Published: November 03, 2009 04:15 pm      

Debut theater production a real scream

The old Kentucky Sound building at 206 North Main came alive Thursday afternoon with the Gusto Theatre’s first production in London.

In Frankenstein Rocks Freddy Frankenstein has inherited his ancestral home, a castle in the eternally foggy land known as Transylvania. He has also inherited a couple of assistants, the wacky but lovable Igor and Inga Dinga. When Frankenstein discovers his great-grandfather’s ultra secret subterranean laboratory, he decides to pick up where his great-grandfather left off if he can find a body and a suitable brain.

Theater rehearsals for children’s productions usually run two to 2 1/2 weeks.

“Don’t let that abbreviated rehearsal schedule fool you though,” Director Luther Dowell said. “Our shows will always be of the highest quality. We work fast, and we work very, very hard at what we do.”

The children who were participating in this production had to keep their grades up and their attendance in line at their respective schools.

“We are doing five matinees for local schools,” Dowell said. “The state of Kentucky provides 10 days of Educational Opportunity Enhancement Credits for students to participate in just this sort of project. Not only do the kids on stage benefit from being in the production, but 600 other students in Laurel County benefited from being able to see their fellow classmates in the play.”

The company will offer 12 plays per year. Of those plays, eight to 10 will be children’s plays or have a large number of children’s roles. There will also be well-known adult plays, such as Steel Magnolias, The Odd Couple, Arsenic and Old Lace and Of Mice and Men. There will be two Summer Stage Theatre Camps per year for children. The camps will culminate in full productions of plays, such as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some of the shows will have a mixture of adults and students in the casts.

The Gusto Theatre itself was founded in 1995 with the purpose of producing works of theater that would both entertain as well as educate audiences.

“For many years we worked as a traveling theater company producing our shows in different venues across the state,” Dowell recalled. “In the 2008-2009 school year we traveled to 118 different schools within the state of Kentucky teaching drama classes and producing plays with students at those schools. While we are not exclusively a children’s theater, a great deal of our programming focuses on youth and family-oriented productions.”

During Gusto Theatre’s history while traveling, they worked out of rented venues when they were available.

“During this time, I was purchasing theater equipment such as lighting and seating,” Dowell said. “I have looked at a lot of spaces in the last 14 years, but last year narrowed our search to three areas of the state where I thought this theater venture might be successful. I was impressed by how much the people here seem to love the arts.”

The company’s motto is Dare Mighty Things. Dowell said, “It was Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider, Author, Big Game Hunter and 26th President of the United States who said, ‘Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank among those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in that gray twilight which knows neither victory nor defeat.’”

Audition notices will be published in The Sentinel-Echo’s calendar and on the company’s Web site at www.gustotheatre.com.

Staff writer Carol Mills can be reached at cmills@sentinel-echo.com.