Wabeno Area Players Announce 2019 Season!
A year of Classics, Comedy and Commemoration.
The 2019 Season will begin with the ever popular On Golden Pond in March. This production will be held at the intimate setting of Madonna Hall. Table service is provided for all our performances in Madonna Hall. Following On Golden Pond will be the musical Working in July. This is sure to be a hit with all audiences. The production includes a live on stage band and will be held in the newly named Nancy Volk Auditorium at Wabeno High School. The season will finish with the side splitting comedy Farce of Habit in November.
Listed below are our Mainstage Productions for 2019:
On Golden Pond
2019
March 21, 22, 23, 28, 29 & 30 at 7:00pm
24 & 25 at 1:00pm
Madonna Hall (1793 Elm Ave., Wabeno, WI 54566)
This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory—but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the “grandchild” the elderly couple have longed for, and as Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness—and slang—in return. In the end, as the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final, deeply moving moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought even closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack. Time, they know, is now against them, but the years have been good and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.
WORKING
2019
July 18, 19, 20, 25, 26 & 27 at 7:00pm
21 at 1:00pm
Nancy Volk Auditorium (Wabeno High School, 4325 Branch St., Wabeno, WI 54566)
Working is the extraordinary genre-defining musical from Grammy and Academy Award-winner Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell) based on Studs Terkel’s best-selling book of interviews with the American workforce: Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.
This highly original and universal portrait of the American workday is told from the perspective of those that the world so often overlooks – the schoolteacher, the millworker, the mason, the housewife, the fireman and the waitress amongst many – whose daily grind and aspirations reflect the truths of the people that make up a nation. Working employs a range of musical styles and genres from contributing composers, including five-time Grammy Award-winner James Taylor. Nominated for six Tony Awards, this classic has been updated for a modern age, featuring new songs by Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Farce of Habit
2019
November 21, 22 & 23 at 7:00pm
23 & 24 at 1:00pm
Madonna Hall (1793 Elm Ave., Wabeno, WI 54566)
Comic fireworks explode in FARCE OF HABIT, an absurdly funny Southern-fried romp that takes us back to the Reel ’Em Inn, the finest little fishing lodge in the Ozarks. The proprietor, D. Gene Wilburn, is looking forward to a peaceful weekend on the lake. But there are only two chances of that happening: slim and none. Why, for example, has his wife, Wanelle, picked these three days to white-knuckle her way through caffeine withdrawal? Why is his son Ty’s marriage to Jenna falling apart so fast? Could it have something to do with the French can-can costume Ty is wearing? How on earth would D. Gene’s feisty sister, Maxie, allow herself to get caught up in such a bizarre undercover police assignment? And that’s just his family. If this isn’t enough to thwart D. Gene’s weekend plans, he’s got a gaggle of nuns who’ve converged on the Inn, hell-bent on experiencing a nature retreat—which might be tolerable if D. Gene didn’t have a chronic fear of anything in a habit. Add to this the presence of Jock McNair, a nationally known relationship guru whose colossal ego threatens everyone’s sanity; a shy retiree anxious to cut loose and embrace his “inner caveman” and a couple of wild women who may or may not be who they claim to be. Throw in the storm of the century that’s fast bearing down on Mayhew, Arkansas, and D. Gene has no prayer of baiting a hook any time soon. Oh, and did we mention there’s an axe murderer on the loose? If you enjoy gloriously preposterous hilarity, then laughing your way through the take-no-prisoners lunacy of a Jones Hope Wooten comedy is one habit you’ll never want to break!