CCP Announces 2010-11 Season

Carmel Community Players recently announced the theme and productions for its 2010-11 season at its Annual Meeting on May 19th. Make 'Em Laugh is the theme chosen by CCP's artistic director, Lori Raffel and will include five hilariously funny comedies along with a Rising Star youth production to be directed, produced, and starred in by kids 18 and under.

The season opens October 14th with Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, directed by Kari Ann Stamatoplos. This comedy begins with an incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table has had enough of the ringing phone belonging to a dead man-with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. A work about how we memorialize the dead-and how that remembering changes us -- it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

The second production of the season will be a holiday comedy opening on December 9th. Every Xmas Story Ever Told (...and then some) by Michael Carleton, James FitzGerald, and John K. Alvarez, with original music by Will Knapp will be directed by Michael T. Long. This show combines all those holiday shows we've all come to love...and hate. Instead of performing Charles Dickens' beloved holiday classic for the umpteenth time, three actors decide to perform every Christmas story ever told -- plus Christmas traditions from around the world, seasonal icons from ancient times to topical pop-culture, and every carol ever sung. This show is a madcap romp through the holiday season!

Beginning January 27, 2011, director Doug Davis will stage Phil Olson's A Nice Family Gathering. This is the story about a man who loved his wife so much, he almost told her. It's Thanksgiving Day and the first family gathering at the Lundeen household since the Patriarch died. At the gathering, Dad comes back as a ghost with a mission; to tell his wife he loved her, something he neglected to tell her while he was alive. After all, they were only married for 41 years. The problem is, she can't hear or see him. The trouble begins when Mom invites a date for dinner.

CCP's spring production will be the critically acclaimed I Hate Hamlet, written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Lori Raffel. Opening March 31, 2011, this is the story of a young and successful television actor who relocates to New York, where he rents a marvelous, gothic apartment. With his television career in limbo, the actor is offered the opportunity to play Hamlet onstage, but there's one problem: He hates Hamlet. His dilemma deepens with the entrance of John Barrymore's ghost, who arrives intoxicated and in full costume to the apartment that once was his. The contrast between the two actors, the towering, dissipatEd Barrymore whose Hamlet was the greatest of his time, and Andrew Rally, hot young television star, leads to a wildly funny duel over women, art, success, duty, television, and yes, the apartment.

The regular season closes with the Indiana premiere of SUDS, a fun-filled musical romp through the 1960's. Director Rich Baker will bring an amazing script from Melinda Gilb and Steve Gunderson to life beginning June 9, 2011. The show takes place in a Laundromat where Cindy, an employee, begins receiving bad news from "Mr. Postman". With her life falling apart before her eyes, a couple of Laundromat customers (actually "guardian angels") with baskets of dirty laundry, are sent down from above to help her with her dilemma. The cast breaks out with songs such as Please Mr. Postman, Walk On By, It's My Party, Are You Lonesome Tonight, These Boots Are Made for Walkin', Respect, and many more. This is good, clean, comical fun for audiences of all ages. If you loved Forever Plaid, Taffetas, and Pump Boys and Dinettes, you'll get washed away in SUDS, the musical.

Finally, CCP will present a Rising Star Production in July of 2011. This production, under the guidance of Patricia Schiro-Long, is for students 18 and under. They will help direct, produce, run sound and lights, stage manage, costume, and act. It will give them experience in all aspects of live theater and help them develop and refine skills and focus in on their strengths. This production has not yet been chosen.

For more information about these productions and auditions, visit www.carmelplayers.org.

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