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Now it’s your chance to join the Jasper Project’s Play Right Series as a Community Producer.

Are you the kind of person who always wants to know more about the art you experience?

Why did the playwright make their characters the way they did?

What was the director trying to accomplish by having an actor move across stage, turn their back to the audience, or break into dance?

How did an actor make me feel the way they did simply by turning their head?

If you have a passion for knowing more, understanding process, inspiration, and impetus, and seeing how a virgin play goes from page to stage, you are a good candidate for becoming a Jasper Project Play Right Series Community Producer.

What is a Community Producer?

Community Producers are important members of the Play Right Series Team who, in exchange for their investment of a modest amount of funding, ($250 each or $500 per couple) become engaged in the development of a virgin play from the first time the actors meet until the production of a staged reading of the play in front of an audience.

Between February and August 2022, Community Producers will gather monthly to explore the process of a play moving from page to stage with presentations that include

· Meet the Playwright: Colby Quick

· Meet the Director: Chad Henderson

· First Table Reading with your host, Jon Tuttle

· Behind the scenes with the Cast of Moon Swallower

· Stage managing, props, costumes, lighting, & sound with your host, Jon Tuttle

· And finally, a Staged Reading before a live audience with the Community Producers front and center as our esteemed Guests of Honor*

You’ll enjoy wine, cheese, socializing, and an assortment of other unique snacks at every event, as well as Jasper Project swag bags and FREE admission to the Jasper Project 10th Birthday Celebration rescheduled for Thursday April 14th at 701 Whaley!

* For the Staged Reading, Guests of Honor will be seated in the best seats in the house, acknowledged from the stage and in all programming, promotions, and press releases, as well as on the Jasper Project website and in the Fall 2022 issue of Jasper Magazine.

Play Right Series History

The Play Right Series is an endeavor to enlighten and empower audiences with information about the process involved in creating theatrical arts, at the same time that we engineer and increase opportunities for SC theatre artists to create and perform new works for theatre. Our first project in the Play Right Series was in 2017 when Larry Hembree led project members to ultimately produce a staged reading of Sharks and Other Lovers by SC playwright Randall David Cook. Sharks went on to win a number of awards and has been produced off-Broadway. SC Playwright Professor Jon Tuttle of Francis Marion University is overseeing this project for 2022 with a new team of theatre artists including Chad Henderson (director), Colby Quick (playwright), Cindi Boiter and Christina Xan (Community Producer Liaisons), and more.

When we started the Jasper Project last year as a non-profit entity dedicated to collaborative arts engineering, one of the first projects on our roster, after putting out the next issue of Jasper Magazine, was the formation of the Play Right Series.

The Play Right Series is an endeavor to enlighten and empower audiences with information about the process involved in creating theatrical arts, at the same time that we engineer and increase opportunities for SC theatre artists to create and perform new works for theatre. The word process is italicized because one of the four main missions* of the Jasper Project is to pull back the curtain on what, for most of us, is the magic and mystery of art. The Process.

How, for example, does a play get from a nugget in the playwright’s brain through her pen and all the way through re-writes, communication with directors, casting, table readings, stage readings, blocking, costuming, lighting, scoring, marketing, financing, rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal, and so much more, all the way to the stage on opening night?

We believe not only that the process of creating art deserves the same kind of accolades and wonder that the product does, but that knowledge of the process makes us both better audiences and patrons, as well as better artists ourselves. One of the ways we implement this belief is by involving Community Producers.

Community Producers are normal people, just like you and me, who invest a modest but meaningful amount of money in the production of one of the Play Right Series plays. In exchange for their investment, Community Producers are offered an insiders’ view of what goes on behind the scenes and are invited to follow the process of producing a new play from the first readings on.

The first in our line-up of new, audience-friendly plays is Sharks and Other Lovers, written by Columbia native Randall David Cook, and our first class of Community Producers is made up of Bonnie Goldberg, Roe Young, Bill Schmidt, Marcia Stine, Charles and Jean Cook, and Jack Oliver.

Larry Hembree is the director of the play and he believes strongly that this program is important for the Greater Columbia Arts Community at this point in time. “In a city that prides its arts and culture scene, the Play Right Series validates the performing arts’ work here and is a testament to artists and audiences that new work can be created and supported,” he says. “The long term goals [of the Play Right Series] are to continue to keep our city and state at the forefront of theatre by continuing to produce as much new work as possible. Trustus has done a stellar job at this for over 30 years. So has the Columbia Children’s Theatre with its Commedia productions for young audiences. Now the Jasper Project can continue to grow that. It’s exciting. Because this process is a true collaboration between playwright, director, actors and designers. It can only work if there is true collaboration among all the artists involved which certainly improves theatre skills for all of them.”

Sharks and Other Lovers stars Libby Campbell, Jennifer Moody Sanchez, Josh Kern, Glenn Rawls, and Perry Simpson. David Swicegood does costume and hair, Barry Wheeler is the sound designer, and Emily Harrill is the stage designer.

Because of the support of Bonnie, Roe, Bill, Marcia, Charles, Jean, and Jack, the Jasper Project is delighted to present a staged reading of Sharks and Other Lovers on Friday, April 28th and Saturday, May 6th. Both readings will take place at Tapp’s Arts Center and the cost is only $10. There will be a cash bar and an exciting discussion of the journey the play has taken thus far, and where it will go from here.

I hope you’ll join us for the first in an on-going series of experiments in theatre arts. It’ll be fun, and we’ll all be better theatre audiences (and hopefully artists) for having been there.

Take care,

Cindi

*The Jasper Project is committed to four integrated criteria:

Process – illuminating the unique processes endemic to all art forms in order to provide a greater level of understanding and respect for that discipline.
Community/Collaboration – nurturing community both within and between arts disciplines.
Narrative – creating a more positive and progressive understanding of SC culture.
Economy – being efficient stewards of arts funding committed to creating more with less.

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Colby Quick Wins Play Right Series and You're Invited to Join the Play Right Project Team as a Community Producer

The Jasper Project is proud to announce the winner of our 2nd PLAY RIGHT SERIES project—Colby Quick for his play, Moon Swallower

Now it’s your chance to join the Jasper Project’s Play Right Series as a Community Producer.