New stage-reading theater group to perform ‘Pygmalion’ on Sept. 28

FAIRFIELD – A group of local thespians is putting on a dessert theater staged reading of the play “Pygmalion” in Fairfield on Saturday, Sept. 28.

The event will be held at 7 p.m. that day in Morning Star Studio on the east side of the square. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. This is the first in a series of staged readings to be held monthly called the “Reading Railroad Theatre” series.

Tickets to the event are pay-what-you-can with a $12 minimum. Money raised will go toward the production of a short film by Richard Morell called “Romance Cleanup in Aisle 5,” which he hopes to film over a two-day span in November inside the grocery store Everybody’s Whole Foods. Morell said he has received a state grant to produce the film, and his screenplay for it won the award for Best Screenplay for an Unproduced Film – Under 20 Pages from the Iowa Motion Picture Association.

Morell is a 2023 graduate of MIU’s David Lynch Master’s in Fine Arts film program. He’s been writing plays and screenplays for the last 30 years, and now he hopes to try his hand at filmmaking. In the meantime, he’s become engrossed in the area’s theater scene, having performed in Fairfield Area Community Theatre’s “Oliver!” in June, and FACT’s “The Thanksgiving Play” last November.

“After both plays, audience members started talking to me about getting more theater in this town,” Morell said. “I had this idea to start a stage reading series to tap local actors and put on plays once a month, like the Thirsty Word writers do. We would open it up to local playwrights who want to have their works read.”

Morell said he was inspired to launch “Reading Railroad Theatre” after a Thirsty Word event a few months ago that featured short plays and screenplays. His screenplay was one of those scripts in the reading, which attracted a huge crowd.

“Café Paradiso was packed for that event, with standing room only,” he recalled.

He decided he wanted to create a theater group that would perform stage readings, which would not be as involved as a full play.

“The actors would have scripts in hand,” he said. “And because we weren’t doing a full production, we could do three rehearsals for the stage reading, and do it on a monthly basis to introduce Fairfield to more theater.”

The plan for this inaugural show will be to do a dessert theater, like FACT did with The Thanksgiving Play, serving dessert before the show while a silent cake and pie auction goes on in the back of Morning Star Studio.

“I have no idea how many people will come,” Morell said. “If we build it, they will come.”

Morell said he chose the George Barnard Shaw play “Pygmalion” because it is now in the public domain, plus it’s a well-known work which was also the inspiration for the film “My Fair Lady.” He’s hopeful that he’ll be able to raise enough money from the event to obtain the roughly $5,000 he needs to make his film. Once it’s produced, he plans to submit it to film festivals in Dubuque, Des Moines, Sioux City and Cedar Rapids.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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