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Hollywood Arms Opens July 7

The fifth production of the OMP 2017 Season, the comedy/drama, Hollywood Arms, authored by Carrie Hamilton and her mother Carol Burnett, will go into production with an opening night performance on Friday, July 7th. Curtain is at 8:00 pm.

The bittersweet work was adapted from Carol Burnett's memoir, One More Time, and is set in Hollywood, California, in 1941 and 1951. The play takes the audience through the good times, bad times, funny and sad times of three generations of women living on welfare in a dingy apartment. The characters are based on Carol Burnett herself and her real-life relatives — a no-nonsense grandmother, a beautiful, alcoholic mother determined to be a writer for movie magazines, an absent father who is struggling with his own demons, and a young girl whose only escape is the rooftop of their rundown building, where she creates her own magical world and dreams of a successful show business career. The production runs through July 23rd.

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Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances are at 8:00 PM Sunday matinee performances are at 2:00 PM

Auditions on July 9th and 10th for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Director Stephen F.J. Martin is seeking to cast the second musical of the Oyster Mill Playhouse 2017 season, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek, and based on the film written by Dale Launer, Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning.

The cast includes three principal male roles and three principal female roles, with male and female featured performers needed throughout a large ensemble. Auditions will involve singing, movement, and readings from the libretto. For more casting details and audition requirements, please visit the OMP website oystermill.com and the audition information contained therein.

Ryan Dean Schoening is the Vocal Director and Lindy Mack will be directing the Pit Orchestra. This is a very fun show and we hope for a great audition turnout. (continued on page 2)

IN THIS ISSUE HOLLYWOOD ARMS OPENS JULY 7TH ..……… ……………………….…………………. AUDITIONS FOR DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS …………………….…………………...

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CAST ANNOUNCED FOR TAKING LEAVE………………………………………………….. SPOTLIGHT ON ROXANNE HENNESSY…………. …………….……………………..…… OMP BOARD ELECTION RESULTS…………………………………..…………..……….. OMP ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL….……………………………………………………. CHRISTMAS STORY OUT/ BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY IN………………………… AUDIENCES LOVED SOCIAL SECURITY………… ……..……………………………………

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ENCORE June 2017

Volume 5 - Issue 6

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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels ………(continued from page 1)

The show opens on September 22, 2017, and runs for three weekends. Private performances have also been booked for September 24th and 26th and possibly also for October 2nd.

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Thursday, Friday and Saturday shows are at 8:00 PM Sunday matinees are at 2:00 PM

Auditions will be conducted over two days: Sunday, July 9th and Monday, July 10th, starting at 7:00 pm. Auditions will be held at the playhouse, which is located at 1001 Oyster Mill Rd, Camp Hill, PA. If you have any questions, please contact the production staff at scoundrels@oystermill.com.

CAST ANNOUNCED FOR TAKING LEAVE Director Stephanie Via has chosen her cast for the sixth show of the OMP 2017 Season, Taking Leave. Playwright Nagle Jackson’s occasionally comic but poignant and powerful drama, paints a portrait of a noted English Literature professor, whose specialty is

Shakespeare, as he slips into the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The work also explores the conflicts of the professor’s three very different daughters as they struggle to cope with this devastating family development.

The talented cast assembled by Director Via is as follows:

ELIOT BERNARD DICASIMIRRO ELIOT 1 GORDON EINHORN MRS. FLEMMING MARGUERITE ZWAHLEN ALMA ROXANNE HENNESSY LIZ EMILY KREIGER CORDELIA SAMANTHA SPERAW

Please note that this show contains profanity and includes brief nudity.

Performances begin on August 11, 2017, and the show closes on August 27. Tickets and show times are available at www.oystermill.com or by calling the box office at 717.737.6768.

Spotlight on Roxanne Hennessy

by Mellissa Hurwitz

Roxanne Hennessy will be taking on the role of Alma in the Oyster Mill Playhouse production of Taking Leave. Roxanne is originally from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she attended Bristol High School. She has been singing and acting since the 8th grade and performed in community theater in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania. Shortly after high school graduation, her family moved to Central Pennsylvania for her father’s job. Roxanne currently resides in Harrisburg, and works for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board in the wholesale division.

Roxanne has been very active in local community theater. She has performed at the Carlisle Theatre Company in Anything Goes, James and the Giant Peach, and Hairspray. Previously at OMP Roxanne had a role in Evita. Her favorite role to date was that of Mary Lane in Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg’s Reefer Madness.

Roxanne was drawn to audition for Taking Leave for therapeutic reasons. She lost her grandmother to dementia in March and looks at this production as an opportunity to work through that loss. In preparation for the show, Roxanne and the Taking Leave cast have

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watched a documentary about Alzheimer’s and have spoken with people who work in caring for Alzheimer’s patients.

