Back yard buildings go up in smoke and flames, ghosts bring messages back from the dead, butterflies fly out of cookies, girls kiss boys, and bullies do — well — what bullies always do well.
Never mind. Play sandlot ball. Go kick the can. Remember what it was like to be in small town America. Your ticket to this world of memories, with a clear eye to today, is through the opening curtain of Red Dog Dirt.
The Newtowne Players of Lexington Park plays it small town — spinning those 1950s yarns live on the company’s home stage at Three-Notch Theatre. It premiers Red Dog Dirt this April 17 through April 19, at 8 p.m. each night at the theatre’s Southern-Maryland location.
Newtowne-on-Tour
But . . . wait . . . there is more to this announcement than ballyhooing just another stage play performance — however good this one may be. The Lexington Park theatre premier of Red Dog Dirt launches an unprecedented experiment in live, original theater called Newtowne-on-Tour.
In preparing the April performance for the Three-Notch stage, the play’s director, Wendy Heidrich, readies the performance for a six-location theater tour throughout the mid-Atlantic states.
The upcoming tour — and Heidrich’s careful packaging of the performance to give it “feet” — is designed to discover new things about live, original theater in America. Specifically, the Newtowne-on-Tour experiment in theater seeks to detect clues about how new, original plays with broad, family appeal might fare in — and benefit — “out of the way” communities and, simultaneously, accomplish all these objectives in a sensible and economical format.
“This is creative,” says Wendy Heidrich, Artistic director and founder of Newtowne Players. “We want to take our theater in an educational direction. Our audience — many old-timers from St. Mary’s County and many with experience of theater from all over the globe — want our creative leadership in providing educational theater right here in Lexington Park,” she continued. “This set of performances is the start of that direction for us.”
The Newtowne Players *Red Dog Dirt* performance features two adult actors, male and female, and four child actors from St. Mary’s County. “We will try to recruit children actors in all our tour location performances,” says Heidrich.
“What amazes me about this play,” says John Guisti, lead male actor who was raised in a coal mining town in West Virginia, “is that at all stages in our lives, all these people come into our lives. And then they disappear. Why? What’s this all about? What’s the message they bring to us? That mystery is one the questions the play raises.” Guisti’s career was with the Foreign service where he played in community theater overseas. He continues consulting with the U.S. State Department.
Tasnim McWilliams, the female lead actor, began life in Bombay, India. Now she is a software engineer in St. Mary’s County. Her love is the stage and acting with Newtowne Players in several roles. “I like character roles,’ she says. “This one is both a character role and a lead role.” McWilliams plays a ghost, a grandmother, who “makes the action happen in the play.”
There are behind the scenes creative people responsible for the design of the performance, according to Heidrich. These essential people include