Cover to Cover

Cover to Cover
Theater	Salvage Vanguard Theater
Directed by	Audrey Rachel Sansom Julie Gillis
Produced by	Gnap! Theater Projects
Cast	Alex Dobrenko Amy McKenna Ashlee Medlin Ashley Lowe Audrey Rachel Sansom Emma Holder Eric Heiberg Julie Gillis Kevin Miller Nick Jimenez Nicole Beckley Odin Amador
Run	Oct/Nov 2011

A performance of Cover to Cover.

The Cover to Cover blackboard, showing the book title and the chapter assignments.

Cover to Cover was a longform show inspired by the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys young-adult mystery novels.

Show Structure

Cover to Cover opened with the audience suggestion -- for this show, this meant that an audience member came onstage to pick a book off of an onstage bookshelf. The cast had come up with a collection of plausible-sounding Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys titles, and created a set of book covers with those titles on the spine. Ideally, they got a child in the audience to pick the book, but defaulted to picking an adult theatergoer if necessary.

Each performance of Cover to Cover opened with a classroom scene. One of the directors (Julie or Audrey) would play the schoolteacher, and most of the performers for the night would play middle-school-aged versions of themselves. A few performers sat out this section; they would be either flex players or play the protagonist (in the case of Nancy Drew) or protagonists (in the case of the Hardy Boys). Each performer got a turn as the lead.

The teacher would assign chapters to the students for a book report. Then, each 'chapter' would open with the student working on their book report, and then transition (à la "Typewriter") into that student narrating the next chapter of the story. The teacher would narrate the final chapter of the story -- this chapter would begin and end back in the classroom, and would close the show.

History

After its mainstage run with Gnap!, Cover to Cover had a special benefit show on 12/5/11 for the Austin Children's Shelter.

Media

• Publicity photos by Steve Rogers, with art by Courtney Hopkin.
  • Variant publicity photos.
• Photoset by Steve Rogers of their 10/21/11 performance ("The Unknown Portrait").
• Photoset by Steve Rogers of their 10/22/11 performance ("The Secret of Viking Cove").
• Photoset by Steve Rogers of their 11/4/11 performance ("The Broken Locket").
• Photoset by Steve Rogers of their 11/12/11 performance ("The Mystery at the Masquerade").
• Photoset by Steve Rogers of their 11/19/11 performance.

More Information

• The casting announcement on The Austin Improv Forums.
• The show announcement on The Austin Improv Forums.
• The benefit-show announcement on The Austin Improv Forums.