Domenick Scudera has a regular Festival Blog column about his experiences in the performing arts. He is a longtime theater artist and is the chair of the theater and dance department at Ursinus College.
If you read on, you will understand the relevance.
Community theater is a curious thing. It is a place that attracts all the theater wannabes in a community, throws them together, and allows them to live out their performance fantasies for friends and family. The bank teller, the salesgirl, the local beautician, all with a secret desire to be the next Blanche Dubois or Auntie Mame, they all flock to these little havens. It is the high school drama club for grown-ups. You can pour all your energy into memorizing lines, painting sets, singing The Impossible Dream. You are not the bank teller or waitress anymore; you are a Star, albeit for a week and for a select audience. But the people in the audience adore you because watching Uncle Joe on stage is the funniest, most enchanting experience they have had in months. The productions are shoestring and terrible, but no one on stage or in the audience notices or even cares. Everyone is having a grand time, even if Thornton Wilder is turning over in his grave. It is not great art but, for the participants, it is a helluva good time.
In my first year out of college, I started my new life in a fresh location with no friends or contacts. What to do? Like a magnet, I was pulled to the local community theater. And after a few rehearsals of my first show, I had an instant pack of friends. I warmed in the glow of creativity once again. We all ignored the fact that we were totally wrong for the parts we were playing and that we were not overly skilled or talented.
Before long I was cast in The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. I believe that, at one time or another, every community theater performer winds up performing The Mousetrap. The cast for this particular production was not particularly strong and the director barely registered a heartbeat, but we all reveled in the idea of creating an evening of fantastic mystery and intrigue for our audiences. As if no one had ever read or seen The Mousetrap before, we imagined gasps of horror as the shocking true murderer was revealed.
One night, the mystery became even more intriguing for the audience.
A little background: early in the play, one of the characters is left alone on stage. The lights suddenly go out. The murderer has cut the power. The woman, left in the dark, fiddles with a lamp next to the couch and realizes there is no electricity. The murderer enters the room. She hears his footsteps. He moves toward her. She senses danger. She says something like “What are you doing here? Please, no no NOOOO!” She gasps, struggles, and is strangled to death. The murderer leaves the scene. The lights come back on. The strangled woman is revealed to the audience, collapsed on the couch. Read More
