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And You Will Stand on Windswept Beaches Debuts at Wabash

Wabash Alumnus Returns to Direct at Ball Theater

Crawfordsville, IN (04/21/2026) — Rory Willats '17 wants you to take your jackets and programs with you when you go.

He also hopes the audience will leave "And You Will Stand on Windswept Beaches" with conversations that interrogate what it means to be a man, to be in relationship with others, and to be vulnerable both in body and in soul.

"The play talks quite a bit about being a father, but it totally overlooks having parents," he said. "It's an invisible voice that speaks throughout the story. For some men, in particular, these narratives serve to separate men from their dads. So my project in the theater was making the invisible visible."

Willats is directing the play, based on Owen Booth's short story of the same name, as new type of show-one that is less rehearsed and more raw, one where the choreography, sound, and lighting are often in conflict and commentary with the action on the stage.

"The father figures read this text, line by line, so that the sons can perform it," Willats explained. "The sons are told what to say and do during the show. So it's more like an athletic event where they rehearse the strategies but not the show. Then they are playing the show on stage for the first time when they're in front of the audience."

The show stars student actors Ben Donaldson, Trezdin Hair, Alex Kindig, Hunter McArthur, and Alex Schmidt as The Sons. Willats said he was looking for intellectually curious actors who were also willing to be vulnerable in public and exhaust themselves physically for the sake of the play.

"This is staging the vulnerability of going, 'Well, actually, I haven't rehearsed this ever," he said. "I think that is a little bit scary."

Willats wants the audience to be involved in making meaning along with the play.

"The narrative makes men kind of strange and insular," he said. "And now, if you've seen this show, you can still be insular, but you can't pretend that you're the only person that is feeling this feeling. You'll know that a couple hundred people were sat in the room with you, and you'll recognize the feeling because you saw it in front of you."

Willats travels as a freelance director and is often involved in community theater, but directing this show at Wabash is special for him. He directed Aeschylus' The Furies as a senior at Wabash, and is working with many familiar faces on this production nearly ten years later.

Willats said, "I actually get to make this with Wabash, for Wabash, and not as a kind of thesis, but as a kind of offer that goes, 'How are we relating to these things now? Why is the conversation around this?' And so can we make a show that opens space rather than closes it down?"

Other members of the cast include Zachary Anderson, David Vogel, Ethan Hollander, Eric Olofson, and Dan Rogers as The Fathers. Members of the crew include Precious Ainabor, Aidan Amick, Sean Bledsoe, Brighton Boggess, Asher Bolen, Jax Bower, Javier Cabrera, Boston Cahoon, Xavier Cienfuegos, Jeremiah Clayton, Chessa Duval, Carson Foxen, Jessie Franklin, Ryan Frazier, Chris Harshbarger, Mike Kopecky, Nicholas Kvachkoff, Grayson McCallum, Hieu Nguyen, Thomas Price, Bailey L. Rosa, Cooper Rudolph, Daniel Shaw, Nick Sommers, Cameron Spaulding, RJ Sturgill, Misael Talavera, Brandon Thompson, David BW Vogel, and Heidi Winters Vogel.

The show runs April 22-25 with shows at 7:30 p.m. each night. Admission is free but tickets are required and may be reserved by visiting https://www.wabash.edu/boxoffice/. This event may involve material that may not be appropriate for young children.

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