Copious Notes

Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kimberly Shaw photographed in May in the theater's new offices in the Distillery District. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Actors Guild of Lexington Artistic Director Richard St. Peter has told the theater’s board that he will be leaving by the end of the 2009-10 season to pursue a doctorate degree in theater.

St. Peter declined to say where he will be going to graduate school, as he has not finalized those plans with the school. He did say that his departure is not a reaction to Actors Guild’s recent financial troubles which came to a head in June when LexArts declined to grant the theater an allocation for general operating funds.

“I want to stress as much as I can that this is not a bad thing, not death or disaster,” St. Peter said Saturday night. “It’s just the next thing.”

St. Peter said he is not leaving immediately and expects to negotiate a departure time with the theater’s board, when a succession plan is in place.

Actors Guild board president Jennifer Miller said that St. Peter’s decision was of his own volition. She said she had been aware he was contemplating pursuing a doctorate, but was still surprised when he informed her of his plans this weekend.

She said the theater’s board has not had a chance to meet and discuss searching for a successor, but she expected it would be a little while before that effort starts.

“We don’t want to make rapid decisions, we want to make the right decisions,” Miller said.

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Allie Darden is Ouisa in Studio Players' production of "Six Degrees of Separation" at the Carriage House Theatre in March and April. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Lexington actor Allie Darden will get to make her New York debut after all.

Darden will be heading to the Big Apple this summer to participate in a production of Brian Hampton’s Checking In at the Midtown International Theatre Festival July 15-Aug. 1.  She will be reprising the role of Brooke, the part she originated in the world premier production of Checking In at Actors Guild of Lexington in 2005. Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter will be directing the production. It will be St. Peter’s New York directing debut.

Darden traveled to New York earlier this year for a reading of the play, which is about a group of high school friends who gather years after graduation at a hotel room in Atlantic City. She was invited to join the production when the Midtown Theatre Festival picked it up, but had to wait for permission from her employer to take the time off to go participate in rehearsals and the performances.

Darden’s most recent role in Lexington was Ouisa in Studio Players’ production of Six Degrees of Separation. She is currently working in On the Verge’s production of Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest, which opens Sunday at the Hunt-Morgan House.

The poster from AGL's original "Checking In" production.

Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which had its world premier production at Actors Guild of Lexington in 2005, will be presented at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City this summer. Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter will direct the production, which will be performed five times between July 13 and Aug. 3 at the 99-seat June Havoc Theatre in the Abington Theatre Arts Complex.

Checking In, which centers on the reunion of a group of Virginia high school friends at an Atlantic City hotel, had a reading in New York in January featuring Hampton in the role of Ben and Lexington actor Allie Darden as Brooke, the roles they originated in Lexington.  Brian will play Ben in the New York production, and Darden has been offered her role but has not announced whether she’ll be able to take it.

In a 2004 photo, Tiffiney Kavanaugh, Adam Luckey, Michelle Czepyha and Rubin Thomas rehearse for Actors Guild's production of My Way, led by Peggy Taphorn. Taphorn is now director of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., where Luckey is playing Hamlet.

Two Actors Guild of Lexington productions from past seasons are getting some road work.

AGL artistic director Richard St. Peter and actor Adam Luckey have been in Sanford, N.C., recently to bring St. Peter’s high-tech production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the stage of the Temple Theatre. The production, with Luckey reprising his performance in the title role, opened Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 25. The Temple’s producing director is Peggy Taphorn, who directed Actors Guild’s productions of My Way in 2004 and Quilters in 2005.

Allie Darden in 2007. Herald-Leader photo by Mark Cornelison.

To the north, Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which received its world premier production at Actors Guild in the Spring of 2005, will be read Monday night at the Blackbird Studio Theatre in New York. Heading to Gotham for the reading is Lexington actor Allie Darden, who will be reprising her role as Brooke and Hampton, as Ben. The play is about a group of old high school friends from Virginia who reunite for a weekend at an Atlantic City hotel. One of the friends has been harboring a secret that threatens the group’s friendship. Filling out the reading’s cast will be several Broadway and television actors.