1998 Production
Cast:
Homer Hodges - Jerrold Rabushka
Veretta Coleman - A.W. Shade
Helene Hodges - Diana Krueger
Harley Hodges - Billy McLaughlin
Dennis Coszczak - Chris Taylor
Aleeto - Gerald C. Ortiz
Corinthia - Lori A. Hand
Emmennea - Tara Robinson
In the photo, Gerald, Tara, and Lori as the mutants from Times Beach.
Music by Jerrold Rabushka
Directed by Doug Bernier
Choreography by Sheila Rabbitt
Producer and Tech director Skip Hardesty
Looking back, notes on the performance
This was Ragged Blade's first full length production, and we had a variety of challenges. Our original plan was to have the "office" and the "Hodges Household" on stage at the same time, but the stage inexplicably shrank between the time of set design and tech week. This changed just about everything... ten years after the fact it's safe to say we managed to cut 20 minutes off the show by the end of the run simply by better managing our set changes.
I also went to some imaginative lengths to cast the show; no one who auditioned was suitable to play Harley Hodges, so I randomly started instant messaging young men with the word "Actor" in their profile. Billy was suspicious, but he met to audition at an Einsteins and he got the part. Good news for him, he met his future wife doing this show.
Performance wise, one of our biggest challenges were the mutants, whose lines were divided up between them randomly, so that all three of them might say different parts of the same sentence. It took a lot of concentration, but came off successfully.
It was also our first show in St. John's, and their theater had been unused for years. There was a lot of dusting off, literally, to make it habitable. We also learned the "hard" way, not to put the audience on wooden chairs. Ouch. Eventually someone donated some resin patio chairs to the theater. Whew!
--Jerry Rabushka, July 2008
