Announcing the Cast & Crew of Chad Henderson's Let It Grow -- Jasper's 2024 Play Right Series Winning Play

Cindi Boiter July 24, 2024

SAVE THE DATE

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2024

The Jasper Project is delighted to announce the cast for the premier staged reading of our 2024 Play Right Series winning play, Let It Grow, by Chad Henderson.

The performance will take place on Saturday, September 14th at 7:30 at Harbison Theatre. The evening will also feature the launch of the book, Let It Grow, by Chad Henderson, the 4th original play for the Play Right Series, and the third manuscript we’ve published and registered with the US Library of Congress. (It’s important to Jasper that we preserve for posterity as much of the art coming out of South Carolina as possible. )

Now, onto our cast.

We couldn’t be more excited to announce that Libby Campbell-Turner will lead the performance in the role of gardening talk show creator and host, Mary Lily.

Libby Campbell-Turner has worked in theatre (regional, professional, and community) for a number of years. She is currently a litigation paralegal with a law firm here in Columbia. (She was forced to seek out "normal" employment once she aged out of ingenue and district attorney roles.) She has also worked in television and film. In fact, she just received a royalty check for her work in Robbie Benson's 1990 rom-com film, Modern Love, and says “That 3 cents will go a long way toward paying off my credit card debt.” (Libby also loves shoes.) Libby works with the Jasper Project as its Theatre Editor for Jasper Magazine and is a member of our board of directors. She was most recently seen on stage in Death of a Salesman.

G. Scott Wild will be playing the part of Christophe, a celebrated author, and a new panelist on Let It Grow.

A graduate of the Stella Adler Studio of acting, Scott has been around the Columbia theatre scene for many years now. He was last seen on stage in the Trustus production of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning Fairview.

David Britt will be playing the part of Jeb, a long-time panelist on the show.

Britt is in his18th year in the UofSC Dept. of Theatre and Dance. Directing credits at UofSC include Spinning into Butter, Proof, Becky Shaw, A Piece of My Heart and Of Mice and Men. At Workshop Theatre here in Columbia he has directed Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound and Jake’s Women. He also performed in Workshop's production of Barefoot in the Park… see a pattern? David appeared on stage at Theatre South Carolina in Measure for Measure, A View from the Bridge, Bus Stop, Dancing at Lughnasa, Legend of Georgia McBride and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is from Raleigh, NC, where he appeared in more than 30 roles. He has trained at the New Actors Workshop in New York City and at the world-renowned Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA, and also completed the Second City Comedy Improvisation Boot Camp. David is a member of SAG/AFTRA.

Kayla Cahill Machado will be playing the part of Charlotte, a panelist and co-producer of Let It Grow.

Machado is a Jersey-born writer and actor who lives in Columbia with her husband, Daniel; two-year-old son, Ben; and soon-to-be daughter, Harriet (and cat, Tate). She is a part of the Trustus Theatre company as well as The Mothers, most recently directing the group’s spring sketch comedy show. Acting credits include The Thanksgiving Play (Logan), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Rachel), Silence! The Musical (Clarice), Rock of Ages (Regina), The Rocky Horror Show (Columbia), Godspell (Ana Maria), and The House of Blue Leaves (Corinna). She is excited for this chance to bring new work to life.

And Marybeth Gorman Craig will be captaining the ship as the director.

Marybeth Gorman Craig is an actor, director, intimacy choreographer, and text/dialect coach currently on faculty at the University of South Carolina in the Department of Theatre and Dance. A member of Actors' Equity Association, Marybeth has performed on local stages such as Trustus Theatre and UofSC, as well as at theatres across the country such as Arden Theatre Company, Walnut Street Theatre, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, The Hippodrome, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Lantern Theatre, Theatre Horizon, and 11th Hour. She is an advocate for consent and inclusion through her work as intimacy coordinator/director in professional and educational film and theatre projects, most recently this summer with Local Cinema Studios and the Texas Shakespeare Festival. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of South Carolina, and Bachelor of Arts from Temple University. Marybeth is thrilled to be a part of Jasper's Play Right project and is grateful to Jasper for all they do to support the arts in our community.

It’s not too late to support this new and original theatrical art by becoming a Play Right Series Community Producer or Sponsor. All the info you need is here!

Mark your calendars for Saturday September 14th at Harbison Theatre for the premier staged reading of Let It Grow, by Chad Henderson. Tickets will be available via Harbison Theatre and should be on sale soon!

REVIEW: Trustus Theatre's The Thanksgiving Play - by Patrick Michael Kelly

Cindi Boiter November 19, 2020

“Watching the show feels as close to an evening on Lady Street as possible - you can almost smell the Cromer’s popcorn.”

