Doubt, A Parable leaves the audience questioning the truth long after the curtain dropped.

Posted on by Thor

I went to the final dress rehearsal for “Doubt, A Parable” based on a. book by John Patrick Shanley. The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama follows a Catholic high school priest’s battle for truth and personal integrity.
It is produced by Beth Marshall Presents
and directed by Beth Marshall in the historic Winter Garden Theatre (160 West Plant Street, Winter Garden FL).

When the theater went dark, Father Flynn (Michael Wanzie) began his sermon in the isle at the back of the theater. He spoke about how the country pulled together after John F Kennedy was assassinated.  The moving monologue rallied the audience behind the father. He was clearly a well loved man among his parish. Michael Wanzie seemed perfectly cast for this role. I’ve seen him in past productions and he always seems to be in roles where he must question the faith he grew up with.

Sister James (Chelsey Panisch) is a young and enthusiastic teacher loves to get the children excited about history. Her superior, Sister Aloysius (Ginger Lee McDermott) is a hard edged disciplinarian. She views every situation with suspicion and doubt and advises Sister James to do the same. Eventually a situation arises in which the one black student in the school is called away for a meeting with Father Flynn. The boy returned from the meeting acting strange and he had the scent of liquor on his breath.

Sister Aloysius assumes the worst and begins a personal vendetta to expose Father Flynn as the monster she imagines he is. Her black and white view of right and wrong is greyed by the Fathers compassion and a simple straight forward explanation. He gives another sermon, this time about gossip. In this parable he has a woman cut open a down pillow on a city building roof top. Feathers fly everywhere in the wind. She is told to repair the damage and recover the feathers. That of course is impossible, the damage is done.

The play haunted me on the entire drive home. Without an admission of guilt, there is always doubt. The father was clearly a gifted orator who cared for the children in his charge. Yet sister Aloysius’s steadfast conviction at times swayed my view of the man. He clearly had human weaknesses. The show was just an hour and a half long but the questions still linger.

Mark Your Calendars!

February 6 – 22, 2015
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm
Industry Night: Monday, February 16 at 8pm

Tickets: $25 ($21 seniors/students)
Industry Nite Feb. 16th -$15 (post show cast meet/greet Pilars Martini) 

Garden Theatre Box Office
160 West Plant Street, Winter Garden
407-877-GRDN (4736)
gardentheatre.org

The Travon Martin Project touches raw nerves.

Posted on by Thor

On the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, United States, George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African American high school student. George, a 28-year-old mixed-race Hispanic man, was the neighborhood watch coordinator for the gated community where Martin was temporarily living and where the shooting took place George was told not to follow the youth but he followed anyway.  Responding to an earlier call from Zimmerman, police arrived on the
scene within two minutes of the shooting. He was taken into
custody, treated for head injuries, then questioned for five hours. The
police chief said that Zimmerman was released because there was no
evidence to refute the claim of having acted in self-defense. The police chief also said that Zimmerman had had a right to defend himself with lethal force. An arrest was finally made after the incident became national news and protesters filled Sanford. George was given a trial and found not guilty.

Producer Beth Marshal wanted to create a show that deals with the huge divide that Trayvon Martin‘s death caused in Central Florida and the country. Her son is about the same age as Trayvon and if her son was seen walking through suburban Sanford, quite frankly he would be alive. The show opens with Billy Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” as the audience entered the theater. The song referenced “blood on the leaves” in a sorrowful anguished voice. The show opened with a congressional hearing about the ban on certain items. There were long heated debates about how these items needed to be outlawed for everyone’s protection. One committee member had smuggled the item into the hearing like a knife into a courtroom. The committee erupted in chaos as he showed them the hoodie which is quite functional on a cold evening.

  

John DiDonna acted as the show’s narrator. He talked about Sanford‘s past and how racism has been woven into the fabric of the towns history. Back in 1946, the city of Sanford ran Jackie Robinson out of town while he was playing for the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers AAA team, which trained in Sanford. Then there was the story of schoolteacher Harry Tyson Moore,
who was the founder of the first branch of the NAACP in Florida’s
Seminole County, where Sanford is located. Moore fought tirelessly for
racial equality in Sanford, including voting rights for African
Americans. That made him a dangerous man to many white people in town. On Christmas night of 1951, the home of Moore and his wife
Harriette Vyda Simms Moore was fire bombed. It was the couple’s 25th
wedding anniversary. Moore died on his way to a Sanford hospital and his
wife died 9 days later of her injuries. In Sanford’s more recent past, the 2010 case of Sherman Ware had some troubling similarities to the Trayvon Martin tragedy. On Dec. 4, 2010, 21-year-old Justin Collison, was captured on a YouTube video leaving a Sanford bar, when he walked up behind an
unsuspecting Ware, a homeless African American man, and punched him in
the back of the head, which drove Ware’s face into a utility pole and
then onto the pavement breaking his nose. Sanford police questioned Collison who was not cuffed that night and had
possession of the video but did not arrest him. You see, Collison’s
father is a Sanford police lieutenant and his grandfather is a former
circuit judge and wealthy Florida landowner.

