STAUNTON, Va. (AP) - After years of back-and-forth traveling to see her long-distance love in Maryland, Rebekah Bradley Ray and her husband, Noah Ray, began a life temporarily nestled in Harrisonburg, where they dreamed of a future set in Staunton. When Bradley Ray was invited to join the American Shakespeare Center last year, they eagerly packed with minds fixated on the limitless possibilities of their new future.
Shortly after nestling into their new life, the pandemic shattered all visions of productions and shows for the foreseeable future, but the duo were hardly ready to give up on their newfound theater family.
“When we saw all the productions we were going to be in canceled left and right, we were trying to figure out something to do, something because we were all dying on the inside,” Bradley Ray said.
Presented with the options, the two decided it made the most sense to attempt a small-cast drama, so the couple turned to “The Country Girl” and began working to bring the show to life through ShenanArts.
Based on a ’50s classic that originally starred Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and William Holden, “The Country Girl” is a drama about an actor who chases his 15 minutes of fame with booze, which ultimately wears his relationships and mental health threadbare.
Ray said he wanted to direct the forgotten classic to share the message of the dangers of co-dependent relationships and addiction.
“When you’re at home, you have nothing to do but think or consume other media, so I hope it brings to light other ideas of what a co-dependent relationship looks like,” he said. “You need a basis of what to look out for and give you the incorrect ways of dealing with things as much as the correct ways of dealing with them.”
Gathering a small community of theater veterans, the couple began planning a virtual translation of theater where performers could continue practicing their craft and providing audiences with live entertainment.
Bradley Ray said the seven-part cast ran through the first half of rehearsals virtually and began meeting in-person to bring the show together, but in-person rehearsals and filming have all been conducted as safely as possible.
“We started going scene by scene all over Zoom, fleshing out characters, reading it aloud, figuring out where we were doing and what we wanted to communicate in each scene,” Bradley Ray said. “We made sure everyone was wearing masks at all times, including actors. We have hand sanitizers.”
As a Dayton native, Bradley Ray has years of experience in Valley theaters, such as the Schultz Theatre Off Broadway Players and Oak Grove Theater.
Harrisonburg resident Kasey Lohr is a fellow performer who met Bradley Ray when cast together in Schultz Theatre’s 2017 production of “Nunsense” and was set to perform alongside her in Memento, Mori, and Co. murder mystery shows before the pandemic. Lohr said she is not surprised that Bradley Ray is behind the Valley’s first community theater production since the pandemic.
“She is very much like - if something needs to be done, she’ll do it kind of person. Being creative and being artistic and putting it out into the world is such a big part of who she is,” Lohr said.
While drama productions are often acknowledged as a less popular production style, Ray said he hopes other theaters can look to this show as encouragement to produce and introduce stories the community may not know but are important regardless.
“They’re not big ticket sellers like musicals are. They are far and few between in the community theater scene, and we all wanted to do it, so this is creating the opportunity for us,” he said. “I hope it inspires directors to dig into shows they want to do.”
Lohr said the Valley’s art community is excited to watch the final result after months without shows, and she encourages people to tune in so more theaters adapt and adopt similar alternatives.
“I really hope that people support it and stream it because this may be the way that theater goes for the foreseeable future,” Lohr said. “If people appreciate art and are using art to get through the stress of COVID, then they have to support it in any form, so hopefully they support it in this form.”
Bradley Ray said the price for a single streaming ticket is cheaper than most in-person general admission tickets, and she hopes the lower price makes the show more accessible for audiences.
“The Country Girl” will be available for streaming Oct. 16 to 18. Tickets for the show can be purchased online for $10, and when the show is released, ticket holders will have 48 hours to stream the production.
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