Trustus bills The Thanksgiving Play as “a woke comedy” and that’s apropos. Larissa FastHorse’s play follows four white people - Logan, Jaxton, Caden, and Alicia - in their attempt to creatively devise a culturally sensitive play about the First Thanksgiving for Native American Heritage Month. They stumble over many obstacles - mainly themselves and each other - on their quest to craft an engaging, equitable educational show and ultimately arrive at the simplest of conclusions that less is indeed more.

FastHorse wastes no time establishing tone; we know what we’re in for from the jump. The play begins with a Thanksgiving rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with Indian, Pilgrim, and turkey costumes, and choreography that the cast performs with full commitment. These surreal interludes - snippets from the play that might come from the group’s endeavor - recur throughout and serve to break up the realistic scenes with blasts of musical comedy. It’s a pleasing combination.

Consumer culture, linguistic cliches, gender bias, social media, “upcycling”, vegans, etc. - all are placed on the altar or chopping block, whichever metaphor you’d prefer, and while this play’s glut of contemporary issues could feel tiresome, they are integrated perfectly with the story. Most effective are discussions about the fantasy of a “post-racial” society and what it means to be an ally, and a lovely scene between Alicia and Logan concerning the values of sex and beauty, the dangers of their commodification, and the value of their power. FastHorse tackles big issues head-on and lays out all the angles, but rather than smashing you over the head, she builds them in tactfully.

FastHorse also skewers the craft and politics of theater expertly. Often, plays about making plays come off as obnoxious and cliquish, but The Thanksgiving Play manages to poke fun at devising, improv, warm-ups, and the like without alienating non-thespians. Furthermore, she squeezes in some terrific commentary about casting issues that plague the industry, from the well-past-timely death of so-called colorblind casting to the usual excuses of producers and directors about how hard it is to find ethnic actors to fill roles appropriately. At one point, Alicia mentions that she’s “maybe part-Spanish” so she should get to play all the Spanish roles because “it’s a drop thing.” We cringe, but it’s real.

Kayla Cahill Machado is solid as Logan, the embattled high school drama teacher who needs this project to succeed - there’s grant money on the line and a professional actor in the room. Machado drives much of the action of the play and juggles empowering everyone with keeping the project on the rails. We feel her pain.

Patrick Dodds brings his usual charm and affability to Jaxton, the yoga practitioner and “professional” actor. Jaxton’s heart is in the right place, but his desire to do right by everyone all the time gets in his way of being effective. Dodds’s Jaxton comes off a little too young and dumb at times, but the actor’s passion and vulnerability easily make up for it.

Clint Poston as Caden is winning from his first entrance. He nails Caden’s enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge and drives the pace in much needed moments. Caden wants so badly to be useful and to have his hard-won authority recognized, and Poston channels his desperation with a sweetness that cuts through his pretension.

Brittany Hammock plays Alicia (pronounced uh-LEE-see-ya, because of course it is), the self-centered actress with a “super-flexible” look to a tee. Her enthusiastic cluelessness and well-intentioned cynicism both give the group fits and inspire them to rethink their way of being. Hammock steals many scenes with her dry delivery.

Director Abigail McNeely has done a nice job making an ensemble out of her performers while allowing them to play to their strengths. The scenes are dynamic and flow nicely; McNeely clearly knows the story and where the most important parts are and highlights them to great success. The production suffers at times from pacing issues, particularly in the early going, but the actors find their footing as the action builds. The inventive staging and exciting feel of the interludes is a testament to the director’s expansive vision.

It is a treat to see a true box set. Many contemporary plays are filmic in that they employ shorter scenes and multiple locations, making realism an impossibility. Film does realism better than theater, but a realistic stage production is still a satisfying endeavor for artists and audiences alike. FastHorse’s employment of a single location - outside of the musical interruptions - allows for the production team to create a fully inhabited world onstage. Scenic Designer Sam Hetler is up to the task; his set feels just like an American high school drama classroom. The attention to detail provides lots of little surprises for us to find, like old Columbia theater posters on the back wall and a masquerade-themed bulletin board urging us to “put your mask on.” Clever.

Curtis Smoak’s lighting is cheery with just the right touch of industrial, mimicking the unpleasant wash of public fluorescents while warmly supporting the actors and the space they inhabit. The choice to forgo lighting shifts when two characters are having a private conversation in a public space is confusing; the helpful theatrical convention of separating the groups with light to assist the audience’s understanding should apply, even in a realistic piece like this. During the interludes, the lights shift dramatically to make the performers pop along with the musical numbers, giving it a bit of a rock cabaret vibe.

The recording of this production is well done. The shots and the sound are both clear and we get the feel of watching a play live and in person magnified through the camera’s eye and microphones. That said, shot selection is often static in the scenes and much more dynamic in the interludes, and the editing needs to split the difference more. More often than not, the scenes are played out in a wide shot with close-ups and two-shots few and far between. This might have been an attempt to preserve the piece as a play as much as possible, but if you’re going to make a film, make a film.

