Still raring to go, The Non-Stop Players, aka NSP, which by then had a dozen in the cast, next took on Singin’ in the Rain. She contacted the gated community of Covey Lane, where there is a community clubhouse, “and we did You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown there,” as well as in area parks and outside at the Fifth Street Market and Oakway Mall, “complete with masks and distancing,” she said. Karen Olsen continues her passion for student theater with The Non-Stop Players. So we started meeting over ‘Zoom’ twice a week for the rest of the school year.”Īt that point, she had a core group of seven teens who really wanted to put on a play, “so I said I would try to come up with a way we could do that and be safe,” Olsen said. “I had met so many sweet people - I love working with young people of all ages - and we had just bonded. “When the pandemic began, I had just finished doing Cinderella with Rose Children’s Theatre, and I was in the middle of getting Oliver ready, and then everything came to a halt,” Olsen recalled. Non-Stop’s run of the popular Newsies musical continues on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons through April 30, and it even includes the traditional Actors Cabaret option of purchasing performance-only or performance-with-food tickets. They have become The Non-Stop Players, a nonprofit theater organization that just opened its production of Newsies at Actors Cabaret of Eugene, where it recently accepted an invitation from ACE co-founders Joe Zingo and Jim Roberts to become a resident company. In Olsen’s case, it resulted in forming a new theater troupe for young actors - elementary through University - to hone their skills and take them onstage.

“Back during the pandemic” has become a familiar phrase for things abandoned or at least postponed for the past three years, and longtime educator and musical theater producer Karen Olsen’s experience was no exception.īut as with some of those interruptions, some good came out of that lost-but-not-wasted time. (Above: The core group of performers that make up The Non-Stop Players include (back row) Sam Koekkoek, Will Calton, Hayden Shoop, Vidar Alexander (middle row) Siena Staunau-Reicher, Chelsea King, Henry Morton, Bella Morton, Amy Miller, Kelli Langlands (front row) Avery White, Owen Gilbert, Emily Pocock, Madison Urban.

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