Stage Write

  There's a new theatre company in town and its inaugural production is not to be missed. Summit Performance Indianapolis, co-founded by Lauren Briggeman and Georgeanna Smith Wade, opened Silent Sky at the Phoenix Theatre this past weekend. The play by Lauren Gunderson tells the true story of the astronomer Henrietta Leavitt who worked at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s. It is an astonishing piece of theatre.  Carrie Schlatter plays Henrietta Leavitt, the driving force in the powerful production. With each breath she takes she exudes curiosity and a fierce drive. Her passion for her work is infectious. In her new role Henrietta has two female co-workers. Molly Garner is the no nonsense Annie Cannon. She is the straight woman to Gigi Jennewein's Williamina who fills her scenes, and their small work space, with a delightful sense of levity. Adam Tran is their colleague Peter Shaw, who finds himself just as fascinated with Henrietta as the audience is.  ...

When the play you’re about to see is a murder mystery called “And Then There Were None”, you know there will be a body count. The deliciously dark Agatha Christie novel comes to life on the stage in the Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre‘s current production. Unlike most of its shows, this one is held in the smaller, more intimate Studio Theater, a great fit for the chilly drama. Ten strangers find themselves trapped on an English island with a killer in their midst. They soon realize not all is as it seems when they are all accused of committing various murders. The three-act play has one 15 minute intermission and then a short pause after the second act. The pace clips along briskly as the story unfolds. Charles Goad had quite the challenge as the director. He has to show murders, both onstage and off, without revealing the killer. It’s a game of sleight-of-hand and he manages it beautifully. The audience is pulled into the guessing game as the bodies piled up. I frequently he...

This week I attended the 50th performance of the Indy Actors' Playground. This little gem of an event is held on the third Monday of every month at Indy Reads Books. Fantastic Indianapolis actors get to pick a play and do a live reading. The only requirement is that it is a professional play that has already been produced (not a new work) and that it hasn’t been produced in Indianapolis any time recently (and isn’t in an upcoming season).   This gives actors the chance to select shows they’ve always wanted to do. The play isn't announced until the show begins. People attending don’t know what they are about to see. This means that the actors don’t have to worry about whether or not it’s an easy production to market. There are no sets, no costumes, and no elaborate lighting effects. It’s just a simple stage with folding chairs. The actors sit a few feet away from the audience members and read directly from the scripts. The amazing thing is that with excellent acto...

Can women really “have it all”? Do they want to? The Theatre on the Square’s production of Rapture, Blister, Burn explores this topic with a stark honesty and balance that’s rare with such a hot button issue. Two former grad school roommates reconnect in their 40s. Catherine is a literary success who lives in New York and is single. Gwen is married (to Catherine’s former boyfriend) and raising kids in a small town. Both women can’t help but feel curious about how their lives might have unfolded if they’d made different decisions.    Shows like this often have a hard time not infuriating one side or the other of the issue. All women seem to be both defensive and opinionated about the “right way” to live your life. Somehow this play, written by Gina Gianfriddo, manages to avoid all of those pitfalls. Instead of attacking either side it opens the discussion, guiding the audience to consider both sides equally. Using a college course as the vehicle to drive the exploration...

“STELLA!” The infamous line from A Streetcar Named Desire was firmly cemented in the annals of pop culture when Marlon Brando first belted it out decades ago. That is all many people know about the show, but Tennessee Williams’ work has much more to offer. The play delves deep into the complicated lives of the very different DuBois sisters.   Blanche, played with an escalating level of tense cheerfulness by Carrie Schlatter, is a southern belle who has fallen on hard times. Her troubled past has made her leave the family mansion to join her sister, Stella Kowalski in a rowdy neighborhood in New Orleans. Schlatter captures Blanche’s fragile state, vacillating from childish enthusiasm in one moment to snooty disdain in the next. She is in a perpetual state of performing a role, but whether it’s for her or for others is hard to tell. Stella’s husband Stanley, played by Chris Saunders, is coarse and uncouth in Blanche’s eyes and the two immediately butt heads. His raw se...