The Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” will be performed as the Blue Ridge Community Theater’s main stage production this holiday season.
The play will run November 21 through December 15 and curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Sunday.
The theater has performed this play before but Production Manager Joseph Nicolella said this year’s play is new and improved with a brand new set design and theater effects.
Patrons can expect the use of fog machines, special lights that looks like water, snow machines and Greek inspired sets called “periaktos.”
A periaktos is a tall, three-sided wall that rotates and each side depicts another scene, like a porch or a store front or a house. Theater representatives brought in a volunteer team of muralists to paint the periaktoi (multiple periaktos) and a large Blue Ridge mountain inspired landscape to have as a background mural.
In the play, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” theater representatives say, George Bailey dreams of escape and adventure but instead finds himself bound by obligation and duty. His guardian angel descends on Christmas Eve to save him from despair and remind him that he has a wonderful life. The play was written by Phillip Grecian and it is directed by Debbi Friend and Chris Kincaid.
Also new this year is a slightly different script with a custom created prayer sequence in the beginning to replicate the opening scene of the movie version. The theater will use multiple microphones and the surround sound system to recreate the many voices encouraging George Bailey.
Nicolella said, “It symbolizes that even when you’re at your lowest point, there are still all these people that care about you that you may not necessarily even immediately think of like acquaintances or people who you may have thought forgot about you.”
Call 706-632-9191 for tickets and information.