Tonight, we'll work through the scene involving "Tim" — the rabid dog who ambles through Maycomb until "Dead Eye"Atticus takes him out.
Continuing in our effort to meet the cast of our production, I'm pleased to introduce a few more of our talented actors:
Walter Cunningham: This poor farmer is indebted to Atticus for doing some legal work for him, and has no money to pay him. He resorts to sharing nuts, kindling wood, and even turnip greens to cover his debt. I like this character very much because he's upright in that he takes no "relief checks" from the government and he works hard. Later, though, he's part of a mob ready to lynch Tom Robinson — until young Scout reminds him how human he really is and convinces to walk around in Tom's skin. When Bill Hepburn, a long-time SCP Board member and dedicated volunteer, stepped on stage, it was hard for me to picture him as anyone other than Walter. Bill is physically a big man with strong hands, broad shoulders, a good back, and a nice voice. He graciously accepted the part and will return to the stage where he's previously had roles in Deadwood Dick, State Fair, and Love Thy Neighbor. Bill's family is connected to the Vanity Theater in every way possible, and all of Lois and Bill's kids have been raised on local theater stages.
Bob Ewell: We had many good actors read for this role and I liked several of them for very different reasons. When Stephen Morillo, a Wabash College History Professor, took the stage, we saw something behind the goatee that caught our attention. How cool would it be, we thought, to have a Rhodes Scholar and Oxford-educated man play the perfectly disreputable Bob Ewell? Well, very cool, actually. Stephen is a prolific textbook writer, international expert on military history, a musician, artist, father, and a very fine teacher. He tells us he acted in "stuff last century," but we remember him in the Wabash production of the very creepy, haunting play, Pillowman, a couple of years ago. And we figure that as a teacher of bright and talented Wabash guys, he probably has to do a good bit of acting in class every day. We're glad to have Stephen in our show.
Mayella Ewell: This was the second toughest choice I made when casting the play. The character of Mayella is complicated. She's the oldest in a large and motherless family, and she is abused by her father. Her home is near a dump and Harper Lee describes it in stirring detail in the book (early in courtroom section). Lee tells us the only bright light in Mayella's life is the gleaming red of her potted geraniums that surround the Ewell home. So desperate is she that Mayella saves nickels for an entire year to get her siblings out of the house so that she might share her first kiss — with Tom Robinson. We wanted an actress with a strong appearance — to have managed the heavy labor of her daily life — but with the mind of a child being manipulated by her father. We're pleased that Alli Aldrich accepted the role, for we think she brings all of those qualities to the stage. She has appeared in the last two plays produced by the Sugar Creek Players — as the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future in A Christmas Carol and as an Ozian in The Wizard of Oz. A student at Ivy Tech, she performed extensively at Southmont High School and was a five-year member of Southmont's show choir, Panache.
Nathan Radley: The elder Radley, Nathan, is played by Alex Livengood. While Alex has a pretty small role in our play, no person has been more eager or excited to be a part of the cast than Alex — almost always the first or second person to rehearsal and always fun to be around. Alex's acting credits come almost exclusively from high school, when he performed in six plays in addition to skits as a 4-H member. Alex will also play in our lynch mob scene.
Arthur "Boo" Radley: The role made famous by Robert Duvall, Boo Radley has only a couple of lines, but he is clearly near the center of the story — from the children trying to coax him out his house to the final scenes when he rescues Scout and Jem from murderous Bob Ewell. While Harper Lee gives us plenty of examples to highlight her theme of "walking around in someone else's skin" — Dubose, Cunningham, Robinson, even Ewell — Boo is the mockingbird we shall not kill. Our Boo is played by Clayton Mikesell, a freshman at Wabash College. He's a member of the College's Glee Club, and previously appeared in Arsenic and Old Lace. He was also in high school musicals ranging from The Sound of Music to Jesus Christ Superstar.
Tom Robinson: Brock Peters put a mighty big stamp on this role when he played the part of Tom Robinson in the Academy Award-winning film. His is one of the finest screen performances I've seen from that era. We had three very good actors audition for this part, and two were so good I decided to double cast the part, which is not something I had planned to do going into auditions. So two young men, both Wabash College students, will share the part — each playing Tom for one weekend run of the show, and on the opposite weekends, the actors will play another part. DeVan Taylor is a Wabash sophomore from Indianapolis, who previously worked with the College's production of The Bacchae. At Brebeuf Jesuit High School, DeVan appeared in Teach Me How to Cry, Murder's in the Air, High School Musical, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, among others. Our other Tom Robinson is Wabash freshman Larry Savoy, who hails from Missouri City, Texas. Larry is a member of the Wabash Glee Club and is fresh off a spring tour — and performing three concerts this week! In high school, he was in the cast of Grease, The Shadow Box, and Chicago, to name a few.
That's it for now. We'll introduce the remainder of our cast in the next few days.
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