Just Imagine
2007 · Lincoln Land Community College
Just Imagine was a Fall 2007 Traveling Theatre production created through Ken Bradbury's Lincoln Land Community College dual-credit theatre class, performed by a group of Triopia seniors. As a touring show, the cast carried it to area grade schools, performing for fifth- and sixth-graders and younger children throughout the semester.
The story centers on Alex, a kid who has every gadget and gizmo imaginable but no imagination of his own. Over the course of the play, a girl helps him realize that having cool stuff isn't what matters and leads him to discover his own imagination. The show was built deliberately for young audiences — roughly half of it was improvisation driven by the children watching, with interactive games woven directly into the performance. The students named the piece Just Imagine, a title suggested by Lauren Beal.
Structure and Pieces
- An opening group dance that the whole cast learned and performed
- A ballet solo danced by Brittany DeOrnellas
- A duet song performed by Lauren Beal and Hannah Stephens
- A scene in which the cast bunches together to become Alex's "grain"
- A large improv segment built around audience participation, including a freeze-pose "statue" game, a sounds-with-eyes-closed game, the "yes lets" game, and an "underwear game" that delighted the grade-schoolers
- Background props built by the cast, including plastic jail-bar-style set pieces and hand-print splatter painting
Cast
- Cody Nordsiek — Alex, the boy with no imagination
- Lauren Beal — the girl who helps Alex find his imagination (and sings a duet)
- Brittany DeOrnellas — dancer, ballet solo
- Hannah Stephens — choreographer, dancer, and Lauren's duet partner
- Bruce Kellerman
- Erich Nobis
- Jacob Mattes
- Kayla Gaines
- Rachel Schone
- Wendy Love
Production Notes
The show was rehearsed during the fall 2007 semester, with the cast blocking the play across August and September and beginning grade-school visits in mid-September. Hannah Stephens choreographed the dances, and an outside composer wrote original music for the production, including a "funky Alex song." Rachel Schone was singled out by castmates for her ad-libbed lines in a cafeteria scene.
This page is reconstructed from ten student journals (Brittany, Bruce, Cody, Erich, Hannah, Jacob, Kayla, Lauren, Rachel, and Wendy) and a journal-completion grid spanning August through December 2007. No full script survives in the source folder.
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