A portion of the cast, Tova Hengie, Elliot Spaid, Alyssa Montgomery and Nathan Crummett, preform “The Other Room” at Evergreen Playhouse on Saturday night.
The sign outside of Evergreen Playhouse.
The set before the show starts.
The audience at Evergreen Playhouse on Saturday night.
Alyssa Montgomery and Nathan Crummett sit at the table and perform “The Other Room” at Evergreen Playhouse on Saturday night.
Alyssa Montgomery and Nathan Crummett acting in “The Other Room” on Saturday night.
From left to right, Tova Hengle, Elliot Spaid and Jessica Crummett acting out “Gossip” at Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia on Saturday night.
Nathan Crummett and Sean Patrick McNeal act in the play “Gossip” on Saturday night at Evergreen Playhouse.
Jessica Crummett and Sean Patrick McNeal act out a scene from the play “Gossip” on Saturday night.
Elliot Spaid and Jessica Crummett act out a scene from “Gossip” on Saturday night.
Alyssa Montgomrey and Sean Patrick McNeal preforming a scene in “Gossip” at the Evergreen Playhouse on Saturday night.
The cast preforming “The Other Room” at Evergreen Playhouse on Saturday night.
The Evergreen Playhouse, located in Centralia, put on a double feature performance on Saturday night as a part of their “One From the Shelf” series aimed to give actors more opportunities to get on stage and perform.
The back-to-back plays were chosen by Evergreen Playhouse Director Dave Marsh, who said he chooses plays that are about an hour long, can be learned in about three days and contain good subject matter for the teens who perform them. Marsh has been directing the “One From the Shelf” plays at Evergreen Playhouse for three years now.
“It always impresses me how the moment the lights are on and the audience is here they suddenly turn it up and they are on it. They did awesome and there were some moving spots in their performances tonight,” Marsh said.
The cast of eight teenagers performed a different character in each play, giving the audience the opportunity to see each teen act in two different roles in one night. Marsh said that the actors only had three days to rehearse and only ran through each play once before performing it on Saturday night.
The two plays that were performed were “The Other Room,” about the inner workings of an autistic student’s mind when he interacts with another student and “Gossip,” about a new girl in school who starts rumors and causes problems between friends.
The cast of eight that performed both plays was composed of Jessica and her brother Nathan Crummett, Lily Hubbard, Alyssa Montgomery, Felix Haugen, Elliot Spaid, Sean Patrick McNeal and Tova Engel.
“Today was my first time having a big role and I was really excited about it,” said Crummett, who played the character of Gossip in the play “Gossip”.
“(Acting) has always been something that my family has done. My mom used to do it for a really long time and one year she decided that she was going to take us to a playhouse and I thought that it was a lot of fun so I kept doing it,” Crummett, a sophomore at Adna High School, said.
Marsh said that when they were running the lines of “Gossip” the teens said they experience very similar things at their high schools and could easily relate to the characters they were playing.
“It was interesting to me when they were reading through “Gossip,” they were having such strong emotional reactions saying ‘this has happened to me.’ That one really hit home for them,” Marsh said.
The actors were all between the ages of 13 and 18 and came to the playhouse from many different schools, giving them the opportunity to meet people they otherwise wouldn’t have. The cast included teens go to W.F. West High School in Chehalis, Adna High School, Centralia High School, Rochester, South Puget Sound Community College, and a homeschooled teen.
“I really like, not only the experience of actually being in the plays but just being with everyone and fellow actors, we all just have a really good energy and such a good bond,” said Spaid.
The “One From the Shelf” performances are added to the playhouse’s event calendar in between the larger scale productions to give actors more opportunities to get on stage and to an opportunity to perform scripts that are shorter, contain subject matter than wouldn’t be suitable for all audiences or have sets that can’t be fully produced at Evergreen Playhouse.
“If anyone wants to join they just have to contact the playhouse. It gives more opportunities for the younger actors to get on stage. (“One From the Shelf”) is also how we have given people who are interested in directing a start so we can see how they do and see if maybe they could direct a full-length show in the future,” said Danielle Rivers, a Board of Directors member at Evergreen Playhouse.
The next “One From the Shelf” performance is scheduled for April 18 and will feature an adult cast this time around. The next full-scale production play, “Next to Normal”, with PG-13 subject matter, will premiere March 13 and go through the 29th.
Before the start of the play on Saturday night, Marsh mentioned the Seating Campaign that the playhouse is running right now in honor of the 60th anniversary to help fund the replacement of all of the seats in the theatre this August. Those interested in donating to support the theatre can go to the Evergreen Playhouse website at https://evergreenplayhouse.com/seating.
