Introducing the Cast of Jasper's 2025 Play Right Series Winning Play - Busted Open by Ryan Stevens

Cindi Boiter July 2, 2025

Ryan Stevens - Jasper’s 2025 Play Right Series Winning Playwright & author of Busted Open

As we move toward July 20th and the first meeting of the Jasper Project’s 2025 Play Right Series Community Producers, we’re excited to announce the cast for Ryan Steven’s brand new original play, Busted Open!

Directed by Jane Turner Peterson, the cast of Busted Open includes the following —

Sunset: Ella Riley

Artemis: Kristin Cobb

Amy Bell: Maggie Baker

Jane Richmond: Allison Allgood

Painkiller: Beth DeHart

Rachel “Victory” Vance: Zanna Mills

Phil Kirkland: Clayton King

Trevor Richmond: Josh Kern

We’re still assembling our 2025 roster of Community Producers and we’d love to have you join us!

On select Sunday afternoons this summer you are invited to join with the cast, crew, and fellow Community Producers for an enlightening and entertaining session that pulls back the curtains of theatre development and illuminates how a stageplay goes from page to stage. Your first session will offer you a private viewing of the first step in a play production, the Table Reading – the first time the cast of the winning play will read their parts together.

Subsequent sessions will focus on essential ingredients in the production of a successful staged reading, such as the stage manager’s job; props, lighting, blocking, and sound; unique insights from the director; how the actors prepare for their parts; playwright perceptions from this year and past projects; and an invitation to the dress rehearsal. In addition to your invitation to gather with the cast and crew every Sunday in July, each session will also feature exciting snacks and beverages. And many more surprises each week!

Finally, you’ll take your reserved, best-in-the-house seats to a ticketed staged reading.

But there’s more.

Your name will be included as a Community Producer on programs, posters, press releases, and other promotional materials as well as in the perfect bound book published by Muddy Ford Press and registered with the Library of Congress, and you will take home your own copies as a souvenir of your experience.

What is expected of Community Producers?

We hope you can make it to every exciting Sunday afternoon meeting, but we understand if you have to miss some. Each session will last from 90 – 120 minutes.

The financial commitment for a Community Producer is a minimum of $250 per person, but other sponsorships are also available and appreciated.

Our hope is that you will be so enlightened and inspired by this experience that you will become a diplomat of live theatre, fresh playwrights, and the Jasper Project and encourage your friends and colleagues to participate in live theatre themselves!

Play Right Series 2025 Community Producer Schedule

SUNDAY, JULY 20: Introducing Ryan Stevens and Busted Open
Meet the 2025 Play Right Series Winning Playwright Ryan Stevens and witness the Inaugural Table Reading of Busted Open

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3: The Art of Stagecraft
The cast & crew of Busted Open explain the process of preparing for a role and tricks of the trade to demystify some of the magic of the theatrical arts

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17: The Playwright's Craft
Learn about the processes of 4 award-winning playwrights including Ryan Stevens, Chad Henderson, Lonetta Thompson, and Colby Quick with your host Jon Tuttle, author of South Carolina Onstage, The Trustus Collection, and more

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31: Sneak Peek Week!
Be a fly on the proverbial stage wall among an intimate group of guests to watch a working rehearsal of Busted Open – see how far the cast has come since the first ever Table Reading just six weeks earlier

SUNDAY: SEPT 14: The Big Event – Staged Reading of Busted Open
Take your reserved seat for the Premiere Stage Reading of Busted Open by Ryan Stevens at Columbia Music Festival Association and enjoy a post-show champagne toast to the cast, crew, and creator of Busted Open!

Purpose of the Play Right Series

Empower and enlighten audiences by allowing them insider views of the steps and processes of creating theatre art by

Offering limited open table and stage readings of theatrical works as well as rehearsals of theatrical works to community members
Offering Community Producer opportunities to the community members by keeping production costs low and involving community assets already in place. In exchange for an established minimal financial contribution, Community Producers are invited to attend designated open readings and rehearsals, informal presentations by cast and crew, and opening night performances with producer credits. The result: Community Producers learn about the extensive process of producing a play and become invested personally in the production and success of the play and its cast and crew, thereby becoming diplomats of theatre arts.

Increase opportunities for theatre artists to create and participate in new art without the necessity of being attached to an existing theatre organization by

Offering a space and arts engineering for playwrights to workshop their plays and one-off theatre arts experiences and potentially have them produced
Putting out calls for new works of theatre art from new and existing playwrights, as well as work opportunities for on-stage and backstage theatre artists.

Provide more affordable and experimental theatre arts experiences for new and emerging theatre artists and their audiences; thereby expanding cultural literacy and theatre arts appreciation in the

Columbia Theatre Stars Come Together for Jasper Project Staged Reading of MOON SWALLOWER

Cindi Boiter August 24, 2022

SUNDAY AUGUST 28TH

DOORS AT 3:30 - SHOW AT 4 PM

CMFA - 914 PULASKI STREET

$10 W/ RECEPTION

MOON SWALLOWER BY COLBY QUICK

left to right - Chad Henderson, Chris Cockrell, Michael Hazin, and Becky Hunter

Join some of the city’s most exciting theatre artists this Sunday as they bring a brand-new play to the stage of CMFA. Directed by Chad Henderson, MOON SWALLOWER by Sumter playwright, Colby Quick, is the winner of the 2022 Jasper Project Play Right Series.

