Welcome, everyone, to WFHR's Rapids Report for this April 28, 2025.
Today we are joined by some of the cast from Wisconsin Rapids Community Theatre's Noises
Off.
They're final show of their 50th season.
We're just going to let everybody introduce themselves so the audience can put a name
to the voice, a voice to the name, all of that, and I will start at the end here and
while I didn't expect this, it's been a while for us.
But immediately I wanted to go to some of the old things we used to talk about Heather,
but don't please introduce yourself if you don't mind.
My name is Heather Sayers and my characters are Doddy Utley aka Mrs. Clackett.
Thank you Heather and thanks for being here.
Thank you.
I'm Mike Edgren and I also have two characters, that's because the first character that
Doddy and I play are the actors within a play and those actors then have another role.
So I play Selsden Mulberry, who appears as the burglar in a play called Nothing On.
Thank you for that, Mike.
And Laura.
My name is Laura Berg.
I play Tim Allgood, he's a stage manager for Nothings On Well, one of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nicely done.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate you guys being here and certainly want to thank all of you right away for not only
putting up with me in my questions, but bringing your talents, bringing these skills to our
audience, to our community and entertaining our community and having such a wrapping
up such a great season over at Wisconsin's Rabbits Community Theater.
I want to talk a little bit about what the play is, now it's hard for me to imagine because
this play is one of the older ones that I can remember from my youth, but this is certainly
maybe not a, everybody knows what noise is off it's about.
So if we can give them a little bit of a cliff notes version of this and I'm going to put
you on the spot, Mike, for that, it will help out a little bit too.
But if you could just kind of touch on that a little bit of what the synopsis of the
play.
It started it's a play within a play and it's even a little, that's done occasionally,
but this is the only one that it's, the play they're putting on is a bedroom farce,
which is a British tradition of doors slamming and people going in and out and in and out
and mistaken identities and things like that.
So you have a troop of actors that are trying to put this on along with their stage
managers and their director and it begins the day before the night before opening night.
And they're having a lot of trouble with this play and putting it together.
The really clever part comes after act one.
Act one you get a chance to see what the play is supposed to be even though they're having
trouble with it.
And act two, we spin the entire set around and you watch the entire same act being done
a couple of weeks down the line I think it is.
And and a lot has happened since then they're not getting along, props go missing,
there's damage done, lots of damage done, as they attempt to get through the play,
the first act of the play in front of a matinee in a matinee.
And then the third act is the end of the line.
Well done, well done sir, nicely done.
It's one of the things, one of the things that I was trying to do with this, I never
like to ask a question I can't answer myself so I practice some of this and I was talking
to my mom because she knows the show very well and I was doing these questions with her.
When I brought up that question, proposed that question to her and I answered it.
She right away said, you made that much more complicated than it needed to be.
And I think that with a farce, sometimes that can come across to people but it's such
a you're there, you're going to take it in.
You're there, you're going to be a part of it.
And farce is I think can seem a little more that way than most plays but soon as you get
into that audience from the opening line, you're immediately going to get the hang of things
and enjoy.
Yeah, they're going to get sucked in real fast and it's going to be a situation where
so much happens so consistently throughout the show that you're not going to really have
a chance to get bored or really think too much on it.
So that's what makes farce so magical to me.
Yeah, in comedy, you're listening for funny lines.
Yeah.
You know, there's going to be funny lines, funny characters, right?
In a farce, it gets very physical.
You're closer to the old Warner Brothers cartoons, to Laurel and Hardy, the Marks Brothers, all
that kind of thing would qualify as farce.
And when you get to the later point of act two, my advice to the audiences, don't blink.
Yeah.
That's nice.
Because, honestly, we have up to three things going on at a time.
Yeah, in that backstage act, yeah, absolutely.
I encourage people to take in multiple shows all the time because there are no reruns
in theater, but when it comes to a farce, you really do get a chance and not only taking
a new show with every show, but maybe you see something you weren't able to catch the
first time or something like that.
I think of as a kid wanting to watch airplane multiple times because I was laughing too
hard and I missed a joke over something like that.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
When it comes to the show itself too, and in farce is in general, we've seen a real rise
in popularity with these things.
Younger generations are starting to kind of like get back into these, and I personally,
just as a side note, think that's really cool.
I like seeing that.
It's fun to, this kind of being brought back.
I want to ask you guys a little bit about your characters now, and Heather, I will start
with you.
What can you tell us a little bit about your character and what have you enjoyed playing
in the character?
Well, I grew up watching noises off, and Daddy was, by far, my favorite character.
