Story By John Mann
It’s a new year at The Whole Backstage Theater in Guntersville and auditions and rehearsals are underway for their upcoming shows. The theater held the first day of auditions on Thursday night for their upcoming production of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” to be directed by Debbie Moss.
“This was a Pulitzer Prize winning play written in 1955 by one of our greatest Southern authors, Tennessee Williams,” Moss said. “It’s a story about a very dysfunctional family featuring greed, lies and this ‘everyone is out for themselves’ dynamic. For Williams to have visualized it, it’s still so relevant for today’s times and very poignant, it has a lot of depth I didn’t even realize until I started digging into it.”
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is set in 1950s Mississippi and follows the wealthy Pollitt family. As the family celebrates the sixty-fifth birthday of its patriarch, called Big Daddy, conflicts arise as the knowledge of the man’s impending death spreads. Along with the millionaire Big Daddy there is also his favored son Brick who struggles with alcoholism brought on by his disgust for other people, Brick’s wife Margaret (the titular cat) who hatches a plan to become pregnant and secure the family fortune, Brick’s vengeful brother Gooper who also has designs on the family wealth and Brick’s mother Big Mama who sees him as her only son.
The play is a straight drama and even with a small cast of characters features a lot of personality conflicts as well as a wide range of character ages to accommodate, with Margaret the youngest at twenty nine all the way up to the mid-sixties. Moss, who also directed The Savannah Sipping Society and Crimes of the Heart for the theater, says that the play has drawn a good deal of interest from the community and will be the first Tennessee Williams show at The Whole Backstage.
“I really like dramas,” Moss said. “We’ve never done Tennessee Williams here and it’s such an interesting character study about the flaws of everyone in this family and their conflicts with each other. I want to get the perfect cast and so far I’ve had a lot of enthusiasm and interest from people wanting to participate. It’s great because we don’t do a ton of dramas but I’ve had people tell me this is on their bucket list as an actor.”
In their current season The Whole Backstage has already completed two shows with the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee last October directed by Kory Duquette and It’s a Wonderful Life last December directed by Johnny Brewer. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will premiere on April 17 and run through April 26, but before that the theater will host 9 to 5: The Musical directed by Diane DuBoise and Will Casey starting February 13. The last show of the 2025-26 season will be Oklahoma! starting on June 19, directed by Brewer with choreography by Casey. Auditions for Oklahoma! will be held at the theater on January 29 and 30 at 630 pm, with two more auditions on Saturday, January 31, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
More information about The Whole Backstage, including tickets and patron information, can be found on their website at wholebackstage.com. The theater is located at 1120 Rayburn Avenue in Guntersville.
