Promotional poster for Last Night at Black Hollow Kari and Stephen Williamson have written a murder mystery party scripts, a genre which has become a periodic fundraiser for Sock & Busking Theatre Company. Unlike a typical play, which is fully scripted and generally involves minimal audience interaction, the murder mystery parties have relatively brief scripted …
Continue reading Kari and Stephen Williamson’s Last Night at Black Hollow—24 Oct. 2025
Night Watch poster I’ve seen a good amount of professional theatre and university theatre, and both seen and been involved in a good number of community theatre productions. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show as well executed as Sock & Buskin’s production of Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch, directed by Stefanie Austin. …
Continue reading Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch—20 Sept. 2025
And Then There Were None program This weekend I saw the State College Community Theatre’s (SCCT) production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None directed by Eli Beers-Altman and assistant directed by Joe Appel. Our story begins with eight very different house guests, eccentric in their own ways, arriving at an isolated mansion situated …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – 13 Sept. 2025 by Andi Stout
Love, Loss, and What I Wore program The Gamble Mill and Sock & Buskin Theatre Company co-sponsored a staged reading of Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—adapted from Ilene Beckerman’s novel—as a charity performance to raise money for Out of the Cold Centre County, which is a shelter. The production was …
Continue reading Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—17 Apr. 2025
Slain at the Speakeasy program Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy is a full-length play developed out of an original semi-scripted murder mystery party script by Stefanie Austin, so this is definitely an in-house project for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Although this version was based on the original, the full-length production—directed …
Continue reading Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy—23 Mar. 2025
Poster for Hoarding Michael Bérubé’s new play Hoarding premiered at Tempest Productions, directed by Cynthia Mazzant (who also starred). The performances were and the script is an emotionally powerful journey through a difficult mother-daughter relationship, strained by both physical and emotional distances and by the traumas and tribulations each character has experienced. The play focuses …
The playbill for the Cutthroat Christmas staged reading This performance was a staged reading of Kari Williamson and Stefanie Austin’s play Cutthroat Christmas, as a kind of prelude to the upcoming sequel Cutthroat Christmas: Deadly Deals. This original script had received a full production two years ago, and this read through was basically done so …
Continue reading Kari Williamson and Stefanie Austin’s Cutthroat Christmas—4 Dec. 2024
State College Community Theatre’s production of Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, directed by Kerry Clancy-Burns, had some strengths as a production, though overall it was not the best show I’ve ever seen. There were many positive aspects—especially individual performances, most of which were excellent. But there were some technical issues that undercut the show. To …
Continue reading Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot—13 Sept. 2024
Eve Ensler's The Good Body Program Sock & Buskin’s recent charity performance of Eve Ensler’s The Good Body—benefiting Centre Safe—was a great performance of a generally powerful play about the psychological and physical difficulties women experience in their own bodies. Stephanie Whitesell’s directorial debut was a triumph, and the performers were each amazing. Ensler’s most …
Sock & Buskin’s The Will to Kill was a new one for my partner and I, because we had never attended one of the company’s murder mystery parties before. Part performance, part cocktail party, part whodunit, the murder mystery party is an interesting, interactive, hybrid genre. Unlike most theatre, the majority of the action is carried out between “audience members” and the performers, rather than amongst performers themselves.
Phillip Zapkin 