Opening Night of Talley's Folly went wonderfully! The actors got a standing ovation, and the audience kept clapping after they'd left until they came out to take a second bow! That was a nice surprise. :) I'm really, really happy with the work that the entire company has done on this production.

And we're thankful for a splendid review, the first one out, from D.A. Blackburn of Encore Michigan.

One of his nicer comments:
Over the last two seasons, Williamston Theatre has proven time and again that good theater can come out of small towns. They've also shown that, with experience, a theater can improve the quality of its programming with each and every production. Williamston's final offering of the 2007-2008 season, Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly, opens on the heels of the company's most ambitious offering to date, but true to form, the work sets a high benchmark for shows to come.

The entire review can be found here!

-Tony Caselli
-Artistic Director

Here's a shot from Tech weekend of Talley's Folly.

Wayne David Parker and Kate Peckham

Previews start this Thursday, come on out and see the show during a preview, stick around for the talkback and be part of the process!

Melanie Schuessler is one of the wonderful Costume Designers who work here at Williamston Theatre. Audiences will remember her work from Flap, our summer show of 2007, and can see more of her designs this summer. She was kind enough to share some of her thoughts about working on Talley's Folly with us...


I really like working in theatre. Where else would your list of things to do say "Blood!"? Not that there's much blood, thank goodness, but I think it's going to be a bit trickier getting just a tiny drop of blood in the right place than a larger amount.

Another note I have says "distress suit." Distress in costume terms can mean anything from making clothes look a little rumpled to total destruction. I'll be going for a little rumpled in this case. Matt Friedman is a man with one suit, and he wears it to work every day. He would of course wear a suit when he came courting, so there he is, in his lived-in suit and, as he tells us, a new tie. What sort of tie would Matt Friedman buy to impress Sally with the seriousness of his affection? Would it be different from the usual, probably conservative, tie that he claims to wear every day? Or would it be similar but just newer and fresher?

As for Sally, she's a bit of a puzzler. She's given up on love, and yet she wears a "pretty dress" to see Matt. She's considered by herself and everyone in her town as a spinster, but she still has some pride in herself as a young woman and makes some effort to be fashionable. "Where is she between pretty and sexy?" I asked the director. He said, "She's pretty sexy." Thanks, John! I think we've got the right dress, though--not too young, not too loud, and looks good in moonlight.

Melanie Schuessler
Costume Designer, Talley's Folly
Williamston Theatre

Today the Lansing State Journal announced the winners of their theatre awards, "The Thespies"!

Williamston Theatre is pleased to have received the the following:

Best Original Show: Maidens, Mothers and Crones
Supporting Actor - Musical (professional): B.J. Love for Guys on Ice

Special Awards mentions:
Great Ensemble Work: Art and Maidens, Mothers and Crones
Co-operative Projects Between Theatre Groups: Williamston Theatre and M.S.U.

And they do a special award called the Robert Busby Award, named for the late founder of the Creole Gallery. The Busby award honors people with extraordinary overall contributions to local theatre. The Williamston Theatre and its founders - Tony Caselli, John Lepard, Christine Purchis and Emily Sutton-Smith are very honored to have received this award this year.

Bart Bauer has done some wonderful design AND construction work on this set!

Williamston Theatre has received 16 nominations for the Lansing City Pulse "Pulsar Awards", and 3 nominations from Between The Line's "Wilde Awards"!

It's an honor to be nominated, and we're flattered that the folks at the City Pulse and Between The Lines enjoy the work we're doing.

You can read more, and see the specific Pulsar nominations right here! :)

Or, to see the Wilde Award Nominations, you can go right here! :)

Williamston Theatre Announces its 2008-2009 season!
The Williamston Theatre is excited to announce the plays for its 2008-2009 season. This mix of new plays, classics and returning favorites is sure to provide our audiences with an entire year's worth of things to think, and laugh, about.


Leaving Iowa
By Tim Clue and Spike Manton
October 2 - November 9, 2008
A warm, nostalgic and moving comedy about a man who returns to his childhood home in the Midwest following the death of his father. On his quest for the perfect place to scatter his father's ashes, he relives the family vacations he spent trapped in the backseat of their station wagon.

Every Christmas Story Ever Told!!
By Michael Carlton, Jim Fitzgerald and John Alvarez
Original Music by Will Knapp
November 28 - December 21, 2008
The boys of Christmas are back! But this year they're here for four whole weeks of holiday hilarity. Don't miss the newest edition of everyone's favorite holiday spectacular spectacle!

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon-Marigolds
By Paul Zindel
February 5 - March 1, 2009
The 1971 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama. This American classic is a stirring story of perseverance and hope. One of Off-Broadway's greatest successes, this powerful and moving study of an embittered, vindictive widow and her two young daughters has been hailed as one of the most significant and affecting plays of our time.