After this production, Roxanne will be taking a break from theater in order to continue her education. She plans to attend Harrisburg Area Community College to major in business administration.

OYSTER MILL MEMBERSHIP ELECTS NEW (AND NOT SO NEW) OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS

At a meeting of the general membership of the Oyster Mill Playhouse held on June 25, 2017, the following candidates were elected (or re-elected) to two-year terms:

PRESIDENT CHRIS HOLBERT SECRETARY MARTE ENGLE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER ROSIE TURNER PRODUCTION COORDINATOR ALIZA BARDFIELD

Also elected (or re-elected) to one-year terms were 6 Members-at-Large:

JOHN FINE, DAWN-MICHELLE LEWIS, KATHY LUFT, MEGAN MCCLAIN, WILLIAM O’DONNELL AND STEPHANIE TRDENIC.

Member-at-Large candidate Chandra Yoder was delayed in getting to the meeting and missed the voting but is expected to be appointed by the Board as a Member-at-Large at the July Board meeting.

There remains one vacant Member-at-Large position on the 15-member OMP Board. If you have an interest in serving in that position, please email oystermill@oystermill.com or call the box office at 717.737.6768 and leave a message.

(FYI — The terms of the current holders of the offices of Vice-President, Treasurer, and Business Manager run through June 30th of 2018).

OYSTER MILL PLAYHOUSE ON THE TRAIL

Members of the Oyster Mill Playhouse family participated in the Duncannon Appalachian Trail Festival on June 17, 2017, providing information about the theatre from our table/tent space to friendly and interested festival-goers.

OMP was also represented in the entertainment portion of the festival, providing a short comedic skit which highlighted the talents of several of our actress/members, as well as a favorite canine friend of OMP.

Thanks to volunteers — Chris Holbert, Marte Engle, Carol McDonough, Stephen Martin, Stephanie Trdenic, Dawn-Michelle Lewis, Stephanie Via, Megan McClain, Kathy Luft, Mary Geraci, Denise Farquhar Carmen, and, of course, Amara (and her sometimes handler Diane McClain).

And since the Appalachian Trail runs along the streets through Duncannon Pennsylvania, all the volunteers can claim to have hiked a portion of the Trail. ☺

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NO CHRISTMAS STORY IN 2018

A professional company of the musical selected by the OMP Board to end the 2018 Season, A Christmas Story, is currently on tour until the end of 2017, and the tour may be extended into 2018. Consequently, the rights to mount a production of the show at OMP in 2018 cannot be secured at this time. Rather than promote that musical as a component in the OMP 2018 Season only to pull it if the rights cannot be obtained, the OMP Board of Directors has selected another musical to produce in its place:

In 1965, Francesca Johnson, a beautiful Italian woman who years before married an American GI to flee war ravaged Europe during WWII, meets a lost National Geographic photographer who pulls into her driveway asking for directions while her husband and children are away at the Iowa State Fair for 4 days.

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name (and made into a movie in 1995 starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood), The Bridges of Madison County was developed as a musical by the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning team of Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman. Winner of the 2014 Tony Award for Best Score and Orchestrations, this sweeping romance captures the lyrical expanse of America’s heartland along with the heartbreaking emotions that result from the roads we travel and the bridges we cross.

Local note: In the 2014 Tony Award winning production of ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, the role of the photographer was played by Hershey, Pennsylvania native Steven Pasquale.

CAST OF SOCIAL SECURITY HAD AUDIENCES LAUGHING IN THE AISLES

Kudos to the Director, cast and crew of Social Security for providing audiences with expertly delivered characters,

spot-on comedic timing and physical reactions etc., all on a perfectly designed and executed understated set, well lighted, with great costumes and all the right elements to keep people interested, amused and outright LOL during every performance.

Applause to Director Patrice Whitson and her fine actors:

DAVID KAHN CRAIG STOUFFER BARBARA KAHN SUSAN DANOWITZ TRUDY HEYMAN MELISSA HURWITZ MARTIN HEYMAN SPURGEON DAVIS SOPHIE GREENGRASS E. K. WEITZEL MAURICE KOENING CHARLES ‘SMITTY’ SMITH

And to the very talented and capable staff:

Co-Producers Megan T. McClain & Michael Beckstein

Stage Manager Stephanie Trdenic Costumes Mary Johnson Light Design Stephen Hensel Light Technicians Alan Potok,

John Kaufman Sound Design Megan T. McClain Sound Technicians Stephanie Trdenic,

Megan T. McClain Props Cast & Crew Set Design Lois Heagy Set Construction Brian McElhiney,

Cast & Crew Set Painting & Dressing Brian McElhiney &

Lois Heagy Featured Artwork Stage Crew Marquee/Program Design

spritz and splatter Howard Hurwitz

Keith Bowerman

Photography Rosie Turner Opening Night Reception Stephanie Via,

Jill and Stephen Jahn