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Salem’s Daughter Returns to The Spotlight Playhouse for Fall Run 👻

Written by

Chad Hembree

Just in time for spooky season, the Spotlight Playhouse and the Bluegrass Players present Salem’s Daughter. I have been looking forward to seeing this one finally get its chance on our stage, because this is actually the second time we have scheduled the show at Spotlight.

The first time was during the COVID year. The production was on the schedule, but the theater shut down before the show could be performed. So this is not a third run, and it is not a revival of a production people saw here before. For us, it is more like finishing something we started years ago.

The play is by Craig Sodaro, from Pioneer Drama Service, and this production is directed by Dana Hendren. It runs September 18 through 27 at The Spotlight Playhouse, 214 Richmond Road in Berea.

There is an important thing to understand about the structure of Salem’s Daughter, because it is easy to describe the play incorrectly.

How the play is actually built 🎪

It does not take place in 1691.

There is a very short opening scene in which we hear a judge condemn a witch. That brief prologue establishes the history hanging over the story, and then the play jumps forward. Act One is about teenagers. Act Two is about those same characters as adults, roughly a decade later.

That structure is one of the things I find most interesting about the show.

We are watching the same people grow up, and then we get to see what happened to them. The decisions they make when they are young do not simply disappear when they graduate, move away, get jobs and become adults. The past keeps showing up.

The same actors, a decade apart 🎭

That gives the actors a real challenge, too.

They are not playing two unrelated characters. They have to play the same person at two different points in life. In the first act, they have to find the teenager. In the second act, they have to show us the adult that teenager became.

That takes more than changing a hairstyle or putting on different clothes.

An actor has to think about how a person carries themselves at seventeen compared with nearly thirty. How do they speak? What has changed in their confidence? What has not changed? What old fears are still sitting underneath the surface? What happens when somebody has spent ten years trying to put something behind them, only to have it come back?

Those are fun questions for actors to work on, and they give the audience something to watch for beyond the mystery itself.

The mystery, without giving it away 🌙

And there is a mystery.

The show has a super awesome twist, and I am not going to tell you what it is. I would rather have you sit in the theater and try to figure it out along with the characters. The story keeps giving you reasons to wonder what is really happening and what pieces of the past matter to what is happening now.

That is the kind of suspense I enjoy in theater. You are not sitting there waiting for somebody to jump out from behind a door every five minutes. You are watching people, listening to what they say, noticing what they do not say, and trying to put the pieces together.

The audience gets to play along.

Why this belongs in a community theater 👻

That makes Salem’s Daughter a particularly good fit for a community theater audience. Theater works best for me when the people onstage are giving us a story that we can take apart together. You watch a character make a choice, and you start wondering what you would have done. You notice a relationship changing. You hear a line that means one thing early in the show and something very different later.

And because the characters begin as teenagers and return as adults, we get to watch those consequences accumulate.

That is also part of why I like the partnership between the Bluegrass Players and the Spotlight Playhouse.

The Bluegrass Players bring the acting talent. The Spotlight Playhouse provides the venue and the technical direction. Those are two different pieces of putting on a good production, and when we combine them, we can give local actors a place to do serious work without having to reinvent the whole theater operation for every show.

I have always believed that a community theater needs room for more than children’s shows and musicals. We love our youth productions at Spotlight, and they are a huge part of what we do. But grown-ups need stories, too.

There is something satisfying about coming into a theater on a Friday or Saturday night, sitting down in the dark and watching a story that is written for an older audience. You get to leave the everyday world outside for a couple of hours and let somebody else scare you, surprise you or make you question what you think you know.

That feels especially right in the fall.

Around here, spooky season tends to bring out a certain kind of enthusiasm. People like ghost stories, old legends, strange happenings and anything that gives us a reason to wonder what might be hiding just out of sight. Salem’s Daughter gives grown-up theatergoers a chance to enjoy that atmosphere without turning the whole evening into a haunted-house experience.

It is a mystery on a stage, played by local actors, in a room where the audience is close enough to see the actors working.

That is a pretty good combination.

If you go 🎓

Salem’s Daughter is recommended for ages 13 and up. The show runs for two weekends, September 18 through 27, with performances at 8:00 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 4:00 p.m. Sundays.

I am glad we get to bring this one back to the schedule after all these years. Sometimes a show gets its moment, and sometimes circumstances get in the way. This one never got its first moment.

Now it gets another chance.

Come sit with us at the Spotlight Playhouse and see if you can figure out what is going on before the characters do. Just remember, I am not telling you the twist.

Upcoming Community and Theater Events 🎭

Tickets and info for all shows: thespotlightplayhouse.com

Sources 📚

About the Author ✍

Chad Hembree serves as the Executive Director of Spotlight Acting School, The Spotlight Playhouse, and Spotlight Performing Arts. A resident of Berea, Kentucky, and a former member of the Berea Council, he has spent decades working in community theater, arts education, and local journalism. Since 1995, he has operated BereaOnline.com, focusing on local news, civic issues, and stories that highlight community collaboration and grassroots efforts across Madison County.

This article originally appeared on BereaOnline.com.

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