20 years ago when I moved to Orlando, the Ku Klux Klan held a demonstration at the Jewish Community Center in Maitland.  There was a heated debate at the time about if there should be a counter demonstration. Some argued that by counter demonstrating, we would be giving the KKK the attention they wanted. Hundreds of counter demonstrators showed up verses six or so KKK members hiding behind robes. Janine Klein spoke of isms in her monologue in the show. She was a Jewish school teacher and did grow up facing racism. In the talk back after the show she said that she realized that she wants to be more of an activist to help bring about change. Silence isn’t the answer.

The talk back triggered an amazing conversation with the audience. One woman in the audience was of Cuban heritage. One of her cousins had light skin and she was treated differently than all the other children with dark skin. So there was racism even within a family. Sheryl Carbonell, from the cast is inter-racially married to a white police officer. He has been bitten, beaten and shot at on the job. 14 incidents were all caused by black men. None of these incidents were ever covered by the media. The Jordan Davis shooting happened during production of the play. It is clear that these type of shootings continue. Kerry Alce who plays Trayvon said that he is desensitized and frightened by all the shootings of black children. The talk back was every bit as powerful as the production itself. Change only happens when you open a dialogue.This is a daring production that certainly opened that dialogue. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King

There are only 2 shows remaining of The Trayvon Martin Project…

October 4, Saturday at 7:30pm

October 5, Sunday at 2pm

at the Valencia College East Campus Black Box Theatre building 3 (701 North Econolockahatchee Trail Orlando FL).

Tickets are $20 general admission and $15 students. Proceeds from this event benefit The Travyon Martin Foundation.

Beth Marshall Opens Her Next Theatrical Season

Posted on by Thor

This sketch of Beth Marshall was done in 2010 while she presented a “Yapinar” which basically educated Directors and Producers on how to promote their shows for the Orlando Fringe Festival. At that time Beth and her husband were recovering from a car accident. Thankfully they both made a full recovery. This year Beth has begun a healthy lifestyle and she is sharing her progress on Facebook. I’m fascinated by her progress and updates.

On August 20th, she got
all her measurements from her costume designer and trainer. The Total
inches on my body lost equaled 48″ in 20 weeks. Biggest body area loss is a tie
for 7″ each on her waist and chest. She was pleased with these results so far. She has
have more energy, and feels physically stronger. She is now working out
3-6 times a week. She didn’t even think she would work out at all
until I was under 300 lbs. This summer, she had relatively moderate to light work load which
allowed her time to put extra focus on her health and hang around juice
bars, farmers markets, whole foods and gyms. This week the new theater season starts
and this means that a full work load and chaos will be in full force. Still her health
goals remain her top priority. She has the entire month of Sept. scheduled
with  personal trainings and boot camp. She hopes to maintain her
hardcore training as the work load triples. Sharing her health goals and achievements is inspiring me to try and improve my own health.

Mark Your Calendars! The 7th Beth Marshall Presents season is about to kick off with Play in a Day which will be staged September 6th at Lake Howell High School (4200 Dike Road, Winter Park Florida).  6:30pm will be a silent Auction and the shows followed by a talk back. Play in a Day has 100 artists write and produce 9 plays with the same theme within a 24 hour time frame. This year a musical is in the works and I hope to sketch the production from inception to birth.

On November 7th Beth will be presenting Beatnik Squared. This is a unique, audience interactive speak-easy 60’s theme One-Night ONLY
event. Whether attending for the first time or returning for seconds,
all audience members will get into the groove of enjoying a flashback of
the 60’s. Many of our usual beats, poets, freaks, geeks and artisans of
every kind will be returning along with some new acts and surprises.
This event is once again in partnership with Blue Star and VarieTEASE taking place at The Venue (511 Virginia Dr., Orlando, Fl).

I am intrigued by THE TRAYVON MARTIN PROJECT because I did a number of sketches of demonstrators at the time.  Part 1, A Tribute will be staged (Oct. 3rd-5th 2014).

This year long socio-political theatrical collaboration and exploration in partnership with Penguin Point Productions, and Valencia College East begins with the World Premiere
of 6 short plays and a poem inspired by the tragic loss of
Trayvon Martin. The works carefully explore race relations and equality
issues within our culture and specifically within the Central Florida
community. Playwrights include: Dennis Neal, Rob Winn Anderson, Janine Klein, James Brendlinger, Paris Crayton lll, Steve Schneider, and poet Rob Gee. Directed by Beth Marshall, Paul Castaneda, and John DiDonna. Each performance will hold a post-show talk back with the audience. Performances will take place at Valencia College Black Box Theatre (701 North Econlockhatchee Trail, Orlando, Fl). Partial proceeds from this event benefit The Travyon Martin Foundation. This production will be presented at Valencia College East Campus
as part of their build up to the world premiere of their own original
devised play centering around the inciting incidents of Trayvon Martin
and Jordan Davis, the 17 year old killed in a Jacksonville gas station
parking lot.  Researched and created by a class led by John DiDonna, this event will premier in Valencia College Theater’s February 2015 slot. Part 2 will be staged in February and Part 3 is yet to be determined.