Constellation's 'Alex Gold: Stuck on Repeat' is a choose-your-own-adventure on stage

The play "Alex Gold: Stuck on Repeat" follows a sixth grader named Alex as he repeats the sixth grade. Alex's overactive imagination brings the audience through crazy scenarios in the show and even allows them to help Alex make decisions. Alex will ask the audience about what he should do in certain scenarios and the audience will get to vote for what Alex does next. The show will be on stage at the Waldron Arts Center from April 26 - May 12 and tickets are $18 for children and $28 for adults.

The director of the show, Jack McCarthy, said the show will have a different combination of scenes every night since the audience picks what happens in the show. He said the goal of the show is to push the boundaries of what the actors can do on stage and make the audience feel a part of the action.

“It is very choose your own adventure, so people can see the show multiple times and they’ll probably see different scenes every time,” McCarthy said. “The moral and artistic vision of the show is that the choices you make and how you use your imagination can determine what's going to happen.”

McCarthy is based out of Los Angeles and does a lot of interactive and immersive theater. He said the cast is rehearsing all of the different options so they are prepared for whatever may happen.

“There are some improvised moments like when we ask the audience for suggestions on what Alex should do or what words to incorporate that the actors will fully improvise,” McCarthy said. “We rehearse the individual scenes but then we also do improv training and do improv work so we can roll with whatever we get from the audience.”

Since McCarthy is based out of L.A., the audition process was held over Zoom and included aspects of a traditional theater audition with an improv component. He said he wanted to see how well actors could think on their feet and adapt to random situations since that's a big part of the show.

McCarthy said they may rehearse some scenes for the show that never get acted out depending on how the audience votes each night.

“We have to be prepared for anything,” McCarthy said. “The show is about 60-65 minutes long but the full script is closer to 2 hours long.”

Due to all of the different scenes that potentially could happen in the play, McCarthy said they have set pieces that work for multiple scenes and some of the actors will be playing multiple roles to make the scene changes as easy as possible.

“A lot of times Alex will launch into his imagination and a bully will no longer be a bully, but they’ll turn into a super villain he has to battle,” McCarthy said. “The set is a unit set which means all the main pieces stay on the whole time, but we have a lot of blocks that we use and build to become different things.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Constellation to stage 'Alex Gold: Stuck on Repeat' April 26-May 12