The Tale of Hannah Banana
2016 · Lincoln Land Community College
The Tale of Hannah Banana was the fall 2016 Traveling Theatre touring show created by Ken Bradbury and his Lincoln Land Community College theatre class. A cowboy-themed musical comedy built around a girl named Hannah Banana, it was the year's original production written specifically for the class to perform on the road for elementary-school audiences across west-central Illinois. The cast filled out the Old West with a sprawl of characters — the no-nonsense Pokey, the swaggering Captain Winner ("the All-American Hero") and his Horsemen, Handsome Hank and his trio of Singing Cows, and Billie Jean, the Queen of Things, with her crew of Rappers — a mix calculated to draw giggles from kindergarteners in the front row.
Ken's journals trace the show's invention from scratch. As late as mid-August 2016 he wrote that he was "completely clueless as to a traveling theatre idea." The cowboy concept arrived over Mexican food at El Rancherito on August 17, when he met with students Kyler, Hannah, Brenan, and Abby to chew over ideas; "somewhere midway through the meal someone came up the idea of cowboys. . . and I think we have a concept now." The next day page one was written, "a girl named Hannah Banana. The name alone should be worth a couple of giggles." He noted this play was "a hard one to write. . . much harder than last year where the superheroes sort of wrote their own story," but credited the class's enthusiasm — as he began his 45th year of teaching — for carrying it forward.
Cast
- Hannah Banana — Hannah Werries
- Pokey — Katia Janes
- Nevada — Courtney Privia
- Montana — Bailey Littleton
- Handsome Hank — Kyler Miller
- Amos — Mathew Thurman
- Captain Winner, the All-American Hero — Brenan Pool
- Silas — Lane Rahe
- Boone — Marcus Blair
- Blaine — Kira Sayre
- Arizona — Alexis Lucas
- Kade — Kamryn Portwood
- Blaze — Rachel Skillet
- Billie Jean, the Queen of Things — Abby Link
- Hank's Singing Cows — Kamryn, Rachel, Alexis
- Captain Winner's Horsemen — Matt, Lane, Rachel, Abby, Marcus, Brenan, Kamryn, Kira, Alexis
- Billie Jean's Rappers — Elite: Kyler, Cream: Alexis, Choice: Kamryn
- Old Bucky — TBA
Production Notes
The show was developed in fall semester 2016 through the class's usual blend of improvisation, singing, and devising, then taken on the road as the LLCC Traveling Theatre tour. Performances ran across four touring days in December 2016 — December 1, 2, 8, and 9 — playing roughly sixteen elementary schools and parochial schools in the Jacksonville, Illinois area, including North Jacksonville, Franklin, Gard School (Beardstown), Trinity, Roodhouse, Murrayville, Lincoln School, Our Saviors, Washington, Westfair, South Jacksonville, Triopia, Winchester, Meredosia, Eisenhower, and Salem Lutheran. A "Friends and Family" preview was held the evening of November 30.
Props purchases for the production reflected its Old West and barnyard cast: adjustable plush stick horses (sourced from Walmart and Amazon), a two-man horse costume, latex cow heads and a cow costume for Hank's Singing Cows, a Western hat, a deluxe first-place rosette, and — for the title character — an artificial banana. Total spending on the Traveling Theatre class props came to about $347.
The 2016–17 class numbered fourteen students: Marcus Blair, Abby Link, Alexis Lucas, Brenan Poole, Katia Janes, Bailey Littleton, Kyler Miller, Kamryn Portwood, Courtney Privia, Lane Rahe, Kira Sayre, Rachel Skillet, Mathew Thurman, and Hannah Werries.