Earlier this year, The Upstagers–the award-winning community theater group based in Del Rio, Texas–lost its founder, Fred Brockwell. Although he had moved out of the state several years ago to be closer to family and enjoy retirement, he visited his home town once in a while and even returned in 2017 to direct a revival of “Pump Boys and Dinettes”, featuring our original cast. But along with losing Fred, The Upstagers also lost our home venue, The Paul Poag Theatre for the Performing Arts.
After a series of storms and related damage, coupled with years of neglect by the City of Del Rio, the theater was found to have such substantial damage that it was rendered unusable. All told, we’re talking around $2 million in repairs and upgrades needed. Thus, The Upstagers has had it’s 2023 season completely upended, and we’ve been seeking venues that we can actually produce shows in. The biggest limitation is the fact that we an build sets in the Paul Poag, whereas no place we’ve found so far can afford us the opportunity of a multi-week set build. We have to build smaller, portable sets and transport them—definitely not optimal, given how involved most of our sets tend to me (something we’ve become well know for).
So, whereas our original plan for a fall show was “The Play That Goes Wrong” (a huge, intensely complex set), we have since replaced it with a musical revue, “The Upstagers At The Movies”. This will allow us to incorporate a fairly substantial cast with very minimal set requirements. The show will feature iconic songs from or made popular by movies over the years, and will feature a combination of choreography by our own Annie Marshall, individual performing talent and much of the music provided by my band, Accidental Drama (named independently of any affiliation with theater, but very appropriate as a team-up with The Upstagers). So, work begins on casting and rehearsals for a November opening (venues still to be determined at the time of this writing).