Readers’ Theater comes to OLT!

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What is Readers Theater?

Unlike traditional theater, Readers Theater does not require costumes, make-up, props, stage sets, or memorization. Only a script is needed, from which the players read aloud. Using only their voices, facial expressions, and bodies, they interpret the emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and motives of the characters. A narrator conveys the story’s setting and action and provides the commentary necessary for transition between scenes.

For its debut Readers Theater production, OLT is presenting scenes from Ernest Thompson’s touching and graceful play, “On Golden Pond”, for a special matinee production Sunday, March 9. Directed by Gini McDonald, this is a golden story of heart, humor and drama where lives are forever changed by the common search for love and belonging.

On Golden Pond

Directed by Gini MacDonald

Sunday March 9th, 2 PM

Tickets are available at the door at the time of performance. Box office and lobby will open 1/2 hour before show time.

General Admission $5.00  Students and Seniors $3.00

Summary:

This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-fourth year. He is a retired professor with heart palpitations and a failing memory but still as tart-tongued and observant as ever. Ethel, the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched their long life together. They are visited by their daughter and her fiancé, who go off to Europe and leave 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.

Main Characters:

Norman Thayer Jr. (Male): A retired teacher who is turning 80 and feeling old. Norman is intelligent and cantankerous and obsessed with death and dying. When asked how it feels to turn 80, he replies, "Twice as bad as turning 40."

Ethel Thayer (Female): Norman's devoted wife. She is exuberant and young at heart (a 69-going-on-39 year-old). She picks berries, rides her bike and talks to the local loon population in their own language.

Chelsea Thayer (Female): Norman and Ethels divorced daughter. She is a competent, successful woman reduced to childhood insecurities every time she revisits Golden Pond. She and her father have had a strained relationship, marked by her calling him by his first name. As Norman explains, he is her father but he never was her daddy.

Billy Ray (Male): Chelsea’s boyfriend/fiancé. The L.A. dentist who must face the unforgiving father he's heard so much about. Billy Ray Jr. A sometimes smart aleck, sometimes sweet 13-year-old who teaches Norman to say "Bull@!#*!" You would expect this teen-ager and Norman to mix like oil and water. Instead, they get on famously and Billy proves to be the elixir of youth that Norman so desperately needs.

Charlie Martin (Male): The mailman-on-a-boat with a funny laugh who was Chelsea's summer boyfriend for years. Now in his forties, he still carries a torch for her.