MIX, MATCH,
AND MAKE IT UP

An intergenerational troupe turns
audience ideas into live musical theater

Here’s a special recipe for success and entertainment. It’s all in the mixing and blending and combining of diverse ingredients. The people participating are of different ages and experiences and talents. The elements of the production are acting, music, and movement. The tones and moods range from goofy LOL comedy, in large doses, to moments of touching tenderness, with accompanying live instrumentals that might be classy classical pieces or contain contemporary concoctions. Keep an open mind. Stir well, rehearse, respect, and revise. Add sparkle and the magic of the moment, always ready to improve, improvise, and imagine more.

That’s what goes on in preparations and performances by the group called Creative Stage Collective, a troupe of devoted, focused people as young as elementary school–aged to those much longer in the tooth, including guest artists with long résumés of professional appearances and training. Audiences can catch the fruits of their most recent labors on Saturday, April 25 at Symphony Space, the large-capacity venue on Broadway at West 95th Street, with two performance times: 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM. The show is titled Musical Mad Libs!, as its structure and content are inspired by the old party game “Mad Libs,” in which words (nouns, adjectives, etc.) are added to the bones of a story through the suggestions of attendees, filling in the blanks of a basic narrative without knowing or anticipating the full context and results.

In this Saturday’s presentation, audience members will be asked to shout out ideas and words that will instantly be incorporated into scenes that the actors have been playing with in their recent meetings—going over movements and situations with set music. For example, the small core group of actors has worked out a framework for a scenario called “Morning Routine,” about what members of a family (mom, dad, kids, and a pet) might do shortly after waking up and getting ready for their day ahead. But the audience will dictate what some of those activities will be for the pantomime to come (making their beds? making sure they make time for morning prayer? making a place for putting on make-up? who knows!). And what kind of animal will one game human actor become?

Cate Smit will narrate the stories, inserting the crowd’s contributions for the plot as it thickens and quickens apace. That’s just one segment of a full program where actors are ready for anything, along with some glorious classical music played by violinist Ariel Horowitz (Concert Artists Guild Competition winner whose work has been heard at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center), Mitch Lyon (cellist and Teaching Artist Faculty member with the New York Philharmonic), and Carter Johnson (international prizewinning pianist and finalist in the 2025 Van Cliburn International Competition). Audiences can follow a young protagonist as she finds herself in situations such as discovering a mysterious object (the audience will decide what it is), dining in a fancy restaurant (the audience will decide what she eats), and landing even more mysteriously in a metaphysical plane TBA.

What’s remarkable about Creative Stage Collective is the way the young and post-young generations work together so warmly and cooperatively—age seems irrelevant—and how those who have just a modest amount of performing experience under their belts are welcomed as partners with veterans. It speaks well of this group that people come back for show after show—participants as well as audiences, who come by the hundreds to fill seats in the vast Symphony Space auditorium.

In the most frozen days of winter, Stage and Cinema was invited to attend rehearsals for a February program of scripted scenes and songs to bring you a preview of that project—ideas flying and then being polished by founder/director Madeline Bender with a deft touch and admirably loving leadership, inspiring everyone to make what was good become even better, more specific, clearer, and funnier. That hard work in marathon sessions paid off on February 7 with the public performance Creative Stage Spectacular 2026. Despite the bitter cold, the audience showed up and gave a warm reception to the company, laughing heartily at the loopy humor of skits involving chickens running a hotel and chaos on an airplane while grooving to pop music favorites with new lyrics (with a worthy message), along with robust classical music sung and played with panache. Cheers and cheeriness filled the hall. One expects the same with the different program (and some familiar faces and similar humor and good spirits) on April 25.

The descriptions above of these best-laid plans and possibilities for the madness of Madeline’s Musical Mad Libs!—liberally sprinkling in clever surprises—are based on return visits to the CSC group’s preparation and brainstorming sessions to be ready for anything and continue getting to know each other as team players who contribute ideas and reflections. Even this Stage and Cinema invitee, happy to be a pencil-toting, note-taking fly on the wall, was asked to give feedback and allowed to make suggestions. The ambiance is amiable, and the work ethic—even when tackling wacky action—is serious. The strong bonding of performers, director, stage manager, and assistants is such that Creative Stage Collective might be called Creative Stage Connective!

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Musical Mad Libs!
Creative Stage Collective
Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street, New York
Saturday, April 25 at 3 PM & 6 PM
for tickets ($15-$20 +$5 fee); visit Creative Stage Collective

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