By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
The Carmel Community Players (CCP) are stepping out of their comfort zone with their latest production by staging a local writer’s work, and the gods are pleased.
Amused was written by local playwright Megan Ann Jacobs and will be on stage Oct. 13 to 22 at The Switch Theatre, 10029 E. 126th St., Fishers. The show is being directed by Kelly Keller, who was kind enough to speak with The Reporter about this very human tale featuring the Greek god of comedy.
This is the first time anyone in Indiana will see the full play. A short version was previously staged at Indy Fringe.
“The story itself is about a Muse,” Keller told The Reporter. “He is a second-generation Muse and during the play he tells the story how he became a second-generation Muse. The original Muses were women. They got fed up with humanity and decided to stop and he was one of the ones that replaced them.”
In this show, the Muse has been working with an older woman – an author with whom the Muse has collaborated on several books during her career. Before she dies with one last book in progress, she asks the Muse to find a new human to inspire to finish her work.
“He stays in the apartment that the woman that passed away lived in,” Keller said. “He meets a new woman. He chases off a whole bunch of people before the new woman shows up. They interact and there are a lot of humorous scenes where he introduces her to the fact that he’s a Muse and he makes himself unavailable and invisible to certain people. Eventually he becomes her Muse.”
Keller met Megan Ann Jacobs when he was an actor in a different play she had written. She gave him a copy of the script for Amused as a gift, and Keller enjoyed it enough to submit it to the CCP board for consideration.
“Megan writes great scripts,” Keller said. “’This one has got quite a bit of humor to it. It’s a tough subject, but it also has a lot of humor.”
Keller is calling this the equivalent of a PG production due to the nature of the work.
I think it’s family-friendly,” Keller said. “I think the only part that is a little challenging is one of the characters passes away, but there’s nothing, you know, vulgar about it. She is on a couch and the lights go down, so you never really see anything. She just disappears.”
If you like a heartfelt story with a bit of humor along the way (it is about the god of comedy being melancholy, after all) or if you want to see a community theater company performing the work of a local author, then this is the play for you.
Get amused with CCP between Oct. 13 and 22 at The Switch Theatre, 10029 E. 126th St., Fishers. Call (317) 815-9378 or go online to CarmelPlayers.org for tickets.