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Independent Actors Theatre to put on 'Dead Man's Cell Phone'

The play runs March 12 and 13 at The Blue Fugue.

By Katie Prince

Published March 12, 2010

At a Heidelberg table, a small group chats animatedly in a space set apart from the rest. The atmosphere is more like a party than a meeting. Rushing in from the cold, the last member arrives to join the crowded table, and the laughter and conversation builds to a dull roar. Charles Willis begins to pass out thick packets of paper with "Agenda" neatly typed at the top, joking amiably about the depth of the information provided.

Charles Willis is the executive director of a local acting troupe called Independent Actors Theatre. The meeting was called to discuss the state of the non-profit organization and its future direction. The organization is in its third season and was originally started by Willis, artistic director Shawna Kelty and Ross Taylor, who has since left.

"When we were first discussing forming a new theater company, what we saw was a lack of roles for community actors and the same kind of roles coming up again and again in academic theater," Willis said. "We wanted to give actors in Columbia the opportunity to explore other approaches and to take on the sorts of roles that they wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to take on."

The organization keeps itself small, with a core group at the center comprised of Willis, Kelty, marketing and promotions director Alicia Abight, as well as board of trustee members Matt Heapes, Cece McFarland and Emily Rollie. Rollie is director of their current project, "Dead Man's Cell Phone."

"Part of our aesthetic is we're nomadic," Kelty said. "We don't have a home. We like it that way."

Member Ed Hanson, a local actor, also said the lack of a permanent home is one of his favorite parts about the group.

"Because they don't have a permanent home anywhere, everything is sort of like, ‘This is what we want to do, and how can we make this happen?’ " Hanson said. "It's really an exciting group to be a part of."

The organization's upcoming play, Sarah Ruhl’s "Dead Man's Cell Phone," is also rousing excitement from within, especially in its director.

"It's really fascinating, and the characters are very eccentric and kind of wacky," Rollie said. "But they're still slightly grounded in reality, so it's a fun acting challenge for a lot of (the actors), making (the characters) believable but still eccentric."

Rollie said the concept of the play centers on a woman, Jean, who is out to lunch. A man's phone begins to ring without stopping. Jean decides to answer the phone and in doing so, gets propelled into a world of connections with the man's family and events that force her to question her ideas on life, relationships and death.

" 'Dead Man's Cell Phone' is a lot about connections and how we think we are all connected in our technologically savvy world with our cell phones, but we're really not," Rollie said.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone" will be held in The Blue Fugue, an innovative location for a full-scale play.

In past seasons, IAT has done "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" by Charles Busch (a hit) and "Confessional" by Tennessee Williams. It held "Confessions" in Eastside Tavern, an innovative move, because the play itself is set in a bar.

"The goal is to engage our audience as opposed to have it just be passive theater," Kelty said.