Iona Suna Holder and her husband, Jimmy Holder, have made Blackbird Coffee a cornerstone of the downtown area. The local coffee shop grants students an off-campus study space and on occasion acts as a venue for local arts. Birdhouse Theater is located in the back of the store and has seen many long study sessions, local bands, and most recently over the weekend “Grown-Ups.”
Iona Suna Holder has been working in theater and directing plays for almost 30 years. Holder fell in love with Skylar Fox’s original script for “Grown-Ups” and decided BlackBird would be the perfect place for an intimate and engaging setting.
“I think people are feeling some sort of lack of community or a sense of one, and community is built by one little event after another. It’s good to just sort of break out of your shell and kind of try something new, and that makes theater so fun, and there’s just so much to learn from it and about other people. That’s what theater is a reflection of humanity,” said Holder.
“Grown-Ups” follows a group of teenage camp counselors during a summer camp. Holder was passionate about the project and its campfire setting. The original script was written during the COVID-19 pandemic and took place around an actual campfire with a small crowd.
The cast was composed of current GCSU students and alumni. Holder and her crew created paper mache trees and foliage for the set. They even created the illusion of a campfire using lights and water vapor, turning the Birdhouse Theater from a study space to a dark and atmospheric campfire in the woods.
The cast was energetic in their roles despite not having a lot of opportunities to rehearse together in person. Their performances match the absurd, but relevant social commentary throughout the story. The underlying conflict revolves around a social media trend involving a pineapple that spirals into a divisive, almost political conflict.
“It sounds like any story in the news today, and that sort of struck me more and more contentious. And then it really strives to divide people under this really ridiculous premise of a pineapple. I think that serves as a really nice reflection of some of the hysteria that we’ve seen, especially in the last decade.
As long as Iona Suna and Jimmy Holder are at BlackBird, the local coffee shop will continue to promote arts of all kinds for the community.