Charlotte Banks Stopped Waiting for a Role. She Built a ‘Hairspray’ Production.

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Charlotte Banks could keep waiting for someone to cast her, find a different job or make a show herself.

“I want to make something myself,” she recalled thinking. “I can’t not do this.”

That decision brought the Sandy Springs actor to Lawrenceville, where she is now playing Penny Pingleton in Hairspray while carrying the responsibilities of the company presenting it. Pretty as a Penny Productions’ debut runs through Oct. 24 at the Lawrenceville Arts Center.

In conversations with North Atlanta Star after the Oct. 17 matinee, Banks and members of her cast described what it took to get there: personal investment, an unexpected return to auditioning, a move away from home and the daily work of becoming comfortable enough to perform.

For Banks, some of that experience is familiar from the character she plays.

Penny, Tracy Turnblad’s best friend, gradually finds the freedom to make her own choices despite her controlling mother. Banks sees more determination in her than audiences might initially recognize.

“I don’t think she’s shy,” Banks said.

Penny wants to participate, she explained, even when she is unsure how. Her transformation becomes visible by the end, but the effort begins much earlier.

Banks recognized something of herself in that willingness to try before knowing exactly how everything would work.

Finding a Stage

Making a company meant learning tasks that had little to do with performing: nonprofit paperwork, securing production rights, finding an available theater and arranging accommodation for actors coming from elsewhere in the country.

Banks toured venues, only to find that existing theater companies had already booked much of the available time. The search eventually brought her to Lawrenceville.

She said the first production was financed through personal investment. Finding sponsors was difficult without a completed show to demonstrate what her company could do.

Now she has one.

Banks does not expect this first run to recover the full investment, but she hopes it will help secure support for future work. She is also exploring another staging of Hairspray, possibly in north Florida in the spring. Those plans remain tentative.

There are practical reasons to return to the musical. She owns the set and costumes, which will need to be stored when the Lawrenceville run closes. Using them again would allow her to build on the work already done.

There is also a simpler reason.

“This is my favorite musical,” she said.

What Tracy Has Given Her

Darci Ann Combs-Garibay, who plays Tracy Turnblad, came to Lawrenceville from New York City. Originally from Aurora, Indiana, she auditioned in November and still has a video documenting how she learned she had landed the role.

The news came through a Zoom call following her final callback. She described the experience since then as life-changing.

Asked about the connection between herself and Tracy, Combs-Garibay spoke about the musical’s vision of people coming together. With so much happening in the world, she said, performing that story carries particular meaning for her.

She loves being able to show “how beautiful our world could be when we all come together.”

Standing alongside her, Douglas McGeoch, who plays Tracy’s mother, Edna, said their connection had formed early.

“We’re very bonded, kind of from the beginning,” he said.

Combs-Garibay’s speaking voice reminded him of his own family’s Southern roots. His grandparents were from Rome, Georgia, and he grew up in Naples, Florida, before spending years in New York himself.

For Combs-Garibay, the temporary move to Lawrenceville has been a happy one.

“Oh, I love it,” she said. “I love it so much. It’s so sweet.”

When the run ends, she plans to return to New York and keep auditioning. Asked about a particular production she would love to join, she named the new Dolly Parton musical.

“Broadway is the dream,” she said.

An Audition After Two Decades

For McGeoch, the invitation to join the production arrived unexpectedly.

He and his husband perform as the drag comedy duo Olive and Agatha. They had spent years creating and producing their own work, and he had not auditioned for anything in more than two decades.

Then an inquiry arrived in his business email asking whether he would consider Edna.

His first reaction was that he was not old enough for the part. On reconsideration, he decided he was.

His husband encouraged him to audition. McGeoch prepared the requested material, submitted a recording and received an offer about 36 hours later, he recalled.

Although he had studied vocal performance and opera at Stetson University, he had stopped thinking of a production like this as something available to him.

The experience has renewed his interest in pursuing more musical theater, including a long-held Broadway ambition. Hades in Hadestown is among the roles he would love to play.

He also pointed to the ensemble’s workload: learning the production’s songs and choreography during a rehearsal period of roughly two and a half weeks.

His husband has remained his biggest cheerleader throughout the experience.

“He’s a very supportive man,” McGeoch said.

Learning to Be Seaweed

KeVon J. Vernon, who plays Seaweed J. Stubbs, knew Banks before the production. When she told him about her plans, he wanted to participate.

The role has helped him become more confident.

Seaweed’s ease and physical assurance gave Vernon something to work toward, including a jazz split he initially approached nervously.

“Seaweed has helped me be more confident in myself,” he said.

His next step will take him much farther from Lawrenceville. Vernon plans to spend a year teaching English in Seoul, South Korea, while continuing to develop his dancing and voice. He hopes to return to performing in the United States afterward. His dream role is Simba in The Lion King on Broadway.

He spoke warmly about his fellow performers, whose work pushes him to improve. When asked what he would miss, he mentioned the costumes, their colors and the experience of moving through the set.

For now, those ambitions meet on a stage in Lawrenceville, in a musical about a teenager who wins a place on television and uses it to challenge segregation. The cast also includes Layla Alyce as Motormouth Maybelle and Leo Thomasian as Link Larkin.

Banks hopes more people will come before the run ends. After all the paperwork, auditions, rehearsals and expense, that is the remaining task: getting an audience through the doors.

Hairspray continues through Oct. 24 on the Clyde & Sandra Strickland Grand Stage at the Lawrenceville Arts Center. Tickets and performance information are available through the venue.