What a treat to see something completely new on our Lansing Area virtual theatrical scene! 

Director Mark Colson led a top notch cast through Janet Colson’s new comedy? satire? EA, based around a series of Eaters Anonymous meetings. It bordered on the absurd and offered a lot of opportunities to laugh, as well as to roll your eyes at peoples’ foibles and also scratch your head in disbelief.

This one hour and 43 minute experience features Christine Fisk, Connor Kelly, Rico Bruce Wade, Sara Frank Hepfer, Rose Jangmi Cooper, Amy Rickett, Angela Dill, Erica Beck, and Iris Raine with 
narration (stage directions) by Jeff Magnuson. Each brought life to their distinct and varied characters — and Angela Dill and Connor Kelly get the award for the most believable Zoom fistfight I have yet to see. 

Conflicts and power plays among the meeting attendees felt a bit disjointed and sometimes surreal but never boring. I hope real 12-step meetings are a little more welcoming. What is the deep meaning behind God making coffee and the ritual stacking of chairs? I feel like I should watch it again before making any kind of pronouncement. The video is now being “processed” and will be available “through the end of the weekend” on Riverwalk’s Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNn-HpMtd9r5EaIauCC6vCg

Check out the comments and add your voice on Riverwalk’s Facebook page. EA is free of charge, but if you are so inspired, Riverwalk welcomes donations at http://riverwalktheatre.com

Don’t miss this one: two more nights for this terrific “drive-in-movie” compilation proving Peppermint Creek Theatre continues to find a way to adapt and inspire and provoke and make us think, despite the constrictions of Covid. 

“Hear Our Cry” is mostly monologues artfully assembled to represent a diverse mix of voices: gay, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, female. It is made up of historic texts and also new works inspired by historic texts and current cultural challenges. As director Chad says, "Hear Our Cry passes the mic to voices that have shaped our history, but may be absent from our history books.” Kathleen Egan helped Chad with the adaptation.

This is an hour and a half of well performed, varied, engaging mostly monologues. The opening Harvey Milk speech by our own City Clerk, Chris Swope felt particularly relevant and close to home. Most of the actors were not familiar to me, and the virtual format allows far-flung actors to participate — a great group! I did love seeing the favorite former Lansing-ites, the excellent Shariesse Hamilton, Zurich Dawson and Greg Hunter. 

My favorite bit was the “non-monologue” a full cast mini-play, “Out of Body” by Shawntai Brown featuring Greg and his teacher colleagues in a Zoom meeting setting, with some interesting secrets/assumptions/prejudices revealed — a gem of a script, and well done.

This is an excellent theatre experience — continuing for two more nights at 7 pm in the parking lot on the corner of south Capital and Washtenaw. Kudos to Ben Cassidy who, I think, was responsible for the editing and other tech stuff? The sound was fine on the radio “station” 101.2, I think — but it is also captioned for extra clarity.

This is a show that is ironically both “new” and “historic”— and safe in the Covid-free confines of your own car. Well worth the drive.

It is free of charge, but the parking lot only holds 40 vehicles. There were maybe 15-ish tonight? Hard to get a count from inside the car, but this SHOULD fill up on Friday and Saturday.  Email the office mailto:[email protected] to make a reservation and get a confirmation that there is room for you. 

Here is the complete info on how make arrangements to reserve a parking space:

http://www.peppermintcreek.org/hear-our-cry-directions--parking.html

Here is more info with all the names and titles and links to the texts. 
http://www.peppermintcreek.org/hear-our-cry-info.html

Evolve Theatrics (formerly known as Blue Light Players) has produced a virtual storybook hour and ten minute version of Alice in Wonderland that captures the daydream-like weirdness of the Lewis Carroll classic. 
 
Ten-year old Lorena Krauss is the “missing” Alice, discovered daydreaming and recruited by the other players. She joins the fantasy where each player later transforms with hats, masks and props into the surreal characters we remember. Lorena’s girlish charm and earnest embrace of the unexpected ties this project together, as it weathers the limitations of theatre-in-boxes.

Phillip Franke is appropriately “mad” as the Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. Bobby Maldonado is fun as the swimming mouse and the March Hare. Andrew Muylle was an energetic White Rabbit; Elizabeth Johnson showed her range as a haughty Duchess and a woebegone Mock Turtle. Emily Kloc added imaginative blocking as the Cook, Tracy Smith dozed delightfully as the Dormouse, Bill Henson was an expressive Knave of Hearts tart thief and Michelle Smith was not too scary as the off-with-their-heads Queen of Hearts. 

Kudos to director Helen Hart for directing this via Zoom, with characters more “in charge” of their own lighting/costume/blocking than usual. 
 
The watching process worked well for us, going from the link at http://www.evolvetheatrics.com There is a place to make a donation there, but it is not required. Tickets must be obtained on October 16th and 17th. Once an audience member has obtained a ticket, they may watch the video at any time prior to the end of the day on October 17th. 

As far as I know, there is no way to watch it after that date.

An Act of Madness, reimagined for the “virtual” stage of Riverwalk’s Facebook page, gives us a human look into a violent tragedy that happened close to home, the Bath School Bombing of 1927. Thanks to director/author Jane Falion and the cast for giving us this history lesson and tragic tale of what remains the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history.

The cast (Adam Woolsey, Ben Holzhausen, Mark Bethea, Brian Farnham, Meg Woolsey, and Rachael Raymer) bring suitable gravitas and humanity, painting a picture of the people, the place, and the devastation.

This was recorded - LIVE - with few if any glitches that I could see. The uniform black backgrounds brought the cast visually together, in their neighboring boxes, and Matt Ottinger’s historic slides added context and a sense of the reality of it all. Matt’s explosive sound effects and touches of appropriate music rounded out the production. Thanks to Stage Manager. Michele Booher and Technical advisor, Cody Skalmowski for helping make this happen.

If you missed An Act of Madness, definitely give it a re-play, after the fact. Go to Riverwalk’s Facebook page and look under the “More” heading for “Videos.” (Tricia Rogers’ gracious Barney Thank you with her adorable BABY comes up first as “most popular” video and you can also see other Barney Thank you’s on the videos page — but scroll down until you see “An Act of Madness.” The whole video is 33 minutes and 42 seconds, but the first 8 minutes is “the program” with lists of cast, etc. You can pull the little ball ahead to minute 8 and catch the real-live-people-talking part. 

And don’t forget to donate to Riverwalk if you are so moved. Membership and other donation options are available at Riverwalk’s website https://www.riverwalktheatre.com/act-ii-campaign.html