Tibbits Opera House summer stock season begins
COLDWATER — Almost all of the 60 professional actors, directors, and technicians are in town and ready to present four main stage and three children’s “Popcorn” show on the historic Tibbits Opera House stage over the next nine-week season.
The main stage of summer stock season starts on June 15 with the sequel to last year’s smash hit “Nunsense.”
“Nunsense II" sees the hilarious singing nuns, the Little Sisters of Hoboken, return funnier, having been “bitten by the theater bug.”
The first three shows are musicals, but a wide variety, artistic director Peter Riopelle said.
“You try to have something for everyone," he said.
“The Little Mermaid” musical plays June 29 – July 8.
The final musical of the season, “Grease,” plays on the main stage July 13-22, rated PG-13.
The season closes with farce, Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor,” which has performances from July 27- Aug. 5.
Rehearsals for Nunsense II, which runs through June 24, began last week at the Fairfield Plaza Dance Factory while the main stage prepared for the Friday and Saturday morning show “Aladdin’s Luck.”
The production starts the 34th season for Tibbits Popcorn Theatre, created specifically for kids and their families on Friday and Saturday morning.
Nunsense was so well received by the audiences last year that Riopelle brought back three of the five professional actors.
Actors Cheyanne Marie, Brenda Sparks, and Kiersten Vorheis are back in their same roles.
Tickets are available on the theater website, www.Tibbits.org.
Meet the actor
The cast spans veterans to a college student.
Vorheis is also back for her ninth year at Tibbits.
Vorheis husband, Paul, started doing shows at Tibbits. “He mentioned this amazing 1800s beautiful opera house that does summer stock. There’s just something magical about it.”
Vorheis feels the theater is so special she is taking three weeks’ vacation from the theater where she works full time in Louisville to do “Nunsense II.”
When Sparks went to Western, and after graduation, Tibbits and the Barn Theater in Augusta were the only professional places to work in the area.
“The opportunities here were so much greater. You had the opportunity for more stage time as a young actor and a director, because I’ve always done both," she said.
Cheyanne Marie, her stage name, graduated from Piedmont University in Georgia. “I got my master’s at Oklahoma City University. COVID kept me there.”
Marie found the opening listed and sent Riopelle a video. “I met him, and I was like immediately, so sure that he was like the nicest person ever. The energy was so different, so I said yes, and I came” last season.
“It was the most magical summer ever that we had. Every single person was both phenomenally talented and a really good person in their soul. You don’t always find in theater,” Marie said.
Annie Ross, in her second season at Tibbits, is from Queens. “I just graduated this May from SUNY Cortland which is upstate New York.”
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Ross came because several actors and directors from her SUNY college worked at Tibbits.
“Everybody’s so professional here, nice welcoming. I knew literally since last summer that I wanted to come back,” she said.
Newcomer Gianna Branca, from Philadelphia, said, “I’m still in college about to be a senior at Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia.”
With Vorheis doing only one show, Sparks and the three new actors will be seen in other performances on the mainstage and the Popcorn Theater this summer at Tibbits.
---Contact Don Reid: dReid@Gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DReidTDR
This article originally appeared on Coldwater Daily Reporter: Tibbits opens its mainstage June 15 with Nunsense II
