Bloomington Playwrights presents holiday production

The Bloomington Playwrights Project will kick off the holiday season with a production of "Merry Elementary," a play that touches on the true meaning of the holiday season, among a number of other themes.\n"Merry Elementary" is the story of a schoolteacher, Ms. Baily, who is trying to convey the meaning of the holidays to her fourth grade class. Meanwhile, she's struggling to recapture her own love of the season in spite of her deep depression -- a result of her mother's death six months earlier. \nOffered guidance by ghosts of her Christmas past, she decides to uphold the Merryville Elementary tradition of performing a holiday play, even though it has been cancelled because of feuding parents of differing religious backgrounds. \nHer students take to the stage wtih enthusiasm.\n"If it weren't for the hard work and dedication of my grandmothers and the teachers who have inspired me over the years, Christmas just wouldn't have been wonderful," said playwright Angeline Larimer, a graduate student. "'Merry Elementary' is my way of saying thanks to the people in my life who have gone out of their way to make the season special."\nThe play is Larimer's first full-length production, but she's not without experience.\nShe won an National Society of Arts and Letters Literary Merit Award in April 2000 for the one-act play, "Life Without Rue." \nAnd she's worked with the BPP before.\nThe theater troupe produced her ten-minute play, "Chestnuts Roasting," in a short play series this May. It was recently filmed by Radio Ridge Productions, a film production company in Bloomington.\nSenior Sandy Hall, a founding member of the University Players and an old hand at the Brown County Playhouse, directs "Merry Elementary." The biggest challenge she said she faced in staging the play was working with the nine child actors. \n"Working with the kids was challenging and difficult but very rewarding," she said. "I actually learned a lot from them in during this process." \nWhile some of the young players have been on stage before, it will be the first time in front of an audience for others.\n"Angeline and her husband did most of the work recruiting the kids that are in the play," Hall said. "They posted notices at local schools, and we found other kids through word of mouth."\n"Merry Elementary" will be performed Thursday - Saturday at the Bloomington Playwrights Project Theater, 312 S. Washington St. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students and seniors. Season subscriptions and group discounts are still available. For more information, visit www.newplays.org.