Two theatrical performances in October and November raised the curtain on a new theater program, including classes, at Co-Lin.
On October 27, 28 and 29, Dr. Bobby Helms, Director of Choral Activities at the college, staged three performance of Steel Magnolias, a comedy-drama set in the early 1980's based on the life of writer Robert Harling’s sister about a group of women who bond in a small Southern town as customers of a hairdresser and deal with the death of one of their own, a Type 1 diabetic who risks everything to give birth to her own child.
On November 10 and 12, he produced and directed The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- a musical play based on the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo about an impossible love affair focused on the bellringer at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and a 16-year old street dancer, with songs from the 1996 Walt Disney Animation Studios film adaptation.
There will be three more shows during the spring semester and two junior shows featuring children and youth during the summer also produced and directed by Helms. The venue is the Stanley Stewart Auditorium in the Ewing Fine Arts Building on the Wesson campus, with tickets priced at $10 per person.
“This is the first time in recent memory that Co-Lin has had a theater program, and a season of plays has been staged in Wesson,” says Helms, who was involved in a Georgia community theater and college theater before joining Co-Lin in 2019 to head its Choral department. “We started the program to both attract students to Co-Lin and offer new opportunities to current students.”
Helms launched the new theater program with a summer camp at Co-Lin for children and youth this year. Participants in the summer camps introduced the new program with performances of Sister Act (Junior), a 1992 musical crime comedy written by Paul Rudnick, and Legally Blonde (Junior), a 2001 American comedy scripted by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith about a sorority girl who attempts to win back her ex-boyfriend by getting a Juris Doctor degree at Harvard Law School, and in the process, overcomes stereotypes against blondes and triumphs as a successful lawyer.
Classes started in the fall semester are part of the program, too, with the shows in which students can practice their learning along side members of the wider community with a theater background who want to audition for them as well. Helms also teaches the classes, which include one theater major who will graduate and move to a four-year school, and students who take them to complement other studies. During the current semester, he is teaching stagecraft (building props and sets), acting, movement and drama production. Next semester, his courses will include stagecraft, theater appreciation and drama production.
This month, auditions begin for the three spring semester shows:
Tick Tick. . . . .Boom, a semi-biographical musical by Jonathan Larson about the writer’s experience creating a musical to enter the theater industry.
Clue, a comedy written by Jonathan Lynn, Hunter Foster, Sandy Rustin and Eric Price based on the classic board game, Clue, in which six guests are invited to a dinner party thrown by an anonymous host who gives them aliases -- Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet, discover they are the victims of the same blackmailer, their host, are presented with a weapon and must choose to pay their extortionist double or kill the innocent butler.
Little Shop of Horrors, a horror comedy rock musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics and a book by Howard Ashman that follows a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The musical is loosely based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. The music, composed by Menken in the style of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes several well-known tunes, including the title song, "Skid Row (Downtown)," "Somewhere That's Green," and "Suddenly, Seymour."
Helms pronounced the initial productions of Steel Magnolias and The Hunchback of Notre Dame successful ventures “received very well” by nearly full-house audiences. The audiences at Steel Magnolia participated in the play as attendees at a “wedding reception” during the intermission, which was made part of the play. Minus the audience, however, the play had only seven cast members, making it relatively easy for Helms to produce and direct to start the 2023 theater season at the college. As the season progresses, Helms is creating bigger challenges for himself. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in contrast, had 35 cast members. Spring semester productions, Helms adds, will feature live instruments in musicals instead of recording tracks to provide sound.
For more information, contact Bobby G. Helms at bobby.helms@colin.edu.