Loose Leaf Notes

The following was published in The Floyd Press May 28, 2009. I saw the play last night and can highly recommend it. It’s being performed tonight at 7:00 and Sunday at 5:00.

Since the fall of 2005 Floyd’s Young Actors Coop (YAC) has been entertaining audiences. With over a dozen productions of original plays and stage adaptations to their credit, and building on the momentum of their well received winter performance, “Comedy through the Ages,” the group has a new play opening on May 28th at the Winter Sun Music Hall, with subsequent showings on May 29th and May 31st.
The full feature play, titled MEN2B, was written by Haden Polseno-Hensley in collaboration with YAC founder and director Rose McCutchan. Polseno-Hensley and McCutchan both have theater backgrounds that began more than a decade ago at Floyd County High School under the guidance of Drama Teacher Nan Johnson and Forensics Coach Janet Keith.
According to YAC’s Myspace site, MEN2B is described as having a “good mix of social commentary, humor, and music with a tip of the hat to the Beatles.” It’s a comedy with a plot that revolves around a Boy Band with fake British accents, their groupies, and an investigative reporter, says Polseno-Hensley.
Comedy is a good fit for Polseno-Hensley. As a member of a comedy troupe at Vassar College in New York, where Polseno-Hensley was an English major, he wrote as many as twenty skits that were performed in front of large audiences. The Floyd native recently relocated back to Floyd from Alaska, after receiving an MFA degree from the University of Alaska in Anchorage.
The four members of the fictionalized MEN2B group are played by Elias Sarver-Wolf, Cameron Woodruff, Ian Gammarino, and Emerson Perry and are loosely based on another fab four: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Perry’s character, who likes to wear lots of necklaces, is named Blingo Scar. Gammarino wears a white suit like John Lennon’s and Woodruff walks barefoot across Locust Street in a photo take-off on the Beatles’ Abby Road album cover posted on the YAC Myspace page.
“They know nothing about the Beatles,” Polseno-Hensley explains. “It’s their super evil producer who has made them speak with accents, put them into clubs, told them how to act and told them who their favorite Beatle was.”
Art Goldberg, the evil MEN2B producer trying to capitalize on the Beatles’ popularity, is played by Abraham Cherrix. Marsden Woddail is the band’s road manager, and Boy Band fans trying to get into a concert are played by Bethlehem Cherrix, Jessica Spangler, Avery Foster, and Vivianna Lynch. Alesandra Hicks plays one of the girls’ little sister who threatens to tell her parents about her older sister’s activities if they don’t let her tag along. Bedelia Burris- McGrath is the reporter probing for the truth. Other cast members are Coriander Wooddruff, Maggie Avellar, Hanna Da’Mes, Hannah Schwenk, Hannah Mitchell, Arlo Glibert-Tanner, and Wilson Coartney.
With 37 roles played by 19 actors aged 7 to 18, MEN2B is the first YAC full feature play and the first one that Polseno-Hensley has written. Another first is the participation of Mike Mitchell’s students at The Floyd Music School, expanding on the showcase of local young talent.
“There is live singing of Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby. The Floyd Music School is going to play on most everything that we do, mainly violins,” says Polseno-Hensley. There is also an original piece, reminiscent of a Boy Band song that was written just for the play by Adam Parks, a musician who was recently visiting Floyd. “It has a familiar pop sensibility. I think it’s brilliant. It captures exactly what we were trying to do,” noted Polseno-Hensley.
McCutchan, who has a degree in Theater Performances from Marymount Manhattan College, taught an arts based afterschool program to young children and acted in Community Theater in New York before resettling in Floyd. Excited about MEN2B, McCutchan says, “It’s just so much fun. The main characters are well developed and there are some sensational side characters. It’s a play that shows off the kids and how amazing they are.” ~ Colleen Redman