Theatre department to present The Miss Firecracker Contest

Carnelle Scott is a brash, unfeminine and quite promiscuous young woman growing up in her hometown of Brookhaven, Miss. Trying to emulate her cousin Elain, she enters into the Miss Firecracker Beauty Contest to prove to everyone she is not more than her nickname, "the hot tamale."

The Miss Firecracker Contest will be at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus from April 3-7 in the Wendy Kurka Rust Flexible Theatre.

The tickets for the play are $15 dollars.

The comedy, written by Beth Henley, stars southeast students Sarah Anderson who plays Carnelle, Shannon Walton who plays Elain and Andrew Gehrlein who plays Delmount.

"It's a family play, she [Carnelle] is entering herself into a pageant in Brookhaven, Miss., the Miss Firecracker contest," Walton said. "My character is her cousin. I won it when I was 17 years old back in the day, and Delmount is my brother and we have a sibling rivalry in the play. It's a fun show that we get to play around in and eat a lot of food."

The cast began rehearsing approximately two months before the day the start of the show. The cast is small, so they said it was better for feeding off of each other to come up with ideas together.

"I like how you get to see how everybody works because it is a smaller cast," Anderson said. "If it's a big cast, you just kind of go with the flow, but since its smaller I get to watch everybody and see how they work."

The cast said they are really excited about bringing the play to Southeast, and they want as many people to come to see the play as possible.

"In certain ways it's not realistic, but it is very realistic and it's very homey and it's like watching somebody's real life," Anderson said. "It's not like watching a Shakespeare show or something else. You're watching someone's life."

Most of the actors in this production are seniors who will graduate in May, and they have big plans about what they are going to do after graduation. Gehrlein and Walton plan to move to Los Angeles after they graduate, and Anderson is planning on starting out in Chicago. She said she might end up in New York, but she is not sure yet.

Walton said she advises that people that want to become actors make sure to get to know the faculty first because they want to get to know you, and they want to help you and see you succeed as much as possible. Anderson said to not be afraid to mess up and to just go for it.

"Make sure you have time for it because it sucks up your life," Gehrlein said.

The Miss Firecracker Contest will be at 7:30 p.m. April 3 -6th and at 2 p.m. April 7.