Swamp Gravy coming to Albany

ALBANY — Albany area audiences will have a chance to enjoy one of Southwest Georgia’s greatest artistic treasures, while also supporting a good cause, when the Rotary Club of Dougherty County presents a special performances of the beloved folk-life play Swamp Gravy.

Set for 6 p.m. Saturday at the SOWEGA Council on Aging’s Kay Hind Senior Life Enrichment Center in downtown Albany, the production will give audiences a taste of why Swamp Gravy still thrills crowds some 24 years after it debuted.

Each year since 1994, upwards of 100 volunteer actors and production crew members present Swamp Gravy at the Cotton Hall Theatre in Colquitt every Friday and Saturday throughout the months of March and October, drawing crowds from across the country.

Even though Swamp Gravy has an official home base, Artistic Director for the Colquitt Miller Arts Council Kate Willis said the production typically travels to other areas a few times a year to bring the Swamp Gravy experience to audiences that might not be able to make the journey to Colquitt, or to help a worthy cause.

“We love to take Swamp Gravy on the road,” said Willis. “We can usually do something two or three times a year. It’s generally by request (and) a lot of times it’s for fundraisers. We’re very much about community (and) it helps out the organizations we work with.”

In the case of Saturday’s show in Albany, the Swamp Gravy performance will help the Dougherty County Rotary Club raise funds it can use for various service projects the civic club undertakes in the community.

According to Bill Sadler, this year’s board president, the organization seeks to help multiple organizations or projects each year, and fundraising events are part of that mission.

“We use these funds to serve the community,” said Sadler. “We seek out organizations and causes and find out where the need is. Then we put together a service project. We feel we can make a greater impact in the community that way.”

For example, this year, because the club’s service projects were all related to seniors, the club organized the Air Conditioning for Seniors project in which its members gave out 29 window-mounted air conditioning units to seniors in the community who had a financial need.

In fact, the club’s focus on seniors extended into the planning of the upcoming Swamp Gravy production.

Sadler said club members Tammy McCrary and Izzie Sadler, who is the development director at the Council on Aging, were brainstorming ideas for service projects and fundraisers when they came up with the thought of Swamp Gravy because so many seniors take day-trips to Colquitt to see the show.

“The thought was, why not bring the show to Albany?” said Sadler. “It seemed like a good idea with broad appeal. It’s a family-type play, and it’s about the South. We wanted something where everybody got value. You get a dinner and you see a play.”

While it is certainly a play, Swamp Gravy is, in many ways, much more. As the official folk life play of Georgia, Swamp Gravy, using a blend of comedy, drama and music, presents stories gathered from around South Georgia about the universal themes of life, death, family and community.

While the normal Swamp Gravy productions held in the Cotton Hall Theater are about two hours long, Willis said the typical travelling edition of Swamp Gravy is about half the length of a regular production, running about an hour and featuring scenes from Swamp Gravy productions from the past.

“It’s a taste of Swamp Gravy,” said Willis. “This performance will feature scenes from the first production up through last year’s show. People will see a retrospective of years past. For those who have been to Swamp Gravy before, there may or may not be scenes they’ve seen before. If they’ve never seen Swamp Gravy, it’ll be a great introduction.”

Willis explained that each year Swamp Gravy contains some new stories to keep the show fresh, and that there is a story-gathering committee that goes out and finds true stories collected from the area that can be integrated into the production.

General admission tickets to the performance are $50 and can be purchased by calling (229) 446-9641 or at eventbrite.com (SWAMP GRAVY).

Anyone who is unable to attend the show but is interested in making a donation to the Dougherty County Rotary Club to be used for future service projects may contact McCrary at (229) 446-9641.

The SOWEGA Council on Aging’s Kay H. Hind Senior Life Enrichment Center is located at 335 W. Society Avenue in Albany.