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The Ripe & Ready Players started out as a one-time arts project funded by Senior Neighbors, a social services agency, and Allied Arts of Chattanooga. Founder/Director Suzanne Carter, a University of Tennessee theatre professor, spent time with Senior Neighbors members to gather material for the show. Then she turned their conversations into songs and three to ten-minute vignettes on presidential grandmothers, newly retired husbands and couples on cruises. The cast was selected and off it went to perform at area theatres, conferences, on college campuses, at political caucuses, theatres and public schools.
That was in 1987, and there's no end in sight. The troupe has had kudos from the founder of Chicago's Second City theatre group. The Players performed to sold out audiences at the 1998 and 2003 Piccolo Spoleto Festivals in Charleston, SC, the Cumberland County Playhouse, as well as many different Arts Councils around the southeast.
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