“Songs and scenes about love in all its various manifestations.”

— Leigh Selting

Approach:

Pokes ‘n Plainsmen was a collaborative experiment between the Department of Theatre & Dance at the University of Wyoming and the theatre club at Laramie High School. With the show opening the week of Valentine’s Day, the goal was to create a fun filled evening of scenes, centered around love in its various iterations, that would allow college and high school actors to work/train together. During the auditions, students brought a range of thematically appropriate material that they were interested in working on. After casting was complete, we used these suggestions as our baseline and then incorporated additional scenes and group musical numbers as needed to fill out the program.

My primary responsibility was to work with the two and three person scenes prior to and during their incorporation into the larger production. The students in those scenes came back a few days early from winter break and we worked on staging, characterization, and text through the days leading up to full rehearsals. One of the most rewarding parts of this process was in seeing the depth of understanding, the research, and the enthusiasm put into our As You Like It scene by the high school lead. In this way, it was lovely to see the lessons go “both ways.” While the high school students benefited from working with the more seasoned college actors, they also reminded the college students about the drive and passion that helped to get them into theatre in the first place.