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ANOTHER CAST HIT!

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ANOTHER CAST HIT!

          CAST Takes a Well-Deserved Bow for “More Carrying On”        by our own local playwright and director

The last thing I expected, when coming to BOLLI in the spring of 2015 after 40 years of teaching drama,  was that I would end up  doing more drama–this time, with a group of BOLLI players.  And yet, CAST (Creativity in  Acting, Storytelling, and Theatre) has been, for me, the most satisfying drama experience of all! And why?

Because these players engage in this activity for the pure and simple joy of the experience.   Unlike adolescents, these actors (most of whom took up this interest after arriving at BOLLI) are willing to go “all out” in their playing, without worrying about looking “silly” on stage.   As a result, they are constantly experimenting, exercising their creativity–and as a result, not only do they end up looking terrific on stage, but they have enormous fun in the process as well.  And, as we have all seen over the past nearly four years, this group’s work (and play) just gets better with every performance.

This year’s production of More Carrying On  took the BOLLI audience on a return visit to Carey Village, the upscale senior living facility located on the campus of Carey College in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where these scenes all take place.

All seven members of this years CAST cast (Sandy Clifford, Donna Johns, Eileen Mitchell, Becki Norman, Mark Seliber, Rachel Seliber, and Bette Winer) played multiple roles in this production, all of which they took on with aplomb, creating distinctly individual characters.

On this year’s visit to Carey Village, we met a new resident (Becki Norman) who is thrilled with her freezer and the Village’s bulletin boards; an avid hostess (Elaine Mitchell) bemoaning the failure of her latest event; a father (Mark Seliber) and daughter (Sandy Clifford) share very different feelings about the new piece of “art” he has just hung on his wall; a pair of retired Princeton political science professors (Bette Winer and Mark Seliber) who have become obsessed with creating truly unique culinary creations;  friends (Rachel Seliber and Eileen Mitchell) engaged in their human version of “bird watching;” and, finally, the Village’s own “crazy plant lady” (Donna Johns) talking to her plants.

Thanks to Photo Group members Dennis Greene and Sandy Miller-Jacobs for taking these great shots!   (Let your cursor hover over each image for details.)

In case you missed these CAST productions and would like to read the pieces, both sets of Carey Village scenes have been compiled in a single volume and are now available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback versions.

Kindle Version
Paperback

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living proof that our continued learning and activity at BOLLI can lead us to all sorts of new and exciting ventures!

BOLL Matters editor Sue Wurster

 

Known, in some circles, as Wurster the Wily Word Woman…

BOLLI Events, BOLLI News, BOLLI Special Interest Groups

CAST PRESENTS: “Going Solo”

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During the last week of the fall term, the BOLLI Membership Committee sponsored lunchtime presentations celebrating ourselves and our activities, providing our fellow BOLLI members with entertainment, discussion, and more!  First up, that week was our intrepid group of actors providing a program called “Going Solo.”

                                                                 CAST                                                                               (Creative Acting, Storytelling, and Theatre)On Monday, our CAST Our CAST members performed monologues drawn from plays (many of them one-character shows) featuring characters from real life.  The performers provided the following glimpses of fascinating people–

CAST Coach/Performer Sue Wurster as Stein

Sue Wurster started off the program with a piece drawn from the play Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein by Marty Martin.  The play, a single-character work, featured Pat Carroll in its off-Broadway run in New York in the ’70s and takes place on the eve of Stein’s eviction from her Paris apartment.  In this portion of the work, she talks about the inner self as well as what she was trying to accomplish in her work.

 

Monique Frank as Emily Dickinson

We then moved back in time (and place) from the Paris of 1933 to the Amherst, Massachusetts of the mid-19th Century.  In this scene from William Luce’s one-woman play, The Belle of Amherst, the reclusive poet talks about her father, her sister, and, of course, her poems.

Bunny Cohen as Amelia Earhart

In 1932, the National Geographic Society awarded its Gold Medal to Amelia Earhart for becoming the first woman (and the only person since Charles Lindbergh) to achieve a solo transatlantic flight.  In this passage from Laura Annawyn Shamas’ one-woman play, Amelia Lives, the aviatrix reflects with some amazement upon the extraordinary public response to her flight as she accepts the medal for her achievement.

Becki Norman as Vivien Leigh

In Marcy Lafferty’s one-woman show, Vivien Leigh: The Last Press Conference, drawn from the Leigh’s own words, we are given a portrait of the troubled and gifted actress not long before the end of her life.  Here, she talks about her most determined campaigns in life:  marrying Laurence Olivier and landing the role of Scarlett O’Hara.

Eileen Mitchell as Eva Peron

In a very unusual piece, First Lady, playwright Erica Christ has provided a unique look at the woman who used her position as Argentina’s first lady to fight for women’s rights and care of the poor. Here, Peron (after her death) reflects upon what it means to be a woman in Argentina…and more.

Sandy Clifford as the irrepressible Molly Ivins

Twin sisters Margaret and Allison Engel have provided a vivid image of brassy Texas newspaper columnist Molly Ivins in their one-woman play, Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.  In this portion of the play, Ivins turns her humor on Texas politics as she tries to write about her father.

Bette Winer as J. Robert Oppenheimer

A scientist herself, Bette Winer was drawn to this particularly powerful monologue from Carson Kreitzer’s compelling play, The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer.   In this passage, the scientist reflects upon the volatile age that he and his Los Alamos crew ushered in when they invented the modern devil, the atomic bomb.

The Cast of CAST’s “Going Solo” Presentation

So, is CAST a closed group?  NO.  Does one have to audition in order to be involved?  NO.  What if you’ve never been on stage in your life but are kind of interested in maybe trying some acting–is this something you could join?   YES!  And so, how would you go about doing that?

Just watch the Bulletin for announcements of our upcoming meeting times (next at BOLLI on Thursday, January 5 from 12:00 – 1:30) when we engage in lots of fun activity–we do some warm-ups, play some theatre games, engage in some improvisation, read scenes and/or plays, and so on.  No experience necessary–just a desire to have some creative fun!

Want to know more about BOLLI’s Special Interest Groups?  Click here:  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33972419/SIGS.pdf