One Waco community theater celebrates its long history while a second adds to its short history in performances this weekend.
For the Waco Civic Theatre, Friday’s “Curtain Up: A Century of Storytelling” fundraising gala focuses attention on the theater’s upcoming centennial year.
At Brazos Theatre, the theater’s 10-member company winds up the second and final weekend of its production of Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” a change of pace from the theater’s murder mysteries and improv comedy.
Kelly MacGregor, interim director of Waco Civic Theatre, said the “Curtain Up” gala, held at Anthem Stories downtown, aims to point toward the theater’s upcoming season while recalling a history it traces back 100 years, though not as the Waco Civic Theatre through that time.
The gala, in the format as with past “Stars” fundraisers for the theater, will feature songs about theater from 22 singers of past WCT musicals like “Oliver!,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Lightning Thief,” “White Christmas” and more. The theater also is holding a silent auction, with items presently listed on the theater’s website.
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MacGregor hinted that the new season will feature Shakespeare, Disney and a Broadway show, but added the details are being withheld until Friday.
The theater traces its roots to the Waco Little Theatre, a community theater formed in 1925 which operated until 1936. Famed Baylor University director Paul Baker helped revive the idea of community theater, and in 1948 the Waco Civic Theatre was formally organized, becoming a nonprofit in 1955.
The theater’s current building originally featured a novel design inspired by Baker that featured movable seating — foldable director’s chairs — arranged in a horseshoe shape fronting a stage that would be adjusted for use as a proscenium stage, a thrust stage or theater-in-the-round.
The theater was reconfigured by former director Eric Shephard to its current theater-in-the-round operation in the months after the COVID-19 pandemic, but MacGregor said discussions are underway on how to restore the original layout.
Those attending Friday’s gala are encouraged to wear 1920s attire. A VIP event starts at 6:30 p.m. with the gala beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $150 and available at wacocivictheatre.com.
Farce among friends
Brazos Theatre’s production of Simon’s 1988 comedy “Rumors” finds a 10-actor cast shifting to stage farce under the direction of Meredith Sutton. It’s a return to directing for Sutton, longtime choreographer for the Baylor theater department, and she has enjoyed the shift to an older community cast than her typical university student one. “I feel like we did a great job finding the right people for the right roles and it’s been a blast in rehearsal,” she said.
The play, written by one of the iconic comic playwrights of American theater, imagines a dinner party thrown for the 10th anniversary of a deputy New York mayor and his wife. Ken and Chris Gorman (Susan Kelly and Wesley Walker) arrive to find the wife missing and her husband unconscious after an apparent suicide attempt.
As other couples — the Ganzes (Rachel Velasco and John Anderson), the Cusacks (Mary Beth Talley and Bart Cox) and the Coopers (Rae Snyder and Chris Low) — begin to arrive, the Gormans start to invent an explanation why the anniversary couple isn’t there and the story and speculations soon start spirallng wildly out of control.
Comedy ensues, as they say.
“It’s classic Neil Simon: quick conversation and more than one (conversation) happening at a time,” Sutton said.
“It’s not a kids’ show,” she added, noting there’s some adult language. “But it’s for anyone who’s been married for five minutes or more, or who has a group of friends.”