A one-act coming-of-age exploration that embraces the world of Youtube, gentle drug use, family dynamics, performative Christianity, and yes, the possibility of werewolves, this is not your typical staged reading.

Check all your expectations of straight back chairs and music stands at the door. Henderson has included lights, music, sound effects and more in this tease of what a full-blown production would look like. And the actors are anything but sedentary. From fight scenes to actors climbing on tables and hissing like creatures of the night, this is an exciting look at an exciting new project coming out of Columbia, SC.

Tickets are only $10.

Join this accomplished cast and crew for a fun Sunday reading complete with wine, snacks, and an opportunity for you to learn more about the page to stage process courtesy of the Jasper Project!

Advice for Writers from our JAY Literary Arts Finalists Jon Tuttle, C. Hope Clark, and Ray McManus

Cindi Boiter January 27, 2020

by Adam Trawick

Each year The Jasper Project asks its readers and patrons to nominate candidates who have demonstrated excellence in their respective fields. The names are then handed over to a panel of experts who discuss each candidate and select three exceptional individuals out of the lot as finalists for Jasper Artist of the Year. This year The Jasper Project is pleased to announce its three finalists in the Literary Arts: Dr. Ray McManus, Dr. Hope Clark, and Dr. Jon Tuttle. The Jasper Project contacted each of these distinguished figures for a brief conversation on the profession and the craft.

**Our question: Just how do the up-n-coming literary artists break out of anonymity and break into recognition?**

Dr. Ray McManus is a poet among whose publications include “Angels Already Know” from Binder Summer, “Undertow” in Open-Eyed and Full Throated: Irish American Poetry, and “Finding Teeth in the Yard” out of Talking River, and much more. McManus’ advice is “be vulnerable.” This is a complex suggestion. Vulnerability is often interpreted as sentimentality. This is not Dr. McManus’ meaning. “Be honest with yourself,” McManus says. “Walk unafraid. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.” As a beginning literary artist, you will have to “go to readings, establish relationships—create your opportunity. [You will have to do all] the unsexy difficulty of asking for money, someone to help cover costs to get you started.” This is not a task for the sentimental. The vulnerability McManus speaks of is one that bears no shame in breaking out of the little ego that hinders most from breaking into social circles where networking and fundraising can be accomplished. But this vulnerability is also to be applied to the writing itself. He suggests reading the likes of Terrance Hayes, Sean Thomas Doughtery (who McManus calls a “gypsy punk poet”), Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs to “raise [your] emotional IQ” in order to render explicit that which you merely sense or intuit. Confront it. Put it down on paper. And let the world filter through you.

C. Hope Clark is a novelist having published a number of books including the two mysteries: Dying on Edisto and Edisto Tidings. Ms. Clark recommends one “be specific.” Clark recommends “[going] to the experts in your field. Not just any good writer…connect with the professional organizations of your genre.” Clark says, “Lisa Gardener, John Sanford, Raymond Chandler – I love his use of words – are among my go-to.” An emphasis on diligence and trajectory is Clark’s philosophy: “Read a lot. Take notes while reading. If [you] have not truly defined [your] genre, then read quality work that is entertaining. Don’t force-feed what you read, trying to become something you’re not.” Clark continues, “…write daily…allow criticism. Not all criticism is good and not all is bad. Accept it as [an] opportunity to glean nuggets of direction and improvement.” Break out of inconsistency and indecisiveness. Specificity begets direction. It facilitates refinement. It makes clear to the mind what it’s after and where to get it.

Dr. Jon Tuttle is a playwright. Among his publications are The Trustus Collection (which is an anthology of six plays that have premiered since 1994 at the Trustus Theater) and Boy About Ten, which was a finalist in the Screencraft Stage Play International Competition, and more. Dr. Tuttle’s suggestion is “be discerning.” Because of email “the competition is overwhelming.” This day and age “[it’s] difficult to even get rejected.” That’s because there is so much content being submitted that a large portion doesn’t even make it to a real set of eyes. “People spend the day unselectively sending out a submission and this clogs the system” and most of the time what’s being submitted are unpolished drafts. Tuttle fears this has enabled a lack of discipline in the scriptwriting process (and writing in general) for beginning writers, as well as blocked out a great deal of valuable scripts. Among Tuttle’s current go-to are Samuel French, Qui Nguyen (particularly her play She Kills Monsters), and Adam Rapp (notably, his play The Sound Inside). Get particular in what you are writing, what you’re sending out, and where you’re sending it. Discernment raises one’s standards. It aids in the production of quality work and gets it in front of the right eyes.

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If you’re looking for a start, are a fan of these lexical wizards and wish to celebrate, or would simply like to hear more about the arts in Columbia from those immersed in it, come to The White Mule on Friday, January 31 at 7:30pm for the Jasper Artist of the Year Awards Celebration and Mardi Gras Ball. Tickets available here.

For more info on these artists and those nominated in other disciplines check out http://jasperproject.org/what-jasper-said/pne6ka386aep4xhlf9sf8ysne2arh6