left to right: Katie Jo Cox (Announcer); Zach Dearing (James); Leah Dick (Jane); Allie Darden (Diane) photo courtesy of Thomas Eisenhauer Photography
See Jane Quit
BCTC’s production on stage at Downtown Arts Center
by Kim Thomas
See Jane.
Jane is a chain-smoking, single, thirty-year-old waitress, living with her aging-Southern-belle grandmother, Bessie. But her life’s not so bad – she has a calm, sweet big brother named James; her brother’s wife, Diane, is her best friend; and there’s finally a new romantic prospect in Jane’s life: social activist Charles. The picture is pretty rosy until the day Jane decides to quit smoking. Her family is thrilled to hear the news… unfortunately, each of them has an upsetting secret they need to share with her, but now none of them want to stress her out and give her the excuse to light up. When the secrets start mounting, the audience gets to see Jane’s friends and family trip their way through a classic farce, all in the name of helping Jane quit smoking.
When playwright Beth Kander is in Lexington for the Southeast Theater Conference, it will be her first opportunity to see her engaging comedy come to life as See Jane QUIT makes its mark at the Downtown Arts Center, under the meticulous and ridiculous direction of Tim X. Davis, Theatre & Film Coordinator at Bluegrass Community & Technical College.
Davis and his cast and crew were so entertaining at a recent Mardi Gras rehearsal, it was impossible to leave after just one act, even though the Cats game against Mississippi State was about to begin. It came as no surprise that this work by Kander won the 2009 Mississippi Theatre Association Playwriting Competition.
See Jane QUIT is about the intersecting lives of would-be non-smoker Jane (played by feisty Leah Dick) and her family and friends. Jared Sloan keeps the pacing quick as stage manager; Jane’s brother James (Zach Dearing) and his wife Diane (Allie Darden) keep the sparks flying as their relationship is tested by Jane’s grandmother, Bessie (Kathy Crabtree Swango), with whom they all live.
The proceedings are knit together by an engaging narrator (Katie Jo Cox), who speaks directly to the audience as the plot develops. Philip Sharkey, as Jane’s boyfriend Charles is also a kick to watch, his comedic timing is spot on and he garners a lot of well deserved chuckles.
Info, Southeast Theater Conference visit: http://www.setc.org/conventions/index.php
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Director Tim X. Davis is BCTC’s Coordinator of Theatre & Film and does not shy away from new works, as he’s shown in recent years with the debut of his own Dancing With Dani, a play he wrote and directed in 2008; he also performed the role of Mason in Actors Guild of Lexington’s successful production and world premiere of Silas House’s Long Time Travelling last spring under the direction of Rick St. Peter.
Self-described “husband, father and prisoner of rock-n-roll” Davis likes to tell the story of how he met the author of See Jane QUIT while having dinner one night. “Beth is the significant other of one of my best friends from down in Mississippi. They visited us Thanksgiving weekend, and Beth (who I found very charming) mentioned that she was a playwright and had some full length material. Almost offhandedly, I asked her to send me something, and when I read what she sent, I was blown away at how strong her writing is (and of course the fact that the play won this year’s Mississippi Theatre Association’s playwrighting competition didn’t hurt)! I am MORE than happy to be giving this piece its premiere.” (Kander will be at the performance Friday, March 5th. There will be a reception at 7pm, the performance at 8, and a Q and A with Beth and the cast and crew immediately following.)
Kander will be in town for the Southeastern Theatre Conference, which will be held this year in Lexington. Davis emphasizes the importance of the the SETC: “Having it in our fair city is an amazing opportunity, and one that should not be missed. The conference has hundreds of workshops on every imaginable area of the theatre (tech, acting, directing, movement, etc.), and a number of High School and Community theatre performances from all over the region.”
“The pre-professional screening auditions are also an important part. I have been the state coordinator of these auditions for the better part of the last decade, and this year we had 148 college students from the state of Kentucky go through the screening auditions (held this past November in Morehead), and of those, 60 were selected to audition for over 100 professional theatre companies who will be attending the festival. I’m pleased to say that three of our BCTC students were among those selected to audition, so we’re very excited about that. There will also be hundreds of high schoolers auditioning for a large number of undergraduate programs, and Undergrad students who will have the opportunity to audition for graduate theatre programs. They also have a job contact service for technical folks, directors, PSMs and more.”
