Precious West Joins Theater at Brenau

Precious West, from Tucker, is working as house manager and in the box office in the Gainesville Theatre Alliance WonderQuest production of the stage adaptation of the children's classic "James and the Giant Peach," running now until Oct. 7 in Brenau University's historic Pearce Auditorium. West is a freshman at Brenau majoring in theater.

Brenau collaborates with Gainesville State College in the Gainesville Theatre Alliance, which for three decades has brought high-level drama and musical performances involving students, community theater amateurs and professionals to stages at the two institutions. WonderQuest is GTA's organization, the only one of its kind North Georgia, dedicated to offering professionally-produced theater specifically for children and their families. Each production is performed in the historic Brenau University opera house, Pearce Auditorium, for family audiences and more than 7,000 students from schools throughout northeast Georgia.

The WonderQuest production of "James and the Giant Peach" celebrates the 50th anniversary of a classic in children's literature, the popular 1961 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl, which was transformed into the 1996 Disney film. Adapted from the novel by playwright David Wood and directed by Gay Hammond, assistant professor of theater at Brenau University, the play focuses on a young English orphan boy whose misadventures with a magic potion he acquires to escape his abusive and repulsive guardian aunts, Spiker and Sponge, sets him off on a surreal cross-world adventure inside a giant peach.

Tickets for performances are $10-12 for adults and $7-8 for students. Wonderquest scheduled an ice cream social with the cast Oct. 2.