‘Grunella’ cast announced for IVCC production

The cast for Illinois Valley Community College’s theatre department’s family-friendly fall production of “Grunella, The Story Stealer,” written and directed by speech and theatre instructor Dr. David Kuester, has been announced.

Cast includes Madeleine Hunter as Grunella, Macy Anderson as Enchantra, Zoe Starkey as Snow White, Reid Rynke as Winston, David Zuniga as Prince Charming, Emma Elmore as Cinderella and Rattryna Yim as the Magic Mirror.

Crew members are production assistant Ashley Hurst, Maryanna Amaral and Andrew Paden.

To mitigate COVID and for the safety of the audience and cast, the production will be recorded and streamed the week of Nov. 22 on the IVCC Fine Arts YouTube channel.

“This is a fast-moving story involving many of the familiar fairy tale characters,” Kuester said. “They are put in situations where they have to save the stories of Story Land from the nasty plot of a naughty witch.”

Classic improvisation tools are used in the workshopping and story-building process of the script.

“It is my hope,” Kuester said, “as well as Grunella’s, that this story further enhances the classic fairy tales and gives young and old a new window into the magical world we all grew up with.”

In the play, Enchantra, magical keeper of the fairy tales, is hosting a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All starts well before strange things start happening: characters are missing and others are quickly losing their memory.

Grunella, a minor witch in Story Land, bursts in and announces her plan to take control of all princess stories and star in all of them. She has cast a spell to erase everyone’s memory, leaving only herself in every leading role.

The cast works hard to counter her spell. To do this, they must, with the help of audience members, act out story lines and action to restore Snow White’s and later Cinderella’s memory and protect all princesses of Story Land.