I've always wanted to be her.
She was Carol Burnett in the play, and her walking around the stage screaming,
so her deans was something I didn't own.
Yeah.
So when I was cast, I was just like, yes, this is exactly what I want to do.
And I do.
I enjoy screaming that way quite, quite frequently.
Even when I don't need to, and I forget my lines, it's just something that I do.
It's great.
It works.
Daddy is a housekeeper.
I'm sorry, Mrs. Clackett is the housekeeper for the young couple, and she is supposed to
not really be there, but she ends up being there throughout the whole thing.
She's in and out, always forgetting her lines, forgetting her entrances, not really knowing
what she's there for, but she's just there, just to make comic relief, I think, sometimes.
So.
Oh, and it sounds like you're nailing it.
That's awesome.
I'm having fun whether I'm nailing it or not.
I don't know.
But it's a good time, you know, the nice thing about, like, especially act number two is
we, even if we mess it up, the audience doesn't know because it is chaos, 100% of the time.
Yes.
So I prefer to do plays like that.
Yes.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Heather.
Thank you.
Mike, can you tell us a little about yours?
Sales in MOBA has been in the theater for some 60 years, yes, started at the tender age
of two.
My parents, my parents were the magnificent MOBAs and music hall, which, which here you
would know more is vaudeville and Britain, it's, it's music hall.
They were a singing, dancing, juggling duo, one night during a mishap with some of the
props.
They ran out of things to juggle and I made my first entrance on stage.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Yes.
Indeed.
And since then many, many roles, especially with Dottie and her, her repertoire.
I haven't been in it as long as, as Sellsden, I started, I started when I was 15 and I just
want to put that age.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Well clarified.
Well clarified.
Yes.
And Sellsden enjoys a drink occasionally and sometimes that becomes a problem.
And also people, I find that actors don't speak up well enough sometimes.
I can't understand, especially with the director, saying in the stage manager, but something
to do with 60 years in the theater, I think, yeah, 60 years in the theater, yeah, they are
60 years.
My face is hurting from smiling already.
God, I missed you, Mike.
I missed you, man.
Thank you for that.
Laura, can you tell us a little about yours?
Dom is overworked, underrested, and yet still managing to run a show with the help of Poppy.
Most of my time in the show is spent trying to help the director deal with his budding
love triangle.
And so I introduce most of the props in the second act.
That's fun.
It's a lot of fun.
Tim is there.
He has a remarkable ability to be there.
Actually done.
No, I appreciate that.
And you also teed me up very well, too, because with forces, and this one in particular, especially,
your props are so vital to the characters and almost a character of themselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you were able to, with your character in particular, Laura, you have a little bit
of a charge with that.
Yeah.
No, I bring on four or five different props during that second act.
I introduce them to the set, and they get used in multiple times.
And it's one of those things that, well, this happens all the time in theater.
With a farce, it's so key and so important and everything, especially with the timing
of this.
So it's a unique part of this particular play where I feel like almost every character
is also a prop master, right, is in charge of these things.
So a little more different, a little more important than your normal play.
As much as Christine Sullivan, our stage manager, is doing a remarkable job of keeping track
of our props.
We are all kind of in charge of our own props at the same time, because everyone has their
hands on lots of props, and it's kind of a, at the end of the act, it's, okay, who
is the last one to have the whiskey?
Where did it get left?
Who has the whiskey because I need it for the next act?
Like it's that kind of thing.
I'm the only one that has my own prop.
You have your own prop table, but I have a coat rack, so there's plenty on it.
It gives me an opportunity to shout out the complete crew of this show and the people
that have worked so hard on this one.
Every prop person, every person working backstage, we shoot, we shout you out, we appreciate
you.
I certainly want to shout out the rest of the cast.
You guys got an amazing, perfect cast for this show, and there's so many great actors.
Some you've seen before, and maybe some you haven't seen before, or haven't seen in
a while, encourage you to take in this show for those reasons, among many, many others,
and this amazing stage.
I am very fortunate I get to work with every day with Melissa K, your director, and one
of the things that Melissa has been talking about for pretty much the whole year is this
stage, is this set.
I'm curious, when it comes to that, how much fun have you guys been having with this
set?
It's a very different set than normally, then we normally have, and it's a very ambitious
set for a local community theater, especially WRC team.
Yes, it's very ambitious.
Yeah.
Are we six or seven doors?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
I never know.
There's a window coming in.
There are six doors and a window.
There are three sets of stairs.
Everything gets used pretty much non-stop.
