DUMMERSTON — The Vermont Theatre Company is ready to bring live theater back to the area after the state of emergency that forced all venues to close down productions and shut their doors.
And, for this very special returning-to-normal production, VTC has drafted two New York directors described in a news release as “talented and experienced.”
Currently in rehearsals, Coming Back - Moving On is a Broadway music cabaret to be performed at the Evening Star Grange in Dummerston Center from Friday, Aug. 20 through Sunday, Aug. 22.
The ensemble cast consists of six local singer/actors: Hillary Ballantine, Ayla Cordell, Krista Coughlin-Galbraith, Gene Newman, Henry O'Connell, and Katy Peterson. Brenda Seitz is stage managing the production, and Bob Kramsky is the producer.
The production is being directed by New Yorkers Lin Snider and Woody Regan, professionals with long lists of credits for work on stage, at the keyboard, and behind the scenes.
Snider originally approached VTC with a proposal for the 2019–20 season.
“The show I initially pitched to VTC was to happen in the summer of 2020 - a revue of songs from Broadway shows that had to do with summer and its various meanings,” Snider said in the news release.
“Well, that show obviously didn't happen, but the opportunity to revamp the show and direct it as the first production following the restrictions of the last year was too good to miss,” she added.
From the pandemic, Snider was able to find new inspiration.
“The show now, still using Broadway comic songs and ballads, explores some of the discoveries made during the Covid restrictions and how we all hope to move back into the world, having grown and with more clarity on what is important to us."
Snider has been a professional actor/singer/director/teacher in New York City for many years, having taught at New York University, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Purchase College at the State University of New York.
She is currently the artistic director for the Out of the Box Theatre Company, an Equity company in Manhattan, and has been on the theater faculty at Yeshiva College for 15 years. She was in the cast of the national tour of Anything Goes with Mitzi Gaynor and once directed a young Javier Muñoz when he attended a performing arts high school in Brooklyn.
Regan, the music director, was an assistant conductor of the pre-Broadway national tour of Little Johnny Jones starring David Cassidy. He collaborated with Sam Shepard as composer of a piano score for Shepard's play When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), which opened the 1996 season of the Signature Theatre in New York City. He went on to play at The Moscow Art Theater, where he was the first U.S. composer to perform his own work.