items tagged with Shellie Moore Guy

I’ve been moved by several productions this year, but by none so deeply as the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s A Lesson Before Dying. In fact, I was in tears several times during Friday night’s performance, including throughout most of the second act.

Whether you attend stage works sporadically or, like me, you saw 85 shows in the past year, anyone who enjoyed even one will understand that feeling of leaving a venue thinking, "Wow ... that was really good." I experienced that sensation numerous times this year, and while this list is hardly exhaustive, it'll hopefully give you an idea of just what you've been missing if you missed out on 2009's offerings.

Narrowing down 2009's sensational stage portrayals into a list of 12 "favorites" is a hopeless task, really, so don't take this as any kind of last word on the subject; you'll find mention of amazing stage work all throughout my year-end coverage. Still, here's hoping you were able to catch at least a few of the following performances, which helped underline just how crazy with theatrical talent our area actually is.

Five Inspiring Ensembles

Powerful lead performances and scene-stealing supporting turns are always welcome; one- and two-character shows can be a gas. But for my money, nothing quite beats the theatrical pleasure of watching a tightly knit ensemble in action, and the following five productions ensured that this pleasure was a continual one.

Area performer and radio-show host Shellie Moore Guy is slender in frame, and not particularly tall. Yet in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's presentation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the actress -- in her role as matriarch Lena Younger -- projects such expansive love, pride, and strength of character that she appears larger than life. Lena's adult children, Walter Lee (Curtis Lewis) and Beneatha (Alysha McElroy-Hodges), may tower over her, but there's never any doubt that Guy's selfless, resolutely devout mother is the one in charge; she guides both her family and Hansberry's drama with an impassioned righteousness that would be mythic if it weren't so complexly structured, and so wonderfully human.