That being said, it’s hard not to notice that the element that gives live theater its power is sorely missing here. As if comedy weren’t hard enough already, taking away the audience puts the performers in a tougher spot, and they respond by pushing in moments where the support of laughter or other audible reactions would otherwise buoy them. Trustus deserves applause for making theater - and polished theater at that - safely, but the interplay between actor and audience is what makes theater...well, theater.

In its first attempt at producing a fully mounted show for home consumption, Trustus delivers a quality product and should be commended for adapting to these trying times. Watching the show feels as close to an evening on Lady Street as possible - you can almost smell the Cromer’s popcorn. Format-associated growing pains aside, The Thanksgiving Play is well worth your time and your donation and should inspire some spirited conversation at your virtual Turkey Day dinner table.

Patrick Michael Kelly is the theatre editor for Jasper Magazine.

CORONA TIMES - Trustus Theatre Melds Formats to Bring Us The Thanksgiving Play: A Talk with Director Abigail McNeely

Cindi Boiter November 9, 2020

“It’s a satire about white wokeness and the assumptions that we have always been taught about the Native American experience that we have accepted as fact, and how complex and impossible it is to create something that represents an oppressed group when that group isn’t even in the room. … Now, it’s one of the top ten most-produced plays in America and it fits in at Trustus perfectly. It’s modern, it’s challenging, it makes you laugh and then it makes you cringe that you just laughed…”

Abigail McNeely, director - The Thanksgiving Play

As quarantine precautions continue to impact the opportunities for performing arts institutions to gather artists and audiences safely together, problem-solving and creative solutions are more highly valued than ever.

With a theatre that has been physically dark since March, Columbia’s beloved Trustus Theatre has offered a number of alternative events including a virtual play festival last month that brought us new plays with small casts live streamed three weekends in a row.

This week, the organization, under the watchful eye of Producing Artistic Director Chad Henderson, is raising the bar even higher with a brand new play being offered as a pay-for-view event—The Thanksgiving Play, a comedy by Larissa Fasthorse.

Jasper talked with Abigail McNeely who, in addition to directing The Thanksgiving Play, is also on staff at Trustus Theatre. We’re sharing this interview with you.

JASPER: First, tell us about your position at Trustus Theatre, how long you’ve been there, and what you do.

MCNEELY: I am the Administrative Assistant of Production and I started in May 2020. I do a lot of different things! I work closely with Chad, the Producing Artistic Director, and our technical staff, as well as our wonderful donors. When we return to live production, I’ll be working with production teams as well. A big part of my job over the last few months has been working on our Trustus LIVE series, which included filming, editing, and streaming video for our audiences at home. I was so excited to take on the challenge of taking the Trustus experience online and I’ve learned a lot. I’m really proud of the streaming work that we’ve done and it has all been leading up to The Thanksgiving Play, a production that combines both our practical live theatre skills and our virtual skills.

JASPER: And I know you graduated from USC – when was that and what was your major?

MCNEELY: I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2017 with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre. While there, I received the Helen Hayes Undergraduate scholarship and worked with Green Room Productions, the entirely student-run theatre production group, and was a member of TOAST Improv.

JASPER: Talk for just a minute about some of the plays you’ve been in or directed and maybe choose one or two favorites.

MCNEELY: There are so many! I’ve been doing theatre since high school and each project feels like it teaches me something new. Some highlights:

· Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which marked my fifth musical here at Trustus (and unfortunately closed in after just two performances due to COVID – but we’ll be back!). I love working with Chad on musicals. It’s like you stepped into a music video. It’s a blast.

· A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter which I directed my senior year of college with some of my very close friends through Green Room. Hunter is one of my favorite playwrights. Funny and dark and full of heart.

· A Christmas Miracle at the Richland Fashion Mall, written by The Mothers, Trustus’ resident comedy group that I am proudly a member of. I was honored to get to direct our very first full-length play that was a love letter to some of our favorite Columbia things.

Patrick Dodds and Kayla Cahill Machado

JASPER: Now, let’s hear about the Thanksgiving Play – who wrote it and what should viewers expect from the content of the play?

MCNEELY: The Thanksgiving Play is written by Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation). The show is about four people coming together to try and create a politically correct, culturally-sensitive play about Thanksgiving during Native American Heritage Month. Those four people all happen to be white, not a single Indigenous voice in the room. It’s a satire about white wokeness and the assumptions that we have always been taught about the Native American experience that we have accepted as fact, and how complex and impossible it is to create something that represents an oppressed group when that group isn’t even in the room. FastHorse wrote this play to explore these issues with only white people in the cast in response to being told that her other plays couldn’t be produced for lack of Indigenous actors. Now, it’s one of the top ten most-produced plays in America and it fits in at Trustus perfectly. It’s modern, it’s challenging, it makes you laugh and then it makes you cringe that you just laughed… it’s what I think of when I think about “a Trustus show.”

