an audience will be there to see what our three days of rehearsal have produced.
My hope is to provide this blog part two of my readers theater history next Tuesday.
I also hope we get a few laughs. Kathleen is one of two podcasters who do a true crime podcast. It's been fun to work with her on crafting a lot of the script... in fact, we spent a very pleasant hour or so this afternoon editing some of her lines and just practicing.
We are driving over to the church for the final tech rehearsal in 15 minutes.
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