Cast members sang camp songs and played the guitar, and the audience members were instructed to write letters to their parents before they moved from the lobby to the theater for the show.
The interactive experience all took place at the preview of the Bloomington Playwrights Project’s performance of Gregory S. Moss’ “Billy Witch.”
The show premieres at 7:30 Friday at the Bloomington Playwrights Project’s Timothy J. Wiles Theater , and the next shows will be at 7:30 Dec. 5, 10-12 and 17-19.
“It’s almost to the point where it makes the audience feel uncomfortable because they’re so used to going to shows and just sitting there and everything happening in front of them,” said IU musical theater student Jenny Case, who plays a camp counselor in the show. “In this show everything happens around them, and they’re treated like they’re in it.”
The show begins in typical summer camp style, but things take a turn for the mysterious when new camper Oliver meets a strange boy on the shore while everyone else is swimming. The boy says repeatedly he wants to go home but cannot, and the suspense is heightened when the campers tell a ghost story about a boy that disappeared from camp in 1985.
“It’s summer camp, something that everyone can relate to, but it also takes a strange, interesting, dark turn,” Case said. “You’re still into it, but it goes toward a really weird place.”
The show has a comedic mixture of characters and hilarious one-liners with something more sinister under the surface, said T. Scott Parnell, who plays the male camp counselor. The camp’s head counselor has a dark secret, Billy Witch’s vengeful ghost remains a mystery, and Oliver develops a budding romance with fellow camper Miranda.
“I think the audience will enjoy the humor of it, the story and the weirdness of it,” said T. Scott Parnell, who plays the male camp counselor. “More than anything, they’ll go away from it feeling like they have never been to a play like that, where it doesn’t even really feel like a play.”
Parnell said another interesting aspect of the show is that it is put on by the BPP, a theater that specializes in new plays that can’t be seen anywhere else.
“It’s totally unique, you can’t see it anywhere else unless you come to see it here,” Parnell said. “That’s what theatre is really about, the live and new aspect of it. I like the idea that maybe something we’re doing now will be a big deal someday, and we originated it.”
Tickets are $20 for general admission and $10 for students. To purchase tickets, go tonewplays.org.
