The cast of Robb Willoughby’s “The Works,” clockwise from top left: Seth Ratliff, Reilly Dixon, Ben Guenther, Kayla Graham, Thor Sage, Jeanna GunderKline and Ellen Ballerene. The eight-vignette play will be staged at First Presbyterian Church April 25 and 26 and May 2 and 3. (Photo by Lauren "Chuck" Shows)
Have a laugh with ‘The Works’
- Published: April 21, 2025
It’s time to start the work day, but your coworker has decided to take the day off.
It’s happened to all of us — but when it happens in “The Works,” a chain reaction of hilarious events is set into motion.
“The Works,” written and directed by playwright and local resident Robb Willoughby, will be performed April 25 and 26 and May 2 and 3, at First Presbyterian Church.
Willoughby told the News at a recent rehearsal that the play — a collection of eight interconnected vignettes — was borne out of a writing exercise.
“I said, ‘I’m going to write a page a day, and at the end of 10 days, I’ll have a 10-minute play,’” Willoughby said. “And then I just kept going, and soon I had several 10-minute plays, and one full-length when I put it all together.”
Willoughby has become something of a prolific showman for local audiences: The YS Theater Company produced his “W3 — Three Humorous Tales of Horror” in 2018 and the full-length comedy “Roof Man” last April. In between, Willoughby’s short works have been performed at the YS Brewery and in several of the YSTC’s annual 10-Minute Play Festivals — sometimes with Willoughby as part of the cast.
“The Works” as a full-length work debuted in October of 2024 at the Paradise Center in Paradise, Montana, but a few of its individual vignettes have made appearances at past local 10-Minute Play Festivals.
The full-length play features a large number of characters, but each only appears in one vignette — though introduced characters are sometimes referred to in later scenes. All of them live and work in the same community — with most of the scenes focused on those employed at the same workplace. The action begins at sunrise and ends after sunset on the same day. The events of the first of the eight vignettes sets up, or at least influences, the events of each of the scenes that follow.
If the language describing the play has seemed vague up until this point, that’s on purpose: All of the play’s scenes are connected by a central conceit, and it’s up to the audience to figure out what it is.
“When I was writing, it was a little game for me,” Willoughby said. “I wanted the audience to figure it out before I told them what these characters are — I mean, I eventually tell you, but it’s fun to be able to figure it out.”
Seth Ratliff stars in the final act of the play as an “angry, stressed-out manager.” Outside of the mysterious mechanism at work in the show, Ratliff said each scene is connected by another, more thematic device.
“I feel like everybody’s having kind of an existential crisis throughout the whole thing,” he said.
Ellen Ballerene — who, in addition to acting in several of the scenes, is the show’s producer — said each scene is also connected by a common choice made by its focal characters.
“All of them are about somebody making a decision to be different than what they’re expected to be and doing what they want to do — which is kind of liberating,” she said.
Most of the play’s cast members appear in several scenes, portraying a variety of characters. Actor (and News colleague of this reporter) Reilly Dixon said a favorite in his lineup of five characters belongs to a “class of workers who are historically clever” — a descriptor that, at first blush, doesn’t seem to apply to his character.
“I really like playing idiots, because I think it comes so naturally for me,” he said. “But I think there’s more to [my character] than what my coworkers initially think.”
Kayla Graham said she has relished the challenge in differentiating each character she portrays, finding “different quirks for each character that makes them stand out.”
“You don’t want it to feel like you’re playing the same thing three times in a row, right?” she said.
Thor Sage — who described his characters as a “retired elder fellow,” a “dense worker drone,” a “ringleader for workplace mischief” and a “confused father” — said the quality of Willoughby’s writing helps bring a differentiation of character into focus.
“Each of the characters talks differently, has a different voice,” he said.
Willoughby said writing fully-rounded characters — even for a short play — is the driver of his particular brand of comedy, which unfurls naturally from characters’ motivations and reactions to the worlds they’re written to inhabit.
“Caricatures are easy, but they’re not as deeply funny,” he said. “But with characters, you don’t even have to write the joke.”
Most of the cast has worked with Willoughby on past productions, but Ben Guenther is a new addition to the playwright’s cadre of local comedic talents. He said he was drawn to work with Willoughby after seeing one of the vignettes from “The Works” performed at a past 10-Minute Play Festival.
“Robb is a great writer,” Guenther said. “I was laughing my head off [at the 10-Minute Play Festival], so getting to be a part of the larger production is really cool.”
Willoughby said comedy is the place that’s “most comfortable and most fun” for him as an artist, and that — though there may be a “little seed” of deeper meaning in “The Works” — it’s “not really a message play.”
But for the members of his cast — and, potentially, audiences — the comedy itself may be the message; a few of the play’s actors mused on the value of laughter in the midst of uncertain, often challenging times.
“So much of the world is so heavy — it can feel a little daunting sometimes to try to find that spark,” Graham said. “But once you’re in the room with people, and their little spark happens and your little spark happens, it just kind of grows.”
“I always get joy from the theater, even just watching theater,” actor Jeanna GunderKline added. “There’s immediately a sense of community, because you’re building something together. And laughing heartily — I guess you could call it a distraction, but I think laughter is important in resistance, too. We’ve got to keep our joy.”
Even at the best of times, though, Willoughby said performing comedy isn’t just a walk in the park — it takes the right timing, the right flourish and, importantly, the right community of people.
“It’s not as easy as you might think — but it’s easier when you have good people,” he said.
Laughing, he added: “And none of us are getting paid, so I tend to cast people I want to hang out with.”
“The Works” will be performed Fridays and Saturdays, April 25 and 26 and May 2 and 3, at First Presbyterian Church; each show begins at 8 p.m. The performance will run about 90 minutes.
Some adult themes are implied — but are likely to go over the heads of most kids, and there is no adult language, so families are welcome. Tickets are $15.
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