CHILDREN'S THEATER COMPANY
For bookings for 2008-2009 season’s tour of Rapunzel, contact Ric Averill directly – lacdrama@sunflower.com or raverill@sunflower.com or (785) 843-2787, ext. 123
Watch the Video
RAPUNZEL – BOOKING FOR ’08-’09 ...
As many of you know, we are phasing out the Seem-To-Be Players after 35 wonderful years. However, the Lawrence Arts Center , which has served as our home during all these year, remains an active producing entity, very interested in educational theatre opportunities.
Our production of RAPUNZEL, as adapted by award winning playwright, Max Bush , has been touring through the ’07-’08 season. The production is very literature-base, true to the original Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tale and is a coming of age piece suited for grades 2 through 8. Directed and with original music by Ric Averill, the play is a delight for all ages and highly recommended for your family theatre series.
The production will be booked exclusively through the Lawrence Arts Center as part of our Theatre at the Center series. (As many of you know, we had a wonderful relationship with Mainstage Management for many years, but our transition to more educational and opportunistic touring of specific shows and projects will involve booking through the Arts Center itself.) We will be making the piece available in early Fall of 2008 and/or in February/March/April in the Winter/Spring of 2009.
Photos of the production and a study guide are also available below (Click Here). To book the production, contact Ric Averill at lacdrama@sunflower.com or call him at (785) 843-2787, ext. 123.
Other upcoming touring projects from Theatre at the Center may be KING JOHN, by Will iam Shakespeare, and GROTESQUE ARABESQUE, an opera with rock instruments and modern dance based on the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. Please contact Ric Averill, above, if you are interested in any of these projects.
The Seem-To-Be Players are a professional troupe of actors, playwrights, directors, teachers and musicians who seek to expand the imagination, encourage creative thinking and promote an appreciation of our shared humanity through innovative productions and drama education for children, educators and families.
The Players provide an early introduction to the diverse world of theatre for thousands of children each year using a variety of theatrical styles and forms to illuminate classics, showcase biographies and share imaginative original stories. Since 1973, the Players have shared a vision of a world where girls have great adventures as quickly and as often as boys, where the unexpected is necessary and where fantasy and reality meld in an absurd potpourri of theatrical images stirred and mixed with original music.
The Seem-To-Be Players celebrate the joy of ‘play.’ The company’s imaginative repertoire includes THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER, a musical and somewhat scientific romp through Aesop’s fable, RAPUNZEL, the classic Fairy Tale told truthfully, and coming soon –THE RUNAWAY ORCHESTRA, TOM SAWYER and STUART LITTLE. Teacher/Parent guides accompany all programs and Artistic Director Ric Averill and the Players perform residencies, curricular related workshops and community outreach. The company tours nationally, performing for youth of all ages and their families. The Players received support from the Heartland Arts Fund, the Kansas Arts Commission, Hallmark Cards, Payless Shoesource and the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America.
The company is affiliated with ASSITEJ/USA, the AMERICAN ALLIANCE FOR THEATRE IN EDUCATION (AATE), and the INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING ARTS FOR YOUTH (IPAY).
The Player's home theatre is the Lawrence Arts Center at 940 New Hampshire, Lawrence, KS 66044. Phone 785-843-2787, Fax 785-843-6629, email lacdrama@sunflower.com
ON TOUR
RAPUNZEL by Max Bush
The Seem-To-Be Players are very proud to tour award-winning playwright Max Bush’s version of this classic story. Ric Averill directs and will provide original incidental music for the production. Sets by Jon Cupit and costumes by Jennifer Glenn will be bigger and better than ever, giving a magical and medieval fairy tale look to this crowd-pleasing production.
Rapunzel has the strength of a pure fairy tale, purely told. Magical events – a young woman’s craving for rapunzels (radishes) a ‘reputed witch’s’ bargain, the father’s enchantment – are told through comedy, song, powerful language and delightful characterizations. The ‘coming of age’ tale of the girl traded away and raised in an enchanted tower is told in powerful images but with an appealing warmth and wit. Rapunzel and her Prince are delightful; his man-servant even more comic and Mother Gothal herself has an appealing quality that doesn’t detract from her power. The piece ties to curricular study of fairy tales, literature, medieval times, history, geography and the art of theatre itself.
This production is family theatre at its best and recommended for K-6th graders and their families.
Download the High Rez photo
Download the High Rez artwork(PDF)
Download the Teacher's Guide.(PDF)
Download Program Copy.(PDF)
Download Tech Rider (PDF)
MORE ABOUT THE PLAYERS
The Seem-To-Be Players tour an average of about 150 performances per year, playing for more than 125,000 children and their families each season. The company has performed in more than 200 communities from Florida to California, from Texas to Maine, from Arizona to Wisconsin.
The company is based in Kansas and has received the Governor’s Arts Award as a State Arts Treasure. The Players have also received grants and recognition from the Kansas Arts Commission, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Children’s Theatre Foundation of American, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the International Showcase – performing at the Showcase in Philadelphia, PA., in 1995 and Skokie, IL, in 1997.
It is with your help and our strong base of support from the Lawrence Arts Center, the Lawrence Community and the nation that we continue to share theatre with children and families across the country. Consider a fit to the Seem-To-Be Players today!
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Ric Averill
Ric Averill has been the Artistic Director and principal playwright, composer and director for the Lawrence Arts Center's Seem-To-Be Players professional children's theatre company since he and his wife, Jeanne, founded the company in 1973. The company has toured in more than 50 Kansas communities and 39 states, entertaining and educating more than 150,000 students per year.
With degrees from the University of Kansas in both Music Composition and Children's Theatre. Ric has received numerous Playwriting Fellowships and been selected for five professional play development symposiums including multiple appearances at the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices and the Indianapolis Bonderman Youth Theatre Playwriting Symposium. Ric is also a 2006 recipient of an Aurand Harris Fellowship from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America, and the 2007 McKerrow Award for Excellence in professional artistry. More than ten of Ric’s plays for youth are available from Dramatic Publishing.
Included among Ric's many commissions are the Kennedy Center's Alice in Wonderland, First Stage Milwaukee's Little Drummer Boy, the Coterie Theatre's Frankenstein, and the Kansas Health Foundation's Red Blood and High Purpose. Ric's fusion of music and theatre culminated in an opera for children based on the story of The Emperor's New Clothes commissioned by the Kennedy Center for a world premiere in November of 2001 and a national tour in 2003-2004.
For the Lawrence Arts Center, Ric wrote the script and composed the music for a ballet/drama based on The Snow Queen of Hans Christian Andersen. Having begun ballet to ease his ‘mid-life crisis’ in 2003, Ric also danced the role of the Hobgoblin King.
Current projects include an opera with rock music and modern dance based on the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe entitled Grotesque Arabesque, a commission from the Children’s Theatre Company of Sioux Falls about the life of sculptor Korczak Ziolkowsky entitled Dreams Carved from Stone, a play called Turns about a young girl who re-connects with her estranged father through dance, and a screenplay called Riding the Pine currently in production.