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It is a perfect fit.
Bettie Murchison, director
of The DuBois Center in Wake Forest, has
been searching for a way to include
theater in the center’s school of the
arts.
Kevin Holmes, director of
the Road Less Traveled Theatre, had been
searching for a permanent home for the
traveling troupe.
“One of our board members
said, what about Wake Forest,” Holmes
said, and he began making telephone
calls. One of those was to Susan
Simpson, director of the town’s parks
and recreation department, who said,
“Here’s who I think you should call.
“I reached Bettie at a
quarter to seven on a weeknight. She was
still at work,” Holmes said, and from
there on their plans meshed. “It seems
like a marriage made in heaven.” When he
talked to the DuBois Alumni Association
board, Holmes said he walked in with a
long-term plan and a way to introduce
the theater group to the community.
“They got behind it.”
The introduction will be a
spring production of “Oliver!” Everyone
interested in theater in the area, from
Henderson to Oxford to Durham and
Raleigh, is invited to audition later
this month at the center. The tryouts
will be held from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday,
Jan. 15, and from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Monday,
Jan. 16.
“I
am ecstatic about this partnership with
RLTT,” Murchison said.
“Kevin Holmes and his troupe have years
of experience working with young people,
and I am looking forward to
seeing our youth on stage doing
Shakespeare. We have been looking for
just this type of opportunity for a
couple of years now. We appreciate the
community embracing the arts and
supporting this effort to make community
theatre accessible in our area. In the
future we plan to expand it to include
dinner theatre and other aspects of
creative arts.”
Holmes’ partner in RLTT is
Mitchell Butts, a cofounder, creative
director and president of the board of
directors. They spoke from Kinston last
week where they were in the cast of an
independent movie, “Secession Past.”
Butts, 50, has a lengthy
resume of theater, film and TV work. He
is living in Kinston to care for his
85-year-old mother. He heads up the
theater department at Lenoir Community
College and also teaches English.
Holmes, 33, is from
Creedmoor, where RLTT now has its
office, box office, web site (http://www.roadlesstraveledtheatre.com)
and multi-media development. Holmes is
the only full-time employee.
“We both worked for the
Granville Little Theater. We both
directed shows for them,” Butts said.
“When we first formed Road
Less Traveled it was as a subsidiary
under them,” Butts said. “Our first show
was an all-teen production of “Romeo and
Juliet” done under that arrangement.
“We always intended to
strike out totally on our own,” Butts
said, and that happened in May or 2005.
Since then, the traveling
troupe with different casts has
presented performances in Oxford,
Creedmoor and Kinston, at Duke
University and in Clarksville, Va.
“We came into community
theaters with a whole new mind set. We
wanted children to be proud of what they
did,” Butts said. “We work very well
with children, with teenagers. Once
teenagers get their teeth into
Shakespeare you cannot get them out of
it.”
Children and teenagers today
generally have a lot of experience with
organized sports, football and
basketball, Holmes said, and RLTT offers
a different experience.
“We have teenagers and
children who need us to do it for them,”
Butts said. “Even when we have an
all-adult play, we have teenagers
working on it, learning the other side
of the curtain.”
One way is that the men pick
a teenager to work as their assistant
director for the entire run of a show –
from auditions through the final
performance.
The troupe has two programs
for children and teens: Kids on Stage
and RLTT Teens.
“Oliver!” was chosen as the
first production because it has roles
for all ages. “The potential for the
entire family to be involved is
definitely there,” Holmes said.
After auditions and cast
selection, Holmes and Butts give the
actors a script and then do not see them
for four weeks, at which time they hold
intensive rehearsals over three
weekends.
For more information about
the DuBois Center, go to its web site at
http://www.theduboiscenter.com. |
