Ashton Hittle
Lantern Staff
“Anatomy of Grey,” a play written by Jim Leonard Jr. published in 2006, will take place on Thursday, Nov. 15 through Saturday, Nov. 17. The production will begin at 7:30 p.m. each evening and a matinee performance on Saturday at 2 p.m. The play is directed Professor of Theatre by Sam Sparks.
“There are parts of the play that are directly addressed the audience,” Sparks said. “It is a story within a play, so I am really excited to add the audience element to the performance.”
There is a lot of work that goes on and off stage. Courtnee Wisdom and Kassandra Cabrales work on the technical side of theatre for “Anatomy of Grey.”
“There is not much scenery,” Cabrales said. “I am interested to see how the projections will play out in a play that is set in the 1890’s.”
Like most plays, a lot of the work is done by students that are working on the technical side.
“It is interesting to work with projections,” Wisdom said. “It has always been build from old, tear down [equipment]. The lights will be focused on the actors and not the background, so the projector will still be bright.”
The play, set in Indiana during the late 1800s, begins with June Muldoon whose father passed away from an illness. She is full of grief and finds the need to pray to God about sending a doctor to the town so no one will ever die again.
Before long, a tornado hits the town, and her prayer seems to be answered. A man, Galen P. Gray, in a balloon blows into town with the tornado. When questioned as to who he is, he claims to be a doctor. He begins to cure everything and anything that he can. Later, Preacher Wingfield falls ill to a mysterious illness. A mob in the town is trying to run the doctor out, for he cannot help all those who are falling ill. He ends up helping the preacher, and the mob softens up to the doctor. With more people being marked by a mysterious illness, the doctor finally figures out the cause and ends up saving the town.
This play has been in the works for five weeks, which does not including the students’ time outside of mandatory rehearsal.
“There are very minimal props, so it requires a lot of imagination, from the actors and the audience to imagine the scene around them,” Sparks said. “It can be very powerful because our imagination is always more powerful than reality.”
This play has a cast of nine students to perform the show including: Derek Alcorn, Nathan Todd, Sydney Gregor, Seth Knowles, Sophie Watkins, Dakota Alvord, Kaitlin Showalter, Emily Crow and Morgan Hailey.
To purchase tickets, visit the Box Office in the Fine Arts Building from from 1 to 5 p.m., call (316) 322-3262 or go online to http://www.butlercc.edu/boxoffice.
