South Valley Civic Theatre’s Limelight is staging “Theatre People,” a farce about a young novelist, his muse and a mansion with thin walls, opening Oct. 30.
The comedy by Paul Slade Smith, who also wrote “The Outsider” and “Unnecessary Farce,” centers on Oliver Adams, a young writer whose novel is being adapted for the stage by Broadway playwrights Charlotte and Arthur Sanders (played by Denee Lewis and Michael Grimm, respectively).
They want the woman who inspired the book, actress Margot Bell (Elyssia Tingley), to star. But Margot has met Oliver only once and has no idea he’s in love with her. When everyone gathers at a mansion, the thin walls reveal more than anyone intended.
Director Tressa Bender described the show as “A love letter to theatre.”
“This is a show about theater people and how they relate to each other, and I am very much a theater person,” Bender said. “So it feels very fitting to be able to do the show. I love how in the end, we do truly believe in the power of theater, as cliche as it may sound.”
SVCT has staged two of Smith’s comedies before, and SVCT board member Elizabeth Mandel said organizers are “confident that the humor of this playwright can really (land).”
Lewis described Charlotte as an incurable optimist who “loves writing scripts that are positive and hopeful, and she loves happy endings.” The role, she said, offers something she thinks audiences want right now.
“I’ve needed it right now,” Lewis said. “When I read this script, I really sought out an opportunity to audition and worked really hard to do a really good audition piece. This was a part I felt I personally needed, and I feel in a lot of ways a lot of people need it. Especially in this time in our lives, we need some positivity out there.”
Oliver, by contrast, is a “hopeless romantic” and “a little naive,” Edejer said.
Tingley said Margot is “really sweet” and caught up in the fantasy that someone so sweet could be interested in her.
The biggest challenge, the cast and director said, is the staging. The Limelight set is arranged with the audience seated in an L shape around the stage, requiring actors to face the corner, angling away from the audiences’ faces on each side and running against an actor’s instinct to face the audience.
“We oftentimes really want to turn toward the person we’re speaking to,” Bender said. “But if you do that here, you give a lot of people your back.”
The smaller space has a payoff, Bender said. “It’s much more intimate. You’re much closer to the action.”
Because the story unfolds in a single room, the production could also invest in the set, Bender said. The set was completed even before rehearsals began, a first in the director’s experience. The crew could put detail into the room that never has to change, and the actors rehearsed with the doors and angles in place from the start, eliminating the guesswork that comes with rehearsing on an empty stage.
When asked what experience he hopes to leave with the audience, Edejer gave a simple answer.
“I think you just have to get ready to laugh,” he said.
“Theatre People” opens 8pm Friday, Oct. 30, at Limelight Theater, 16300 Condit Road. The show also runs at 8pm Nov. 6 and 13 and Saturdays Nov. 7 and 14, with 2:30pm matinees on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 8 and 15. General admission tickets are $32.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit svct.org/2026_people.
