By Sandy Foster
Tribune Reporter
Lee’s Summit Rotary Club member Ben Martin sat in the audience last fall and listened as Carl Chinnery told the story of his family’s battle against polio. The year was 1942 and Carl was the youngest of five brothers who had all been struck with the disease.
Carl read a letter penned by his mother, describing the family’s experience, and as he did so, an idea was born. “When I heard Carl Chinnery tell the story of his family’s battle with polio, I thought immediately that it would be a powerful stage play,” Ben said in a recent interview. Later, he asked Carl for permission to write a play about the Chinnery family’s experience and permission was granted. Ben then got to work writing what came to be titled, “A Candle Against the Dark.”
Originally written as a play for Summit Theatre Group, COVID-19 changed all that. “We had anticipated doing Candle during the 20/21 season. It wasn’t cast yet nor did we have a specific date picked out,” Ben explained. “But when COVID hit, all of the musicals that were planned for production had to be scrapped. Candle, however, had good potential to be revised into an audio play.”
Ben, as writer and director, teamed up with Nick Parker, of Fredcasts Podcast Network, asking him to produce the play. “This project has been a wonderful collaboration between Nick, Summit Theatre and the Rotary Club,” Ben said. “It wasn’t without its challenges though. Because of COVID-19, all the parts were recorded over Zoom. We then had to edit the Zoom voice tracks and splice everything together, adding in sound effects.”
Local actors will be voicing the roles in the production with some playing multiple roles. Stan Cole (Blue Springs) is Carl; Janet Shelman (Lee’s Summit) is cast in the role of Mother; Emily Davenport (Greenwood) portrays Ardyce and Nurse; Haydon Wood (Lee’s Summit) will voice Bill; Augustin Kalwei (Lee’s Summit) is George; Kieran Ford (Lee’s Summit) plays Richard; Kirby Asplund (Lee’s Summit) plays Dr. Eldridge; Taylor Arri (Kansas City) will voice a nurse and Elizabeth Kenny; Kenny Taylor (Lee’s Summit) portrays a doctor, Donor and McDonnell; Nikki Stanley (Lee’s Summit) will voice a doctor and Elanor Abbott; Ginger Birch, Becca Stabno and Dana Reynolds (all of Lee’s Summit) portray nurses; Jon Specht (Kansas City) is the voice of Dad, Announcer and Official; Brad Rackers (Lee’s Summit) will voice the Intern, and Paisley King (Lee’s Summit) is Elanor Sage.
The play is a fundraiser for the Rotary Club of Lee’s Summit’s International Polio Eradication effort. Polio eradication has been the primary cause of Rotary International for over 30 years. Their goal is to rid the world of polio, and they are very close to accomplishing that goal. Currently, only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria continue to have outbreaks. “Worldwide polio cases are down to a couple hundred per year,” Ben said. “There is a concern, however, that because of the current COVID-19 outbreak, immunizations could be down, and that could be cause for another outbreak of polio in the future.”
The play is set to premiere August 13 on the FaceBook pages of the Rotary Club of Lee’s Summit (https://www.facebook.com/LsRotary) and Summit Theater Group, (https://www.facebook.com/SummitTheatreGroup).
Episodes two and three of the play will air in the same location on Thursday, August 20th, and Thursday, August 27th respectively. All episodes will be able to be accessed at least through the fall. Freewill donations to aid in the fight to eradicate polio worldwide will be accepted through buttons on the FaceBook pages.
