Starkville Community Theatre took home a bouquet of top honors last weekend at the 68th Annual Southeastern Theatre Conference in Lexington, Kentucky — among them, Best Production, Best Actor and a handful of others.
In doing so, these community actors qualified for a national competition this summer.
By any measure, this is an impressive feat, especially when you consider these actors, designers and singers are volunteers who lend their talents to the stage simply because they are passionate about the theater. What’s more impressive, though, is how much of an institution SCT has become.
Each year, scores flock to its casting calls. Veterans of more than a decade often mix with first-timers on casts. Even high schoolers have found their way into the SCT ranks.
The community, for its part, has bought in wholeheartedly. Playhouse on Main, the downtown home of the SCT, is packed on show nights, and those without season tickets frequently end up on waiting lists.
For their trouble, theater patrons receive a quality product — one quite rare in the realm of non-professional theatre, something the weekend’s awards only further affirm.
When you see an SCT production, you have a first-class look at the world the participants hope to show you, one where willing suspension of disbelief is never an issue. You’ll laugh, cry and grip your seat in suspense. And even if you’ve seen the play before (or the movie on which the play is based) and you know the ending, it will hit you like it did the first time.
Then at some point in the process, you’ll realize — if you’re from the Golden Triangle — you know many of these people. They’re teachers, restaurant workers, business people, students, friends, who you see every day. If it’s your first time enjoying an SCT production, you may have not even known that person could act or sing that well … of their “other life.” At that moment, the whole production becomes all the more impressive.
Too often communities lose their vibrancy for one of two reasons: Either people are not willing to put their talents out there (whatever those talents may be) or citizens simply don’t support it when they do.
Refreshingly, in the case of the SCT and the Starkville community, neither of those is the case.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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