Iola Community Theatre, with its musical comedy “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” opening this weekend, began casting for its next play at the Warehouse Theatre, 203 S. Jefferson Ave., Monday evening.
It’s been a hectic few weeks, said Dee Sell, an ICT board member, as he watched Linda Brocker and Debbie Lake, Humboldt, read from Dr. Seuss books — scripts haven’t yet arrived — for parts in “The Dixie Swim Club.”
Brocker, a teacher at Jefferson Elementary, has not performed on the ICT stage, but allowed she does each day — in front of her students. Lake has experience with an Old West enactors group and in Civil War Days at Humboldt.
Both were eager to dive into the play, which Sell described as “Steel Magnolias” meets “Same Time Next Year,” Sell said. “The first night will have the women in their 40s and each succeeding one will have them 10 years older, in their late 70s in the last.”
The play will be April 28 and 29 and May 4 and 5. Angie Terhune will direct.
The cast of five actresses will be announced later.
“We started casting tonight,” said Sell Monday evening, as Brocker and Lake filled out short resumes, “but we don’t have an end time. We’ll take however long to find the right combination.”
Rehearsals will start sometime later this month, after “I Love You …” has played out Friday and Saturday nights and March 16, 17 and 18. Tickets for the dessert theater may be purchased at Sophisticated Rose, 19 S. Jefferson Ave.
IN “THE DIXIE Swim Club” five Southern women pledged when they graduated from college to meet a weekend each August to recharge friendships, recall what had occurred in the previous year and, as time passed, help each other deal with changes and challenges in their lives — men, sex, marriage, parenting, divorce and aging.
The play is set at a beach cottage on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Comedy is a part of each meeting; so is poignancy.
“It’s a portrayal of life,” Sell said.
