There is a time to weep. There is a time to mourn. And there is a time to dance! “Footloose – The Musical,” based on the hit 1984 movie that launched the careers of Kevin Bacon and Sarah Jessica Parker among others, explodes onto the Landers Theatre stage in Springfield Little Theatre's new production June 7-23 to conclude LT's 2018-19 season. I talked with the actors playing Ren and (no, NOT Stimpy!) Ariel—Patrick Sturm and Austen McGranahan—on KSMU’s “Arts News.” Sturm’s character, a teenager named Ren, moves with his mother from big-city life in Chicago to small-town Bomont (Sturm refers to it in our interview as “Beaumont, Texas,” although the film and stage scripts only identify Bomont, as it’s spelled, as a small town in the middle of nowhere). And Ren’s life is abruptly altered—he thinks, for the worse. “He just does not want to be there, after moving from a big city where he could do anything.” The problem with Bomont is that it is crippled by rules and regulations. “They just
↧