Paradise Players plan additional radio plays

The Paradise Players plan to show their acting flair once again with performances in February and March at the Paradise Center.

Kathleen Hubka of Plains is in the process of writing three radio plays that will be performed on the last Sunday of the month, Feb. 27, at 2 p.m. at the Paradise Center, but she and the Paradise Players are already rehearsing for their March production of “The Charitable Sisterhood of the Second Trinity Victory Church,” written by Bo Wilson, which will be performed March 25, 26, and 27.  

The 30-minute long radio plays will include: “Another Day in Paradise with Butch and Babe,” which is a domestic situation comedy, and “Police Protocol” a Dragnet-inspired crime story. The third one, which she’s still working on, will be a cowboy story. None of them had been previously performed. Each of the radio plays will include radio ads done by the cast, as they did in the old days of radio broadcasting, said Hubka. She directed the radio version of “Christmas Carol” with the Paradise Players in December. 

“I write plays in my head all the time,” said Hubka, who has been with the Paradise Players since 2018 and taught drama in high school in Nebraska for over 40 years. “The trick is getting the focus to sit down and commit the ideas to paper. I am constantly revising, so unless I am threatened with a deadline, I never really finish. I’ll get the plays ready for performance, but I’ll always want to make changes to a script. It’s a creative process, so I don’t have a sense of how much time it takes,” she added.

The cast for the March comedy will include: Deborah Davis, Rochelle Caldwell, Franchesca Nass, Rashell Jones, and Hubka, who is also serving as director with Wendy Artz as assistant director, and Doug Wilks on lights and sound. She doesn’t have a cast for the February radio plays because they don’t take as much time to prepare. “There are no costumes or sets with radio plays, typically, because they are meant to evoke the old days of radio when the audience does not see the production, but lets their imaginations create the story,” she said. 

The March play times are 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Hubka said they are considering doing 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday. 

Hubka said that “The Charitable Sisterhood of the Second Trinity Victory Church” has a rewarding message about friendship and sisterhood. “It truly is laugh-out-loud funny,” said Hubka. “The sisterhood has a mission to serve those in need, in times of need, whatever they need. This time they are helping victims of a flood in someplace called Guatemala, but they aren’t really sure where that is,” she added.

Advance tickets are $10 and are $12 at the door for adults. Tickets for students are $5.