Community Theater Troupe Takes It 'Day by Day'

Day by day turned into weeks and months of rehearsals for the 2013 Village Players production of "Godspell," on stage in March at the James McCabe Theater in Valrico.

There on opening night, March 8, co-director Lois Green and wardrobe designer Carlton Jones took a break at the fish-fry dinner served before the show's first scene to discuss the Lenten-season production.

• See Village Players 'Godspell' on Stage at James McCabe Theater for production, crew and cast member listings and show dates and times.

"Godspell," a modern musical based on the Gospel according to Matthew, has been staged in many different settings and time periods. The local theater troupe opted for the 70's.

"Orignally it was done in the 70's but many people bring it up-to-date and do it in very different settings, such as a circus," Green said. "I've seen it done in a child's school yard. I've seen it done very modern, with rap added to it. I wanted to do it in the original time period because I felt the music suited that time period better."

With co-director Gail Pierce, Green also attended to the production's choreography.

"Not one of the cast members is a dancer and this show is one dance after another," Green said. "They worked really hard to get the dancing where it should be."

Jones worked just as hard to get right the costuming.

The styles then, he said, were "deceptively simple."

"It looks very easy [to get the style right] but it's not," he added.

Green agreed.

"We didn't want to make the 70's look comedic," she said. "We wanted it to look like real people of the 70's."

These "real people," in the opening number, were dressed as they would in the roles they played at work and in the community. Featured, for example, were a nurse, a waitress, a lawyer, a thief and a policeman.

"They all started out as a professional before following Jesus and becoming disciples," Green said. Each character was assigned a "color," which followed them as they became followers and then dressed in realistic hippie attire.

"We wanted to symbolically show that when people decided to follow Jesus they didn't lose who they were, they gained something," Green said.

As Green sees it, the show is a "family oriented, uplifting way to teach about Jesus by bringing the story to the people with music and dance."