Museum Fills "Black Box Theater" With Laughter, Fun

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There is no end to the magic of theater.

There is the magic of story.

The magic of seeing student actors transform themselves in front of your eyes.

The magic of costume, set, and makeup.

And the magic of escaping wholly to another place with a cast of zany characters.

Director David Sims brought the magic of place to this fall's production of Tina Howe's Museum by transforming the auditorium with the help of CCES parent Carl Sykes into a black box theater. The transformation was so complete that once audience members entered from the backstage door, they stepped into a space that bore almost no reference to the familiar auditorium.

The casual, intimate feeling of the black box placed the audience in the museum with its eccentric sculptures (sporting castoffs from Reggie Titmas's vast collections) and its parade of art-loving characters ranging from the bored and affected to the frivolous and serious.

In the program notes, director Sims wrote, "You might be asking yourselves why we went through the trouble of getting new auditorium seats without actually using them for two consecutive fall dramas. The answer isn't simple, but it has to do with making theater as new an experience as possible by containing the performance environment in the world of the play."

In their performances, the students spoofed the pretensions of the art world and mined their characters for humor. Little touches throughout the production heightened the satire, such as the tongue-in-cheek plaques labelling the art works on the set, and the programs that were designed as museum handouts, complete with 3-D diagrams of the galleries and descriptions of the current exhibits.

(For example, of the "Colonial Quilts and Weathervanes" exhibit mentioned several times in the play, the blurb reads: "Featuring quilts from across the South, this sprawling event is sponsored by the CCES Arts Guild. Please show your appreciation by reading their literature. Nothing here would be possible without them.")

In the space of five 90-minute performances the Cavalier Players worked the magic of the fall drama. Congratulations to the entire crew and to cast members Katie Atkinson, Elizabeth Beeson, Brian Blake, Julie Buisson, Garrison Carpender, Emily Cull, Sarah Evert, Caitlin Evins, John Freeman, Jayme Hendershot, Madeline Hoptry, Brooke Hughes, Therlow Huntley, Maggie Mathena, Warren Moseley, Alyssa Reichental, Brett Rhyne, Paige Schumaker, Smedes Scovil, Laura Sykes '05, Taylor Townes, and George Washburn.

Now the characters have gone back to their lives as students, and the black box has been dismantled, stored backstage--a room within a room--where it awaits another opportunity, like the genie in the lamp, to work its magic on the stage.