SETC’s administrators and board of directors make the decision as to where to hold the conference every year, but as Davis explains, “many of our KTA board members showed them what we had to offer when they visited Lexington last year (Jeremy Kisling at LCT was particularly instrumental in this). The conference hasn’t been in Lexington since 1978, so this is a pretty big deal.
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Davis’ upcoming developments at BCTC will be especially good news for those interested in obtaining a fine arts degree. “We are working on putting together a theatre degree (an Associates of Fine Arts) which we hope we’ll be able to offer as early as next fall. We also hope to expand our production number to three per school year. We’ll continue to partner with Talon and LexArts and we also anticipate working with the Keeneland Concours de Elegance folks again for their show in July. We also hope to have some student-directed material, which will be performed later in this semester.”
Davis also pointed out the college’s participation in the American College Theatre Festival. “It’s a national organization sponsored by the Kennedy Center, and our region is the largest in the nation (10 states). We enter our shows every year, with the possibility that we may be selected for inclusion at the regional festival (held every year in February- this year down in Murfreesboro, TN at Middle Tennessee State). Though our show was not selected, we were the ONLY community college theatre program that was recommended and in the running, and I’m awfully proud of that. We also had four students compete in the ACTF Irene Ryan Acting competition at the festival, and they acquitted themselves nicely and had a great time at the Festival, seeing shows and going to workshops.”
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Leah Dick is honored to play the lead for the first time in a world premiere, and to be “paving the way for hopefully many Janes to come.” She doesn’t view it as a difficulty but rather, thinks it’s easier to perform a new work. “This isn’t A Streetcar Named Desire – no one’s going to compare my Blanche to Vivien Leigh’s. There are infinite possibilities which means that I can do what actors do best—explore!
Allie Darden says, “This is not the first play I’ve been involved in that is a world premiere—I did another world premiere at Actors Guild of Lex in 2005; it’s called Checking In written by Brian Hampton. Last winter, he asked me to come to NYC and perform it in a staged reading at the Blackbird Theatre, and it was a hit! That performance led to it being accepted into the Midtown Manhattan International Theatre Festival in July, and I was asked to come back to NYC for a month to perform it. I was luckily able to take the time off work and go, and it was a hit. The playwright, Brian, is still working on ways to get it even more exposure. The new playwright’s job is truly never done.”
Kathy Crabtree Swango (an associate professor at BCTC) plays crotchety but lovable Bessie, took her first acting class in Spring 2007 with Davis, “whom I adore. He’s a wonderful teacher and director. He has such an eye and ear for what will work on stage. This is the first new work I’ve done, and it’s been such fun. We’ve somewhat created it as we’ve gone—no preconceptions or audience expectations, but it also has been a challenge because there’s nothing to compare it to.” Swango plays Bessie, the grandmother, “who is a somewhat intolerant woman. She loves her grandchildren, but she can be pretty unpleasant and demanding. She also doesn’t want to be a burden to her grandchildren, so that’s an endearing quality. It’s been fun to create her ‘from scratch,’ giving her voice and form.” Swango adds that she’s looking forward to meeting the author when she’s in town for the SETC next week.
Zach Dearing (at work on his first novel in his spare time) plays James, Jane’s older brother. Dearing says, is a veteran of five of Davis’s BCTC productions, and says, “Tim is a miracle worker. We don’t have a theatre, we don’t have a rehearsal room, we don’t have a WHOLE LOT of other things that other programs do have, and yet we consistently fill houses, and in my opinion, we often put on better shows than you’ll find at neighboring schools. I defend that statement with the list of actors (myself included) that have gone on to the next level of college theatre and traveled to compete in national competitions like the Irene Ryan competition. We have great talent but very limited resources and yet somehow, Tim has managed not only to keep his brainchild alive but to expand it over the course of two years.”
Dearing adds he feels that “unfortunately, BCTC productions are the best kept secret in the local theatre community.”
See Jane QUIT
Showtimes are: Feb 25th, 26th, and 27th at 8 pm
Mar 4th, 5th, and 6th at 8pm
Tickets, LexArts at (859) 225-0370
