The play, a fictional encounter of real personalities before the 1935 500 Mile Race, pits the WWI ace and track owner, Eddie Rickenbacker, against Laura Ingalls, an intrepid aviatrix trying to break Amelia Earhart’s records and Mary Bostwick, a seasoned society reporter for the Indianapolis Star.
Fate has brought these women together, and they love speed and they want to take to the bricks, but as Bostwick reported in the Star in 1935, all they hear is, “Hey lady, you can’t go there.” In a spirited and raucous play, the women confront Rickenbacker with their ambitions to drive a racing car, causing consternation in the Pagoda.
1935 was the era of ‘Wild Bill’ Cummings and Wilbur Shaw. The cars were two-seaters with riding mechanics and no rookie tests were required. All you needed was guts and these women had as much as the men.
In Driving Them Crazy, Rickenbacker is caught between protecting the women from the dangers of the Speedway, the early ‘30’s were deadly years, and the need for publicity in the midst of the Depression. He has already changed the “rules” in 1935 by inviting Amelia Earhart to be the honorary referee and letting Life Magazine send their famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White to cover the race.
Rickenbacker expects the women to attend the Speedway Ball and the Columbia Club dance, not to climb behind the wheel of a racing car, but when Bostwick discovers that a famous, well-publicized fact about the first 500 in 1911 is really an urban legend, Rickenbacker finds himself steering a course through history that’s more than four left turns.
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Driving Them Crazy was written by Paul L. Bancel, an Indianapolis native. The play is directed by Dan Scharbrough and features Casey Votaw, Carl Cooper and Robyne Ault.
Bancel’s 2008 IndyFringe play, Jealous Sky, about Amelia Earhart and the pioneer flyer, Harriet Quimby, was noted by Whitney Smith in the Indianapolis Star as, “One of the most engaging pieces in this year's IndyFringe…one of my favorites…” Hope Baugh wrote for indytheatrehabit.com, “It is a treat. Again and again … I forgot completely that I was watching actors.”
Performance Details:
Theatre on the Square.
Saturday, August 20, 7:30pm; Sunday, August 21, 4:30pm; Monday, August 22, 9:00pm; Friday, August 26, 10:30pm; Saturday, August 27, 1:30pm; Sunday August 28, 9:00pm.
Box office: 317-721-9458
Tickets also available at www.indyfringe.org
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