Take a little Shakespearean-style comedy, add mistaken identities, love triangles, a dash of drag and a nonbinary hero, and then turn up the volume with the music of the Go-Go’s.

That’s Head Over Heels, the latest production from the Brandon Actors Troupe, onstage this weekend at Otter Valley Union High School.

For director Jeff Hull, the production is another step in building something he believes Brandon has been missing: a place where people who love theater can keep doing it after high school, without having to leave town or wait for a professional stage to come calling.

“We like to foster those who love theater to have a chance to do that with more fun and less stress,” Hull said. “This particular show was a good opportunity to bring younger people into the group with the adult actors, so they can see the opportunities that exist past high school.”

Hull knows something about those opportunities. He has taught and directed theater for 29 years, including over two decades leading Otter Valley’s international award-winning Walking Stick Theatre program. The program has taken students to regional and New England drama festivals and as far as Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Now he is helping build a theatrical home for those students after graduation.

Filling a hole in Brandon’s theater community

The Brandon Actors Troupe is only in its second season as an independent 501(c)(3) organization, but its roots run deep in Brandon.

The troupe grew out of a collaboration involving Hull, a former student and Hull’s son, also a former student. Brandon once had another community theater company, but when that organization folded, Hull wanted to fill that void.

The result is BAT: Brandon Actors Troupe, which brings together Hull’s former Otter Valley students and adults he has worked with through the Paramount Players in Rutland, where he has directed several productions. 

Head Over Heels brings together a 19-member cast, five musicians, and a five-person crew to explore heart-opening themes of acceptance and joy.

“It’s just fun,” Hull said.

For Hull, fun is a big part of the point. Theater can be demanding and intimidating, particularly for young actors who are accustomed to the structure and expectations of school productions.

BAT offers another route.

Elizabethan romance meets the Go-Go’s

Head Over Heels is an unusual beast.

The show is a juke-box musical, pairing a story drawn from Sir Philip Sidney’s late-16th-century The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia with songs by the Go-Go’s. 

For Cam Wescott, Otter Valley’s band teacher and the production’s music director, that collision was part of the attraction. Wescott didn’t know much of the Go-Go’s catalog when the project began. Then the music won him over.

“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I like the way the music is juxtaposed with the verse — it feels like a rock concert until the scenes start and then it feels like Shakespearean comedy.”

The production features a five-piece live band, which is different from a lot of musical theater that features recorded music.

And Wescott particularly enjoys watching what happens when the actors and band finally come together.

“My favorite time is when the actors get to sing with the band live,” he said. “It’s so fun to watch their faces light up with all their work and preparation becoming the moment they realize, ‘I’m here and I’m having a good time.’”

Love Is Love: Love in Arcadia is complicated

The mash-up extends beyond the music. The plot has the familiar ingredients of a Shakespearean romantic comedy — people fall for the wrong people, people disguise themselves, people misunderstand one another, and people discover things about themselves along the way — but it takes them in a distinctly different, contemporary direction.

Hull describes the production as “very LGBTQ forward.”The central character, Pythio, the Oracle of Delphi, is nonbinary; the role was originated on Broadway by Peppermint, the first openly transgender woman to originate a principal role on Broadway. 

Hull said the character initially appears to be a drag queen but is revealed as nonbinary as the story progresses. For him, that isn't simply a theatrical gimmick; it is at the heart of the story.

“It’s about accepting love from anyone no matter who they are or how they identify,” he said. “What I hope audiences will get is the message to be more accepting,” he said. “Head Over Heels reflects what’s happening and what could be possible. And it’s a good time while it’s happening.”

From Grease to Arcadia

For Laurie Bertrand, who plays Queen Gynecia, theater has always been about the chance to step outside yourself for a while.

Gynecia is a queen, a wife, and a mother of two daughters who has become somewhat lost inside all those roles.

“She’s comfortable but has lost herself,” Bertrand said. “By the end of the show she comes to find herself again.”

Bertrand understands that feeling of self-discovery through her own experience with theater. Her first stage appearance was as a Pink Lady in her high school production of Grease. Years later, when the Brandon Actors Troupe formed an adult company, she got hooked all over again. She has now appeared in every production.

“I just like becoming someone else,” she said. “You get to inhabit another existence.”

That’s what she hopes audiences will get from the show, too.

“I just want them to forget about life for a while and fall into Arcadia and have a great time.”

BAT plans to continue creating opportunities for local performers. Auditions are open to the community and announced through the troupe’s social media pages, and a children’s production is planned for January or February.

The Go-Go’s have the beat. Arcadia has the romance and the fancy language. The actors have a story to tell.

And Brandon has a musical theater troupe.

The Brandon Actors Troupe presents Head Over Heels at Otter Valley Union High School, opening Friday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m., with additional performances Saturday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 20 at 2 p.m.

The production is directed by Jeff Hull, with Cam Wescott as music director, and presented by the Brandon Actors Troupe.

Tickets available online for a discount or at the door for $20.00.