Six actors pair up with six local playwrights to share six unique stories.
Writing Wabaunsee County began in 2023 with a call for local writers to try their hand at playwriting. Six writers - Karen Barron, Rob Meseke, Rhonda Nehring, Wendi Rogers, Emmett Spaw, and Marci Spaw - stepped up to attempt something new. Since then they have been working with the play's guides Beth Wynstra and Mary Pinard, to develop original short plays about life in Wabaunsee County. For creative inspiration and to provide links among the plays, each playwright is using a set of the same "ingredients" that feature local themes and details. Each playwright will use the ingredients in unique ways, yet these ingredients will tie all the plays together.
Those familiar with Volland's past events will remember Wynstra and Pinard from their 2022 play Heart/Roots: Wabaunsee County at Volland. Wynstra and Pinard are professors at Babson College just outside Boston, MA where Wynstra teaches drama and Pinard literature. In Writing Wabaunsee County, the two serve to guide the process from drafts to finished scripts and finally to performance.
The play's actors - Briana Drinkwater, Don Hendricks, Brian Huntzinger, Stephanie Manes, and Blake Thomas - also reside in the Flint Hills. This performance marks the second time the group has performed at the Ruin, where they helped launch the space with Heart/Roots. The sixth actor, Jeremiah Ariaz, lives in Baton Rouge, LA, where he is a professor of photography at Louisiana State University, but he is a familiar face around Alma. Jeremiah was an exhibitor and resident artist at Volland and continues to make regular trip to Kansas to visit family in Great Bend and to continue his photography projects based in Kansas.
