NEWS
Summer Stock 2023: It’s a Wrap
Stages shook and vibrated, moaned over mystery, cried in despair, and reverberated with laughter, delivering staccato song and dance all over the Davidson area theatres this summer—entertaining sophisticated, naïve, young, aging, awestruck, joyful, emotional, tearful, critical, and grateful audiences. Summer Stock is over. And now the proscenia are dark. But not for long.
After the last curtain call in 2023 at Lake Norman’s diverse and entertaining stages, theatre boards soon will light up again to bring a chaotic barroom thriller this Fall, youthful tales this Winter, and cherished holiday traditions
Barber Theatre
Common Thread Theatre Collective opened its second summer season at the Barber Theatre with its unique professional concept to produce excellent professional theatre that highlights critical issues of contemporary relevance. The company is a winner!
The Common Thread Theatre Collective, a partnership between Davidson College and North Carolina A&T State University, features high-quality shows with diverse casts and themes.
Their season opened with Clyde’s written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Luther D. Wells, a drama that highlights the hopes, dreams, and challenges of formerly incarcerated individuals who are trying to transition back into society as productive members.
Common Thread went on to produce the East Coast premiere of how to make an American son written by Christoper Oscar Peña and directed by Holly Nañes, a gripping drama that revealed the innermost feelings about current issues burning at our southern borders, highlighting the juxtaposition of a struggling refugee and a spoiled rich kid.
The actors and staging were superb. Can’t wait to see what Common Thread Theatre Collective plans to produce next summer.
Duke Family Performance Hall
Davidson Community Players staged Mary Poppins, their best musical show since the award-winning production of Ragtime in 2011, on Davidson College’s abundant stage at the Duke Family Performance Hall. Every performance was sold out.
Directed by Tod A. Kubo, Mary Poppins had everything there is to like in a musical—lively tunes and dances, gorgeous sets, lighting, choreography, and costumes—even flying actors! The book was written by Julian Fellowes with music and lyrics by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman.
DCPs Mary Poppins has been nominated by the Metrolina Theatre Association for several awards including Best Musical, Best Actress (Cornelia Barnwell as Mary Poppins), and Best Supporting Actress (Allison Rhinedardt as Mrs. Banks).
Mary Poppins imparts wisdom to her young charge
Mary Poppins’ award nominations also include Debbie Silver Lauder for Best Choreographer, Vicki Clayton Harvell for Best Musical Director, Tod A. Kubo for Best Director, Chelsea Retalic for Best Costumes, Alexandra Corbett for Best Lighting Design, and Brandon Kincaid for Best Sound Design.
Winners will be announced in October at Metrolina Theatre Association’s annual gala dinner in Charlotte.
Davidson Community Players’ annual comedy staged at the Duke Performance Hall a month later, The Explorers Club, also received an MTA nomination for Best Costumes by Beth Killion.
A clever British farce written by Nell Benjamin and directed by Todd Olson exposed the unique eccentricity of a botanist, herpetologist, archeo-theologist, zoologist, and a couple of explorers who were suddenly faced with the possibility of welcoming a female anthropologist to their traditionally all-male club. The woman entered with an entertaining painted young tribesman. Lots of laughs and antics!
Charles Mack Citizens Center
Actors in the Mooresville Community Children’s Theatre company
Mooresville Community Children’s Theatre (MCCT) introduced a couple of large, vivacious, youthful casts to perform two shows this summer at the Charles Mack Citizens Center, The Little Mermaid, Jr. and a few weeks later, Spongebob the Musical.
Sierra Key directed the huge cast of 54 young thespians in The Little Mermaid, a musical based on the Hans Christian Anderson story and the Disney film, with fabulous costumes designed by Lisa Altieri. Annie Altieri’s interesting set design gave the nautical scenes a sense of reality.
Less than a month after Mermaid closed, MCCT staged Spongebob the Musical, directed and choreographed by Steven James who expanded his cast of ten principal nautical characters with an Ensemble of twenty diverse sea creatures who changed costumes as fast as the storyline permitted. Wendi Choiniere must have designed over a hundred unbelievable versions of attire worn by the gyrating sea-faring creatures.
The happy-go-lucky lives of Spongebob SquarePants, played by Dylan Underwood, and his quirky circle of friends and neighbors from the undersea city of Bikini Botton were abruptly interrupted when they discover that Mt. Humongous, a nearby volcano, would erupt within the next 48 hours.
MCCTs staging of Spongebob and his friends climbing the never-ending number of steps to reach the volcano and prevent its fatal eruption was a clever design of stagecraft and action. Well done!
Youngsters in the audience who were familiar with Spongebob, a character they love, continually bounced in their seats, yelling, and clapping with joy after each song and dance.
Armour Street Theatre
Summer productions concluded Lake Norman’s summer stock season at the Davidson Community Players home, the Armour Street Theatre, with two productions from their Connie Company’s Teen Summer Stock Series, Heathers the Musical and Peter and the Starcatcher. It was a learning experience.
Teenagers really were challenged by the Teen Summer Stock Series. Actors were handed a script they had never seen to produce a play in two weeks. “It was a bit edgy,” DCPs Education
Peter and the Starcatcher
Director Katie Mullis said, “but the kids had lots of fun.” The youths worked long hours day and night learning their role, while a stage crew figured out how to design and stage the production.
Debbie Silver Lauder directed Heathers, a drama staged at a typical high school setting, featuring three girls named Heather played by Kathleen Moore, Destiney Wolfe, and Lindsey Bolster. Vicki Clayton Harvell directed the music and Hannah Shizuko Martin choreographed the dances.
Two cast members were selected to perform Heathers. The Scrunchie cast was led by Lillian Lauder as Veronica Sawyer, the Drama Queen, with Chris Brammer as JD, the Stud. Breanna Suarez played the Drama Queen in the Slushie cast, and Parker Syler portrayed the Stud.
By mid-August a week later, Emily Klingman directed Peter and the Starcatcher, a musical fantasy based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Julie Cesena choreographed the
production with Devin Slade as Peter and Bailey Rowles in the role of Molly, a star catcher.
Performed on a simple, basic stage without props or set design, members of Peter and the Starcatcher’s cast were challenged with the opportunity to learn how to implement many new stage techniques, fulfilling a basic tenet of the Connie Company.
Lake Norman’s theatrical season will resume this Fall on the Armour Street Theatre stage with the Davidson Community Players drinking thriller, Yankee Tavern.
Connie Fisher
Connie Fisher, neé Consuelo Carmona, is a Davidson resident who grew up in Mexico City where she became a journalist and acquired a taste for the theatre. Her preference for work behind the scenes led to an interest in writing reviews—Yale Rep among her favorite troupes. Connie is the author of Doing it the Right Way, the biography of an Italian hatmaker. Her prose appears with 87 other international writers in The Widows’ Handbook. An active, founding member of Lake Norman Writers, Connie just released her latest book, "The Mongrel, Bi-cultural Adventures of a Latina-Scandinavian Youth," a memoir about her years growing up in Mexico.