No birds, just Bees

Well, we have come to the end of another amazing season for Newnan Theatre Company. We have gone from the depths of Transylvania to the Mississippi Delta, from a dog park in New York’s Central Park to the Yellow Brick Road of Oz. And for our season finale, we want to take you to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, where you get to watch six prepubescent kids from all walks of life in Putnam County as the compete for the prestigious title of Spelling Champion of Putnam County. This show is wonderfully funny, filled with songs and laughs as the ‘kids’ work themselves into a frenzy of grammar rules and words like ‘antidisestablishmentarianism.’

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has become a treasured comedic musical in theatre companies around the country. Anytime you have adults playing fifth-graders, you never know what might happen. And with this show, the audience becomes a part of the show. After all, there can be no Bee with only six contestants! Yes, for every show, the cast interacts with the audience, bringing them into the show and letting them have some time in the spotlight.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opens Thursday, May 12 and runs through May 22.  Click here to buy tickets!

From here to... well, the summer.

Well, folks, we had a great run with Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and also with Flies at the Well, our world premiere play about the trial of John Wallace, known to most everyone in town as the “Murder in Coweta County” story. So now we get to lighten the mood some with our next presentation, Sylvia, a comedy by A.R. Gurney. 

The show concerns a certain stray dog named Sylvia, who spies a lonely, overworked man named Greg in Central Park and decides he will be her new “human.”  Greg’s wife, Kate, however, is none too thrilled by her new housemate, and Sylvia and Kate go to war over Greg’s loyalty.

We have some newcomers to the NTC fold in the cast, most notably Megs Free as the wonderful Labradoodle, Sylvia, and Michelle Mason as Kate, the woman who is Sylvia’s rival for Greg’s affection. Both are incredibly funny, and we are proud to welcome them into the NTC family.

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Meanwhile, back on Mainstage, the “students” representing the fictional “Putnam County” in our season finale, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are hard at work, learning their word lists and remembering “I before E except after C”. The cast of this show is amazing and Putnam County looks to be one of the funniest musicals we’ve had on our stage in a while.  As we all know, kids say the darnedest things, but these kids say those and more as they fight their way to being the champion speller of all of the county.

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And summer is also our KidsCamp time! For six weeks, we host camp sessions for elementary school and middle school students. The elementary kids learn the basics of theatre over the six weeks, with a different theme each week, ending with a special performance on Friday afternoon that they help put together.

Our middle school camp, known as “NTC Backstage” is more concentrated, with two three-week sessions, each with a central theme, but the instructors take the students through the entire process of staging a show. The students will build their sets, help write their script, design their own costumes and make-up, and stage their show for the end of the session.  We are so excited to watch another group of youngsters find their niche in the theatre.

Think that’s it for now, but stay tuned. We have N.I.T.W.I.T.S. to talk about, and the annual interactive murder mystery, too! Spoiler alert on the murder mystery – you might want to sharpen up your machetes and get a new bowstring for your crossbow… just saying…

Hi there!

Welcome to our new NTC blog, Backstage Chatter!

Here we hope to present quick items about what's going on down on First Avenue: news about shows, cool facts about the actors or designers or whoever, just whatever strikes our fancy—you never know what we'll come up with!