In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Kentucky Voices series, Danville’s Pioneer Playhouse is bringing back Elizabeth Orndorff’s Death by Darkness and debuting Angela Correll’s Guarded, the sequel to her previously produced Grounded.
“Ten years fly by pretty fast, and we felt like we needed to do something special,” said Managing Director Heather Henson, who grew up in the theater her father, Col. Eben C. Henson, founded in 1950. “We have produced five of Elizabeth’s plays over the years (including The Dillinger Dilemma), so we thought it was appropriate to bring back the crowd’s favorite.”
Death by Darkness opens the playhouse’s 68th season on June 9 and runs through June 24. It’s set in 1842, when cave guide Stephen Bishop takes a party of tourists—including Charles Dickens and his wife—into Mammoth Cave. The comedy, Drinking Habits, about two nuns at the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing, opens June 27 and runs through July 8. Correll’s Guarded, based on her novel of the same name and with a script by Holly Hepp-Galvan and Artistic Director Robby Henson, runs July 11-22. It continues the story of Annie, Jake and Beulah, whom playgoers met in Grounded.
Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery is slated for July 25-Aug. 5, followed by Elvis Has Left the Building (Aug. 18-19). A special comedy weekend with “Dyn-O-Mite” Jimmie Walker closes out the season Aug. 25-26.
Orndorff began her playwriting career after her short story The Bathroom Cleaner won $25,000. “I turned it into a one-act play,” she said of the work that won honors at the Louisville Juneteenth Festival. “I originally wrote Death by Darkness for the International Mystery Writers Festival at the RiverPark Center in Owensboro.” After it took top honors there, Orndorff, who calls Danville home, brought the play from the black-box setting to Pioneer Playhouse.
While a sequel, Guarded is a stand-alone play and is being adapted by a new team of playwrights. “They are two very different plays with very different voices,” said Henson.
Correll based the story on hidden letters found in an old house and a quest to discover more about the letter writers and their memories of World War II. “It’s a Kentucky story, but it is also not just Kentucky—there is Italy, too,” Correll said.
Tickets are $18 for adults and $10 for children. Dinner and a show cost $32 and $17. Shows begin at 8:30 nightly.
For more information or to purchase tickets (859) 236-2747 or 1-866-KYplays or visit pioneerplayhouse.com.