Panache
By Don Gordon
March 26 - April 19, 2009
Midwest premiere! The story of two lost souls who find their future in each other. This unpredictable, charmingly comic story seems to start out simply: Kathleen wants a license plate with the word "Panache" on it - but Harry has it. Nothing is as simple as it seems, however, and what begins as a ridiculous squabble over the seemingly unimportant turns into a desperate quest to salvage two lives.

Flyover Country, U.S.A.: Voices From Men of the Midwest
By Dennis North and Joe Zettelmaier
May 21 - June 14, 2009
The second installment of our groundbreaking series Voices From The Midwest. Built around submissions from men all over this part of our country, this production is an exploration of what it is to be a man in the 21st Century Midwest.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
By Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield
A Co-Production with Tipping Point Theatre
July 2 - August 9, 2009
Think you know Shakespeare? See this production and find out what Shakespeare is really talking about! Three talented actors take the audience on a laugh-a-minute romp through all of Shakespeare's work - yes, ALL of it!

The Lansing City Pulse has given Maidens, Mothers and Crones a wonderful review. Check it out right here!

It's great to see folks liking this show, and being moved by it. We're getting wonderful audience response, and we really appreciate it.

Tickets are selling well - because of the holiday weekend we've got a couple of light houses this week, though, so our Managing Director, Chris Purchis, has announced a "BUY ONE, GET UP TO 3 MORE AT 1/2 PRICE" Ticket Special for the 8pm shows this Thursday (May 22nd) and this Saturday (May 24th). You can call the box office at 517-655-7469 to reserve your tickets! :)

Meanwhile, we're in production meetings for Talley's Folly, which is going to be a beautiful production. Set Designer Bart Bauer (who is also responsible for the sets for Additional Particulars, Rounding Third and Flap) has come up with a fabulous set, and Jeremy Winchester (Art and Melanie Schuessler (Flap) are doing the lights and costumes, and their work is always wonderful!

Maidens, Mothers and Crones got a pretty great review from D.A. Blackburn at Encore Michigan.

He had some wonderful things to say and, although he had a couple of quibbles with the show, it's a very positive review.

Some highlights include:
At times, the dialogue is so good, and so pure, that it feels less a theatrical experience than a conversation with a group of wise and thoughtful women.

and

The honesty of the material provides both some tremendous humor, and a number of firm tugs at the heartstrings.

and

The cast is, in all respects, a delight.

and my favorite,

Martin and Regan (the latter also serves as director) have created a striking work with a true relevance for women all over our nation, and also for the men in their lives.

I particularly like the last two because Annie Martin and Suzi Regan have, along with the cast and designers, truly done some spectacular work on this production.

If you'd like to read the entire review, you can see it at Encore Michigan

This show only runs 2 more weekends, so don't miss it! :)

-Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

The weekend of previews for Maidens, Mothers and Crones went very well! We got some useful feedback from the preview audiences, and the show is really coming together beautifully. Lots of laughs, and a good amount of eye-wiping at just the right times! Director, playwright, cast and crew are all doing tremendous work, and the audiences have been very responsive and appreciative. Word of mouth is selling tickets nicely, we're all hoping that continues! (In fact, we sold out the first preview and unfortunately had to turn people away! And the other houses were very full - yay!)

The next couple days will be some good rehearsal time of polishing and tweaking moments in the play: Suzi (the director) and Annie (the playwright) have a handful of things they want to adjust to really fine-tune the thing. The biggest thing that will happen is that two scenes are having their positions in the play swapped. The scenes both work very well, but we're all in agreement that the flow of the play as a whole will be improved with the flip-flopping of their places in the show. So - if you've seen the show, come on out and see the changes and tell us what you think! :)

Also, we had a round of General Auditions last night for our upcoming season, and I'm really happy with the amount and quality of folks coming out. Sometimes it shocks me when audience members ask me "Now where do you get your actors from?" because so many of them expect theatres in this state to be shipping in actors from the "Big Name" towns: New York, L.A., etc... I love the please/impressed/surprised reaction you get from folks unfamiliar to the theatre when they find out that most of the great talent onstage here in Michigan actually comes from Michiganians (Michiganders? You pick...).

So, lots going on: More auditions today, some rehearsals and Opening Night later in the week, the Official Announcement of our 2008-2009 Season coming in a few days, as well as our announcement of Summer classses. It's a wonderful, busy time here at WT! Hope you get a chance to come out and be a part of it!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

Here's a quick rehearsal shot - not particularly good quality, because it's from a Camera Phone! (Have I mentioned that the theatre would like a Digital Camera donated?) :)



This features (although you can't really tell it's them) the entire cast of Deborah Solo, Sandra Birch, Emily Sutton-Smith, Tiffany Mitchenor and Sarah Benoit.

