“Welcome to the Show”, directed by VCU Professor Dorie Barton, features over 30 VCU student actors. The film premiered on March 20th at the Cinejoy Virtual Fest. Photo courtesy Dorie Barton
Claire Darcy, Contributing Writer
As four students wander through town hoping to find their way home in the new feature film “Welcome to the Show,” many of Richmond’s well-known landmarks are depicted, from street paintings to Belle Isle.
Dorie Barton, the film’s producer, writer, director and co-editor, said she had wanted to make a movie about the city since moving to Richmond.
“I think the city is so beautiful,” said Barton. “It’s so cinematic in all the contradictions that are here.”
The film stars over 30 VCU student actors and follows four people – played by Dillon Douglasson, Richard Follin, Keegan Garant and Christopher Martin – as they take part in a mysterious interactive theatrical experience known as The Show.
“Welcome to the Show” celebrated its world premiere on March 20th as part of the virtual film festival Cinejoy. Cinejoy is an online rerun of the annual Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival, an international independent film festival in California.
This year the festival ran for 10 days on the Cinejoy website and ended on Tuesday. Barton said the film was invited to be part of the festival after she submitted it to Cinequest.
“I wanted to challenge what the theater’s responsibility to its audience really is. How people who do the theater relate to their audience, care about their audience, ”said Barton.
Each of the four main characters has the same name as their actors but is a fictional version of the men. Douglasson said the four were best friends before the film and that keeping their own names made it easier to relate to the characters.
The friends meet the female cohort of participants in “The Show” on Belle Isle. Left to right: Maria LoPresti, Rachel Foeller, Rebecca Bailey, Havy Nguyen, Trinitee Pearson and Sarah Velasco-Kent. Photo courtesy Dorie Barton
“Every actor takes from his own life,” said Douglasson. “There are different aspects of the character that I could relate to – this is how I did it, just trying to relate to each situation and how I would react as a person and how I thought the Dillon in the film would react.”
The four main cast were students in Barton’s class on acting for the camera in the fall semester of 2019. The film was shot over 10 days in November 2019 and the editing process began last January, Barton said.
“It’s been the longest 10 days of my life that have passed in a snap,” said Douglasson.
The film begins when the four friends decide to stay on campus for their last Thanksgiving day together before they graduate and go their separate ways. Then Rich finds an uncleared red envelope in his jacket pocket. In the envelope there is an invitation to “The Show”, which is described as an “interactive theater adventure in three acts”.
The next morning the friends head to the Shafer Street Playhouse at the VCU, where they meet the Ticket Taker, played by Maya Forrester, and played on Lady Day, a character who explains the rules of “The Show” to the men by Chyanne Leeland. Forrester and Leeland both graduated from VCU last year.
As one of the film’s co-producers, Forrester said it was unexpected to play the role of Ticket Taker. If a dedicated actress didn’t appear, she had to step in to cast the role.
“I was one of the few women who went there that day,” said Forrester. “I put on a dress four sizes too small and loosened my hair from that morning. I said, “Oh no, I wasn’t ready for this” but it was really fun and a really good experience. “
The friends are led to a car where they meet the driver, played by Barton, who blindfolds the crew and takes them to an unfamiliar area. As the driver speeds up, they decide to look for clues and quickly discover that they are missing all of their precious personal belongings – phones, wallets, and keys.
The cast of “Welcome to the Show” poses for a portrait on the set of the film. Left to right: Scout Smith, Christopher Martin, Dorie Barton, Dillon Douglasson, Richard Follin and Keegan Garant. Photo courtesy Dorie Barton
The rules of “The Show” prohibit the characters from giving or receiving help from anyone, so they must work their way around Richmond and home on their own. Along the way, they encounter several groups of students who they suspect are actors in the interactive game.
Alongside his friend and fellow VCU student Andrew Bonieskie, Douglasson wrote original music for the film. He said much of the score was composed on his bass guitar, which he would play while re-viewing the scenes.
Barton was a graduate student at the time the film was made, and “Welcome to the Show” served as a thesis.
“It was only about six weeks from the time I asked them if they wanted to be in a movie to the time it was set,” Barton said. “I wrote the script during this time and did all the preparation for the production during that time. So it was a very intense six weeks of my life.”
Forrester was unable to submit their dissertation as the COVID-19 pandemic halted face-to-face classes in mid-spring 2020. She is happy to show the film as something she showed as a student last year, she said.
“‘Welcome to the Show’ was such an unexpected gift,” said Forrester. “It was my last project at VCU and it was a really great memory for me.”
“Welcome to the Show” can be streamed online in the future, but the dates and platforms have yet to be announced.
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