Some of the most interesting things come from the unlikeliest places. While Santa Cruz’s Broadway Playhouse isn’t where you might ordinarily think to go for your slice of summer horror, this August the Midsummer Ensemble—a local independent theater company—is closing its summer season with Trap, an immersive one-act play by Stephen Gregg.
Produced by Molly Meyers and Isaac Ludington and directed by a dynamic duo of creatives—Lu Ludington and Yarrow Sifry—Trap is an unnerving and interactive horror play that follows a mysterious event where everybody except one audience member falls unconscious during a theater production.
“We wanted to show that theater can be just as scary if not more scary than the movies,” Yarrow says.
The ensemble came into being in 2022, when two recent high school graduates—Isaac Ludington and Molly Meyers—decided that they wanted to get their friends together to start performing again outside of school.
“My friend Molly was like, ‘Hey, I miss doing theater, would you like to put together a show with me?’ We’d done theater stuff in the past so the idea of collaborating again was fun. That summer we threw together a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that we performed at UCSC, and it was a BLAST, pure serendipity,” Isaac says.
It wasn’t until their second season in the summer of 2023—in a production of Macbeth with a queer twist—that they felt they’d really come into their own as an ensemble.
“The next year, Lu and Yarrow wanted to do a lesbian Macbeth, so we were like, ‘Okay, great—let’s do it.’ So by year two it was really like, ‘Great, we’re an ensemble now, and this is our group, and no matter what gonna keep making stuff together.’” Isaac says.
Independent theater isn’t without its challenges, and the Midsummer Ensemble is no stranger to the greatest menace faced by any organization: the need for funding.
“Our biggest challenge is definitely funding. How do we put together plays at a professional level? With this rag-tag group of weird young people? So we got a lot of help from Terri Steinmann. West Performing Arts has a grant for youth theater which helps us access the Broadway playhouse and covers some of the production costs. There have been challenges, but as a whole it’s been a lot easier than we originally expected,” Yarrow says.
Some of the most gratifying parts of producing independent live theater for this “ragtag group of weird young people” have been the self-discovery it prompted for them, and the power they’ve learned they can tap into as creators.
“Especially with Macbeth, that is one of the most gratifying projects I’ve ever worked on. Everyone poured their heart and soul into it and it showed. It’s so cool to get together with your friends and make something that”s just so cool,” Lu says.
“One important thing to note, especially about being independent, has been that we have control over our creative vision as a group, and that has really helped us come together as an ensemble,” Yarrow says.
While they currently only perform in the summer, their future vision is a hopeful one and the creative team has its eyes on the sky.
“We are kind of working toward figuring out how to establish ourselves as a business or nonprofit to make us legit, and here to stay. Hopefully we can build it out so we have a full season where we’re doing a show in the summer but we’re also performing in the fall and spring,” Lu says. “We wanna find ways to be doing more shows.”
To the Midsummer Ensemble, Trap is not only an enormous opportunity to terrify the audience but also an opportunity for people from throughout the community to share a love for the arts in an inviting and fun space full of passionate individuals.
“What we’d like the community to take away from Trap is less about the show itself and more about theater and sharing our passion for theater. Trap is an experience, and we’re excited for the community to experience that experience,” Yarrow says.
“I hope that they all scream—loudly. With terror,” Isaac says.
Trap opens Aug. 9 and runs weekends through Aug. 18 at the Broadway Playhouse, 526 Broadway, Santa Cruz. Tickets: $15. midsummerensemble.com
