The Collinsport Players

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See also:	Convention Skit
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The Collinsport Players is a Dark Shadows acting troupe.

The Collinsport Players is a fan-led Dark Shadows dramatic group founded at the Dark Shadows Festival in Newark, New Jersey, in 1984 by Jeff Thompson and Dr. Laura Brodian, hosts of the festival. Both were already in costume and decided to enliven their hosting chores with a set of improvisational sketches. The positive reaction of the audience led to a formalizing of their activities as the Collinsport Players... Improvisation dominated the 1985 performance of a skit entitled "Julia's Trump". From that point, scripts were written and the cast size increased. "Spelling Bee", presented in 1985, involved five actors. In 1986, the twentieth anniversary of the premiere of Dark Shadows, the group performed "The More Things Change: The Official Twentieth Anniversary Skit", a major step forward into a full one-act play with some two dozen actors participating.

The Collinsport Players now regularly perform at the annual national Dark Shadows Festival. It draws its cast from fans around the country. The new scripts each year are sent to the players six weeks ahead of time. They memorize their parts and gather upon their arrival at the festival site for two rehearsals before their performances. The plays have been comedies full of inside jokes. Many have spoofed actual episodes of the television series while others have moved in more speculative directions, taking the characters into hypothesized situations. Among the Collinsport Players' most successful comedies, complete with costumes, sound effects, and music , have been "Quiet on the Set", "The Times They Change", "The Loco-Motion", "Double Play", and "A Julia Carol". In 1993 the first of two volumes of the Players' skits, The Collinsport Players Companion, was published by HarmonyRoad Press. Connie Jonas, the press' founder, is a member of the group.