The Diviners Presented by Blair Academy Players
Crisis of Faith is Basis for Award-Winning Play

The Blair Academy Players presented The Diviners, a play by Jim Leonard, Jr., in the Wean Studio Theater of the Armstrong-Hipkins Center for the Arts. Leonard’s Depression-era play won the National American College Theatre Festival Playwriting Award in 1980 and, later that year, was produced professionally at the Circle Repertory Theater in 1980, earning rave reviews.

The Diviners is set in Zion, a poverty-stricken, fictional, Indiana town where water and faith are in short supply. The play revolves around a 14-year-old boy left motherless and developmentally challenged by a near drowning as a young child. The experience causes Buddy Layman (Cole Voynick ’11) to possess a debilitating fear of water yet imbues him with the ability of divining, or water-witching. Buddy’s situation is a gift to the local farmers fighting drought, economic depression and despair, while it is a daily struggle for his father, Ferris (Matt Ziff ’09), and his sister, Jennie Mae (Becca Dewey ’11.)

Into this setting wanders C.C. Showers (Jordon Arnold ’12), an ex-preacher from Kentucky. The charismatic Showers is struggling with a crisis of faith. He’s left his church and hit the road, like many during the Depression era, looking for work but more importantly, hope. Buddy and C.C. begin a relationship in which each looks to divine identity and worth in the other. The cast was rounded out by Ameer Brown ’09, Danielle Ungermann ’09, Tori Rulle ’10, Caitlin Campbell ’10, Kim VanderVoort ’10, Soomin Lee ’11 and Andrew Dutton ’12. Student director Jen Shields ’10 worked closely with Caroline Davis ’10 and Kathryn Middleton ’10 on costumes and props, among many other behind-the-scene duties essential to a successful production.

Director Micki Kaplan McMillan says, “We did this play when I was in high school, and I never forgot it. The play of light and sound coupled with the focused story of life in a tight-knit community made for compelling, challenging theatre.”

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Updated 5/12/09

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