ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Shall I compare them to a summer’s day? The energy around the stage was pure sunshine after a Montford Moppets Youth Shakespeare Company production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”
The Montford Moppets perform on the same stage as the Montford Park Players, the long-running outdoor Shakespeare troupe located in the North Asheville Montford neighborhood. Their ranks include kids aged 10 to 17 and range from brand new ingénues to seasoned stage veterans. At five staged productions a year, the Moppets are as regular a theatrical fixture as any of the stalwart Asheville companies.
The latest, an abridged version of the Shakespeare comedy “Much Ado About Nothing,” plays at 5 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre, located at 92 Gay Street. One performance, on Friday, Aug. 9, incorporated ASL interpreters onstage, accessibility the Moppets would like to provide even more of in the future. The last show of the run will bow on Sunday, Aug. 11.
Despite performing in the late summer heat, the Moppets manage to make Shakespeare feel cool. Shakespeare can be a hard sell for many teenagers, something the Moppets are critically aware of.
Charlie Tomlinson, 15, is a sophomore at SILSA High School and has been performing with the Moppets for two and a half years. The young actor was one of the Moppets’ foremost Shakespeare convertees.
“I actually abhorred Shakespeare,” Tomlinson confessed. “One of my friends was like, ‘hey, I wanna do a show, will you do it with me because I don’t wanna do it alone,’ and I was like, ugh, fine, I’ll sign up, just because you’re my friend.”
That show was “Henry V,” which the Moppets performed in the summer of 2022. While Tomlinson will be the first to admit it was not her favorite material or greatest performance, the community, she said, convinced her to stick around.
“The community of actors and of adults was so warm and so welcoming that it made me want to like Shakespeare because all these cool people liked Shakespeare,” Tomlinson said.
Tomlinson has participated in nearly every Moppets production since. In “Much Ado About Nothing,” in fact, Tomlinson played Beatrice, one of the female leads. She exuded confidence and command of the role, a far cry from the Shakespeare skeptic they started as.
Tomlinson is not the only one who hardly recognizes the actor they were first joining Moppets.
Maggie Higginbotham, 13, is a rising freshman at SILSA and will have performed with the Moppets for two years in November. Higginbotham is soft-spoken –– “I’m so awful at projecting,” the actor laughed –– but the audience would be hard-pressed to find a more dedicated Moppet than the tyro theatre star.
“I signed up for ‘Christmas Carol’ of 2022 on a whim, and I didn’t actually want to get a speaking role because that terrified me,” Higginbotham admitted. “But everyone in it was so kind and amazing and wonderful and it made me want to make them proud.”
At this, Higginbotham was interrupted by a chorus of “awww” from Tomlinson and Eska Garrison, 14, a Moppet performer going on three years.
“You do make us proud, Maggie,” Tomlinson gushed.
“I don’t know about that,” Higginbotham smiled.
“Yes, you do,” Garrison scoffed.
For Garrison, the Moppets are a family, sometimes in more ways than one: the actor’s sister, Simone, joined the Moppets for a recent show. However, Simone needed a bit of an unorthodox way to get over her stage fright.
“She’s a quiet person. She didn’t want to be on stage at all,” Garrison remembered, rolling their eyes. “I was like, ‘Girl! Get on stage!’ So, she ended up being a bear and killing me. That’s what she was really happy about.”
“It was so beautiful to really see Simone blossom,” Tomlinson remarked. “The first day of camp I remember she was kinda quiet, not talking to anyone, and by the last day she was the most outgoing, so loud. Because Moppets really allows you to be yourself.”
“Seriously,” Garrison agreed. “I love everyone here. They support you no matter what. If you mess up on your monologue, they support you. They’re like ‘It’s OK, you can keep going, you got this.’”
The support and camaraderie for all the Moppets and all experience levels is there from the first audition and persists until the last performance. Perhaps unlike other competitive theatre companies and productions, the actors said, there are no hurt feelings over perceived casting snubs or snide remarks about flubbed lines.
The performers are all there for one another. It seems that once an actor becomes a Moppet, they are always a Moppet. Young Moppets who were not in “Much Ado About Nothing” hung out in front of the stage after the show, which they had braved the August heat to come see. The next Moppets production will be an experimental take on “Hamlet,” scribed and directed by Moppets alum and veteran director Elias Hamilton. The Moppets company is a safe space and an expansive friend group.
“I plan on doing Moppets until I graduate,” Garrison said. “At least hopefully one a year, ‘cause I have gotten close to so many people. I met my long-distance best friend. She actually comes down from Maryland just to do Moppets plays.”
Higginbotham agreed.
“I hope to keep doing it as long as I possibly can. It’s been so constant,” Higginbotham said. “Even when it feels like I’m not really real any other place in my entire life, it’s right here.”
Tomlinson closed the interview with a simple line, but it was poignant as any moment from any play.
“I just think Moppets is family,” Tomlinson said. “Anyone reading this should come join it.”
More information about the Moppets and their future productions can be found on their website, www.themontfordmoppets.org.
