Encore Musicals has announced their three-show season for 2023, and for two of the shows they are leaving the traditional walls of RiverPark Center’s Cannon Hall to instead perform at Third Baptist Church.
The local theatre group will kick off their season with Godspell in late April, followed by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music in July and Daddy Long Legs in late October.
Auditions for Godspell are set to begin the third week of February.
Godspell is a musical that follows eight non-Biblical characters as they sing and act out the parables while Jesus narrates them. They do this through games, storytelling techniques, and some comedic relief.
Sound of Music is a musical set in 1938 Austria and follows a nanny to a large family while she is deciding if she wants to become a nun. She falls in love with the children’s father and ultimately the idea of them all being a family. The 1965 movie adaptation starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plumber.
Daddy Long Legs is a musical that follows an orphan and her mysterious benefactor who sends her to college under the agreement he continues to send her a letter once a month describing life outside of the orphanage.
David Roberson, who is an Encore board member and will be the director for Sound of Music, said that they had a few shows to pick from for this year’s showcasing. However, due to moving two of their shows to Third Baptist, they had to opt for less stage-centered productions.
He said that Godspell and Daddy Long Legs don’t need too big of a set.
“Both those shows are very well-suited to be able to be done in a non-theatrical place,” Roberson said.
But when it came to choosing their big summer musical, Encore chose a show that is classic to many families as a movie.
“Sound of Music has always been very popular in this area, so we chose to go ahead and do that,” Roberson said. “We’ve talked about doing it for years, but we just decided this was the year for us to step out and do Sound of Music.”
While on the board for Encore, Roberson also wears a second hat as the minister of music at Third Baptist. He said the church has always been open to the community outside of traditional services, such as hosting the Kentucky Youth Chorale or different sports. Now Encore will be added to that list.
“Our congregation is really open to it. Our pastor is really open to it and they enjoy the shows that we bring in. And we’ve done several different things here in the time that Encore has been around so they’ve grown used to it and they enjoy it,” Roberson said.
