items tagged with Village Theatre

(Author's note: I'm a proud ensemble member of the Curtainbox Theatre Company, and along with interviewee Lora Adams, am serving as co-associate producer on Wit.)

"When you hear that word - cancer - it's very surreal," says WQPT-TV Director of Marketing Lora Adams, regarding her 2008 diagnosis with the disease. "There's a moment when the reality of it not being a television show, or not happening to somebody else's family, has to sort of settle in. You have that moment of 'Holy crap.' And then once that happens, you move forward."
Read More About The Soul Of "Wit": Lora Adams On The Curtainbox Theatre Company’S Cancer Drama, And Her Own Struggles With The Disease...

The more performances I see as a reviewer, the more I ponder and study stagecraft. With many productions, I take away a concept or idea as to what makes a performance good, whether at the individual level or for an entire production. With the Curtainbox Theatre Company's Fool for Love, it's a word: abandon.

Back in 2006, when I composed my first list of a dozen theatre "Essentials" - theatrical talents whose gifts were employed in a number of area productions - I couldn't have imagined that I'd find a dozen new names to add year after year. Well, as 2009 draws to a close, we can officially add another " ... after year" to that sentence.

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.

Roughly 10 minutes before the Prenzie Players' presentation of The Winter's Tale gets underway, there's a brief, improvisational scene between the Bohemian king Polixenes (David Furness) and Prince Mamillius (Stephanie Moeller), the young son of the king and queen of Sicily.