Mosley Street Melodrama playwrights huddle up for ‘Forgetting the Titans’
Right on time for NFL players to report to training camp, Mosley Street Melodrama goes to the gridiron with its newest, “Forgetting the Titans,” which opens this weekend.
Longtime writing collaborators Ryan Schafer and Molly Tully said they were ready for a sports-themed melodrama.
“A lot of times sports is incorporated in the show, but it wasn’t the main focus,” Tully said. “So we thought it would be fun, something new we hadn’t seen before.”
“We were trying to think of some different ideas and really there are a lot of good football movies and there are a lot of not-good football movies in the ether,” Schafer said. “It felt like there was some fun physicality we could do to bring football to the stage. You don’t really see that in general, but we thought Mosley would be a really good place for that comedy to kind of play out.”
In “Forgetting,” the Ta Town High School Titans are enjoying a surprisingly successful football season thanks to their quarterback, Brett Starr, but face a state championship game against the Fancy Place High Bulldog Dragons and their morally questionable coach.
Sports played an influence on both of the playwrights.
“I have a feeling we came up with the idea while the Chiefs were playing,” Tully said. “It was the first year I had sat and watched every single Chiefs game, so I’m sure that had something to do with it.”
Schafer has taken Tully to a football game of his favorite team, the Green Bay Packers.
“It’s been in my life for a very long time,” he said. “My dad is a former sportscaster in Wichita (KSNW veteran Clark Schafer), so there was a lot of fun things we try to incorporate.”
Their collaboration process is both long-distance and personal.
“We get a shared Google Doc going and meet up once a week/every couple of weeks,” Schafer said. “We flesh out the scene breakdown and what the characters are and how the story can unfold, then we go in and write the actual script itself.
“We meet in person, so we know if we made the other person laugh,” Tully added. “Then we lock it in.”
Schafer added, “I really like writing with someone else because you can workshop the jokes, you can workshop the scenes as you’re writing it so you can get a feel of what the show’s going to be – visually and creatively and comedically – a lot better writing with a partner.”
The two said they try not to write for a specific performer as a certain character.
“There’s so much the actors will bring – an additional flavor, style or interpretation – that amplifies it,” Schafer said.
Among the performers is Haylee Couey, a rookie at Mosley Street but a veteran of Roxy’s Downtown and Prairie Pines Playhouse.
“Every actor in town that I know all want an opportunity to perform at Mosley, because you don’t really audition. It kind of feels like you’ve made it in Wichita when you get cast at Mosley,” she said. “It’s such a specific artform where they trust that you can do that.”
Couey said that even though she had worked with “Titans” cast members including Kyle Vespestad, Briley Meek, John Keckeisen and Scott Noah, she initially found it intimidating working with them as a whole.
“They’re all so quick-witted and so smart and they’ve done this for so long,” said Couey, who’s playing the high school’s head cheerleader and quarterback’s girlfriend. “It’s a little scary but they make me feel really comfortable.”
‘FORGETTING THE TITANS’
When: July 25 to Sept. 6; 7:50 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays (doors open at 6, dinner 6:15-7:30); 1:50 p.m. Sundays (doors at noon, lunch 12:15-1:30); Saturday matinees on Aug. 23 and 30, with same hours as Sunday
Where: Mosley Street Melodrama, 234 N. Mosley
Tickets: $39-$42 for dinner and show, $27-$31 for show only, from mosleystreet.com or 316-263-0222