Actors Collaborative presents ‘Doubt’
4/17/2014
From left, Matthew Kizaur, Barbara Barkan, and Elizabeth Cottle star in ‘Doubt, A Parable.’
TODD MICHAELS
From left, Matthew Kizaur, Barbara Barkan, and Elizabeth Cottle star in ‘Doubt, A Parable.’
The chapel of Trinity Episcopal Church will be the setting for Actors Collaborative Toledo’s staging of Doubt, A Parable, on April 25.
The 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play by John Patrick Shanley is set in 1964 in a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx. Its themes are faith, innocence and guilt, judgment and belief, and their enormous power for right and wrong.
The school’s strict principal, Sister Aloysius, becomes convinced that Father Flynn, a progressive teacher and a parish priest, is having an improper relationship with a young male student. She begins a campaign to remove him, but is she motivated by facts or simply her own convictions?
The play was adapted by Shanley for an acclaimed 2008 film, Doubt, that starred Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The Actors Collaborative production is directed by F. Scott Regan and features Barbara Barkan as Sister Aloysius, Matthew Kizaur as Father Flynn, Elizabeth Cottle as Sister James, Natalie Bostelman as Mrs. Muller, and Cheri Crane Kizaur as the Narrator.
‘"Doubt, A Parable,” will be performed at 8 p.m. April 25 in Trinity Episcopal Church, 316 Adams St. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door.
Whitmer grad in musical
Emily Mitchell was never a cheerleader at Whitmer High School, but she’s playing one now on tour in the musical Bring it On. The tour began Jan. 21 in Macon, Ga., and is scheduled to end in Tokyo in late July. Tonight the show is in University Park, Pa.
The show, which deals with the competitive world of cheerleading and high school jealousies and rivalries, is loosely based on the 2000 film of the same name. Mitchell portrays Eva, a cheerleader who makes the high school squad with the help of the captain, Campbell. Redistricting sends Campbell to another school, and Eva takes over. It’s not long before the two former friends clash, and Campbell decides to get revenge on Eva at the Nationals contest. Both squads are determined to “bring it on.”
Whitmer High School graduate Emily Mitchell plays a cheerleader in a touring production of the musical ‘Bring it On.’
Mitchell’s character is somewhat complicated, part hero, part villain. “Eva begins the show as the sweet new sophomore trying out for the cheerleading squad, and through a series of circumstances ... Eva becomes the captain by the end of the first act,” Mitchell said in an email. “To Campbell, Eva is the devil, the enemy. To Eva, Eva is a hero. You'll have to see the show to learn the truth!”
Bring It On is a physically demanding show, full of dance numbers and high-energy choreography and gymnastics as well as aerial stunts. But Mitchell was ready for it. She is a dancer, and she spent the summer before auditioning for Bring It On working with trainer Aaron Arvanitis. “The day before rehearsals began, Campbell (the lead), myself, our stand-by, and my understudy spent a day in a cheer gym learning all of the stunts in the show,” she said. “Then, every day before rehearsals we’d spend two hours doing stunting/cheering. We had an awesome coach named Jessica Colombo who knocked us all into shape.”
Mitchell is a 2009 Whitmer grad, and a 2013 graduate of Oakland University. She is the daughter of jazz singer and Whitmer art teacher Lori Lefevre Johnson and John Johnson, and John and Patti Mitchell.
Thriller in Bryan
Murder in Green Meadows, which originated in 1986 as a television play produced in Chicago by Steppenwolf Theatre Company and later adapted for the stage, will open April 25 at the Little Theater Off the Square in Bryan.
The TV production and the play were written by Douglas Post.
The storyline tells what’s beneath the veneer of two couples living in the quiet suburb of Green Meadows. Things are definitely not what they seem; their friendship is the cover for illicit relationships, deceptions — and murder.
The Bryan production is directed by Alice Miller; Deb Clum is assistant director. The cast includes Jeremy Scott, Loni Scott, Heather Stoner, and Kevin Devers.
“Murder in Green Meadows” will be performed at 8 p.m. April 25 and 26 and May 1 and 2, and at 2:30 p.m. May 4 in the Little Theater Off the Square, 208 W. Butler St., Bryan. Tickets are $12 from www.mywcct.com and 419-636-6400.
Contact Sue Brickey at sbrickey@theblade.com.