By: Lucy Bowman
Every spring, a certain buzz fills the air in anticipation of the upcoming theater season. T
his year, details regarding the theater season will be announced in the Spectator!
Jd. Bowman, Professor of Theatre at McPherson College, shares that the 2025-2026 season will be the college’s first “mysterious season.” It will consist of four shows: a mystery, a thriller, a children’s show, and a fast-paced comedy. Although the season will feature a wide range of genres, Bowman shares that each script contains a mysterious element.
The season will start with the homecoming show; a murder mystery by Agatha Christie called “And Then There Were None.” By scheduling the mystery for homecoming weekend, the department is reviving an old tradition. According to Bowman, “A long time ago, we did murder mysteries for homecoming. We haven’t done any for quite a while, so we thought it would be fun.” This show will run September 26 through September 27.
Steve Benne, the Technical Director for the Theater, has exciting plans for the set design of the upcoming season. Benne shares that the first show, “And Then There Were None,” will feature a box set (a realistic, three-walled set). “We haven’t done a box set in a number of years…we are really filling the stage with the set, going full heigh, full width.” The set will look like the inside of a house, even including a curved staircase that will create the illusion of a second floor. Benne hopes to create an incredibly realistic and structured set, so that it “really looks like a house, not just the pieces of a house.” Beyond the advanced set design, this process will also include a historic change to the stage’s flooring. The Brown Auditorium stage is currently covered by Masonite flooring (a really, really dense type of cardboard). Benne plans to spend the summer removing this layer to reveal the natural wood floor underneath. Then, Benne will sand the original floor, complete any necessary repairs, and refinish the wood so that it can be featured in “And Then There Were None.”
This process will be taxing; Benne shares that it will be “at least a week-long process of long, eight-hour days.” However, both Benne and Bowman are excited to see the finished result. According to Bowman, “Since [the wood] has been covered up, no one has ever exposed or refinished the floor. This will be the first time the floor is refinished since it was built.” Benne adds that, to his knowledge, the covering has been in place for nearly thirty years. The refinished floors will be on display during the first show, but will then be covered again to allow for the rest of the theater season.
The second show of the 2025-2026 season will be a thriller. Although the theater department is not ready to release the title of the production, Bowman shares that it will be “a jump-out-of-your-seat type of play.” He said, “I read the script and was like, ‘oh my gosh, this is scary.’” This show will open on Halloween, staying consistent with the “mysterious season.”
The 2025-2026 theater season will also feature Octavious Toliver-Flient’s senior project. Toliver-Flient is a theatre major at McPherson College and is required to complete a senior project before graduation. Toliver-Flient will be completing a senior project in acting, but does not yet know which play he will participate in. He shares, “I am a bit nervous for my senior project because I really want to execute it well. I do think it will be hard to leave the theater program here because it had a significant impact on me emotionally.”
Between the script selections, creative set designs, and senior projects, the 2025-2026 McPherson College theater season is one to watch.