And as we said, there are actually two sets.
Yes.
Because it's the front and the back.
Yeah.
And you get to see actually what a backstage really does kind of look like and how it kind
is.
It is.
It performs during a record of the play.
In fact, the playwright wrote that he had the idea for this play when he was doing another
farce with Linda Redgrave in it, and he watched it from behind stage, and he said,
this is fun here than what's going on in front.
So he wrote it.
And for those of us who have been in many stages, we've seen a lot of what goes wrong back
there, has gone wrong.
It just hasn't all gone wrong at the same time, right on top of each other.
Right.
Is there anything that stands out to you as far as the fun that you have had with this
set, in particular, and certainly don't want to spoil anything, but anything that you're
enjoying in scene-wise or set-wise, Heather, I'll start with you.
Well, I want to save the doors.
None of us really know what's going to come in and out of a door at one moment in time,
even though even though we've been there, it's like, and we've watched it all happen,
and we're like, oh, and then you look at it and like, oh, that's what happens backstage
because we don't get to see, like right on the other side of the stage, what's happening
during acting.
So when you're watching it on the prompt, or on the, on the, on the, on the monitor's
up now in the backstage.
We're watching it.
We're like, oh, my God, there's so funny.
I'm like, and then you start laughing, and you're like, oh, we've got to be quiet.
You can't laugh backstage.
Big, big, big, big, big.
Yeah, the doors are opening and shutting and in and out, and it's like when, when people
come in now that window, that window, like boom, boom, boom, you're like, oh, my goodness.
Yeah.
It's fun.
The window's mine.
I knew it was going to change.
Because I'm the burglar, it sells in as the burglar, so I come in through the window
constantly, and I punch out the pain and break my way in each time, and that happens
a lot.
And I apologize for breaking the pain, because I, that was funny.
I, I punched it out one night when I was supposed to come in, and it didn't go out, right?
So I threw it at the ground, and now there's a crack in the corner, and we taped it with
a band-aid.
It says oops.
Do you know what else is fun?
In so many ways, what happened during rehearsal reflects what it was like in a plane.
It's, I mean, we have a bunch of things going wrong, and we just bludgeoned through.
It's perfect.
It's perfect.
Yeah.
It's my favorite.
I guess my coat rack is the thing I touch the most.
I, that's the thing.
I think you're going to take it down with you when you take yourself off of it.
I think about it.
I thought about it.
We'll just take that right off the stage for the coat.
You guys have done a fantastic job, a big part of what this, this purpose of these interviews
are for, certainly to promote the show and let people know when it is, and how they can
get tickets and all of those things.
But as all of us know too, that we, that have a love and a passion for local theater,
we could always use more and more people to be a part of it, or to come to these shows,
to be a part of these shows, and just by talking about them and the energy and the laughter
that you guys have shared today in this interview, you have definitely got somebody out there
thinking about it.
And anybody who has ever been on the fence about being a part of things over at Community
Theater, you are welcome.
We want you to come down.
I do have a warning though.
If you come down, you are coming back.
If you come down once, you're going to come down again.
There is no person, these are potato chips.
There's nobody who does one show.
Everybody comes back.
So get used to coming down there, make plans to come on down, take in this show.
It's a great way to plan a preview of things, how they handle things, and how they do things
that was Councilor Abba's Community Theater.
I want to thank you guys again for the rehearsal process for all the time that you put into
this and joining me today with my silly questions.
Thank you so much for that.
Yeah, I was going to be here anyway.
That is true.
Get your tickets for this show, wrctheater.org, wrctheater.org, production dates may first.
Right around the corner, you guys.
You guys ready for this?
Ready?
Or you've been waiting?
No, not even a little bit.
No, not even a little bit.
We'll see what happens on Thursday.
I didn't need to ask.
The audience could tell by your reactions and your answers today that you're ready.
It shouldn't go.
May 1st and 2nd.
They'll have 7 o'clock show.
May 3rd will be a 2 o'clock matinee, and next week they'll come back and do it all
again.
May 8th, Thursday, be a 7 o'clock show and that Friday a 7 o'clock, and it'll all wrap
up on May 10th with a 2 o'clock matinee.
Get your tickets.
You can get them at the front desk, or right when you walk into the building, or you can
get them right at wrctheater.org, wrctheater.org.
Be sure to follow them on social media as well and share their posts on your page.
You just never know who might see them otherwise.
And a big thank you again to all of you guys for joining us.
Appreciate you.
Break the leg out there.
Thank you.
We'll have more rapids of work coming up for you right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR.
