Rome Little Theatre Backstage Pass April/May 2014

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BACKSTAGE PASS APRIL/MAY 2014

A bimonthly newsletter for Rome Little Theatre and Friends of the DeSoto members and contributors

ROME LITTLE THEATRE

APRIL/MAY 2014

Yes, Virginia, There is a Dixie Swim Club Coach By Wendell Barnes

appreciate the opportunities in theatre experiences that RLT gives me, and one of my most recent delights was to get to spend some time with my dear friend Virginia McChesney, the director of the upcoming “The Dixie Swim Club.” Virginia and I met in a costume class at the University of Georgia theatre department in 1970, and of course neither of us have changed a bit! She went on to get an MFA from the department and I got my BFA there. Of course we never knew that we would both end up in Virginia’s home town and at RLT together! She has directed me several times and I have directed her—and it is always a joy to sit and reminisce about the times we have shared together the past 44 years. So now she’s the “coach” for these five amazing women who will share the stage together as the “team” of the “Dixie Swim Club.” Virginia has lost count of how many shows she has been involved in during her theatre career, but she thinks it is in the neighborhood of 120 productions, in varying roles from actor, director, lighting operator, bathroom cleaner— whatever needed doing to help the theatre. She usually directs at least one show each RLT season, and usually appears in at least one as an actor. She usually chooses shows to direct that have a little more “meat” to them, preferring dramas to comedies most of the time. This is the first show she has directed from the writing team of Jones-Hope-Wooten, one of my favorite writing teams, and she liked this script because it is really the “meatiest” of their many comedies. She likens this script to “Steel Magnolias,” a Southern poignant comedy that is about the relationship of a group of women who might not have been friends otherwise, but who are related to each other not by blood, but by heart. The play is set on the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina, and covers a vast period of time. Her joy has been in working with this spectacular cast, because they all genuinely like each other and all had the chops to develop into the characters they are playing. Some were not initially excited about being

cast in the roles they were selected for, but as rehearsals went on, they saw that their coach had seen things in them they did not see, and now the ensemble has truly become a team. The ladies did some team-building exercises that brought them all together, and now they are having so much fun at rehearsals that no one wants to go home once rehearsal is over—similar feelings I have seen in many of the comedies I have directed. The characters are very varied, but together they become strokes in the medley that makes a team and by the end of the show they have become the dearest of friends ever. Virginia hopes that the audience will leave with a sensitivity to the problems of aging and the meaning of sincere friendships. But no more spoilers! There definitely were some challenges to overcome for this production, as the women are 44 years old at the beginning of the play and are 77 by the time the play is over, so 33 years go by in one evening onstage. But with the efficient supervision of the coach’s boss, producer Neal Brackett, the set has come together and all of the details added to make the show believable. Neal, an RLT Board Member, is such an asset to RLT, as are all five members of his family. The Bracketts are a perfect example of a family that got involved at RLT because their children got cast in a play, and now many of them have won Roman Awards, have performed in the orchestra pit, onstage, backstage and on the lighting board, and we can’t get rid of them! Truth be told, RLT could not do without them, and they are the essence of what community theatre is all about. Virginia was especially excited about the fact that not only is there an all female cast for this show, but there is also an almost all female crew backstage! Virginia is not clear on the details of what’s up next for her, but she does know that she will be directing a local production of “Night of January 16th” in the fall of this year, reprising her direction of this show at RLT many years ago, and she is scheduled to direct the January/February 2015 production of “The Outsiders” at RLT. One thing is for sure: whenever Virginia McChesney is the “coach” of whatever “team” she is directing, the beneficiary is the rest of us—her audiences. « Page 1