I want to extend my congratulations to the cast of my upcoming play “A Flower of the Field”, which is premiering at Tyler Civic Theatre Center on May 4th!
The play will run from May 4th-May 7th and will be directed by David Dickerson, with whom I have had the pleasure of chatting about the piece.
The cast is as follows:
John Clyn — Kevin Willis
Richard Ledrede — Bryan Michels
Mathias O’More — Heath Huffstetter
Alice Kyteler — Aletha Nelligan
Basilia de Meath — Mallory Hallmark
Shadow Friar (Male Voice) — Kevin Phillips
Tickets for the event will go on-sale to the general public starting April 6th!
For this Throwback Thursday, I will focus less on a play and more on a place – namely, the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre – where I had the pleasure of seeing my play “Fifteen Men in a Smoke-Filled Room” being given a staged reading way back in 2015.
While I will discourse more on “Fifteen Men” some other time, I will simply say that it was the first “real” play that I wrote and has always had a special place in my heart – and while the play was recognized in many contests and festivals over the years, I must say that the staged reading it was given by the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre was one of the most memorable.
Located in Denver, Colorado, “the Elitch Theatre has been a vital part of Colorado’s cultural landscape since its inception in 1891” – including being home to the oldest summer stock theater in the country and hosting the screening of Colorado’s first moving picture in 1896 – and to that (fitting) end, it has had many notable performers grace its stage, including Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Grace Kelly, and Edward G. Robinson.
After many years of decrepitude and dormancy, the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre was renovated and scheduled for a big reopening in the summer of 2015 – and to celebrate the theater’s rebirth, the theater association sponsored a new play contest where six new plays would be given staged readings in the theater’s awe-inspiring rotunda – and needless to say, to my delight, “Fifteen Men” was one of the plays chosen to be so honored.
Thrilled by the invitation, I traveled to Denver in August, 2015 and was absolutely mesmerized by the unique beauty of the theater (see the photos below) – and not only was impressed with the caliber of the acting (especially for a staged reading), but had the great pleasure of meeting the director of the play, Bev Newcomb-Madden, who sadly died a few years later and whose husband sent me a very kind note about how much his wife enjoyed directing the piece and how much it meant to her.
I won’t say much further, other than leave you with some of the wonderful pictures I took of the Elitch Theatre during my time there…
