A tale of two little theaters

Ready for a trip to Edgewater, Indiana, or Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire?

They’re both just a few miles away via two local little theaters who are offering to take you to the fictional communities for an evening’s entertainment.

Macon Little Theatre opens “The Prom” Friday and Warner Robins Little Theatre starts “Our Town” Saturday, each respectively set in the imagined towns and each with interesting folks to meet.

For MLT, the production marks the end of their season celebrating 90 years of bringing community theater to Macon and Middle Georgia and for WRLT it’s the debut of a thoroughly new director.

“The Prom” is directed by Sylvia Haynie who’s been part of MLT since 1979.

“That’s when I walked into Macon Little Theatre for the first time to audition and I’ve been involved ever since for so many shows I can’t even say,” she said. “It’s definitely been a big part of my life and woven into the fabric of my family’s life. It’s my chosen family with all the actors, tech people, patrons and audiences – the whole community, really.”

MLT’s first show was “Hay Fever” in 1934 in the Ideal Laundry building at Riverside Drive and First Street. It moved to the playhouse it built on Forsyth Road in the early 1960s and has weathered ups and downs including making it through the COVID pandemic.

“Ninety years is pretty long while and we can rightly claim to be the oldest, continuously-operating community theater under the same name in the southeast,” Haynie said. “We came back stronger than ever doing 11 shows each season which is amazing.”

Those shows include five main stage performances plus more adult oriented “After Dark” shows and a group of family-geared productions including their summer kid’s camp. Season tickets can be bought or all shows or whatever group of shows seem interesting.

As for “The Prom,” Haynie said she saw it on Broadway just before COVID and knew she wanted it for MLT.

“It’s a really fun show with a lot of humor, great songs and when I saw it we were all on our feet clapping for the curtain call,” she said. “There’s a lot of witty, inside musical theater stuff along with poignant moments and an important message.”

The musical was inspired by real-life events and involves the canceling of a high school prom when it becomes clear an LGBTQ student couple plan to attend. Things are further complicated when four New York actors who’ve lost their shine decide to come to town to fix things, and bring a spotlight on their efforts to help bolster their career.

There’s an important acceptance theme to the musical, but Haynie says there’s more.

“This isn’t a highbrow, moralist production,” she said. “Still, I think something important it brings out is showing how people trying to help a situation based on their own conceptions can do more harm than good and can’t do much real good without listening and finding out the real needs of those they’re trying to help.”

If “The Prom” is utterly modern and progressive while being thoroughly entertaining, “Our Town” is maybe the classic among classic 20th Century plays. Written by Thornton Wilder and performed first in 1939, and reportedly every year since by multiple theater groups, the day-in-the-life drama is set in Grover’s Corners but done in a play-within-a-play style set in the local theater on nearly bare stage with mostly imagined props. It’s the characters, their interactions and what they say that is spotlighted as representative of folks everywhere.

Abi Brown directs it for WRLT. This Brooklynite mom has been in Warner Robins for not quite ten years and involved with WRLT since 2021. She has a strong background in dance but here community theater involvement here was the first time acting.

And she had her eye on what her directors were doing from the start. This is her first crack at that aspect of the theater world.

“Acting and directing just hadn’t been my thing,” she said. “I just decided to give it a try and my first show at WRLT was ‘Cry “Havoc”’ directed by Monica Nix and I remember that despite how the cast didn’t know me but knew I had no experience they rallied around me and supported me. I guess if not for that I never would have been in more shows but I’ve been there ever since, gotten on the board and now I’m getting to direct.”

She said she had been fretting over what play to start as a directed then was thrilled when fellow board member Jaimie Miller handed her “Our Town” and asked, “How about this?”

“I really love it and what it portrays,” she said. “I love all it allows our cast to do and that its bare stage and minimal set and props makes it a really good first show for any director. I get to concentrate on other things and as a dancer I see the actor’s positioning, blocking, moving on and off stage and activity backstage as sort of a dance. The script itself is so timeless and though I’ve added my own surprises and vision I haven’t changed the play or dialog. People are really the same now as then.”

Brown said the premise of appreciating people and even life’s small, mundane moments rings true today, especially with it being captured so well in Wilder’s script.

“I think the play’s fan base will really enjoy it as well as those new to it,” she said.

And it’s about community, really both plays are, and that’s something both Brown and Haynie spoke more about.

“I didn’t find the theater group cliquish but welcoming and it’s added a lot to my life,” Brown said. “I mean, where would the new actors and directors come from if there weren’t new people getting involved?”

Brown said her daughter is joining in with stage management for the play and she’s happy to see her get involved and excited about theater. That’s something Haynie knows about, too. She talked about a mother and newborn whose first stop upon leaving the hospital was to the theater to visit the child’s grandfather during his rehearsals as Daddy Warbucks in “Annie.” She said her own family was practically raised at MLT with one now an established New York stage actor and the other, after his own stint in New York, returning to Macon as MLT’s artistic director, JP Haynie.

Brown, of course, is particularly fond of “Our Town” but recommends getting out and about to community theaters all over for shows. And she recommends, for those inclined to or once had a dream to be on stage to give it a shot.

“I spent a lot of time as an actor watching and learning so much from my directors and have studied it and gained so much and gotten so much fulfillment,” she said. “I think people surprise themselves when they see what they can do, how they can work as a team and take feedback and improve and then, despite whatever kind of day they’ve had good or bad, come to the theater and get on stage with the sole purpose of giving that audience the best performance and experience they can. I went to Warner Robins Little Theatre the first time with someone who invited me and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I want that for everyone who comes.”

There are other Middle Georgia theater groups starting shows this month plus the Macon Film Guild has their monthly showing Sunday. Here’s how to find out more.

• MLT, 4220 Forsyth Rd., presents “The Prom,” July 12-21. www.maconlittletheatre.org
• WRLT, 502 S Pleasant Hill Rd., Warner Robins, presents “Our Town,” July 13-28. www.wrlittletheatre.com
• Theatre Macon, 438 Cherry St., presents Disney’s “Newsies,” July 12-27. www.theatremacon.com
• Perry Players, 909 Main St., Perry, present “Matilda the Musical,” July 18-28. www.perryplayers.org
• Macon Film Guild, presents “Slow” at The Douglass Theatre, 355 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., July 14 at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. www.maconfilmguild.org

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com.