To ‘Bee’ or not to be: Empty Space brings popular musical to fresh venue
How do you spell flexibility? The Empty Space didn’t need any help in that department when finding the venue for its latest production, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”
The theater, still awaiting the approval of permits for its Woodmere Drive location, which it moved to in January, has continued to present shows at other venues around town.
This time around it heads to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Kern County’s Armstrong Youth Center, an appropriate choice for a musical that focuses on a sextet of tween spelling champs gearing up for the contest of a lifetime.
“It’s been a challenge to keep pushing through and making theatre happen, but getting to perform the show in a real-life gymnasium (the show itself is set in a high school gym) is the best found space opportunity I could ask for,” director Emily Coughenour
wrote in an email.
“Zane Smith and Marc Caputo with Boys & Girls Clubs have been so gracious to help us make the best out of a difficult situation, going above and beyond to support our artists throughout this process, and I am so grateful that everything worked out with the location. It is really a fun, authentic, immersive way to
watch this show.”
Coughenour said she’s loved the show since seeing it as a teen, relating to soft-spoken speller Olive.
“The show is a testament to the resilience of children, but to me, it’s a lesson for parents,” she wrote of the show. “Your kids need you; they need to know that they are enough, just the way they are.”
Nicole Heasley, Dakota Seaton, April Toelle, Howard-Rick Obando, Stevie McNabb and Connor Deming play the ambitious youth. The cast also features Bethany Rowlee, David Allen
Alvarez, Phil Beglin, Cy Williams and Marina Gradowitz.
The director said she’s worked to incorporate “every silly, crazy, sweet idea that the cast and crew came up with” and she is excited for audiences to see this show run.
“This little cast has persevered through unimaginably difficult circumstances. Scheduling issues, illness after illness, a venue change, having to pitch in with setting up and tearing down tech every night, but despite it all, they are perfection. They’ve worked so hard, and they deserve for everyone to see it.”