Persistence paid off for Lori Raffel.
Raffel has been wanting to direct “The Woman in Black” since she first proposed the play to Carmel Community Players five years ago.
“The rights have been tied up by a Chicago theater for the past three years and after checking every morning for the past year I discovered it was available and I proposed it again,” she said. “We are the first theater in central Indiana to undertake this production.”
The CCP production is set for Aug. 16 to 25 at The Cat, 254 Veterans Way, Carmel.
The Carmel resident said the play centers on a lawyer, Kipps, who is obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over him and his family by the specter of a Woman in Black. He engages a skeptical young actor to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. Only two actors are on stage with lines during the entire play.
“It’s not an easy project to take on for me as the director, and certainly for the actors who do most of the heavy lifting with lines and blocking and special effects,” Raffel said. “I have concentrated on the telling of the story because I think that is what theater is about, but there are scary and surprising elements throughout the show. The Woman in Black appears on stage during the show, but she does not speak. Surprisingly, I had six women audition for the part of the Woman in Black.”
Raffel said the play is set in a Victorian theater in London in the early 20th century.
“The stage is set to show that a show recently closed on the stage, so there are set pieces and furniture sprinkled around the stage left over from the last production,” Raffel said. “The characters use these items to create their story, so the intimacy of The Cat stage is perfect for the show.”
Noblesville resident Earl Campbell plays Kipps. Campbell said he was familiar with the storyline as he read the book “The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill around Halloween several years ago.
Campbell said he enjoys the opportunity to play multiple characters within the course of the story. He said he plays characters from Kipps’ memories as he relays the story to The Actor.
The challenge, Campbell said, is the number of lines he and fellow actor Todd Isaac have on stage.
“That’s a lot of lines for only two actors in a 90-minute show, and it’s not just the lines, but it’s the accent and the dense storytelling and descriptions,” Campbell said. “It’s just not how the majority of people speak on a day-to-day basis, not in Indiana. So, it’s been a lot of line repetition — drilling the lines and imprinting them.”
Campbell said he must perform a different variation of English depending on which character he is playing in the show.
Isaac, a Zionsville resident whose character is titled The Actor, said he was only slightly familiar with the play before auditions, reading the script once right before.
The biggest challenge, Issac said, was presenting horror on the stage.
“It’s not an easy thing to do and I was excited to give this a whirl,” he said. “(I’ve) always been a big fan of horror, whether on stage or screen. It’s always been more difficult on stage.”
Isaac said the type of English spoken in the play isn’t easy to memorize.
“Doesn’t roll off the tongue like other shows,” he said.
This is Isaac’s first appearance with CCP.
“I only moved to the Indianapolis area a few years ago,” he said. “I don’t have a go-to theater company. It always depends on the show.”
Megan Janning, from Brownsburg, appears in the title role. Carmel resident Margot Everitt is the producer.
For more, visit carmelplayers.org.