You can see the "in-process" set: it's going to look great when it's done!

More to come later!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

Emily Sutton-Smith is one of the actors in our upcoming show. She's also the Development Director for Williamston Theatre, so she heads up the department that works to find us funding sources! Here are her thoughts after 10 days of rehearsal!


I’ve been writing all about Maidens, Mothers and Crones for over a year now. Being the Development Director for the Theatre means that I write all the grant applications and corporate sponsorship proposals for our productions. We were lucky enough to get an MCACA Arts Project grant for this production, and our score was really high, so I must have written some great stuff about it (in April 2007!). The concept of this kind of production is fascinating to me… it’s similar to how A Chorus Line was developed in the early 1970s. So I was thrilled when Tony asked me to be a part of the ensemble.

But I have to admit, I was nervous on the first day of rehearsal. We had the draft of a script to work from, but everything came with the proviso, “this will all change.” The various parts and bits were wonderful, but I didn’t see them fitting together well. I didn’t understand the flow of the thing. Would the songs stick out as random musical moments? How could we possibly pull this off in three short weeks of rehearsal? These questions are a good indicator of why I am not a director.

We plunged ahead into rehearsal and just started at the top of the show, which is a dance. A weird dance. But we went for it and over the course of several rehearsals it’s become this really interesting and funny opening. Through the first week, we received re-written pages every day. Lines were cut. Scenes were cut. Songs were added. Poems were added. Scenes were added. The script was frozen just a few days ago – for now. I have no doubt that changes will start coming once we begin running the acts in their completed stage. We have SO MUCH to memorize. I use my walks with my dog every morning to review what I’m desperately trying to commit to memory. Sometimes, my fellow cast mates and I look at each other panic stricken in the midst of a scene when we have no idea what comes next. We can still call for line, but we all want to get past that so that we can really live in these strange and wonderful moments that we are creating.

Yesterday was a long day. We had an eight-hour rehearsal that began with about two hours of intense physical work on the top of act two. So by the time 9pm rolled around, we were all a little punchy. We started in on the final scene in the play, and there are a few moments of just playful, silly humor. I lost it. I was literally on the floor laughing. I couldn’t control myself. I snorted. I was feeling horribly unprofessional until I heard everyone else losing it too, including our director Suzi who was doubled over in row C. I love moments like that. I love working with this team of talented and unique women. And I’m SO excited to be on our stage again… the last time was for Additional Particulars when we still had folding chairs. We have come a long, long way. We’re making our own play AND we have real theatre seats.

Come see us play!!!

We're into week 2 of rehearsals for Maidens, Mothers and Crones. It's going very well, we're excited about it!

This show is very much an experiment for us. We want to explore the lives of women in the American mid-west. Obviously in a 90 minute show we can't touch on every topic, every issue, or every woman's life. But what are the things that are common threads? Interestingly, the common threads are also the things that tie together women from all over the world, not just the American mid-west... which, I suppose, is part of why we're doing the piece! Giving people the chance to see themselves, their own lives reflected, and recognize that none of us are really alone... it's an experiment that we're thrilled to be undertaking!

Soon we'll be posting rehearsal thoughts from more folks directly involved with the show - stay tuned! And reserve your tickets soon, it's only a 4 week performance run!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

As I announced a while ago, we extended HATE MAIL at Williamston Theatre. It was the first time we'd been able to do that, and as happy as we were about it, it was a little worrisome as well.

Like most of the things we do with our young company, the extension was an experiment...and a risky one. Well, I'm pleased to announce that our experiment was officially a success! We sold more than enough tickets for the extension to pay for itself - in doing so, we added two more weeks of work for a handful of artists, 2 extra weeks of mission-statement-fulfilling performances, and 2 more weeks of folks coming into the building and enjoying being here!

It wasn't a runaway success, mind you. It took until the Saturday matinee show on the second week of the extension to be able to say that we'd hit our mark. Still, that left us with two performances above and beyond. As much as I want to sell out every seat every night, I'll take what we got as a nice result for our first time down this particular path!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

After another great review (This one from the Lansing State Journal), Williamston Theatre is happy to announce WE'RE EXTENDING THE RUN OF HATE MAIL!

Instead of closing the show on the announced March 30th date, we will add two weeks of performances, and run the show through April 13th!

This is the first show we've extended at WT, and we're really excited about it, for a couple of reasons:

1) Extending a show means we're doing even MORE to fulfill our mission of providing quality professional theatre at affordable prices.
2) It's a sign of success!
3) We're able to provide 2 more weeks of work to a handful of deserving artists, all of whom are fantastic.

