Wichita Community Theatre “The Diviners” explores community, kindness and tragedy
The last time Leo Larson was on stage at Wichita Community Theatre, he played a teenager with autism who solves the murder of a canine in January’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”
Now the 15-year-old is back in a lead role, this time as a young man who becomes afraid of water after an accident that nearly kills his mother and injures him in “The Diviners.”
“There’s not a lot I can do with my age and my height and stuff, so I take what I can get,” the Wichita Northwest student said. “And it’s a good show. It just happens to be someone with the same issues of not being understood by society.”
The trauma from the accident left Larson’s character, Buddy, afraid of water in the Depression-era drama. Larson said there are some comparisons to Christopher, the boy with Asperger’s syndrome he portrayed earlier this year in “Curious Incident.”
“They’re very similar in a lot of ways looking in from the outside,” Larson said. “But once you get in the head of both of them, they’re really different.”
Buddy makes the acquaintance of a disenchanted preacher, played by Trevor Vincent Farnay, in “The Diviners,” written by Jim Leonard Jr. The preacher becomes Buddy’s mentor and teacher, and the townspeople’s reaction to Buddy changes.
“It highlights some issues that I think we have with religion, sometimes when people get overzealous and they think they know what God wants for them,” Abri Geist-Dennis, the show’s director, said. “That’s kind of why I gravitated toward it.”
This is Geist-Dennis’ second directing role for Wichita Community Theatre, following the musical “A Dog’s Life” in 2017.
Geist-Dennis is staging “The Diviners” in the round, a rare situation for Wichita Community Theatre.
“It gives the audience members different perspectives, wherever they sit,” she said. “The actors are real close up to the audience, so you get to see all the emotions on their faces.”
Blocking the play, Geist-Dennis said, was a challenge for herself and the actors, so no one’s back is to the audience for too long.
“It is a little difficult, I assume, for the actors to be so close to the audience and having to be that much in character and that intense on stage,” she said.
Lily Shaw, also 15, plays Buddy’s sister, Jennie Mae.
She said the message of the play is “just finding friendship in everyone, even if they’re more different or if they appear different, just to reach out to who you can, especially those who struggle a lot – whether it’s mentally or physically or just struggle making friends.”
The director and young actors say the play runs the gamut of emotions, even some unexpected humor that comes out of the characters.
“It is a very funny show and very heartbreaking at times,” Larson said. “To be able to bounce from one to the other is the hardest part.”
“The Diviners”
When: Through June 16, performances at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays
Where: Wichita Community Theatre, 258 N. Fountain
Tickets: $15, $13 for military/seniors/students, by calling 316-686-1282