“Some things never change,” and many things change a lot, whether we are ready for them or not. Freedom Theatre is incredibly excited to start off the 2024-2025 season with One Stoplight Town, a hilarious and heartfelt new comedy focused on the big lives of some folks in a small town that is in for a big new change: a stoplight! As a global society, we have experienced so much change over the past few years, and this play is a great example of how different people react. Everybody responds to change differently, and our personal perspectives often influence whether we deem a change good or bad.
In the play, the town's handyperson, Trish, is commissioned with putting up the first ever stoplight in town to help with traffic from a nearby interstate, and the new stoplight receives mixed reviews from the town's locals. Barb, the local grocer, is adamantly against the new stoplight, while many of the town’s youth are big fans. Clarence and Melvin, two retirees who live and breathe to be up to date on the small town’s business, park themselves daily in the town’s center to bother and be in the know. There are many other life journeys to follow throughout the show, so pay attention to how their stories unfold even after each scene has concluded.
Our small town in the play is loosely based on tiny Dwight, Illinois, an actual small town with a single stoplight that one of our tech team members visited while traveling this fall. However, our goal is to make our small town in the show feel familiar to all: whether you have lived in a town like this yourself, driven through a town like this once, stayed and visited with family in a town like this, or seen a town like this from the big interstate you’ve driven on, our goal is familiarity. Will Barb succeed and convince the Town Council to tear down the new stoplight, or will the change Trish has brought to the town eventually be embraced? Come enjoy the characters’ lives over a 24-year span to find out!
As is tradition in Freedom Theatre, our fall show features many new faces on stage, mixing seamlessly with our veteran performers, each student bringing a distinctive element to their character that is special and specific to Freedom Theatre. The student performers worked diligently on developing specific and dynamic characters through physical acting and voice. The technical elements support not only the creation of this realistic, homey town’s street corner, but also the enormous passage of time that occurs for the characters who inhabit it. This production allowed for a depth of creativity in many elements and, more importantly, provided an opportunity for students to take artistic leadership on creating the world that you see on stage. The whole play takes place at the town’s center where the stoplight is located, so tech students had the challenge of developing an authentic unit set design while showing different time periods, seasons, and times of day.
Without the passion and imagination of this cast and crew, our play could not have come together to be the production you are watching tonight. I am deeply honored to be a part of such a creative and unique group of young artists, and I would like to express my extreme gratitude for the hard work put into this production. The incredible parent support provided the backbone for us, while the sincere commitment of the actors and technicians allowed the show its grace. Thank you to Sam Yearwood, my assistant director, for his passion and thoughtfulness, and for being half of my brain and my second pair of eyes for the past two months. Finally, thank you to TJ Hartless and Marie Knight for guiding the show’s technical design teams. It took the dedication and creativity of each person involved to make this show successful, and I could not be more proud of the work we have done together.