One of the other reasons I personally am excited about this show extending is that the actors, Aral and Hallie, get a chance to continue their wonderful work onstage in front of appreciative folks. This show was a bit of an experiment for us - the style of the play had the risk of turning people off. Having the cast reading letters and notes back and forth, the fact that they don't never look at each other, but still react to the letters they're getting from each other - it's an unusual format of play and a different production style. We were worried this would make people shy about seeing it. Fortunately, the opposite has happened, and we've gotten comments like "This was so refreshing!" and "It's different than anything I've ever seen! It's really fun!", which have been very nice to hear. It's great to have people enjoy taking a risk to see something they're not sure about, and come away happy with the results!

So, if you've not yet seen the show, call the box office at 517-655-SHOW and get your tickets!

Come join us for a wonderful evening of theatre - or, as the critics are saying:

"Wickedly Playful"
"Laugh-Out-Loud Social Satire"
"Delectable!"

Another very positive review, this one from the Lansing City Pulse.

You can check out the whole review here, but some highlights are:

Williamston Theatre continues to take advantage of its intimate space to present another story about the delicate nature of relationships. It’s latest production, “Hate Mail,” is like “You’ve Got Mail” for cynics. More accurately, it is for romantics who hide their idealism behind a brick wall of cynicism.

...a highly entertaining mix of absurdity sprinkled with just enough touching moments to satisfy the uncloseted romantics.

What “Hate Mail” captures most effectively is how people who desperately need each other can alternately help and hurt each other. The play also nails the way cycles of personal fulfillment are rarely aligned between two people.

Audiences are loving it, and it's nice to see that in this review, again, the actors are praised for their quality work!

Williamston Theatre's production of Hate Mail has gotten a big ol' rave type of review from Don Calamia of Encore Michigan and Between The Lines!

It's very favorable, and includes a couple of great quotes:

the thoroughly delightful night of theater guarantees accolades

and

The result, then, are two very believable performances and nary a dull moment, thanks to Caselli's insightful direction.

and

...laugh-out-load social satire...

and

But it is the delicious character development by Gribble and Bard that's the true star of the show...their teamwork is superb.

I'm glad Don liked the show, and I'm also very appreciative that he singled out the actors for their great work - they've done a wonderful job. I'm also hoping that, with a little luck, this and other reviews like it will keep the ticket sales going and fill some seats! :)

You can check out the whole review here at Encore Michigan.

Previews for Hate Mail have been going well. Audiences this weekend have been laughing a lot, and there've been quite a few "OOOooooh!" or "Uh-oh!!" outbursts from the audience during the show, which is a lot of fun to hear - it's a very exciting thing to hear folks get pulled into a performance like that! The talkbacks have been very good - folks really enjoying the production and the unique style of the piece, as well as a handful of very useful observations for the actors and I to play with! A couple more rehearsals next week, and one more preview, and we open officially and hope to fill the seats! :)

A busy week - we've got a two-day workshop for our World Premiere of Voices From The Midwest: Maidens, Mothers and Crones, we're participating in Joint Auditions with several other theatres, Opening Night of Hate Mail is Friday, the next-to-last meeting of our current Acting For Young People class is Monday night, we're working to finalize our 2008/2009 Season, and we've got scene shop renovations and re-roofing projects that should be wrapping up this week. *Phew!*

Hope to see you at the theatre!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

Tonight we'll see how our first preview audience responds to the interesting style of Hate Mail! I'm really looking forward to the talkback discussion after the performance!

It's been a busy week, but a very productive one.

As we've been doing our final dress rehearsals, there has also been a bunch of renovation going on in the building: The Scene Shop is getting torn apart, rebuilt and made into a much more useful space. Yay! Also, the roof over the back half of the building (the part housing the scene shop and art gallery) has been completely re-roofed: What a mess! The building is old, and for a while now we've had some leaks back there giving us trouble. We were awarded a nice grant for projects just like that, and it's been wonderful getting it taken care of!

So, lots of exciting stuff going on - hoping we can fill the seats during our preview week and get good word of mouth on this very fun, engaging show!

Tony Caselli
Artistic Director

Here's what I like about working with good designers:

They come in with ideas.
They discuss the play with directors.
They go through the collaborative process with directors and thing that's ultimately better than either of them had originally thought of comes to life.

See the following 3 pictures to follow the progression of the Set Design process that the designer Sally Converse-Doucette and I worked through for Hate Mail.

First Idea:



Then, following a great round of discussion about the play, our production of it, and some specific "flexibility in staging" thoughts, as well as some thoughts on lighting and the background:



Then, following a bit of rehearsal, where some practical issues and "closer to final" details were discussed, we got the final version:


This shows the set sort of what it will look like at the close of each performance, with letters and postcards and the lives of these two people spread out all over the stage. I really like this design, and seeing it come together onstage is a lot of fun.

-Tony Caselli
Director, Hate Mail