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October 29, 2009

The Dinner Club

Knox Central drama teacher sees work paying off

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Thirteen years ago, Cathy Rhoden decided to bring the dramatic arts to Knox Central High School.

It hasn’t been easy.

She founded the school’s theater program with little budget and little space. With no money to spare for royalties, Rhoden wrote several of her own screenplays for her students to perform — something they do on a 8-by-16 foot stage in a classroom used as a theater.

With risers discarded by the choir department, Rhoden is able to seat about 50 audience members per show.

But her hard work is paying off. This is the first year that Knox Central has offered an improv class — most of those 30 students are freshmen. And for the first time, a KCHS student has made the all-state cast for Kentucky high school theater.

Next month, her students are producing a shorter version of her full-length play, “The Dinner Club” for the one act play competition of the Kentucky Theater Association fall conference.

“We had a good play and a good cast (last year), but I think this year it’s going even better,” said student director Alex Estes. “The group itself works really well together. It’s a smaller group. Last year we had a really large class and it was kind of hard to get things done.”

The play, which takes place entirely inside a small cafe, is well suited to the constraints of the program’s space. It centers around a group of teachers who, for a variety of reasons, consider themselves outsiders in the community. Two of the main characters — Joseph Cross as Kevin and Bethany Bargo as Natalia — develop a relationship throughout the course of the play. But Natalia, a mail-order Russian bride now in her 40s and confined to a wheelchair, is in an abusive marriage, and her friends try to give her the strength to leave it.

While interspersed with comedic parts (Samson Warren gives a brief but hilarious performance as Oliver, a veteran who speaks nearly entirely in military code during a speed dating scene) “The Dinner Club” is ultimately a story about the horrors of domestic violence and love found in unexpected places.

“People cried,” when they performed it during a dinner theater in 2005, Rhoden said. “But that was the full length and that was pretty much for an adult audience because parts of the play are adult-oriented.”

Student Bret Messer said the play was about social acceptance, and was a challenging piece to produce.

“I think it was harder to get into character. Where we did have to be older, you had to really think about your character more than you would if you were doing some other play... you have to be more serious about it,” Messer said.

Drama students will also be making public service announcements for TV4 against dating violence.

“Nobody really thinks about how it could be a teacher at a school going through that kind of stuff... when it happens to everyone,” Cross said.

Students will be performing “The Dinner Club” at 3:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Nov. 9-10. The public is invited to attend. Tickets are $3 for students and $5 for adults, and all sales go back into the theater program. For more information or to reserve tickets, call Knox Central High School at 606-546-9253.

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