“Out with the old and in with the new” is a saying generally
heard as Dec. 31 fades each year into Jan. 1.
It is a phrase just as applicable this weekend to Bradford
Little Theatre, which launches its 2006-07 season finale in a brand
new place.
“Laughing Matters,” a series of four one-act plays, will take
the stage in the Studio Theatre in Blaisdell Hall this weekend,
beginning at 7:30 p.m. today.
Other scheduled performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2
p.m. Sunday.
Since the first BLT production 10 years ago, the local
theatrical company has performed on the stage of O’Kain Auditorium
in Swarts Hall on the Pitt-Bradford campus. Now, nearly 40 plays
later, O’Kain was BLT’s March 2007 presentation of “Waiting for
MacArthur.”
BLT President Emeritus Chris Mackowski remembers acting in
student productions in O’Kain before BLT began its run in the
1990s. His first role was as Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
back in 1988. Since then, he estimates he has spent more time in
O’Kain than any other place except his home and office.
“When you spend so much time in a place, you can really develop
a sentimental attachment to it,” he notes, particularly in a
theater, “where you’re doing something that requires such an
investment of energy and emotion and imagination.”
“You leave a little bit of yourself there every time you do a
show,” he said.
The new setting in the Studio Theatre will bring much more
intimacy for the actors.
“The audience will actually be sitting in three rows right on
stage,” Diane Kerner Arnett, BLT president and producer of
“Laughing Matters,” explained. “They will be around three sides of
the stage, and the actors will play right out to the front row,”
she said.
“This presents a special challenge,” said Mackowski, who directs
and acts in “Hidden in This Picture,” one of the plays in this
weekend’s package. “The actors are, in some cases, standing right
next to audience members. The audience can see everything going on
in the play, and they literally surround the actors. It’s an
intimate experience.”
Arnett said the performers are looking forward to the challenge
of a new type of performance space.
“They’ve all been chomping at the bit to get into the theater,”
she said. “Everyone will be ready on opening night. They’re
excited.”
In addition to the four one-act plays, “Laughing Matters” will
also feature musical numbers performed by the directors of the
plays -ðMackowski, Dani Brien and Rick Frederick; and by Paula
Alter, who will also act in the one-woman play, “Birds and the
Bea.”
The BLT season is supported by the Pennsylvania Partners in the
Arts, the regional arts funding partnership of the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding comes
through an annual appropriation by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly
and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA
is administered in the region by the Pennsylvania Rural Arts
Alliance.
Currently in its tenth season, BLT promotes, encourages and
produces community-based theater in the Bradford area.
