The Collinsport Players

From left, Jeff Thompson, Jonathan Harrison, Joan Stewart and Eileen Berger of The Collinsport Players.

 

Jeff Thompson.

The Collinsport Players is a fan-led Dark Shadows dramatic group founded at the Dark Shadows Festival in Newark, N.J., in 1984 by Jeff Thompson and Laura Brodian. Both were already in costume and decided to enliven their hosting chores with a set of improvisational sketches.

Improvisation dominated the 1985 performance of a skit entitled Julia's Trump. From that point, scripts were written and the cast size increased. Spelling Bee, presented in 1985, involved five actors. In 1986, the twentieth anniversary of the premiere of Dark Shadows, the group performed The More Things Change: The Official Twentieth Anniversary Skit, a major step forward into a full one-act play with some two dozen actors participating. (Via The Vampire Book)

Below is a video of a Collinsport Players performance from the 2008 Dark Shadows convention in Burbank, Calif., featuring Jefferson Black, Amanda Trujillo, Jonathan Harrison & Laura Chapman. The sketch was written and introduced by Jeffrey Thompson.