Autumn Sherry (left) and Juleon Gibson rehearse a scene from “The Library at the End of the World” in the Pottstown Theatre in North Hall of Montgomery County Community College’s Pottstown Campus. Performances run April 23-26. Photo by Tim Gallagher
Making its world premiere on stage at Montgomery County Community College’s Pottstown Campus, MCCC Theatre Arts and West End Student Theatre proudly present, “The Library at the End of the World.”
The Montco Cultural Center will host performances Thursday, April 23-Sunday, April 26 in the Pottstown Theatre, North Hall 228, Pottstown Campus, 16 E. High St. Pottstown, PA 19464. The curtain lifts Thursday, April 23 at 7 p.m., Friday, April 24 at 12:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., Saturday, April 25 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 26 at 2 p.m. Doors open 15 minutes before each performance.
The play is open to all and parking is free in the South Hall parking lot at 101 College Drive. For tickets and information, visit the Culture Events landing page.
Written by Kate Brennan and David Lee White and directed by Tim Gallagher, Theater
Assistant Professor, the show asks the question “Do you have to have all the answers
to live the life you want? Ten strangers search for truth, but the truth they find
may be stranger than fiction,” according to Gallagher.
“What’s important about this show Kate Brennan and David Lee White have given us a story that values the power of writing and our need to escape in writing,” he said. “How we get lost in writing and characters. They give us rich, wonderful characters. When things are going wrong in the world, we escape into reading a book or seeing a film or play. It’s a great escape from the heavy things in our lives.”
Gallagher said in the play the characters are living through the end of the world and are searching for meaning and truth in their lives.
“They’re quirky and bizarre like we are,” he said. “The value of this play is it shows us a great glimpse of what it’s like when we’re searching for meaning in the face of overwhelming odds. We get to do so in a fun way.”
Gallagher highlighted the fact that this is the world premiere of the play, with characters
written with the MCCC students portraying them in mind. Last season at MCCC’s Blue
Bell Campus, students performed the world premiere of “The Marginals,” also written
by Brennan. This year, students at Pottstown Campus hoped to have a similar experience.
“For this experience, she and Lee wrote the play for our students,” said Gallagher. ““The Library at the End of the World” was specifically written for our students, with them in mind. Who they are as people and students. They wrote a play geared toward things students and young people care about but also about our students in particular.”
Brennan and Lee sat in on rehearsals to give students experience working with professional playwrights. The duo structured their play in a way that made it easy to rehearse around the cast and crew’s busy schedules, so they can balance rehearsals with work, school and other personal commitments. Gallagher said sometimes students can only come one or two days to rehearse per week but they are still able to make progress on the rehearsal schedule.
“You can work with small pairings of students,” he said. “I can’t tell you how nice that is as the director and for our students.”
Published copies of the play will feature the names of the MCCC students who worked on the show.
“Now two of Kate’s plays will have MCCC as the first producing organization,” said Gallagher. “Our student actors and designers are listed as the first original production team, which is pretty amazing.”
The cast includes Autumn Sherry, Peyton Seitzinger, Persephone Harshbarger, Star Gies, Alex Voss, Patrick Kovach, Juleon Gibson, Harris Betz, Nayla Garcia, and Chrissy McGuinness.
The production and design team includes Michael Adamski, Lucca Brown, Lia Cox, Persephone Harshbarger, Rhea Khilnani, Elizabeth Kieser, Peyton Seitzinger, Echo Wallower, Erin Armstrong and Will Olsen.