JASPER: Who will we get to see performing?

MCNEELY: Four really wonderful actors from the Trustus company – Kayla Cahill Machado (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Brittany Hammock (A Streetcar Named Desire and the Jasper Theatre Artist of the Year recipient for 2019), Patrick Dodds (Sweat), and Clint Poston (Marjorie Prime). We knew we wanted to stay within the Trustus family for this show and these four actors were my first choice. I’ve had the pleasure of watching and working with each of them multiple times and I appreciate their dedication and their willingness to try new things. Getting them all in to the same cast was a dream.

JASPER: And now, the obvious, how exactly will we get to see this play?

MCNEELY: The Thanksgiving Play is Trustus’ very first virtual on-demand show. After a month of quarantine and testing, we brought our cast and crew in to film the show to then stream online. It’s similar to renting a movie off of Amazon – you pay for an access code that is good any time between November 11-21, and once you begin watching it, you have 48 hours to finish it. Tickets can be purchased online at trustus.org and any questions can go to our Box Office Manager, Brandon Martin (boxoffice@trustus.org). He was instrumental in creating our online experience and ensuring it still felt like Trustus even from the comfort of your couch.

It’s similar to renting a movie off of Amazon – you pay for an access code that is good any time between November 11-21, and once you begin watching it, you have 48 hours to finish it. Tickets can be purchased online at trustus.org

JASPER: As the director, tell us about some of the challenges you encountered in putting this play together and how you problem-solved them.

MCNEELY: We started the process completely online, rehearsing over Zoom. The first few days of a rehearsal process are vital in building ensemble and getting the show up on its feet to block, so having to do so online was challenging, but thankfully, the cast took to it easily.

After two weeks of virtual rehearsal, we started in-person rehearsals. It was a breath of fresh air to have people back in the theatre again. We were masked when not on stage, lots of hand sanitizer, weekly testing… Above all, we had to do this safely. It means nothing to bring theatre back if it’s done haphazardly. While we were in the space, we ran the show and added costumes and props just like any normal rehearsal process. It felt good to be back in the rhythm of things. After another two weeks, we filmed the entire show over Halloween weekend. It was a whirlwind process. The staff worked so hard to make it happen. It was exciting to get to work with my team on a production together.

JASPER: Assuming we haven’t seen the play yet, key us in to one of your favorite or funniest parts to look forward to.

MCNEELY: One of the most fun things about the show is that it’s a play with music, so in between each of the scenes with the group creating the play, we get a glimpse at some of the outdated Thanksgiving songs and pageants that have been performed over and over again. FastHorse wrote these based on real songs she came across while writing the play, and they are perfectly campy in their performance and cringey in their content. There’s also a scene involving a head. That’s all I have to say about that.

JASPER: Is there anyone whose praises you’d like to take this opportunity to sing?

So many people! The time we spent rehearsing online gave us ample time to discuss characters and intentions and engage in conversations about some of the tougher topics. We had discussions with Eva Foussat, an Indigenous member for the Trustus board, and Terrance Henderson, Trustus company member and the chair of our Equity Task Force. I’m so thankful for their time. It was essential to have POC voices at the table when we discussed this play. Otherwise, we would’ve been doing exactly what the play tells us not to do: talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Perform radical wokeness without working with or listening to BIPOC.

I’d also love to shout out the musicians we worked with on the show. We asked Greg Apple to create the transition music you’ll hear between scenes, and what he and Chad came up with is so fun: tribal beats that morph into jazzy tunes. It reminds me a lot of Vince Guaraldi’s score for the Peanuts specials, perfect for the holidays. Then, we reached out to two of my favorite musicians to fill in the music for the rest of the show. Chris Cockrell, Trustus company Emeritus member, scored scenes 1, 3, and 7 and Daniel Machado, whose wife Kayla plays Logan in the show, scored scene 5 and the credits. Daniel also stepped up to the plate as a camera operator and sound mixer for the entire show. He’s helped so much.

I’ve never felt this way about collaboration before. I am so lucky to have worked with so many different artists in such a short, loud time and created something we can all be proud of.

JASPER: And what’s next for you and Trustus?

Coming up on November 21st, we’re hosting three awesome bands in the alleyway outside of the theatre for Rock the Block – a fun(d)raiser for Trustus Theatre! Brandy and the Butcher, Les Merry Chevaliers, and E.Z. Shakes are playing, Scott Hall’s got the food, and we’ll be pouring drinks. It’s going to be so much fun. Info can be found online at https://trustus.org/event/rock-the-block/. After that, we’ll be installing new air filtration systems to hopefully return to live performance soon. Stay tuned!