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The music of that old-time religion

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

Evan Sullivan is working the edge of the stage at the Carriage House Theatre, trying to whip an imaginary crowd into a spirited rendition of the classic hymn Bringing in the Sheaves.

”Miss Mary Franklin,“ he exhorts an invisible congregant, ”Rejoice!“

There, director Michael Grice, holding his script for Smoke on the Mountain and a tattered yellow note pad, steps from behind the music stand and onto the stage to move some actors around and give some direction. He tells Sullivan to bring even more zeal to his performance.

”You're the music director,“ he says, ”You're leading them.“

At a rehearsal break, Sullivan, whom we last saw as Professor Harold Hill in Paragon Music Theatre's production of The Music Man, says Smoke is a very different kind of musical.

”In a lot of ways, it's a free-for-all,“ Sullivan says. ”It's a presentational setting, and the audience is the congregation.“

That would be a congregation in a Baptist church in a small town in North Carolina in 1938. The church is hosting the Sanders Family, touring musicians the pastor has invited in an effort to bring the congregation into a modern worship style. Anyone who's been in a church that tried to modernize its worship can appreciate the inherent conflict in this show.

But the point really is rousing e_SDHprenditions of old-time hymns such as I'll Fly Away.

Grice, director of the University of Kentucky's Singletary Center for the Arts, says he wasn't initially enthusiastic about the show, by Alan Bailey and Connie Ray, when he first heard about it while working in Northern California.

”A friend of mine kept encouraging me to see it, and I finally went to a ­production,“ Grice says. ”I didn't like the production, but I thought the music was great.“

Grice eventually produced his own version in California, and it seemed like a good place to start when he ­decided to launch a theater company in ­Lexington. He calls it Lexington Stage Co.

Before leaving Kentucky in 1989, Grice had been part of several entrepreneurial theater efforts, such as Theatre Bagatelle and Theatre Down Under, which would, in a roundabout way, eventually launch ­Actors Guild of Lexington.

When he returned to Lexington in 2005, Grice was interested in getting involved in the local theater scene, which he initially did by acting in the 2006 ­Lexington Shakespeare Festival and ­serving as artistic director of SummerFest in 2007.

But the Lexington Stage Co. brings back that old artistic entrepreneurial spirit. Grice says the company will produce in a variety of ­spaces, trying to use the lack of a home base as an ­advantage in selecting plays for the venues and the ­available actors.

Grice says he and his producing partner, Nathan Hohman, decided, ”Let's ­produce plays that we want to do, that we think would have an audience. It might be a comedy musical one moment, a political drama the next.“

Smoke seemed like an ­ideal fit for Lexington, though Grice says it took nearly four months to cast because much of the ensemble has to play instruments.

Many instrumentalists Grice talked to about the play had club and restaurant gigs on weekend nights and were loathe to give them up for the three-weekend play.

But Grice eventually filled the stage with actors and musicians.

”It's fun to help these actors become musicians and musicians become actors,“ Grice says.

It's an interaction that takes the director back in time.

”I like that era before electronics came and pulled us all apart,“ Grice says. ”In this day, entertainment was people gathering on their porch with their instruments and being together.

”That's the feeling we want people to have from this show.“