William Inge House visiting playwright Mary sue Price will have a reading of her new script, titled “Chat Rats: Oronogo” Saturday Jan. 12, a story set in the rollicking history of the Tri-State mining district.
The reading takes place at the William Inge Theater at Independence Community College at 2 p.m. and admission is free.
Ms. Price is an Emmy-winning TV writer (as a long-time staff writer for “As the World Turns”) as well as a playwright. Ms. Price grew up in Miami, Okla., and chose to set the play in Picher, Okla., Joplin, Mo., and other areas where she traveled as an adolescent.
“Chat Rats: Oronogo” chronicles the fortunes of a family from Picher, which became an EPA “Superfund” site to clean up decades of toxic waste from mining operations. The piles of waste are called chat.
The guest director is David White, of Towson University, in Maryland. The cast features actors from Fayetteville, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City, along with three local actors. Jackson Reinhart, Wichita, is a former Independence Community College theater student, who was featured in ICC’s “Les Miserables.” Page Petrucka is a theater professor at ICC; she has many stage and film credits, particularly in Hallmark-associated movies. Also appearing is Meagan Moore, of rural Independence.
This reading is supported by an Arts Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the William Inge Center for the Arts of Independence Community College, and the William Inge Festival Foundation. Started in 2003, the William Inge House Playwrights in Residence program has welcomed nearly 50 professional playwrights to Independence, where they teach classes locally and work on new scripts. For further information, contact the Inge Center at 620-332-5492 or info@ingecenter.org.